Vivienne Dick (b. 1950, Ireland) is an internationally-celebrated film-maker and artist. A key figure of the No Wave movement in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she has gone on to develop an extraordinary body of work, which has been shown in cinemas, films festivals and art galleries around the world.
Shot on Super-8, 16mm and video, Dick's film-making practice slips between fiction and documentary, using elements of both, along with fragmentary narrative, dislocated imagery and compelling self-reflexive performances.
This DVD contains: Beauty Becomes The Beast, 1979, 40 mins Beauty Becomes the Beast describes a random access world mediated by TV images and shards of popular culture. The film features a powerful performance by Lydia Lunch regressing from adulthood to childhood, hinting at a sexually abusive past. It concerns itself with the position of woman as subject and the way women experience patriarchal law and the heterosexual order.
Visibility Moderate, 1981, 45 mins Vivienne Dick’s first film after the New York series takes her back to her native Ireland. Using Super 8 film as a parody of the ‘travelogue’ or home-movie style film, Dick takes an expatriate, tourist look at her homeland. The narrative follows Margaret Ann Irinsky as the American tourist trekking from a Dublin populated by Hare Krishnas and rock music, to the horse-drawn carriages in the west of Ireland and the kissing of the Blarney stone. The quaint perception of Ireland and the Americanization of the native culture are contrasted with interviews from sectarian prisoners and footage of political marches. As in all her work, Dick uses a mixture of verité shots which capture the essence of the locality and intersperses them with images which have a totally different feel. This method is used to highlight issues in a subtle way wherein the camera takes an active rather than a voyeuristic role.
Like Dawn to Dust, 1983, 6 mins Lydia Lunch laments the difficulty of relationships in the wilds of Connemara, Ireland.
A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy, 1994, 28 mins "The films I make are about my life and the people around me. I want to awaken the fearless self. A Skinny Man Attacked Daddy takes a look at the family and the place where I grew up. So much of what is ‘me’ comes from attitudes, expectations, fears, habits, beliefs that I inherited from my parents (and they in turn from theirs). The video is about separation form the family. My work is to try to know myself – the only way to change inherited patterns." – Vivienne Dick
Saccade, 2004, 3 mins The shoreline at Salthill, Galway on a summer’s day, followed by the sounds and lights of a fairground ride at night to music by Arovane. Vivienne Dick
Between Truth and Fiction is co-published with The Crawford Gallery, Cork, in conjunction with their show of Vivienne Dick's work in autumn 2009.
Please note that this DVD is for individual purchase only, for institutional sales please contact LUX directly.
Extras
A 100 page full-colour publication, with newly-commissioned essays on Dick's work, with contributions from Maeve Connolly, Rachel Garfield and Bev Zalcock.
