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Interrogating the Image (18) + Introduction by Kenneth White

Carolee Schneemann Film Series

Viet-Flakes (Carolee Schneemann, 1962-67)

Beginning with Schneemann’s own Viet-Flakes (1962-67), this programme brings together a selection of found footage films that critique and subvert the power of images produced by the media.

Over five years, Carolee Schneemann clipped photos of the Vietnam War from international newspapers and magazines, images of violence and suffering so shocking that many of them never appeared in print in America. Spreading them out on her studio floor, she panned over and zoomed into these images with her 8mm camera, travelling into and ‘animating’ them. The resulting film, Viet-Flakes, is a powerful protest against the Vietnam War, reflecting on the ethics, and politics, of witnessing the destruction of war at a remove, through photographs. 

We pair Viet-Flakes with four other celebrated experimental films from the late-1960s/early-1970s, all reflections on the use of documentary images in the media. Three relate to contemporary political events – the Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

82 min

Please note: this programme contains sequences with stroboscopic effects that may be unsuitable for some audience-members with light sensitivity

This screening is locally classified

Carolee Schneemann. "Viet-Flakes", 1962-7. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Programme

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Barbican Cinema 3