Murder & Murder (first 30 mins)

Murder & Murder (first 30 mins)

feminist, woman filmmaker, experimental, sexuality, performance, lesbian

Acquired as research for Women of Vision from the distributors. Yvonne was my teacher at the Whitney Independent Studio Program and a role model for a life as a feminist queer artist, as well as for her conceptual, intellectual, and experimental inspirations. This is the first 30 mins only; the tape is no longer showing video.

She also attended, along with about 50 or more media feminists, the research meeting I recorded for what would become Women of Vision. The tape of that research meeting held in NY in 1994 has been annotated and is available here. 

1996

Rainer’s last feature is also one of her most personal, inspired by the lows and highs of a breast cancer diagnosis in the early 1990s, and the surprise of a burgeoning lesbian relationship. The latter is playfully refracted here through the love story of two women from very different backgrounds: Yvonne’s sixty-something screen counterpart Doris (Joanna Merlin) who gleefully announces that she “loves eating pussy,” and the younger academic she’s soon to move in with, Mildred (Kathleen Chalfant). A comic romance whose emotions are amplified by Rainer’s structural tomfoolery and signature intellectual rigor—with the director providing running commentary and appearing intermittently to address the camera—MURDER and murder probes the pleasures, and attendant questions, of late-in-life love affairs. -- Zeitgest Films

113 mins

Yvonne Rainer

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