Movies: Performance art

One Meter of Democracy (2010) challenged the endurance of viewers, as well as the courage of the artist. In a quasi-democratic process, He Yunchang invited approximately 20 friends to vote in a secret ballot on whether he should have a surgeon cut a ...

An idealistic film student is drawn into a shadowy and intoxicating world when she befriends an enigmatic performance artist....

Welcome to the temple of fear and eroticism, as a monstrous madman slowly mutilates poor young girls! See the sensual act of voodoo performed on an innocent bar patron! View the lustful bite of a vampire!...

From an inverted position, high above the floor, the camera records Nauman’s trek back and forth and across the studio; his stamping creates a generative rhythm reminiscent of native drum beats or primitive dance rituals. However, Nauman is not parti...

"Meat Joy is an erotic rite — excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic — shifting and turning among tend...

An intimate, affecting portrait of the life and work of ground-breaking performance artist and music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and his wife and collaborator, Lady Jaye, centered around the daring sexual transfor...

Erin O'Connor explores the meaning of fashion consumption in a short performance film....

A ritual about"memory". The words and phrases written on the paper are easy to understand but difficult to define, substituting the usual " incantations to gods". The spat out red matter suggests kind of "refusal". This kind of "nauseous" mixture com...

A disparate group of dancers, preferring to express themselves through dance rather than speech, clash with each other and members of the local community....

Bustoni, a performing arts worker who lives with his mother who are dying, has a question that distract his life. What will happen to a woman after death?...

Thirty years after their separation, performance artists Marina Abramović and Frank Uwe 'Ulay' Laysiepen (1943-2020) agree to meet, for the first time on camera, for a raw and honest conversation about their life, art and legacy....

Living in a fictional world all their own, the machines of Survival Research Laboratories act out scenarios of perpetual torment, exasperating consumption, and tragic recognition...

A groom becomes a bride in a gender bending fashion performance by Alexander McQueen....

A collaboration between filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira and performance artist Thomas Pinnock, who performs his "immigrant folktales" using traditional lore of his native Jamaica to dramatize his migration to New York in the 60's....

"As a contribution to Gerry Schum's 'Identifications', Beuys adapted for television the 'Felt TV' action previously staged for a live audience at a Happening festival in Copenhagen in 1966. It was the only Beuys action executed specifically for the c...

The film focuses on an audition to select an actor that best interprets the role of Jesus, judged by a jury of Vatican members....

Marina Abramović Freeing the Body was performed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, where Abramović began dancing frantically to the sounds of a bongo player. During the early part of the performance, she still has plenty of energy, and she r...

...

Filmed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cut Piece documents one of Yoko Ono’s most powerful conceptual pieces. Performed by the artist herself, Ono sits motionless on the stage after inviting the audience to come up and cut away her clothing in a denouem...

A sincere portrait, and in first person, of the multifaceted Andalusian artist José Pérez Ocaña....