‘Assembled Visions’ featuring Carolee Schneemann at Anthology Film Archives, New York, 29 April

27 March 2025

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On Tuesday 29 April, Anthology Film Archives presents newly restored 16mm prints of Carolee Schneemann’s Plumb Line and Viet-Flakes, alongside the rarely screened Red News, with the support of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation and Electronic Arts Intermix. The program pairs Schneemann’s films with Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart and Peggy Ahwesh’s The Falling Sky to examine how found footage can be used for dynamic investigations of memory, politics, and cinematic poetics.

Carolee Schneemann’s Plumb Line (1968-71) offers a fragmented portrait of a collapsing relationship, merging intimate imagery with experimental techniques. Viet-Flakes (1962-67), a searing anti-war collage, recontextualizes found photographs of Vietnam War atrocities, while Red News (1962-67) considers the interplay between media, entertainment, and violence. Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936), a cornerstone of found-footage cinema, transforms a forgotten Hollywood film into a surreal, dreamlike meditation on longing and nostalgia. Peggy Ahwesh’s The Falling Sky (2017) extends this tradition by repurposing animated news to interrogate our collective interests, fears, and obsessions. Together these works trace a lineage of experimental filmmaking that activates archival material to reveal new layers of meaning.

A conversation with Peggy Ahwesh, Rachel Churner, John Klacsmann, Karl McCool, and Kenneth White follows the screening.

Tuesday, 29 April at 7.30pm (EDT)
Anthology Film Archives, Maya Deren Theater, New York 10003.

Find out more via Anthology Film Archives.

Image: Carolee Schneemann, Film still from Plumb Line, 1968-71. 16mm film, color, sound, 14:27 minutes. Image courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.