Saturday February 13, 7:30pm
Vivienne Dick’s “Liberty’s Booty”
Still from “Liberty’s Booty” (Vivienne Dick, 1980)
Microscope Gallery presents a rare screening of Vivienne Dick’s 1980 film Liberty’s Booty.
The Irish born filmmaker and seminal figure in New York’s “No Wave” scene, takes an unabashed look at middle-class white prostitution through casual interviews in cinéma vérité with women talking about their life as call-girls. Unsure of whom we are listening to, and as the line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, Dick seems to suggest that “all women prostitute themselves in some way, to some degree; who’s to say where we should draw a line and why”- as critic and filmmaker Bev Zalcock has stated.
Particularly charged with symbolic meaning is an animated title sequence in which Dick transforms the figure of the Statue of Liberty into a woman performing a strip-tease into an armed activist, reflecting upon the ramifications of the all-American desire for success in this the last film she made before leaving New York.
“Dick’s most disturbing film, Liberty’s Booty purposefully blurs the distinction between spectacle and document, license and exploitation, prostitution and daily life. Although filled with digressions and apparent non-sequiturs, the crux of the film is its frank subversion of male-stereotyped sex roles.” – Jim Hoberman, 1982
general admission $7
students with ID $5
Liberty’s Booty
Vivienne Dick, Super 8mm transfer to video, 1980, 47 minutes 36 seconds
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Vivienne Dick was born in Donegal, Ireland, in 1950 and between 1977 – 1982 she lived in New York, becoming one of the main figures of the ‘No Wave’ movement. Working mainly on Super 8, Dick’s films from this period feature many New York artists and musicians, with performances from Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Pat Place, Adele Bertei, and Ikue Mori, among others. Her films have been screened at film festivals and museums internationally, including Tate Britain, London, MoMA and the Whitney Museum in New York, IMMA in Dublin, and the Edinburgh and Berlin Film Festivals. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives, NYC, and the Irish Film Archives, among others. Dick lives in Galway, Ireland, where she teaches and continues to make films.
