Joan Jonas Movies

Adaptation of an avant-garde play about Rhoda, a hysterical heroine who feels oppressed by the people around her. She suffers through her birthday...

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated...

This short film shot in Iceland and New York, which is based on a thirteenth-century Icelandic Laxdeala Saga, features Tilda Swinton as a young woman...

Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a...

In this experimental film, Borden explores the dynamics among the members of a woman’s group. As she interviews people who know them, such as...

He Saw Her Burning, which is based on a 1983 performance, is a provocative narrative collage, a surreal juxtaposition of two narrated texts. A man...

Jonas intercuts scenes of the Nova Scotia countryside with images of a studio set-up reminiscent of a di Chirico painting. The soundtrack includes...

Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but...

In this seminal exploration of the phenomenology of video as a mirror and as "reality," Jonas, face-to-face with her own recorded image, performs a...

A Jamaican fisherman describes fishing practices.

In Mirror Check Jonas uses a small handheld mirror to inspect her naked body in front of an audience. Though her movements were visible to the...

In Upsidedown and Backwards, two fairy tales — The Frog Prince and The Boy Who Went Out to Learn Fear — are told simultaneously, one...

This complex and enigmatic work, which is performed by Jonas and Lois Lane, explores female gestures, poses, the body and narcissism. Mirroring each...

Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy is based on Jonas' 1972 performance of the same name, the first in which she used video. In an enigmatic ritual of...

In the film, Jonas uses video as a diaristic construct to chart the passing of personal time through quotidian ritual. Over three different periods...

Frenetic silhouettes pass us by.

Five-channel video installation which responds to German art historian Aby Warburg’s essay about his visit to the American Southwest.

The video and sculptural installation Ice Drawing (2012) is one component of Jonas’s masterwork installation, Reanimation (2013). It features...

The film is an adaptation from two sources: Kinesics and Context by Ray L. Birdwhistell, and Choreomania, a performance by Joan Jonas

"Shot vertically and intended to be shown on a video monitor turned on its side, the video May Windows (1976) is a component of the Mirage...