Element

Element

16mm, black and white, silent, 12 min
Camera: Hilary Harris; Performer: Amy Greenfield. ELEMENT, like TIDES, raises issues of the active image of a woman's body on film. The two films are counterparts and are ideally screened together. ...
Rental format: 16mm

Stills

About

Camera: Hilary Harris; Performer: Amy Greenfield. ELEMENT, like TIDES, raises issues of the active image of a woman's body on film. The two films are counterparts and are ideally screened together. The woman's body is covered, like a moving sculpture, entirely with black, wet, clay-like mud in an environment of this element. She falls into and rises out of this glistening substance, over and over, until she is seen against the sky and falls one last time, ending with her black body sliding along the mud glittering in the jewel-like sun. The whole film is a human cycle which is both birthlike and deathlike and summons up through visceral imagery a very primal area of female sensuality. "In the well-known ELEMENT, Greenfield rolls and seethes and plunges in a field of mud, her hair, her face, her naked body [are] not just slathered with mud but become a part of it ...." – Deborah Jowitt, dance critic, The Village Voice Exhibition: Toulon Int'l Festival; Whitney Museum of American Art; Third Int'l Avant-Garde Film Festival, London; Film Forum, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Programs

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    Cinedance

    A program of 16mm dance films from the FMC archive

    Join us for an evening of short dance films created between the 1940s and 1980s, curated by G. Anthony Svatek.

Films

  • Other films by this artist in our catalogue

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    Dirt
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    Dirt
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    Rental format: 16mm
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    Transport
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    Rental format: 16mm
    • Environment / Nature
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    Dervish 2
    Experimental

    Dervish 2
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    Rental format: 16mm
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    Dialogue for Cameraman and Dancer
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    Dialogue for Cameraman and Dancer
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, color, sound, 25 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    Fragments: Mat/Glass
    Experimental

    Fragments: Mat/Glass
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, black and white, sound, 18 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    Videotape For A Woman And A Man
    Experimental

    Videotape For A Woman And A Man
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 34 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    4 Solos For 4 Women
    Experimental

    4 Solos For 4 Women
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, color, sound, 28 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Dance
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    Tides
    Experimental

    Tides
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, color, sound, 12.25 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    Antigone/Rites of Passion
    Experimental

    Antigone/Rites of Passion
    Amy Greenfield

    16mm, color, sound, 85 min
    Rental format: 16mm