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Film

Robert Frank Retrospective: Program 6

Thursday, June 18, 2009

7 p.m.

Additional Info

Flamingo, 1990, 7 min., video
Moving Pictures, 1994, 16 min., color video
I Remember, 1996, 5 min., video
Sanyu, 1999, 27 min., 35mm
Paper Route, 2002, 23 min., video
Total running time: 73 min.

SFMOMA would like to thank the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, home of the Robert Frank Film and Video Archive, for its support in providing prints and other assistance for this program.

Flamingo is Frank’s poetic diary (with voiceover narration) recording the construction of a new foundation for his house in a remote area of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; it silently describes the need to keep working in the face of nature and time.

Frank narrates a charming reenactment of his visit to the home of Alfred Stieglitz in I Remember. The cast comprises June Leaf as Georgia O’Keeffe, artist Jerome Sother as Robert Frank, and Frank himself in the role of Stieglitz.

Sanyu (1901-64), an important Chinese artist, was a friend of Robert Frank’s who died in anonymity in Paris. In Sanyu, Frank creates a requiem that includes dramatic and documentary scenes set in Paris, and a chronicle of his trip to Taipei to attend Sotheby’s auction of the paintings Sanyu left him.

in Paper Route, the artist joins Robert MacMillan on a wintry, predawn morning and accompanies him on his daily route delivering newspapers to towns in the rural Nova Scotia community where Frank has had a second home for many years. Chatting amiably in voiceover as his camera observes the landscape and MacMillan’s encounters with his customers, Frank conducts a rambling interview inspired by his own desire to better understand how people live their lives.