Judith Wechsler

The Passages of Walter Benjamin

Judith Wechsler

Walter Benjamin was a leading German Jewish cultural historian. His Arcades Project, a monumental study of nineteenth century Paris, is set in the context of his life and times. His friendships with Brecht, Scholem, Arendt and Adorno and his romances are evoked. Drawing on correspondence and quotations from 'The Arcades Project,' the film is a visual evocation of Benjamin's great incomplete study. The film includes photographs, documents, letters and manuscripts from the Benjamin archives in Berlin and Jerusalem, prints and photographs from the Bibliotheque national in Paris, interviews with leading Benjamin scholars and archival film of Paris and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.

Jasper Johns: Take an Object

Judith Wechsler

Hans Namuth, Judith Wechsler

A portrait of the artist at work. The film begins in 1972 with Johns repainting Air Ocean World based on Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion map. Johns work is traced over the next eighteen years. His Untitled, 1973, with its cross-hatching, flagstones, and anatomical parts become recurrent motifs, as Johns begins to imbed skulls and severed arms in them. The paintings become more personal as Johns gradually "drops the reserve" in his recent series, "The Seasons." The film culminates with Johns working on the final state of the etching based on "The Seasons."

Flora Natapoff - An American Painter

Judith Wechsler

Flora Natapoff

Flora Natapoff, known for her large collages of urban and industrial motifs, due to MS begins to work on a smaller scale that is no less powerful. She speaks of her way of looking, the impact of landscape, and a new sense of narrative and composition. A legendary teacher at Harvard, her compelling account introduces us to her highly original work.

Harry Callahan - An American Photographer

Judith Wechsler

Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan

This film interprets the life and work of American photographer Harry Callahan, guided by his thoughts about photography and reminiscences of Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Aaron Siskind. The film includes Callahan at work in 1973 and 1983, segments of his films, archival film of him teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design and recent interviews. A moving tribute to one of this century's most distinguished photographers.

Svetlana Boym: Exile and Imagination

Judith Wechsler

Dana Villa, David Damrosch

This documentary film is about the life and work of Svetlana Boym, literary and cultural critic, media artist, novelist and playwright. In 1980, age 21, Svetlana left the USSR for the US, unable to pursue studies at the Leningrad university because of the Jewish quota. After graduate studies at Boston University and Harvard, she became the Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard. A brilliant writer of ambitious scope and great imagination, combining personal memoir with philosophical essay and historical analysis, she explored motifs of exile, nostalgia, the diasporic imagination and different forms of freedom in Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, Akhmatova, Brodsky, and many others, in a total of six books, with two more about to appear.

Aaron Siskind: Making Pictures - The Work of an Influential Photographer

Judith Wechsler

Aaron Siskind

Photographer Aaron Siskind (1903-1991) guides us through his documentary work in the 1930s to his last period of abstraction. We see him photographing, printing, and discussing his life and work. Winner of a Gold Plaque Award at the Chicago International Film Festival.