Mark Rappaport started as an underground director in 70s American cin- ema and evolved into a maker of movies about the movies. Αfter making more than a half a dozen shorts in the 60s and early 70s, he made 5 features in the 70s. He has also been writing fiction and essays about films for over twenty years. His major body of work is based on utilizing footage of well-known films, appropriating them by means of highly distinctive voiceover narration, creating visual and acoustic symmetry in the form of video essays with no particular structure, repeating scenes of favorite stars and combining clips that illustrate his in-depth insight on cinema. We as an audience are immediately captivated with the singular quality of his art. We enter an articulation of thoughts not only visually but also through the use of music that is, too, used by the filmmaker in a certain way in order to create impressions. Rappaport ingests absurdity through the film The Vanity of Tables of Douglas Sirk exploring the movies of Douglas Sirk, provokes through the collages of Becoming Anita Ekberg investigating the sex symbol, boldly excites with his personal interpretation of the character in the film Sergei / Sir Gay and mesmerizes with his approach on I, Dalio. He personalizes the narration, inviting the audience to study his piece towards an instructive interpretation, including cinema elements at its most. This is his most extensive showcase ever screened in Greece, with his latest film America’s Grandpa presented as a World Premiere.
Nina Veligradi