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Making Movies with Amy Sedaris & FriendsMarcel Dzama
One of six new films from Art21’s fall 2019 programming
Marcel Dzama directs his friends and collaborators, Amy Sedaris and Raymond Pettibon, during the making of his film, Dance Floor Dracula, Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. Mirroring his earlier experiences making short movies and music videos with his artist friends in Winnipeg, Dzama explains that “making films is an excuse to get a group of people and just have this family for a little while.”
In his Brooklyn studio, Dzama shares the drawings that serve as the starting point for his filmmaking process. For Dance Floor Dracula, Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, the artist charts out an imaginary chess match between himself, played by Amy Sedaris, and artist Raymond Pettibon. Back on set at David Zwirner Gallery in Manhattan, Dzama encourages open-ended collaboration and improvisation with Sedaris and Pettibon, allowing for a sense of play, spontaneity, and temporary community before he returns to his more contemplative studio practice.
More information and creditsCredits
Producer: Ian Forster. Interview: Ian Forster. Editor: Rosie Walunas. Colorist: Jonah Greenstein. Camera: Jarred Alterman and John Marton. Sound: Audtin Plocher. Artwork courtesy: Marcel Dzama and David Zwirner. Special thanks: Smokey Nelson, Raymond Pettibon, and Amy Sedaris.
Extended Play is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; and, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Art21 Contemporary Council; and by individual contributors.
Closed captions
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Marcel Dzama was born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Canada. Fantastical and absurd, Dzama’s drawings feature a cast of humans, animals, and hybrid creatures rendered in pencil, ink, watercolor, and, at times, root-beer syrup. Dzama draws upon a mix of influences—from childhood monsters, like the Wolfman and Dracula, to the work of artists like Marcel Duchamp, Francisco Goya, William Blake, and Francis Picabia—to create unique worlds that are at once surreal and familiar, sweet and violent, and chaotic and elegant.
A cult figure among underground music devotees for his early work associated with the Los Angeles punk rock scene, Raymond Pettibon has acquired an international reputation as one of the foremost contemporary American artists working with drawing, text, and artist’s books. Pettibon is as likely to explore the subject of surfing as he is typography; themes from art history and nineteenth-century literature appear in the same breath as 1960s American politics and contemporary pop culture. In the 1990s, Pettibon extended his work beyond the printed page and onto the walls of the exhibition space, creating wall-size drawings and collages.
“Making films is an excuse to just get a group of people and have this family for a little while.”
Marcel Dzama
Marcel Dzama
Marcel Dzama
Marcel Dzama