Yvonne Rainer might not be a film director with name recognition like Spielberg, Hitchcock or Scorsese. However, a showcase of her films at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art’s Australian Cinémathèque (October 18-27) illuminates what an important force she has been in the history of film.
Yvonne Rainer: Everything is a Performance is a kind of mini film festival that will feature seven films Rainer made from 1972 to 1996. The program is curated by Australian Cinémathèque’s Robert Hughes, who says the aim is “to showcase filmmakers whose work has not necessarily been given its due attention and this major retrospective forefronts Rainer as a singular voice in modern cinema”.
Also a dancer and choreographer, Rainer – an American who lives in New York and turns 90 this year – is an influential figure in the Avant Garde film movement, with her works incorporating a multitude of mediums including elements such as reconstructions, archival footage and stills photography. She came to film via dance, which gives her works a unique perspective.
New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation have recently restored Rainer’s films in 4K – a great reason to have this culturally valuable showcase presented in a free festival at GOMA.
“The restorations have been painstakingly undertaken, bringing new life to Rainer’s idiosyncratic aesthetic,” Hughes says.
Rainer’s works are definitely in the experimental category. They’ve gained her a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships and three Rockefeller Fellowships, with her being considered one of the most important performance artists of the 20th century.
Hughes says the films speak specifically to Rainer’s experience as a woman and a queer person, “while also being deeply engaged with the contemporary politics of their time”.
“Lest they sound like hard work, they are also funny, playful and provocative,” he says. “Rainer is a true independent and her films will appeal to audiences who are interested in cinema that is uncompromising and completely unique.”
One of the works, Lives of Performers, was Rainer’s first foray into filmmaking in 1972. The story is loosely about a love triangle between one man and two women, but the plotline is seemingly quite unimportant with a review from The Guardian last year summing the film up with: “The cumulative effect is an immersion in 1970s art practice in all its meta-narrative incoherence and mess. Don’t try to understand it, just let it wash over you and you’re likely to find it oddly mesmeric.”
Another film, Privilege (1990), deals with menopause – a timely subject considering the amount of media coverage it’s had recently. Autobiographical and darkly funny at times, the film has filmmaker Yvonne Washington standing in for Rainer as the film’s director, interviewing a friend about her changing body. Sexism, racism, class and the limitations of “white feminism” are all subjects for Rainer to explore. Old black-and-white footage of male doctors talking about menopausal women offers a disturbing insight into how menopause has been dealt with in the past by so-called experts who would never experience it.
Besides her own films, there’s also the impressionistic documentary, Rainer Variations 2002, where the filmmaker becomes the subject in a work directed by Charles Atlas that also has her recognisable techniques at play. From 2002, it includes conversations with Rainer in her New York home reflecting on her career after she’d stop making films.
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Rainer’s films seem to be an antidote to the massively budgeted movies cramming cinemas these days, often as part of a superhero franchise.
Hughes concludes by saying: “I think audiences will continue to respond to creative expressions that are specific and honest, and these new restorations are the perfect opportunity to experience Rainer’s unapologetic cinematic statements.”
The full program: qagoma.qld.gov.au/cinema/program/yvonne-rainer
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