Provocative Portrait of Photographer Francesca Woodman, Her Artist Family, and Tragic Demise
NEW YORK, NY.- Film Forum will present the U.S. theatrical premiere of THE WOODMANS, opening Wednesday, January 19. Francesca Woodman’s haunting B&W images, many of them nude self-portraits, now reside in the pantheon of great photography from the late 20th century. The daughter of artists Betty and Charles Woodman (she a ceramicist and he a painter/ photographer), Francesca was a precocious RISD graduate, who came to New York with the intention of setting the art world on fire. But in 1981, as a despondent 22-year-old, she committed suicide.
- THE WOODMANS beautifully interweaves the young artist’s work (including experimental videos and diary passages) with interviews with the parents who have nurtured her professional reputation these past 30 years, while continuing to make art of their own in the face of tragedy.
THE WOODMANS beautifully interweaves the young artist’s work (including experimental videos and diary passages) with interviews with the parents who have nurtured her professional reputation these past 30 years, while continuing to make art of their own in the face of tragedy. The film grapples with such issues as parent-child competition and the toxic level of ambition that fuels the New York art scene. It also has much to say about the healing powers of creativity. Winner of the Best New York Documentary award at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.
THE WOODMANS will have a 2-week engagement January 19 – February 1 at Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (W. of 6th Av.) with screenings daily at 1:00, 2:50, 4:30, 6:20, 8:10, 10:00.
“Delicately constructed, marvelous to look at and poignantly elegiac… Francesca was ahead of her time, creating dreamy, multilayered, confessional photographic art in which she stripped herself, physically and psychologically with no small amount of nerve.” – John Anderson, Variety
“This seductive narrative lays out Woodman’s epigrammatic journals, photographs and videos as clues in a self-murder mystery.” – Logan Hill , New York magazine
“Captivating. Methodical and bewitching. Woodman’s pictures will be a revelation.” – Hilary Elkins, GQ
THE WOODMANS (2010, 82 mins.) Directed by C. Scott Willis. Produced by Neil Barrett, Jeff Werner and C. Scott Willis. Cinematographer: Neil Barrett. Editor: Jeff Werner. Art Direction: Ekin Akalin. Original Score: David Lang. Original Score Performed by So Percussion. USA. Released by Lorber Films, a division of Kino Lorber, Inc.
Related posts:
- First Solo Display of Work by Photographer Mary McCartney at the National Portrait Gallery
- The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family on View at the Peabody Essex Museum
- Mosaic Art NOW 2010: Great Art, Inspiring Artists, Provocative Thinking
- Aboriginal Image Wins Top Australia Photo Portrait Prize
- MoMA Exhibition Illuminates the Legacy of Visionary Experimental Filmmaker Maya
