ΜΠΑΜΠΕΤ ΜΑΝΓΚΟΛΤ / BABETTE MANGOLTE
Choreographer Yvonne Rainer, having already influenced the world of contemporary dance and having survived physical and psychic traumas, but also emboldened by the women’s movement, entered the terrain of experimental cinema. In this film, her first feature, during the preparation of a performance, a man can’t choose between two women and makes them both suffer. Rainer incorporates one of her older choreographies, parodies the genre of melodrama and the clichés of betrayal and makes extensive use of off-screen sounds and intertitles. The film also documents the hard work involved in performing. Mangolte, artfully, with her roving camera arcs across the bodies of dancers and lights the tableaux vivants that refer to Lulu in Pabst’s Pandora’s box (1929).
Yvonne Rainer (1934) is an American dancer, choreographer and director, with conceptual and minimalist influences in her work. She was a founding member of the legendary Judson Dance Theater in New York. After leaving her mark in contemporary dance in the 1960s, she turned to experimental cinema and made seven films, returning to choreography from the 2000s. She is considered one of the most influential American avant-garde artists.
Babette Mangolte (1941) is a French-American director, cinematographer, photographer and artist who has lived in New York since 1970. She has worked as a cinematographer with Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer and has made important experimental films on the very act of looking, about the American landscape,
about contemporary dance and the art of performance. She is considered one of the most important artists of the American avant-garde and currently teaches at the University of San Diego in California.
