Womanhouse

Johanna Demetrakas | 1974 | Digital | Colour | English | 47 min.

This film documents the construction of Womanhouse in 1972, a historically critical public installation and performance space that comments on ideological and social roles that women were subjected to. Renowned artist Judy Chicago and art historian Miriam Schapiro invited 24 women artists to redecorate an old Hollywood mansion, with the interior remodeling based on thematic rooms. Initiated as part of the Feminist Art Project set up at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, workshops were conducted in the living room of the house, and the ideas for those performative actions were derived from ‘informal working sessions’ that revealed the domesticated female experience.

Sur les traces de Lygia Clark. Souvenirs et évocations de ses années parisiennes (Searching for Lygia Clark's Trace, Memory and Evocation of the Paris Years)

Paola Anziché, Irene Dionisio | 2011 | Hdv-super 8 film | Colour | French, with English subtitles | 26 min.

Sur les traces de Lygia Clark is an oral history of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s class called ‘the gesture of communication’, which she taught as a professor at Sorbonne University in Paris between 1970 and 1975. The filmmakers speak with five participants, who revisit their experiences in the class, which produced moments of intense feeling and connection.

Construcción de un mundo (Building a World)   

Guillermo Costanzo | 2024 | Digital | Colour | Spanish with English subtitles | 85 min.

Follow Marta Minujín’s bold artistic journey through the documentary Construcción de un mundo (2024), directed by Guillermo Constanzo. As one of the most prominent conceptual and performing artists of our time, Minujín created a plethora of groundbreaking works. Their ephemerality and destructive nature defy tradition, inviting the audience to question public art and its meaning. The film unravels intimate untold stories about the artist’s life and her decades-long career in various regions, from Buenos Aires to Paris, New York, and beyond. While Minujín constantly experiments with performances, materials and techniques, she also creates a world where she becomes the art.

Johanna Demetrakas (b. 1937, United States) currently teaches cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. Demetrakas is known for her historic feminist art documentaries. She received the AFI Independent Filmmakers Grant for directing Womanhouse (1974). The documentary was positively received and was screened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Whitney Museum, the Venice Biennale, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Demetrakas’s other notable works include Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1980), Homesick (1988), and Out of line (2001).

Paola Anziché (b. 1975, Italy) and Irene Dionisio (b. 1986, Italy) are Italian filmmakers and research-based interdisciplinary visual artists. They co-directed Sur les traces de Lygia Clark, souvenirs et évocations des ses années parisiennes (2011), which was nominated for Best Italian Short Film at the Torino Film Festival in 2011.

Anziché graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Meisterschülerin, Frankfurt, Germany. She is currently active in sharing her interests in textile culture and the art of weaving through her workshop ‘The Moving Threads’.

Dionisio obtained a degree in the Philosophy of History and earned an MI in Cinema and Philosophy at UPJV in Amiens, France. She is currently the director of the gay festival Da Sodoma a Hollywood, hosted by the Museo del Cinema in Turin.

Guillermo Costanzo is an Argentine writer, director and producer. He obtained a film direction degree from the University of Cinema in Buenos Aries and a degree in psychology from Buenos Aries University. In 2007, Constanzo founded CABRA CARRIL, a production company dedicated primarily to documentary filmmaking. One of his notable works is The Boat (2002), which premiered at the 15th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in Holland. His recent documentary Construcción de un mundo (2024) spotlights the life of iconic Argentine artist Marta Minujín, and was presented at the Buenos Aries Film Festival and The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York.