Fragments. 2000. USA. Directed by Robert Frank. DCP. World premiere of new digital remaster by The Museum of Modern Art. 9 min.
Fragments originated as a film installation that was projected onto a hanging screen as part of the 2000 exhibition Hold Still, Keep Going at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany. Robert Frank created a puzzling juxtaposition of images taken in Cairo on January 11, 1993, of Egyptian snake charmers and their cobras, with those of a squeegee man weaving through car traffic on the Bowery in New York on April 8, 1971.
Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank. 2004. UK. Directed by Gerald Fox. DCP courtesy Greenwich Entertainment . 85 min.
In 1985, on the occasion of a Tate retrospective of Robert Frank’s photography, British documentarian Gerald Fox convinced the famously reticent artist to appear on camera to talk about his life and work and take an excursion to Coney Island, the place he so memorably photographed some 30 years earlier. The production and its aftermath tell a different story, however, as Frank—whether out of privacy or provocation—vacillates between revealing “too much” and withdrawing in fits of frustrated sullenness. After a long period in which Frank tried to take the film out of circulation, we can now appreciate this as a truly American immigrant tale of uncompromising determination.