Any Greenfield's Antigone/Rites of Death

In 1988, New York dancer and avant garde filmmaker Amy Greenfield raised the money to make a feature film, her first,

Antigone/Rites of Death, based on Oedipus at Colonnus and Antigone by Sophocles. She was taken with the character of Antigone, who agonized over her father, Oedipus the King, killing himself in self-blinded despair. More important, Antigone then buried her brother, Polynices, within the city limits of Thebes in defiance of her uncle Creon's decree of death for anyone who did so, then killed herself rather than let Creon execute her. However, Greenfield did not want to produce a dramatic staging of the plays. Her idea was to recast the classic Greek tragedies in pantomime, substituting somber facial expressions and dancing for dialogue and conventional acting. Her cast of actors would include the following: herself as Antigone; former Martha Graham dancer Bertram Ross as Oedipus and Creon; Janet Eilber as Antigone's sister, Ismene; Sean McElroy as Creon's son, Haemon; and Henry Montes and Silvio Facchin as Oedipus's battling sons Polynices and Eteocles, respectively.

When she tried to find a distributor for her film, Green- field could not. Even a rave review by critic John Gruen in the April 1989 Dance magazine did not help. In late 1990, a company called ASA Communications stepped in, getting it booked for an October 16, 1990 screening at the Museum of Modern Art, then on Noember 1, 1990 at the Anthology Film Archives, also in Manhattan, then on July 2

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ng, "The light looks good, Amy, so let's start shoot- ing"). The so-called modern music by Glenn Branca, Diamanda Galas and three others is mostly an overbearing synthesizer drone with some whinnying chorus work thrown in, burying the drama under a further oppressive weight of pretension. The handful of dialogue snatches are read in a deadly monotone. The women are "costumed" in raggedy blouses while the men playing Antigone's brothers and Haemon wear raggedy cutoffs. And Greenfield's editing is nearly all a patchwork of fragmented cuts and meaningless close-ups, such as shots of Creon's dusty boots and sides of a building. The camera rarely sits still for more than a few seconds. Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times was also critical of the camera work: "The camera is unrelievedly rhetorical . . . rocking convulsively at times and zooming in" (Dunning C28). Lor of Weekly Variety agreed, saying "Greenfield errs in overuse of closeup photography, inimcal to capturing performance on film" (Lor 52). John Gruen of Dance felt otherwise: "Her use of wrenching close-ups have the feel of monumentality" (Gruen 100). Preeti Chawla of Village Voice liked the camerawork but not the editing or soundtrack: "Beautifully shot, Greenfield's la

Category: Film - A