Cremaster 1 (1996)

Director:

Matthew Barney

Writer:

Matthew Barney

Stars:

Marti Domination, Gemma Bourdon Smith, Kathleen Crepeau

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Marti Domination	...	Goodyear
Gemma Bourdon Smith	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Green Lounge
Kathleen Crepeau	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Green Lounge
Nina Kotov	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Green Lounge
Jessica Sherwood	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Green Lounge / Goodyear Chorus Girl
Tanyth Berkeley	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Red Lounge
Miranda Brooks	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Red Lounge
Kari McKahan	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Red Lounge
Catherine Mulchahy	...	Goodyear Hostess in the Red Lounge
Brooke Albus	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl
Sara Bearce	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl
Celeste Bolin	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl
Amanda Byram	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl
Holly Carlock	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl
Erin Caskey	...	Goodyear Chorus Girl

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

first of series | art | grape | surrealism | cremaster cycle | 

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Genres:

Short | Musical

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Official Sites:

The Cremaster Cycle

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 July 2005 (France)

Filming Locations:

Bronco Stadium - 1400 Bronco Lane, Boise, Idaho, USA

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

40 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Connections

Follows Cremaster 4 (1995)

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Soundtracks

"Sun Pretty"
by A. Mawer

User Reviews

Unblessed Soles

I'm going to comment on these one at a time as I see them. And I will see them in numerical order — there seems to be some difference of opinion as to what is best, but I'll work with the numbers that artist has assigned.

I come to this as someone concerned with cinematic narrative, explorations, experiments, adventures. And of course matters sexual are always worth tracing deeply.

If you don't know this, it is the first, numerically of five films that are the purest that can be termed "art" films. They aren't generally available via entertainment channels; parts of these can be viewed in a few museums. Sculptures featured in the films are sold by an art dealer who provides funding for the films. Seen commercially, the films are the context woven around the objects, a technique that in the ordinary world would be called advertising.

So starting out, there's a narrative here, the oldest one: "Buy this." Or more sensitively: "associate yourself with this in order to inherit the context we will plant in you." The film experience by itself is lovely, and if it weren't the beginning of a journey into the unknown, I would recommend it without qualification. I fear that marrying this man will bring unhappiness; there's something about giving the illusion of depth that doesn't reward serious investment. And films are always about serious investment; life is film.

What you'll see is choreography on a playing field, observed and controlled from paired blimps. More precisely and obviously the control is the hidden, newly stirring female impulse, that most female of impulses. Hidden and unacknowledged, but powerful.

All the humans we see are women. All the actions are those related to wombness, fruiting, exposing, silent weaving. You might think of it as eroticism for smart people. Pre-erotic.

What makes me hesitate in folding my dreams into this is the apparent obsession with notation. Its a dangerous thing for a sculptor to confuse shape with form. We'll see.

Meanwhile, it such a perfect notion, this business about us, the game of sex, influence from an abstract sky, ordered choreography by blind, hidden, newly stirring goddesses. Fruit.

Of the visual conventions, one is jarringly inelegant. Grapes provide the Steiner corpuscles of being here. Our twinned white goddesses purloin and internalize them, then eject or excrete them to appear as the action on the ground, skirts that vaginally speak to the world.

But where do our goddesses express these fruit? Through flares attached to the soles of one shoe. Its jarringly out of sync with everything else and one can only assume that among all the clever notions of flow, our artist couldn't imagine something more organic that stayed abstract but was connected to skin, or vessel.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.