Review: Our City Dreams | Hollywood Theater
March 9, 2009 — PDXPIPELINEBy Saundra Sorenson
Filmmaker Chiara Clemente moves beyond the predictable 
genre of love song to New York by profiling five female artists with tenuous — if fruitful — connections to the Big Apple. Clemente doesn't suggest that their careers couldn't happen anywhere else, but uses the cityscape as their common ground, devoting vignette-style profiles to each, starting with the youngest and working backward.
There's Swoon, the street artist who works in lithographs and presents herself as a member of the Burning Man demographic; Ghada Amer, Cairo-born diplomat's daughter who blends traditional, textile-based art forms with thick daubs of paint and erotica; Kiki Smith, witchy daughter of New York art royalty who favors a mixed media retrospective of a career tinged with Chelsea Hotel-esque subculture influences; Marina Abramovic, ballsy stunner who pushes the envelope of performance art but does little to legitimize it; and Nancy Spero, spitfire grand dame of three generations of urban art.
This capable documentary pays homage to good storytelling above all. As a study of the New York art scene, it feels spotty; as a tribute to the grandmothers and daughters integral to the city's visual culture, it's essential.
Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale provides an appropriately subdued soundtrack, with a dash of Tom Waits thrown in for full, surreal effect. Read the rest of this entry »
