Nightcleaners Part 1 was a documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan), about the campaign to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was […]
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism is a 1971 film by Dušan Makavejev that explores the relationship between communist politics and sexuality, as well as exploring the life and work of Wilhelm Reich. The film intercuts documentary footage with, predominantly, a narrative about Milena, a Yugoslav woman who seduces a Soviet ice skater. Despite different settings, characters and time periods, the different elements produce a single story of human sexuality and revolution through a montage effect.
Sanja Iveković’s Triangle is an 18-minute performance that took place on 10 May 1979: while Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito’s motorcade passes by below, the artist is sitting on her balcony, reading a book, sipping whiskey and making ‘gestures’ as if performing masturbation, until a security official arrives and asks her to leave. Exhibited as four black-and-white photographs and a short descriptive text, Triangle is one of the most resonant and defiant works of performance made in the 1970s.