MafíSHCO

Liquid Movie

Still from Liquid Movie. 16mm film produced by CRT, Milan. Film excerpt below.






About the work

Liquid Movie is a 16mm film version of the stage work The False and True Occult performed in Milan in 1981 at the Centro di ricerca per il teatro, Milano, Italia.

Reviews

  • “Mostra del Cinema '81 Biennale di Venezia,”  Alberto Farassino, La Repubblica, September 10, 1981.   “In Liquid Movie water is never what it seems. The film, produced by the Center for Theater Research in Milan (whose president is Sisto Della Palma, Secretary-General of the Biennale), documents the performance of the California choreographer Margaret Fisher. She dances ‘in place’ straddling a mirror, her body divided in two - half solid/half liquid, half in air/half in water. In this unreal ambiance, her ‘real’ gestures flow with measure and exactitude while the mirrored gestures distort. Plessi appears to restrict himself to filming a twenty-minute performance with a fixed camera angle. But, in fact, the film itself is a film-mirror, a cinematic palindrone, because the second half is obtained by reversing the first half, which renders it still more elusive among the confines of reality and its mirrored reflection.”

Film
Liquid Movie, an award-winning collaboration between Fabrizio Plessi, director,
and Margaret Fisher, choreographer.   More video below.

Credits

  • Director: Fabrizio Plessi
  • Design and Script: Margaret Fisher and Fabrizio Plessi
  • Choreography, Performance: Margaret Fisher
  • Director of Photography: Armando Bertacchi
  • Music: Fabrizio Plessi, Paolo Rosa
  • Produced by: Centro di ricerca per il teatro, Milano, Italia
  • Distribution: Paolo Zenoni, Centro di ricerca per il teatro, Via U. Dini #7, 20142 Milano, Italia
  • Release Date: 1981   TRT: 18 minutes    Original format: b/w 16mm film
  • Genres: American Dance on Film; Experimental Short Films

Screenings and Awards

  • Best Experimental Film:  Mostra internazionale del cinema, La Biennale di Venezia (Italy)
  • Premio Marino Milan Film Festival (Italy)
  • First Prize Montreal Film Festival (Canada)
  • Film Festival: Asolo (Italy)
  • Nuovo Cinema di Salerno: Gli Incontri Sperimentali, Salerno (Italy)
  • Salsomaggiore Film Festival: Salsomaggiore (Italy)
  • American Center: Paris (France)
  • Film Festival di Martina Franca: Martina Franca (Italy)
  • Centre Beaubourg Paris (France)
  • Lyon Performance Art Performance Symposium  Lyon (France)
  • Festival Cinema Oberhausen Oberhausen (Germany)
  • Image Forum Tokyo (Japan)

Archival Footage
The original solo by Margaret Fisher for The False and True Occult, performed at
Dance Theatre Workshop, New York, 1983. Still image © Aldo Agnelli, 1982, CRT,
Milan, Italy.