Dwightiana

Overview

Menken's 16mm, stop-motion tribute to the art of Dwight Ripley was filmed in 1959 in his apartment at 416 East Fifty-eighth Street in New York. She used his drawings as flats.The remarkably contemporary soundtrack for steel drum, guitar, flute, and voice was written for the occasion by Maya Deren's young husband, Teiji Ito, and is available in his album Music for Maya (Tzadik). Stan Brakhage called Dwightiana a pioneer example of the film portrait, abstract rather than narrative (the colored pencils represent Ripley's palette). Ripley was also a botanist, and Menken's unusual title alludes to botanical nomenclature as if Dwightiana might be the name of a species as well as a work "about" Dwight.

Details

Status

Released

Release date

April 27, 1959

Original language

English

Countries

United States of America

Director

Marie Menken

Budget

Not recorded

Revenue

Not recorded

IMDb

tt2318262