Out of Competition

GOLUB: LATE WORKS ARE THE CATASTROPHES



Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn

Country of production: USA
Year: 2004
Language: English
Mins: 80

Production company: Kartemquin Films
Producer: Jerry Blumenthal
Cinematography: Gordon Quinn, Eric Breitbart
Editing: Jerry Blumenthal
Sound: Jerry Blumenthal
Music: Tom Sivak

Source: Kartemquin Films
Blumenthal, Jerry
1901 W. Wellington Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657, USA
Tel: 773-472-4366
Fax: 773-472-3348
e-mail: jerryb8@sbcglobal.net


The American painter Leon Golub was born in 1922 in Chicago, Illinois. Seeing Picasso's “Guernica” induced him to study art history at the University of Chicago. In the 1950s, when abstract expressionism was the prevailing style, Leon Golub caused a stir with his figurative paintings of wrestling nudes, based on Greek and Roman sculptures. Later, topical subjects began to enter his work. For his paintings, Golub typically used press photos, taking the atrocities of the Vietnam War to the gallery and the museum. In 1969, he started his “napalm paintings,” for which he used press photos of naked people with napalm wounds. In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced series with politicians, mercenaries and war victims. But with his last exhibition depicted in the film, Leon Golub seems to have returned to his starting point: erotica. Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes shows the artist at work and with his wife, the prominent peace activist and feminist artist Nancy Spero. Until the end of his life, Golub kept commenting on the world through his paintings and it is clear, after seeing the pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison, for instance, that his work was disturbingly prophetic.

Jerry Blumenthal was a founding member of Kartemquin Films; he has been a director, producer, editor and sound recordist with them since 1967. His film Vietnam, a Long Time Coming was aired on NBC and earned him a national Emmy and a Directors Guild of America Award for Best Documentary in 1999.

Gordon Quinn is the President and one of the founding members of Kartemquin Films and has been making documentaries for over 35 years. His producing credits include Hoop Dreams, Vietnam and Long Time Coming, and Stevie for which he won the Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn Selected Filmography

The New Americans (2004)
Vietnam, Long Time Coming (1999)
Chicago Crossings: Bridges and Boundaries (1994)
Golub (1988)
Taylor Chain II: A Story of Collective Bargaining (1984)
The Last Pullman Car (1983)
Taylor Chain I: Story in a Union Local (1980)
The Chicago Maternity Center Story (1976)
UE/Wells (1975)
What the Fuck are These Red Squares? (1970)
Hum 255 (1969)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2005 AT 7.30 PM. / BLOCK CINEMA
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