Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

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 27 and 28, 1991 at the Village East Cinemas in New York. Apparently after these few art house screenings, the film went directly to tape with a revised title: Antigone/Rites of Passion.

The movie on tape reveals why Greenfield had a hard time getting a booker for it: Antigone/Rites of Passion is a pretentious bore in the worst tradition of student filmmaking. The movie's problems are not that the medium of film changed the story, but how Greenfield used t...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on Any Greenfield's Antigone/Rites of Death...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Any Greenfield's Antigone/Rites of Death. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690326.html