Amy Greenfield
Encyclopedia
Amy Greenfield is a filmmaker and writer living in New York City. She is an originator of the cine-dance genre and a pioneer of experimental film and video
.
At their retrospective of her films, the Museum of Modern Art
wrote, “Amy Greenfield developed a new form of video-dance, choreographing for the video camera and television screen.” The Whitney museum
writes, “Amy Greenfield shows us how camera and human movement can be ecstatically joined together.” And film critic David Sterritt
says in Cineaste Magazine, that she is “…today’s most important practitioner of experimental film-dance.”
, and video installations
. Her award-winning work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; American Museum of the Moving Image
; Anthology Film Archives
; Lincoln Center; National Film Theatre of London; the Hayward Gallery
, London; the Munich Film Archive
; Harvard Film Archive
s; the Kennedy Center and at international film festivals from Argentina to Japan, including the Berlin, London, Edinburgh, New York, Denver, Dance on Camera, Bologna, São Paulo, winning top prizes at the Houston, Atlanta, Williamsburg, Athens Greece Film Festivals. In 2007 she was honored by the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in Cine-Dance in America, from Thomas Edison’s 1894 Annabelle to Greenfield’s 2002 Wildfire.
Her experimental feature film, Antigone/Rites Of Passion premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and has screened internationally, including the 2004 Athens pre-Olympics celebrations
; was a prize winner at the American Film Festival. The film is now distributed by Alive Mind Media, and is taught in colleges, universities and high schools across
the US. Kevin Thomas writes of it in the Los Angeles Times, “Dazzling! Bold! Triumphantly ambitious and successful! An ‘Antigone’ as if we had never seen it performed in any other form before.”
Her live multimedia garnered a New York Times 10 Best in Arts and Entertainment: “Magical! Unforgettable!” (Dunning).
Her pioneering moving holographic sculptures are in the collection of the Museum of Holography. Her video and holography installations have been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, London; PS 122 Art Space, Queens, NY; The Kitchen Center for Video, Music and Dance, The Franklin Insititute, Philadelphia, The National Science Museum of Canada, and more.
Last season her major new live multimedia work, Spirit in The Flesh was presented at Symphony Space in New York (“Cosmic female energy.” AM New York). And she was featured film-maker in the first Biennial of Women in The Arts. This season her work is being shown from Williamsburg,Brooklyn to Barcelona, Spain, from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia to the Scope Madrid Art Fair. She is now developing Spirit In The Flesh into a film.
Her fine art video is represented by Creative Thrift Shop (www.creativethriftshop.com).
Her film and videos are distributed by Canyon Cinema in the US and Collectif Jeune Cinema in Europe.
She is also a poet and writer. Her poetry book, We Too Are Alive, was carried by Barnes & Noble stores after 9/11. Her poems have been published in inter-national literary journals. She edited FilmDance, with her seminal article, “Filmdance: Space;Time;Energy,” and has written feature articles on film for Film Comment and more.
Amy Greenfield is a graduate of Harvard University
.
, The Rockefeller Foundation
, The New York Foundation for the Arts
, The Jerome Foundation
, The Council On The Arts And Humanities of Staten Island, and David Rockefeller, Jr.
.
In February 2010, YouTube
removed the videos "Element" and "Tides" from its service saying the representation of nudity offended the site's "community standards." The National Coalition Against Censorship
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
both intervened in support of Greenfield and the videos were promptly reinstated.
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
.
At their retrospective of her films, the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
wrote, “Amy Greenfield developed a new form of video-dance, choreographing for the video camera and television screen.” The Whitney museum
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
writes, “Amy Greenfield shows us how camera and human movement can be ecstatically joined together.” And film critic David Sterritt
David Sterritt
David Sterritt is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music...
says in Cineaste Magazine, that she is “…today’s most important practitioner of experimental film-dance.”
Work
Greenfield has directed, produced, edited, and often performed in more than thirty films, plus holographic moving sculpture, live multimediaMultimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
, and video installations
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
. Her award-winning work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; American Museum of the Moving Image
American Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in Astoria, Queens on the former site of the Kaufman Astoria Studios. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the American Museum of the Moving Image. The museum began a $67 million expansion in March 2008 and reopened in January 2011...
; Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
; Lincoln Center; National Film Theatre of London; the Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
, London; the Munich Film Archive
Munich Stadtmuseum
The Munich Stadtmuseum is the city museum of Munich. It was founded in 1888 by Ernst von Destouches and is located in the former municipal arsenal and stables, both buildings of the late Gothic period.-Permanent exhibitions:...
; Harvard Film Archive
Harvard Film Archive
The Harvard Film Archive is a film archive devoted to cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It maintains a collection of over 9000 films and related documents, and regularly screens films in its 210 seat theater...
s; the Kennedy Center and at international film festivals from Argentina to Japan, including the Berlin, London, Edinburgh, New York, Denver, Dance on Camera, Bologna, São Paulo, winning top prizes at the Houston, Atlanta, Williamsburg, Athens Greece Film Festivals. In 2007 she was honored by the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in Cine-Dance in America, from Thomas Edison’s 1894 Annabelle to Greenfield’s 2002 Wildfire.
Her experimental feature film, Antigone/Rites Of Passion premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and has screened internationally, including the 2004 Athens pre-Olympics celebrations
2004 Summer Olympics
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...
; was a prize winner at the American Film Festival. The film is now distributed by Alive Mind Media, and is taught in colleges, universities and high schools across
the US. Kevin Thomas writes of it in the Los Angeles Times, “Dazzling! Bold! Triumphantly ambitious and successful! An ‘Antigone’ as if we had never seen it performed in any other form before.”
Her live multimedia garnered a New York Times 10 Best in Arts and Entertainment: “Magical! Unforgettable!” (Dunning).
Her pioneering moving holographic sculptures are in the collection of the Museum of Holography. Her video and holography installations have been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, London; PS 122 Art Space, Queens, NY; The Kitchen Center for Video, Music and Dance, The Franklin Insititute, Philadelphia, The National Science Museum of Canada, and more.
Last season her major new live multimedia work, Spirit in The Flesh was presented at Symphony Space in New York (“Cosmic female energy.” AM New York). And she was featured film-maker in the first Biennial of Women in The Arts. This season her work is being shown from Williamsburg,Brooklyn to Barcelona, Spain, from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia to the Scope Madrid Art Fair. She is now developing Spirit In The Flesh into a film.
Her fine art video is represented by Creative Thrift Shop (www.creativethriftshop.com).
Her film and videos are distributed by Canyon Cinema in the US and Collectif Jeune Cinema in Europe.
She is also a poet and writer. Her poetry book, We Too Are Alive, was carried by Barnes & Noble stores after 9/11. Her poems have been published in inter-national literary journals. She edited FilmDance, with her seminal article, “Filmdance: Space;Time;Energy,” and has written feature articles on film for Film Comment and more.
Amy Greenfield is a graduate of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Responses
Amy Greenfield has been honored for her contributions to the arts by the Fulbright Foundation and Harvard University and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, The Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, The New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
, The Jerome Foundation
Jerome Hill
Jerome Hill was an American filmmaker and artist. He was born into the family of Louis W. and Maud Van Corlandt Hill, one of the prominent families of Saint Paul and heirs to the railroad fortune of James J. Hill, the famed “Empire Builder.”He attended St...
, The Council On The Arts And Humanities of Staten Island, and David Rockefeller, Jr.
David Rockefeller, Jr.
David Rockefeller Jr. is an American philanthropist and an active participant in nonprofit and environmental areas. The eldest son of Margaret "Peggy" McGrath and David Rockefeller, he is a leading fourth-generation member of the prominent Rockefeller family, serving on many boards of the...
.
In February 2010, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
removed the videos "Element" and "Tides" from its service saying the representation of nudity offended the site's "community standards." The National Coalition Against Censorship
National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship , founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups...
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
both intervened in support of Greenfield and the videos were promptly reinstated.