An Evening with Greil Marcus featuring a screening of I’m Not There
Saturday, November 1, 7 pm
$8 ($6 Walker and IFP members)
Cinema, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
“[Greil Marcus’] kind of creative imagination, and the way he’s converted his own medium into something you can’t even categorize, is something I do feel inspired by, and something I hope I can do as a filmmaker.”-Todd Haynes
Renowned music writer Greil Marcus will introduce a screening of I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ film inspired by the life of Bob Dylan and the work of Marcus, including his books The Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Following the screening, Marcus and film curator Sheryl Mousley will engage in conversation about the film and the life and work of Bob Dylan.
I’m Not There Film Description:
Inspired by the life of Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes’ stunning directorial achievement brings together six actors playing characters who craft a unique response to the elusive artist in different phases of his life, career, and persona. Cate Blanchett, in an Academy-Award nominated performance, and Christian Bale (the literal Dylan), Richard Gere (Dylan and Billy the Kid), Heath Ledger (an actor haunted by the legacy of Dylan), Marcus Carl Franklin (Dylan in Woody Guthrie mode), and Ben Whishaw (Rimbaud as Dylan) are set in the political and cultural reality of the era, and filmed in the cinematic styles of the 1960s. Award-winning I’m Not There is “a profoundly, movingly personal film, passionate in its engagement with the mysteries of the recent past.” (New York Times) 2007, 35mm, 135 minutes.
Greil Marcus Bio
“Greil Marcus’ work is very likely the most imaginative criticism being done, but it’s more than that: it’s a light in dark times.”-New York Magazine
In 1968, Greil Marcus began publishing criticism in Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine’s first record review editor. Best known for being a pop music critic, Marcus has also written extensively on literature, art movies, and politics in such publications as Artforum, Interview, the New York Times, Esquire, Salon.com, and Village Voice.
Marcus’s first book redefined rock criticism. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (1975), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is widely considered one of the finest and most scholarly studies of rock music ever published.
Other books authored by Marcus include: Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989); Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of A Cultural Obsession (1991); Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1997-1992 (1993); The Dustbin of History (1995); Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (1997); Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2000); The Manchurian Candidate (2002); and The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (2006).
Marcus served on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle Award (1983-1989). He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton and the New School, has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and is currently the Winton Chair Fellow at the University of Minnesota, teaching the seminar “The Old Weird America.”