Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (dir. Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1974)
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen
22 March - 24 May 2019, Peltz Gallery
This screening accompanies the exhbition Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen.
Curated by Oliver Fuke and Nicolas Helm-Grovas in collaboration with Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival. Supported by CHASE.
Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (dir. Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen,1974), 99 min.
In 1974, Mulvey and Wollen made their first film together, Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons. This film, which is comprised of five chapters, is concerned with women’s relation to myth and language. Penthesilea is a key example of what might be called counter-cinema. The film’s chapters are made up of sequence shots intended to subvert the conventions of editing. Here, the length of a role of 16mm film determined the length of the shot, as opposed to the director’s choice or control, as in traditional Hollywood cinema. Penthesilea is also testament to Mulvey and Wollen’s longstanding commitment to mixing and combining different media and approaches to filmmaking, which continues throughout all their collaborative films. Its five chapters respectively focus on theatre, spoken-word, the plastic arts, film and television. Thus the film, despite its negation of editing, is a montage of these different media.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington
Contact phone:
6115