Black Dancer [Films in Progress]

Harry, a professional dancer and friend of Lassnig’s, performs for the camera. a ghostly group of female ballet dancers performing on a stage looms in a second exposure beneath the image of Harry, intensifying the motion on screen through a choreography of interplaying film exposures. Lassnig uses this overlay to examine the way the different dancing bodies communicate with one another through the editorial interventions of her camera. Lassnig juxtaposes the exaggerated male form with many female dancing forms, examining their suggestive dynamics. Through these layered choreographies, she tests the limits of her camera alongside those of the human body. (Jocelyn Miller)

Rough cut by Maria Lassnig. Color correction and final cut completed posthumously in accordance with Lassnig’s original editing concept by Mara Mattuschka and Hans Werner Poschauko. Soundtrack composed of a sound collage of Morton Subotnick’s Touch and the artist’s original tape recording of her own narrations, “Wrong Side.”

Digitization by the Austrian Film Museum. This film was preserved and restored by the Maria Lassnig Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum.