Queer Summer Cinema: Monk in Pieces

In the organizer's words:

Meredith Monk - composer, performer and interdisciplinary artist - is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence has gone largely unrecognized. With Monk's music at its center and interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that reflects the structure of Monk's own work and illuminates her highly original vocabulary of sounds and images. As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown art scene of the 1960s and 70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. The first reviews in the New York Times were vicious and sexist: "A disgrace to the name of dancing" wrote Clive Barnes and "so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way" wrote John Rockwell. But as her celebrated contemporary Philip Glass says, "she was and is the only gifted one of us all". In the final chapters of the film, Monk confronts mortality. We see her entrusting her masterpiece ATLAS to director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and acted in all of her musical theater works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to this unique work when she is gone?

Documentary; English with subtitles
USA, Germany, France 2025
Directed by Billy Shebar, David Roberts;
94 min. FSK n.a.

Price information:

Reduced: 8 euros; Full: 11 euros Online reservations only