Featured Films
Cet Air La
February 2010, 16mm, 3 min, B & W.
With April March and Julien Gasc.
Cet Air la is a famous french song from 1963, sung live by NY singer April March in acapela with Julien Gasc. The couple is singing while flying over a superimposed 16mm projection of a stop motion animation of a series of clouds, birds, bubbles, smoke machines and glitters…the song has the texture of a dream.
Part of Residency Unlimited Project
slapthegondola-thumb Slap the Gondola!
Nov 2010, 16mm, 15min, color, screened on video.
With Tony Conrad, Genesis P-Orridge and April March
Musical with music, musicians, muses and fishes.
On a giant ferry, two mermaids play violins to lure the fish when suddenly a giant fish lands on board, joined by thirty dancers and a great singer April March. A fish fight musical ensues. Commissioned by Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. for “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World” (Berlin, 2009) /Funded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds
“What a brilliant explosion of brilliance! Brilliant colors! Brilliant music! Brilliant costumes! Brilliant casting! I shall cherish this masterpiece forever!” Guy Maddin- Nov. 2010.
Papal Broken-Dance
2009, super 8 & Video, Color, 6 min
Music video Papal Breakdance by PTV3-Genesis P-Orridge
With Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and many friends.
A campy music video in the style of a scopitone from the early 1960s, with the wonderful cast of 10 boys in sexy red singlets and girls in red tutus, all dancing with joy with Genesis P-Orridge in a boxing ring…all the ingredients for a slap stick boxing match in music.
Snowbeard
US 2008, 16mm, b/w, 3 min.
Losier’s poignant short film offers a moving tribute to New York icon Mike Kuchar, filmed on his last day before leaving Manhattan to relocate to San Francisco.
Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist
2008, 16mm, color, 25 min.
The latest in Marie Losier’s ongoing series of film portraits of avant-garde directors (George and Mike Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman), DreaMinimalist offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his youth and his association with Jack Smith.
Manuelle Labor
2007 16mm, super 8, Video, B & W, silent, 10 min.
Collaboration film Marie Losier and Guy Maddin.Two sisters, five brothers, a doctor and two nurses and the miraculous birth of a pair of hands..but whose hands…“Marie, that shot of the hands coming out o’ your womb is a dilly!!! What an honour to be born of you! your son, Guy” (Guy Maddin)
Flying Saucey!
2006; 16mm, color, sound, 11 min.A giant pot is ascending from the sky. Twenty winsome damsels are landing on planet earth, coming out of the pot filled with 280 pounds of spaghetti. A battle for sauce and survival ensues.
The Ontological Cowboy
2005; 16mm, b&w/color, sound, 16 min.
w/ Richard Foreman, Juliana Francis, Tom Ryder Smith and JaySmith.“The theater is about sex.” At least according to Richard Foreman, the father of the Ontological Hysterical Theater. The Ontological Cowboy documents Foreman’s invocation of the “manifest destiny” of the avant-garde theater, King Cowboy Rufus strolling down off San Juan Hill with a sigh, waving his handkerchief. Foreman plays himself, and the cast pantomimes his preoccupations. If “the cast and crew suffer alike,” it’s all for a good cause: the violent rebirth of the American theater, with Foreman as its midwife.
Eat My Makeup!
2005; 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
w/ George Kuchar, Marie Losier, Jason Livingston, Paul Shepard.Five winsome damselspicnic on the roof of a warehouse in charming Long Island City, a forest of skyscrapers gleaming across the river. But when a swarm of flies interrupts their feast of chocolate-covered pretzels and cream-pies, the young ladies run amok.
Electrocute Your Stars
2004, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min.With George Kuchar.“You always have to be careful, you always have to have the shower backward in order to see the water, which means you better watch out, or you might electrify or electrocute your stars. You know what I mean, by having the light falling into the tub” -GK This is a dream-portrait of George Kuchar, traveling through snow confetti, strobe flashes and artificial wind as he describes his weather diaries. And then George joins Janet Leigh in the shower. Wearing a red raincoat and a shower cap, reading comic books and blowing bubbles, he laughingly describes his bathing rituals and the making of his film, Hold Me While I’m Naked.
Bird, Bath and Beyond
2003; film, color/b&w, sound, 13 min.With Mike Kuchar.“I don’t put myself into my movies because that would be too much – my pictures reflect my own feelings. So hopefully it’s entertaining. Otherwise I can’t bear looking at them, ha ha!”-MK. In this dream-portrait of Mike Kuchar, he floats through his memories as the sea, space and sky drift past. Wrapped in odd costumes, he frolics with the imaginary creatures surrounding him, and recalls the creatures of his own imagination.
Lunch Break on the Xerox Machine
2003; 16mm, b&w, sound, 3 min.For 3 months, every day at 1pm I would hide in the copy room at work and lay my face on the xerox machine. The result: an animation of my face eating my fist. -ML
Broken Blossom
2002; video, b&w, 10 min.“This is a silent film. Just remember when you hear my voice, this is what it would sound like if you were hearing it. I am D.W Griffith and I control the world.” Rediscovered footage of the screentests for D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms in which actress Marie Losier vies with Lilian Gish for the lead role. A violent silent film about deflowered Blossoms.
The Passion of Joan of Arc
2002; video, b&w 8 min.The story of Jean of Arc is one of the most frequently told tales in cinema’s hundred plus year history. This brand new version is a post-mortem/ post- modern collaboration between the Great Dane Carl Dreyer and Marie Losier, who inserts herself into the 1928 film as God’s greatest lover and France’s most cherished martyr. A funny tragedy.
The Touch Retouched
2002; video, color, 5 min.“Do you have any photos of your wife in the nude” “Oh, I’m sorry, David to disappoint you. You will have to content yourself with my orchid”
In 1971, Ingmar Bergman made his only American film, The Touch, starring ensemble regulars Max Von Syndow and Bibi Anderson, along with early 70s everyman Elliott Gould. In 2001, Marie Losier decided to recast herself in Gould’s role, breathing new life into Bergman’s most awkward, ill-conceived and dubious filmic endeavor.