Maria Lassnig Restored Films in Retrospective at Anthology Film Archives

Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) is internationally recognized as one of the most important painters of the 20th and 21st centuries. The leitmotif of her painting, the act of rendering her body awareness visible, found additional expression in film in New York in the early 1970s. While several of these films have long since been part of her canonical works (e.g. SELFPORTRAIT, IRIS, and COUPLES), many remained unfinished. These "films in progress" can be regarded as autobiographical notes as well as an artistic experiment featuring many of Lassnig's recognizable subjects and methods. In 2018, this filmic legacy was restored and in many cases completed according to her original concept and instructions by two close collaborators, artists Mara Mattuschka and Hans Werner Poschauko.

To celebrate Maria Lassnig’s moving-image work, the restoration of her films, and the publication of “Maria Lassnig: Film Works”, Anthology Film Archives is presenting three programs devoted to both her “canonical” films and the newly completed “non-canonical” works that have expanded and enriched our understanding of her cinema.

GME recently added MARIA LASSNIG FILMS IN PROGRESS (US, 1970-1979), together with the bound publication MARIA LASSNIG. FILM WORK (AUSTRIA, 2020) to our collection of Lassnig’s film work, as well as the earlier GME release MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS (Austria, 1970-1992), for distribution on DVD/DSL bundle to the North American institutional market.

MARIA LASSNIG FILMS IN PROGRESS highlights both finished films and film fragments, all produced using 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8, comprised of live action footage, animated drawings, animated paper cut-outs, and documentary footage of the artist’s studio and her surroundings in New York.

MARIA LASSNIG. FILM WORK, available in English and in German, provides the first comprehensive index of Lassnig's film works, offering insight into the filmmaker's world of ideas through a wide selection of her own, previously unpublished notes. It includes contributions by James Boaden, Beatrice von Bormann, Jocelyn Miller, Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, and Isabella Reicher and extensive conversations on the rediscovery of Lassnig’s fascinating films.

(THE BALLAD OF MARIA LASSNIG) MARIA LASSNIG KANTATE (1992), included with MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS

Drawing on some of the same themes and subjects as her paintings, her filmic narratives, as seen in MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS, are profound and astute observations of the complexities of male-female relationships and of the experience of being both a woman and an artist.