A self-described cinematic diarist and experimental biographer, Benita Raphan made short films celebrating the inner workings of creative and inventive minds. Raphan, who passed away in April 2021, is celebrated here with a program of six of her films from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. Total runtime: 72 minutes.
“I am interested in revisiting a life or a career from the very start, from the beginning; the basic concept as initial thought, as an impulse, as an ineffable compulsion, an intuition; to reframe and reinvent an action as simple as one pair of hands touching pencil to paper.” —Benita Raphan (1962–2021)
Available right here for free beginning at 11 am (CDT) September 21 until October 4. Also screening on-site in the Bentson Mediatheque during gallery hours.
About the Films
The Immediate Subject
In an early journey of remembrance, Raphan’s montage of empty cityscapes and rooms full of personal artifacts evokes the romance and pathos of searching for a lost past. 1986, US, digital, 5 min.
Within/Without
A story of identity and a man’s relationship to his house is told through processing and manipulation of photographic images in the dark room. 1994, US, digital, 9 min.
Absence Stronger Than Presence
An expressionistic biography of inventor Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid process, explores the fallacious role history plays in recreating personal lives through physical objects. 1996, US, digital, 7 min.
2+2
One of Raphan’s “genius films”, 2+2 explores the mind of John F. Nash Jr., a professor at Princeton University who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the 1950s shortly after writing his brilliant text Essays on Game Theory. Nearly forty years later, Nash would win a Nobel Prize in Economics for that very same paper. 2002, US, digital, 11 min.
The Critical Path
In 1927, R. Buckminster Fuller was on the verge of suicide when it suddenly dawned on him that his existence was one small part of a larger dimension. He then devoted the rest of his life to the care and preservation of the universe. 2003, US, digital, 13 min.
Great Genius and Profound Stupidity
Raphan continues her series on genius with an investigation of the balance between perceptions of intellect and idiocy. Her interviews include choreographer Merce Cunningham’s tale of demonstrating dance for Helen Keller. 2007, US, digital, 27 min.
About the Artist
Benita Raphan was a Guggenheim Fellow, visual biographer, and filmmaker whose international career focused on making a series of films using the form of a cinematic diary to examine the eccentric and brilliant inner lives of important cultural figures including Paul Erdös, R. Buckminster Fuller, Helen Keller, and Emily Dickinson. Through Raphan’s lyrical moving image works, she shared a lifelong fascination with exploring where ideas come from and unraveling the mysterious relationship between brain science and creativity.
Accessibility
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