Martina's Playhouse

United States

1986

20 Min

Color

English

Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
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DIR Peggy Ahwesh

CAST Martina Meijer Torr, Jennifer Montgomery, Diana Torr

New York (Views from the Avant-Garde)

Synopsis

The epicenter of this film is Martina, a raucous girl about three years old. Naked, amid mounds of stuffed animals, Martina acts out variations on a newly acquired femininity-although when she yells at the camera “I’m not ready,” it’s almost as if she’s trying to ward off gender. Like Ahwesh’s other films […] MARTINA’S PLAYHOUSE, with its crashing montage, has a deceptively thrown-together look. It jumps back and forth between crisp, “properly” photographed scenes and faded, unfocused images scarred by glitches and sprocket holes; on occasion the picture drops out completely, replaced by mottled leader. —Manohla Dargis, Village Voice, 1989

Director

Peggy Ahwesh

Peggy Ahwesh (born 1954 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American avant-garde filmmaker and experimental video artist. She received her B.F.A. from Antioch College. Ahwesh’s work has been shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, the Balie Theater, Amsterdam, Filmmuseum, Frankfurt; the Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; her work has been included in the following festivals: New York Film Festival (1993, 1998); Berlin; London; Cairo; Toronto; Rotterdam; and Creteil, France. Her numerous awards include an Alpert Award in the Arts, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. She teaches at Bard College. —Wikipedia