A visual lecture by JEFFREY PERKINS

Screenings:
04.10.2019 8pm
05.10.2019 8pm
11.10.2019 8pm

George Maciunas (1931-1978) was the founder of Fluxus, a radical avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. The film traces how the Lithuanian-born iconoclastic polymath assembled an international network of artists, musicians, and poets that provoked social and political change through performance, ready-mades, and artworks aimed at collapsing the boundary of art and life. From developing the first artist-owned lofts in SoHo, New York, to his attempt to realize a utopian society on a desolate island in the Caribbean, Maciunas was an uncompromising visionary with a rebellious sense of humor. What emerges in the film, is a kaleidoscopic, often contradictory but always revealing portrait of Maciunas’ bold and tragic life. With interviews among over thirty artists and scholars including Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, and Nam June Paik, the film recounts Maciunas’ mercurial personality, asks questions that remain central to our contemporary moment, and explores how one can live a meaningful and artful life.

Jeffrey Perkins is an artist and filmmaker who has worked in relative obscurity for over five decades, having collaborated in the 1960s with Fluxus artists including George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, and Alison Knowles. Perkins co-founded the multi media group The Single Wing Turquoise Bird, which was the premier rock and roll concert light show in the sixties. Until recently he was best known for his light projection performances and his Movies for the Blind, based on sound recordings of interviews with passengers in his cab. He completed the feature documentary portrait of George - the story of George Maciunas and Fluxus in 2018 and his feature The Painter Sam Francis in 2008. Other films of his hand are Fluxus Film #22: Shout (1966), Stan Brakhage on Gregory Markopolous (1998) and Meet the Kuchar Brothers (1999). Jeff Perkins has been associated with Anthology Film Archives in New York since 1986, and has produced several programs and performances there since then.

GEORGE - THE STORY OF GEORGE MACIUNAS AND FLUXUS
120 minutes / Director + producer: Jeffrey Perkins / Editor + motion graphics: Jessie Stead
Production manager & assistant to director: Liz Dautzenberg / Associate producers: Jonas Mekas, Cassidy Petrazzi
Executive producer: Josef BogdanovicCountries of production: United States, Lithuania, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, Denmark

www.georgemaciunas.info/the-film.html