by Sabine Willkop, Germany 2007, 26'
| PHOTOGRAPHY: Johannes Anastasopoulos | PRODUCER: Jochen Dickbertel | |
| SOUND: Michael Geißer | PRODUCTION: Südwestrundfunk, ARTE/GEIE | |
| EDITING: Karen Bohnenkamp |
Presented at The Screen of the Arts 2009Sabine Willkop’s movie gives voice to one of the most intriguing and chameleon-like contemporary artists: the worldfamous photographer and film maker Cindy Sherman (Glen Ridge, New Jersey, 1954). Beginning with Sherman’s first series of black and white stills, created in the 1970s - which comprises 69 images, all with the same title of Untitled Film Stills - the artist has found inspiration in the world of cinema, television and fashion, as well as in western art. She has become an icon of transformation and has embodied, in her set ups, the most established and accepted stereotypes of our times, with the result of subverting both the aesthetic and formal canons of visual culture. Her photographs mirror our darkest obsessions. In this film, old behind-the-scenes documentaries and fragments from different interviews cover thirty years of rigorous and solitary work fully dedicated to the exploration of themes such as ambiguity and contamination. The film sketches a kaleidoscopic and moving portrait of the artist.
Sabine Willkop
Born in Munich in 1961, she is a journalist who works in radio and television. She is also an author and a film maker for German network SWR’s program NachtKultur and for ARTE’s cultural magazine Metropolis, and has made films about some of the world’s most important photographers. She received the French-German Award for Journalism in 2002.
Selected Filmography
Candida Höfer; Bernd und Hilla Becher; William Klein; Robert Frank; Female Trouble; Bettina Rheims; Helmut Newton; Gregory Crewdson; James Mollison; 2007 Cindy Sherman; 2009 année Darwin.