Wednesday 18 February 2015, 8pm
Recital is a part-screening, part performance drawing on the work of American filmmaker Stephanie Beroes with live musical interludes by composer and musician Verity Susman.
Recital takes as its point of departure Beroes’ eponymous film from 1978, a rarely screened work inspired by the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, and addresses the state of ‘woman in love’. Drawing on past love letters of Beroes, Carolee Schneemann, Casey Miller and Kathleen Frazier, this beautifully awkward and highly structured work reflects on sincerity, desperation, and distance from emotion. Recital has been an important influence for Rachel Reupke in realising her new film work Letter of Complaint, and the screening is accompanied by live musical interludes specifically composed by Verity Susman. departing from Reupke’s new work and Beroes’s Recital and Valley Fever (1979), also screened on the night.
- Recital, Stephanie Beroes (1978, USA, 20 mins, 16mm)
- Valley Fever, Stephanie Beroes (1979, USA, 25 min, 16mm)
This event coincides with the exhibition Letter of Complaint, Rachel Reupke at Cubitt (22 January - 1 March 2015)
Stephanie Beroes was born in 1954 in Pittsburgh. She received B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh where she studied Film History with William Judson. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978, where she studied with Gunvor Nelson, James Broughton, and Malcolm LeGrice. Stephanie is a founding member of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Inc, and the first Programmer of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Screening Room from 1972-1976. Her works include Recital (1978), Valley Fever (1979), Debt Begins at 20 (1980) and Dream Screen (1986).
Verity Susman is a composer and musician based in London. She performs her own work, including solo appearances at the Venice Biennale (2011), Yoko Ono's Meltdown festival (2013), and a live soundtrack to the silent horror film Häxan, which toured Scottish cinemas as part of the BFI's Gothic season (2013). She composes music for film, including the soundtrack to French feature film Suzanne (dir. Katell Quillévéré, 2013), and recently collaborated with video artist James Richards. Previously, Verity was lead singer and multi-instrumentalist in the band Electrelane.
Rachel Reupke is an artist and filmmaker based in London. In 2013 she had a solo show at Cell Project Space, London. In 2014 her work has been shown at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing, China; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, Austria; Wattis Institute, San Francisco, USA; Tate Britain, London; and Whitstable Biennial, UK. She was nominated to the 2014 Jarman Award.
