Marie Menken
Also Known As: Marie Maas
Biography: Marie Menken was born Marie Menkevicius in New York City on May 25, 1909, the daughter of Catholic Lithuanian immigrants. She grew up in Brooklyn with a brother and a sister, in a home used to frequent financial difficulties. Both she and her sister Adele later changed their surname to Menken. Marie Menken and Willard Maas had got married in 1937, moving into a Brooklyn penthouse at 62 Montague Street which they would inhabit until their deaths. She died on December 29, 1970. Four days after her death, on January 2, 1971, Willard Maas died.
Department: Directing
Place of Birth: New York, New York
Birthday: May 25, 1909
Deathday: December 29, 1970
Adult: No
Gender: Female
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Known For:
Narcissus
Overview: A film poem, a re-telling of the Greek myth in modern terms. In the traditional pool the water has become muddy and Narcissus finds that mirrors are more rewarding for the study of his changing reflections. There are three mirrors, each reflecting a dramatic study in self-love. The first, love that deserves the adoration of the opposite sex; the second, homosexual love that investigates itself and its own sex; the third, love that insures one a place in the present and history.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1958-04-25
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Image in the Snow
Overview: A young male protagonist dreams of a muscleman hero, a black dancer, and a princess who gives him a magic urn. When he wakes he rejects his mother (Menken) and wanders the cold streets, where he finds his dream characters corrupted or dying.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1952-11-12
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Bitch
Overview: “Andy Warhol called Marie Menken and Willard Maas ‘the last of the great bohemians,’ and, in 1965, made Bitch, his real-life parody of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Willard and Marie sitting on the couch in their living room, drunk and arguing on a Sunday afternoon. Unscripted, shot with a stationary camera in his signature home-movie documentary style, Warhol’s Bitch has never before been seen by the public—until now…” (Philip Gefter).
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-01-01
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The Geography of the Body
Overview: A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes views of a man and a woman's bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an ear, a mouth, a tongue, bits of hair, a hand, the tips of fingers, toes. Occasionally, the frame includes a larger scape of a body: a chest, a back, a breast. Usually the camera is stationery; sometimes, it moves across a body, remaining in close up. They hold hands for one moment. The bodies are without clothes; no genitalia are visible.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-01-01
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The Life of Juanita Castro
Overview: A playwright taunts a number of actors into improvising a truly ridiculous but subtlely meaningful meditation on Fidel Castro and his family.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-03-22
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Notes on Marie Menken
Overview: A look at avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2006-04-20
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Andy Warhol Screen Tests
Overview: The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-11-28
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Prison
Overview: Inspired by Bibbe Hansen's experiences in a juvenile detention center.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-01-01
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Chelsea Girls
Overview: Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-09-01
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Overview: An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-23
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