Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer
Director: Jack Walsh
Writer: Jack Walsh
Part of: identities Festival
Seen on: 10.6.2015
[Screener review.]

Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer will be shown at the identities Festival in Vienna on June 17th, 2015, 18.00! Rainer’s film MURDER and murder will be shown as well on June 16th, 2015, 20.00!

“Plot”:
Yvonne Rainer is a choreographer and filmmaker. The documentary tries to provide a framework for her creative endeavours and covers a bit of her personal life as well.

Much like with Alice Walker, I didn’t know much about Rainer before watching the documentary. I had heard of her, but not really a whole lot. The documentary gives a nice overview about her work and even gave me a bit more tools for watching modern dance.

I have watched a couple of modern dance shows and performances already, but usually I left them more bewildered than anything else. I didn’t have the artistic vocabulary to place those performances and I didn’t know what to do with their aesthetics. I am not saying that I would easily understand them now, but I do feel like the film gave me tools to understand them a little better at least. In particular I realized that there is a sense of humor there as well. So far the audiences I watched these shows with were usually completely serious. But in the performance footage used in the film you can hear people laughing.

But maybe it’s not all in my lack of understanding, because Rainer’s choreographies were obviously special. Especially the bits from Three Seascapes as danced by Patricia Hoffbauer we got to see really were something else. I really would like to see it in its entirety.

I’m going to watch MURDER and murder at the festival myself and I am really looking forward tothe film. Because if there’s one thing that’s absolutely clear to me now, it’s that Rainer never did something without thinking extensively about it. We got to hear bits of the diary she kept when she was a teenager and they are basically philosophical and politicsl essays (my own diaries were and are pretty much trivial accounts of my quotidien experiences).

I wouldn’t have minded if the movie had talked even more about dance theory, but then it would have had to be a different documentary. As is, it achieves exactly what it sets out to do: give an interesting and entertaining insight in the life and work of Yvonne Rainer.

Summarizing: fascinating.