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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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

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...

Moving Off the Land celebrates the ocean and its creatures, biodiversity, and delicate ecology.

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...

2015. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. Presented as a two-channel diptych: Green Timeline (3:41 min.); Mirror Timeline (3:48 min.). 7 min.

Mirage was designed specifically for the screening room of Anthology Film Archives in New York's SoHo neighborhood, where Joan Jonas first performed...

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

Jonas's performance piece, an homage to 18th century French outdoor theater, incorporates mythology as well as spontaneously occurring events into...

In this early work, Jonas translates her performance strategies to video, applying the inherent properties of the medium to her investigations of the...

Cutting between snowy fields and a raw seashore, Jonas focuses on a group of performers moving through a stark, windswept landscape. The 16mm film...

Two women kiss.

1992/1994. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. Presented as a two-channel diptych: Berlin Wall (9:39 min.); Berlin Road (9:35 min.). 19 min.

"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...

Short movie by Joan Jonas.