Films

THE REFLECTED GAZE: THE ART OF SELF-PORTRAITS FRIDA KAHLO

While living, Frida Kahlo was famous as the wife of the legendary Diego Rivera. She was famous as an "exotic princess with immense powers of seduction", well experienced to deal with "genius men". Her dual role as wife and sparkling personality overshadows her identity as a genuine artist even today.

The film demonstrates: Frida Kahlo is a graphic artist and a passionate philosopher at the same time. In her Self–Portraits she experiments and reflects a multitude of identities. Her creative work is a radical experiment on herself, the way to survival. In the various designs of herself she tries to capture the unity of body and mind she lost traumatically in her youth because of severe physical injuries she suffered.

The film is not a biography. Central to the film is Frida Kahlo's art. Via the analysis of the Self–Portraits closeness to the person Frida Kahlo is achieved; enhanced by the sensual conveyance in picture and sound. The viewer gets an idea of her motives, her thoughts, her anxieties, her wishes and her yearnings.

A film by ARTE, 2006
30 min. documentary

Director: Marita Loosen
Photographer: Steffen Bohn, Thomas Vollmar
Editor: Daniela Thiel
Commissioning Editor: Andrea Ernst


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