Watching this on Marie Menken's birthday today, one of the rare individual who inspired so many filmmakers but never sought for limelight and stayed underground. This story was interesting and few sequences moved me, I was amazed by how she gave it all to complete her experimental shorts. Sometimes i felt she was a woman of the wrong time, but it was great to hear about Menken from Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken, Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama. This alone can be the sole driving force to hunt this down and to be enlightened about this forgotten bolex-wielding filmmaker of American alternative film. I have always loved Martina Kudlácek's In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2001) and this is another great homage with interesting stories recounting the life and work of Menken. Kenneth Anger and Alfred Leslie portions was one of the most interesting, they shared about the New York gay culture and the place Meken and her husband Willard Maas shared back in the day.
I'm happy that Kudlácek made this documentary, you will realize there's more that lies beneath the rabbit hole of this forgotten legend. Still so many directors and films buried somewhere. If you check the reviews i've plugged in, most of the movies have very less vote or no reviews, i dared to go down the rabbit hole, if you want to and i'm sure it's worth your time as this immersion in a life of a forgotten but important filmmaker unfamiliar to world, but fascinating.
I'm happy that Kudlácek made this documentary, you will realize there's more that lies beneath the rabbit hole of this forgotten legend. Still so many directors and films buried somewhere. If you check the reviews i've plugged in, most of the movies have very less vote or no reviews, i dared to go down the rabbit hole, if you want to and i'm sure it's worth your time as this immersion in a life of a forgotten but important filmmaker unfamiliar to world, but fascinating.
