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Masked and Anonymous – Bob Dylan and the Cinema Curated by Cyril Neyrat Bob Dylan and the cinema: to all the world, this means two central images from the singer’s mythology. First of all, the rising young star filmed by D.A. Pennebaker in Dont Look Back (1967).
And then, in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), the taciturn cowboy flaunting his mystery in a moribund Wild West. But Dylan’s relationship with the cinema goes far beyond these two iconic images. As I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ kaleidoscopic portrait of the singer, perfectly illustrates: the poet’s world of the imaginary and his writings are haunted by the cinema. This program’s first ambition thus is to trace Bob Dylan on the big screen. Few other artists have been as anxious as he has to constantly reinvent themselves, to avoid falling into the traps of identity. From the documentary, Dont Look Back (1967), to Masked And Anonymous (2003), the political satire Dylan co-wrote and starred in, cinema has been witness to his development and metamorphoses. Dylan has also taken the leap and directed two exceptional films: the anti-documentary, Eat The Document (1972), and the sprawling Renaldo & Clara, one of the best-kept secrets of 1970s American cinema. Films that were poorly received and poorly understood when they came out because they were too far ahead of their time, too unconventional and ambitious.
They shed new light on Dylan’s poetics and inscribe themselves into a key discourse of cinematic modernity, sharing the interests and aesthetic issues of Andy Warhol, Robert Kramer, Monte Hellman, Glauber Rocha and Jean-Luc Godard. And that is the program’s second major aim: to show the filmmaker in Bob Dylan and to explore his place in a certain region of cinema.
With the program “Masked and Anonymous” the Viennale pays tribute for the first time to a personality whose work is not directly and exclusively connected with film. Curated by the French critic and author Cyril Neyrat, it is an attempt to put Dylan’s work into an associative context with cinema, contradictory cinematic positions, ideas, relations and affinities, as can be found in the realm of cinema in infinitely broken, reflected and freely interpreted ways. The program will be accompanied by a series of public talks, lectures and musical interventions, dealing with Dylan’s work and the tribute of “Masked and Anonymous” beyond the usual “Dylanology.”