Saturday March 21, 7.30pm
Burckhardt Films
Works by Jacob Burckhardt and Rudy Burckhardt
presented by Norte Maar & Microscope Gallery
admission $6 – Jacob Burckhardt in person
Still from “A Guided Tour of Edith’s Apartment” (Jacob Burckhardt, 2010) – Image courtesy of the artist
Microscope Gallery in collaboration with Norte Maar presents an evening of films and videos celebrating artist and writer Edith Schloss, who died in 2011 at the age of 92. At the center of the program is the 47-minute “A Guided Tour of Edith’s Apartment” (2010) by filmmaker Jacob Burckhardt, who is also Schloss’ son, in which the then 90-year old artist leads a tour of her apartment in Rome – a city in which she lived since the early 60s – discussing her art and other work, art history, and mythology. Two short and poetic black & white 16mm films “Verona” (1955) and “Roma” (2004) by Rudy Burckhardt and Jacob Burckhardt respectively were shot nearly 60 years apart in the Italy that the German-born Schloss adopted as her home. And the evening also features the premiere of Jacob Burckhardt’s “Happy Holi” (2014) capturing a vibrant dance party celebrating the Hindu Holi festival of colors in Sri Lanka.
Edith Schloss is currently the subject of a major retrospective now on view at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Manhattan.
Program:
HAPPY HOLI
by Jacob Burckhardt, digital video, 2015, 24 minutes (English and Sinhala with subtitles)
The students at the Sri Palee campus of the University of Colombo throw a dance party, complete with choreographed numbers and a DJ. In a predominately Sinhala Buddhist part of Sri Lanka they are celebrating the Hindu Holi festival of colors, as a gesture of reconciliation, five years after the end of civil war. They are also commemorating having survived three years of university!
ROMA
by Jacob Burckhardt, b/w 16mm, 2004, 11 minutes
A poetic view of the Modern Ancient city from the point of view of a familiar pedestrian. Stones, water, graffitti, lights, the Pope, cats, people in the streets, clouds, markets, and even a few monuments, captured on a Bolex with grainy black and white film. Music by Carlo Buti and Tschipolla.
A GUIDED TOUR OF EDITH’S APARTMENT
by Jacob Burckhardt, digital video, 2010, 47 minutes
Edith Schloss Burckhardt, a 90-year-old artist living in Rome, gives a tour of her apartment. She vividly presents her own paintings, her career and her vast knowledge of American and European art history and mythology, past and present. She provides a colorful commentary and anecdotes about her life and her collection, which ranges from puppets found in the trash in Palermo to works and correspondence by her many friends, including painters, sculptors, poets, photographers and filmmakers, dance and art critics, musicians and composers, such as Fairfield Porter, Giorgio Morandi, Peter Rockwell, Meret Oppenheim, Edwin Denby, Rudy Burckhardt, Francesca Woodman, Elliott Carter, Alvin Curran, and many others.
VERONA
by Rudy Burckhardt, b/w 16mm, 1955, 8 minutes
The city of Verona, Italy, in 1955, with music by Domenico Scarlatti.
Still from “Verona” (Rudy Burckhardt, 1955)
Microscope gratefully acknowledges the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation as the Official Sponsor of the Event Series
