The Present. 1996. USA. Directed by Robert Frank. DCP. 27 min.
Robert Frank was always on the outside looking in and on the inside looking out, both metaphorically and literally. And while The Present can mean the here and now, it can also mean a gift, in this case the gift of memory and friendship: “Every day I want to make a little piece of video. And I find that people are very good and very expressive.” At 72, Frank reflects in words and images on the many friends now gone. And on his children, who died tragically young, wondering whether his daughter Andrea would have had children of her own by now. Outside his window, black crows gather.
June and Robert Kara and Me. 2022. USA. Directed by Ari Marcopoulos. With Robert Frank, June Leaf, Kara Walker, Marcopoulos. DCP. 78 min.
“In the summer of 2019 Kara [Walker] and I took our second and final visit to see Robert Frank and June Leaf at their place in Mabou, Nova Scotia. This video is a record of some of the conversations between us. A blooming friendship between two mid-career artists and two late-career ones. I never meant to make this film but some time after Robert died I looked back and lined these moments up” (Ari Marcopoulos).