I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard

Matt Wolf

2012 | 00:24:35 | United States | English | B&W and Color | Stereo | 4:3 | HD video

Collection: On Art and Artists, Single Titles

Tags: AIDS/HIV, Artist Portraits, City, Documentary, LGBTQ, Poetry, Portrait

Matt Wolf returns to Joe Brainard's iconic poem I Remember (1970) in this videowork. His archival montage combines audio recordings of Brainard reading from the poem, as well as an interview with his lifelong friend and collaborator, the poet Ron Padgett. The result is an inventive biography of Joe Brainard, and an elliptical dialog about friendship, nostalgia, and the strange wonders of memory.

Modesty, whimsy, and clarity of design grace the work of Joe Brainard (1941-1994), an artist and writer whose evocations of memory and desire perhaps found their greatest expression in his memoir-poem I Remember. Composed of a sequence of brief recollections, the poem’s standardized format admits an incredible variety of images and feelings: "I remember Greyhound buses at night... I remember candy cigarettes like chalk... I remember leaning up against walls in queer bars...” Brainard's many drawings, collages, assemblages, and paintings, as well as his short essays and verbal-visual collaborations, were celebrated during his lifetime, before he stopped making art in the mid-1980s.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

Pricing Information

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Prizes + Awards

The No Violence Award, 51st Ann Arbor Film Festival

Premiere

CSS Bard
New York, NY
2012

Exhibitions + Festivals

Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Netherlands, 2013

Queer City Cinema, Regina, Canada, 2013

Images Festival of Independent Film and Video, Toronto, Canada, 2013

Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland, 2013

Antimatter [Media Art], Victoria, Canada, 2013

MoMA/PS1, 2013

Liverpool Biennial, 2013

The Kitchen, 2013

Berkeley Art Museum, 2013

BAM CinemaFest, 2013

Outfest, 2013

InsideOut LGBT Film Festival, 2013

Onion City Film Festival, 2013

Athens Film + Video Festival, 2013