It’s almost criminal that Narcisa Hirsch isn’t a household name by now, at least in the homes of those passionate about the histories of performance art and cinema. Then again, the 95-year-old Hirsch, who was born in Berlin in 1928 and emigrated to Argentina in 1937, has playfully called herself una famosa cineasta desconocida (a famous unknown filmmaker), acknowledging her own marginalization but also the freedom that comes with some degree of anonymity. This freedom enabled her to stage politically subversive Happenings on street corners in Buenos Aires and New York in the 1960s and ’70s, handing out apples and plastic toy babies to puzzled passersby; to roam throughout South America and the United States, capturing her travels in camera viewfinders; to defy tidy distinctions of genre between the diaristic, the structuralist, the epistolary, and the mythological; and to experiment with artists like Carolee Schneemann, Marie Louise Alemann, and Werner Nekes. Hirsch’s passions have encompassed the cosmic and the quotidian: the sexuality and integrity of the human body; the still and moving image; a sound composition by Steve Reich, an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and a Neapolitan love song; the four archetypes of man, including that of “the alchemist”; the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; and the concept of the Aleph, in which “each second represents an instance of life from birth to death.”

Digital restorations courtesy Filmoteca Narcisa Hirsch, in collaboration with USC Libraries, supported by a grant from USC Research and Innovation. New York premiere. All from Argentina and directed by Narcisa Hirsch.

January 26th, 19h - Introduced by Tomas Rautenstrauch, Erin Graff ZivinJanuary 31st, 16:30h

Manzanas (Apples). 1969. With Narcisa Hirsch, Marie Louise Alemann, Walther Mejía. 5 min. A-Dios. 1984. 26 min. Canciones Napolitanas (Neapolitan Songs). 1971. 10 min. Orfeo y Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice). 1976. 12 min. Taller (Workshop). 1974. 11 min. La Noche Bengali. 1980. Co-directed by Werner Nekes. With Narcisa Hirsch, Katya Alemann. 6 min. Aleph. 2005. 1 min. Come Out. 1974. 11 min.

This screening is based on a program curated by Oona Mosna for Media City Film Festival's 26th edition.