Wheeler Winston Dixon
April 11–12, 2003
Wheeler
Winston Dixon, the prolific author of books on François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard, American experimental cinema, and film theory,
has also been making experimental films of his own for the past
three decades. This three-program retrospective traces Dixon’s
career from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, with rare screenings
of early works like The DC Five Memorial Film (1969), which
interweaves home movies of Dixon’s 1950s Connecticut childhood
with footage shot in 1969 in New York City and at a farm upstate;
Quick Constant and Solid Instant (1969), featuring a Fluxus
group-performance piece and a poetry reading by Gerard Malanga;
and Madagascar, or, Caroline Kennedy’s Sinful Life in London
(1976), in which a fictional Caroline recovers from a hangover.
Also shown are Serial Metaphysics (1984–86), an examination
of the American lifestyle recut entirely from existing television
advertisements, and What Can I Do? (1993), a rigorous, tender
portrait of an elderly woman who holds dinner-party guests in thrall
to her difficult family life. Dixon, who will introduce all three
programs, is generously donating the originals of these films to
MoMA.
Organized by Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator, Department of Film
and Media.
A dentist’s convention in Cincinnati circa 1936, London in
the Swinging Sixties, and a flurry of American television
commercials are some of this program’s humorous and touching subjects.
. 1969. USA. 2 min. .
1969. USA. 20 min.
. 1974. USA. 6 min. . 1976. USA. 7 min. . 1976.
Great Britain/USA. 2 min.
. 1986. Great Britain/USA.
4 min. . 1986. USA.
4 min.
.
1987. USA. 2 min.
. 1987. Great Britain/USA. 12
min. . 1984–86. USA. 20 min.
Program approx. 90 min.
. 1975. USA. Dixon plays with narrative conventions in this portrait of a family coping with loss and rejection. 40 min.
. 1976.
Great Britain/USA. Dixon interviews a mod about his life, his imminent deportation
from the United States, and his experiences in 1960s England. 40
min.
1993. USA. Lloyd Michaels wrote in Film
Criticism that
Dixon’s feature film “creates the kind
of intense engagement that one might expect if Louis
Malle’s My Dinner with André were filmed
by Chantal Akerman.” 80 min.
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