ENDED

An art world phenomenon eight years in the making, Barney’s epic cycle of birth and sexual differentiation melds genres as diverse as the Busby Berkeley musical, the gothic Western, and operatic spectacle, encompassing Celtic myth, Masonic initiation rites, motorcycle races, obscure historical references, high fashion, lush music, and category-defying imagery, as it spans half the globe, from Boise to Budapest, with Barney himself popping up as a tap-dancing satyr, a naked magician, a giant, and serial killer Gary Gilmore. This is the cycle’s first theatrical screening in the order it was conceived.

DISTRIBUTED BY PALM PICTURES & ARTHOUSE FILMS.

Marti Domination (pictured), star of CREMASTER 1.

“Mr. Barney’s cycle, with themes enunciated and developed and overlaid with other themes, can now be perceived as one mega-film... It’s rather like watching Wagner or Robert Wilson or Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev” and letting the imagery captivate you on its own, preverbal terms. There's time for reflection later, as the images cling stubbornly in your brain... Mr. Barney’s pictures are often really brilliant, so brilliant as to be disorienting; of course, the pervasive ickiness, to use the technical term, helps in the disorientation process. This is utterly original stuff: the sleek elegance of the dirigible stewardesses in “1”; the dazzling desert and ice landscapes and bizarre Gary Gilmore enactments (although as an actor Norman Mailer is no Richard Serra) in “2”; the Houdini zombie and demolition derby, the racetrack of rotting horses, the Chrysler Building and the Guggenheim itself, the dueling Celtic giants and the extraordinary Aimee Mullins as the Cheetah Woman, all in “3”; the tap-dancing man-beast and androgynous “Faeries” and motorcycle racers with what [Guggenheim curator Nancy] Spector calls “gelatinous gonadal forms” oozing from their pockets in “4”; the Budapest Opera House and dappled Asian water sprites and the amazing image of Mr. Barney’s descended testicles attached to ribbons borne by fluttering doves, from “5.”
– John Rockwell, The New York Times. Click here to read the entire article

CREMASTER 1

(1995) In twin hovering Goodyear blimps, a woman arranges red and green grapes into geometric patterns imitated by Isaac Mizrahi-clad dancing girls on the blue astro-turfed football field below. 40 minutes.

CREMASTER 2

(1999) “A sprawling, hallucinatory quiltwork of gorgeously shot scenes and ominous organ music, all slowly unfolding a circuitous plot involving Gary Gilmore (Barney), copulating bees, members of the Gilmore clan, Houdini (Norman Mailer), a Brahma bull, the Mormon Tabernacle and landscapes ranging from Utah’s blindingly bright salt flats to the glacial ice fields of Jasper, Canada... A world as strangely alternate as Lewis Carroll’s.” – Steven Henry Madoff, Time. 79 minutes.

BOTH FILMS SHOWN TOGETHER (119 minutes total) at 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:30

THE CREMASTER MARATHON

(SEPARATE ADMISSION FOR EACH PROGRAM)
CREMASTER 4&5: 1:00 (96 minutes total)
CREMASTER 1&2: 3:00 (119 minutes total)
CREMASTER 3: 5:20 (182 minutes)
CREMASTER 4&5: 8:45 (96 minutes total)

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CREMASTER 3

(2002) Barney’s The Entered Apprentice faces off against Chrysler Building architect Hiram Abiff (played by sculptor Richard Serra) in the Art Deco landmark, while battling punk bands, Rockette-like chorines, and a half-cheetah woman (Aimée Mullins) as he scales the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum in an interlude. “Endlessly fascinating . . . Barney’s most hypnotic work yet.” – New York Magazine. 182 minutes.

1:00, 4:30, 8:00

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CREMASTER 4

(1994) Flame-haired goat-boy The Loughton Candidate (Barney) slowly taps his way through an eroding floor into the sea, as competing color-coded motorcycle teams set off in opposite directions to circle the Isle of Man. “A surreal, slapstick fantasy; sexuality turned into a bizarre vaudeville.” – Stephen Holden, New York Times. 42 minutes.

CREMASTER 5

(1997) Ursula Andress (Dr. No) stars as the Queen of Chain, the sole audience for a lush operatic spectacle performed by the Budapest Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra within a grand 19th century opera house, accompanied by faeries, a magician (Barney on horseback), various attendants of unspecified gender and species, and a bevy of live pigeons. “A ravishing stretch of cinema... rich and quite, quite strange.” – David Frankel, Artforum. 54 minutes.

BOTH FILMS SHOWN TOGETHER (96 minutes total) at 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

CREMASTER Poster (pictured at left)

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Matthew Barney Drawing Restraint 7 by Matthew Barney (Editor), Klaus Kertess	MATTHEW BARNEY CREMASTER 3 [book]	Matthew Barney by Neville Wakefield (Contributor), Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (Contributor), Nancy Spector, et al
CREMASTER 2 [SOUNDTRACK] Jonathan Bepler. AVAILABLE NOW at www.jonathanbepler.com	CREMASTER 5 [SOUNDTRACK] Jonathan Bepler	CREMASTER 3 [SOUNDTRACK] Jonathan Bepler AVAILABLE NOW at www.jonathanbepler.com