Movies: Rudy Burckhardt

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jeal...

a travelogue of Peru....

"The story of a shipwrecked baby reared by a kindly animal. See Tarzam, the beast-man, invent the art of painting. He meets his first human. His scene deepens from innocence to corruption and to final violence. Taylor is sublime, as always. The text ...

To a poem by Kenneth Koch with Chopin played by Gena Raps. "Rudy's lyrical montage opens and reflects the world the way a poem does. He consistently gets to the essential fragments of an experience or a view. His perspective is that of a pedestrian ...

A short, avant-garde movie, starring twelve-year-old ballet student Gwen Thomas, Nymphlight is a lovely blend of fact and fiction, using Bryant Park at the New York Public Library as a stage set for the fantasy inclusion of a certain nymph. A meditat...

Images of city and landscape moving with a romantic piano sonatina by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), then classic keyboard figures by Johann S. Bach. Images and music, "in" the same time-space, sometimes join and affect each other, then pursue their o...

"a film that looks forward to the many collage films Burckhardt has made in the last two decades. Shot in Maine in black and white, it demonstrates Burckhardt's ability to take seemingly slight subjects -- flowers, fields, a pond -- and invest them w...

"A few acres in Maine. Closeup looks at a small lake in the woods, wild flowers, clouds, mosses, ants and mushrooms. The visual richness is fantastic, the objective eye is absorbing. Often cut by glimpses, the second time you see the film you see twi...

Images to accompany the lines of a poem by John Ashbery. "Rudy Burckhardt's film is a brilliant extension of my poem, perhaps the film I might have made myself if I were a filmmaker." – John Ashbery...

The film's title evokes a mundane slice of life but a kindhearted maid catches a lucky break when her enchanted feather duster makes it so that the house cleans itself....

When New York was about to go bankrupt, all construction had stopped and an architect tried to become a wrecker. This is the story of the demolition of a large factory building on 23rd Street and 6th Avenue. Meanwhile daily business - grimy or funny,...

A detailed look at a remarkable artist who died in 1999 at age 85. Aspects of Burckhardt's work in photography, film, and painting are examined in interviews with Rudy Burckhardt, painter Yvonne Jacquette, and curators Robert Storr (former Senior Cu...

Slightly different version of Cornell's Mulberry Street. Scenes of Mulberry Street on New York City's Lower East Side, as seen from the point of view of a bust of Mozart sitting in a store window....

A sightseeing portrait of New York, with lively narration taking the viewer aboard the New York elevated and subway trains. Then the view from the windows becomes slightly abstracted, the voice of the commentator becomes uncertain. Featuring Joseph C...

"…one cannot deny its documentary value or Burckhardt's eye for detail, his unpretentiousness. There are sequences — the children swimming under the Brooklyn Bridge is one — which belong with the best footage on New York by anybody." — Jonas Mekas...

"A funny and gorgeous little animated story of the war between coke and pepsi – the bottles come alive and form armies. The battle scenes are spectacular." Ron Padgett, Tap Journal...

A silent screen-type comedy starring Edwin Denby as Hemlock Stinge, the unlovable billionaire....

"A few acres of Maine, a small lake in the woods, wild flowers, clouds, mosses, and mushrooms after the rain. The visual richness is fantastic, the objective eye is absorbing. Burckhardt often cuts by glimpses, the second time you see the film you se...

Elliott Carter’s composition of the same title inspired Rudy Burckhardt, in collaboration with Yvonne Jacquette, to photograph this collage-style film. Mostly shot in New York City, but also in Hong Kong and Searsmont, Maine....

A fairy tale about a pair of moccasins that take off on their own, through woods and fields into the town of Belfast, Maine. They fall in love, drink beer, dream in the gutter, at last are rescued by the boy on whose feet they belong. - MUBI...