Kathy Acker Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Kathy Acker
Acting
Biography
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was influenced by the Black Mountain School poets, the writer William S. Burroughs, the artist and theoretician David Antin, French critical theory, feminist artists Carolee Schneeman and Eleanor Antin, and by philosophy, mysticism, and pornography.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Blue Tape (Tape 2)
The day after recording the video piece that has come to be known as BLUE TAPE (but which was never intended to have a title), Sondheim and Acker made a second, related tape. Commenting on and structured after the first, it similarly documents a charged intellectual and sexual encounter but with Sondheim and Acker’s roles reversed. Screened only once, in the UK, this film was presented for the first time in the U.S. at Anthology Film Archives on March 6th, 2023. 1974, 33 min, video.
IDn4
I am so endlessly alone. Whats my illusions, whats my odds, and illusions have to be killed, I don't have more time to destroy. Is my loneliness real and is my longing about what? Then who are this people?
The Golden Boat
Inspired in form by American police TV shows and soap operas, The Golden Boat is a madcap, surreal dash through the streets of New York city, telling the mysterious and often hilarious story of an aged street-person named Austin, a comically compulsive assassin, as he joins up with a young rock critic and philosophy student named Israel Williams. In the course of their adventures, Austin pursues his object of desire - a Mexican soap opera star - and along the way engages a host of TV characters and bit players, whose repartee range from gangsterish insults to the question of God's existence.
The Falconer
Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair's liminal, laminal tribute to underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, featuring image manipulation by Dave Mckean & reminiscences from various countercultural characters. A fitting epitaph for an English margin walker.
Kathy Acker in School
Kathy Acker talks about being 14, hanging out at the New York Filmmakers Cooperative with Jack Smith, Stan Brakhage, and boyfriend P. Adams Sitney. She speaks to the theft of language, narrative versus myth, and digging herself out of hell. The interview was shot on Halloween night, 1996.
Seeing Is Believing
Film becomes a metaphor for lost history and its “negative“ impact on successive generations who look for stability in an electronic world that lacks sufficient mediation. Video retrieves lost memories for the child who, through her camera, seeks to find her father.
Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?
Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.
The Blue Tapes
Serious discussions of art, philosophy & idealism are put together with explicit scenes of masturbation and sex, by writer Alan Sondheim and punk icon Kathy Acker.
Kathy Acker
Documentary about Kathy Acker where she talks about her writing and her life in New York.
Traceroute
Artist and life-long nerd Johannes Grenzfurthner is taking us on a personal road trip from the West Coast to the East Coast of the USA, to introduce us to places and people that shaped and inspired his art and politics. Traceroute wants to chase and question the ghosts of nerddom's past, present and future. An exhilarating tour de farce into the guts of trauma, obsession and cognitive capitalism. Features interviews with Matt Winston, Sandy Stone, Bruce Sterling, Jason Scott, Christina Agapakis, Trevor Paglen, Ryan Finnigan, Kit Stubbs, V. Vale, Sean Bonner, Allison Cameron, Josh Ellingson, Maggie Mayhem, Paolo Pedercini, Steve Tolin, Dan Wilcox, Jon Lebkowsky, Jan "Varka" Mulders, Adam Flynn, Abie Hadjitarkhani, Kelly Poots...
Production
Blue Tape (Tape 2)
The day after recording the video piece that has come to be known as BLUE TAPE (but which was never intended to have a title), Sondheim and Acker made a second, related tape. Commenting on and structured after the first, it similarly documents a charged intellectual and sexual encounter but with Sondheim and Acker’s roles reversed. Screened only once, in the UK, this film was presented for the first time in the U.S. at Anthology Film Archives on March 6th, 2023. 1974, 33 min, video.
Variety
A repressed young woman becomes obsessed with pornography and the mysterious rich patrons of the Times Square porn theater where she works selling tickets.
The Blue Tapes
Serious discussions of art, philosophy & idealism are put together with explicit scenes of masturbation and sex, by writer Alan Sondheim and punk icon Kathy Acker.
Variety
A repressed young woman becomes obsessed with pornography and the mysterious rich patrons of the Times Square porn theater where she works selling tickets.
Blood and Guts in High School
"Blood and Guts in High School" features actress Stephanie Vella in a series of video installations that re-imagine punk-feminist icon Kathy Acker’s book of the same title. The book received noteriety from 1978-1982 during the rise of Reagan republicanism and the emergence of punk rock. In Parnes’ interpretation, each video-chapter presents a typical scene in the life of Janie bracketed by US news events from the time period in which the book was written. These events saturate the character's daily experience, informing her adolescent, nihilistic worldview and her desire for rebellion. As the viewer looks back at pivotal historical events (Jonestown Massacre, Moral Majority, Three Mile Island etc.) connections are drawn in relation to our current political situation.
Memory Xperiment: Kathy Acker
A short film based on the literary work of author Kathy Acker. Set in the 60's and 70's, a young female writer explores her identity through sex and writing.
Gallery
