This special evening celebrates the new translation of Pierre Clémenti’s memoir, A Few Personal Messages, accessible for the first time in English and available for purchase before the program. Readers include Balthazar Clémenti, Lynne Tillman, Ken Jacobs, Leah Hennessey, Shiv Kotecha, Claire Foster, and Stephanie LaCava. Following the readings, Clémenti’s 1969 film Positano will be screened with live musical accompaniment by Lizzi Bougatsos.
The island of Positano, off the Amalfi Coast—created, according to ancient mythology, as a gift from Poseidon to a beloved nymph—was a summer haven for artists in the 1960s. Clémenti’s avant-garde home movie is a freewheeling record of family and friends in Positano, including Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel, and Nico, with whom Clémenti starred in Garrel’s La Cicatrice Interieure the same year. The film’s painterly superimpositions are all done in-camera, Clémenti’s technical precision put at the service of poetic beauty and a cosmic love of life. Tenderly featuring his wife Margareth and son Balthazar, artistic luminaires and loved ones, nature and the supple splendor of animals, Clémenti creates a filmic tapestry worthy of the mythic island.