Fri, May 23, 7:00 p.m.
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/10529
Screening followed by a conversation with Larry Gottheim and Lynne Sachs
Your Television Traveler. 1991–2024. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim. DCP. 18 min.
Knot/Not. 2019. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim. DCP. 22 min.
Entanglement. 2022. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim. DCP. 27 min.
A Private Room. 2024. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim and Forrest Sprague. DCP. 10 min.
Your Television Traveler was shown in its 16mm print form in the Larry Gottheim Shorts I program. Here, in its digital form, it foreshadows the use of found footage and superimposition in the three digital films that follow here: Knot/Not and Gottheim’s most recent works, Entanglement and A Private Room, both of which were inspired by concepts from quantum physics. Most of the material in Knot/Not, a film of a musical and historical nature, comes from a TV documentary about the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, edited to a song about multiplication. Entanglement is a train ride through a landscape inhabited by figures ranging from Phil Spitalny and his All-Girl Orchestra to the Norns from Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung. A Private Room moves from bittersweet, unexpected comedy to the anguish of the human condition, in which we are locked inside ourselves, trying and failing to connect. Presented in their original digital files.
This screening is a part of the series The Red Thread: Larry Gottheim’s Films at MoMA from May 15–27, 2025.
This career-spanning survey celebrates the work of avant-garde filmmaker Larry Gottheim, from his first film, ALA (1969), to his latest, A Private Room (2024). Renowned for his 1970 film Fog Line, Gottheim has continued to challenge notions of what it is to truly see and be present when viewing moving images; his work encourages deep meditation. The series begins with Gottheim’s silent works—continuous shots of bare landscapes in upstate New York—and goes on to focus on his subsequent sound films, including the Elective Affinities, a series of four feature-length films: Horizons (1973), Mouches Volantes (1976), Four Shadows (1978), and Tree of Knowledge (1981). Gottheim’s more recent film works explore philosophy and family, driven by complex editing and sonic designs.
In 1965 Gottheim founded the cinema department at Binghamton University, in central New York State—one of the first film programs with a curriculum focused on personal, experimental film—helping to spur a revival in academic and professional activity in avant-garde film in the US and providing an incubation space for filmmakers such as Gottheim, Ken Jacobs, Ernie Gehr, Nicholas Ray, and Saul Levine, among others. The work begun by Gottheim at Binghamton shaped the experimental film scene for decades to come, and continues to have an indelible impact on avant-garde cinema. This series coincides with the recent publication of The Red Thread: Larry Gottheim and His Films, in which the filmmaker discusses his explorations of cinematic perception, alongside other artists’ and critics’ reflections on the importance of Gottheim’s work.