LeAnn Bartok’s fascinating life and work comes back to light in the next edition of Pittsburgh Sound + Image’s Essential Pittsburgh series, focused on local film masterpieces which have been unseen here for decades.
Thanks to ongoing preservation work by the Academy Film Archives and distribution by Canyon Cinema, we’re able to present to you a complete retrospective of Bartok’s films, all made while a member at Pittsburgh Filmmakers in the 1970s.
Canyon Cinema introduces Bartok by describing just a few of the accomplishments from her astounding life: “A pioneering conceptual visionary artist, painter, filmmaker, sculptor, poet, actress, and inventor (U.S. patent liquid crystal), LeAnn Bartok (1937-2001) graduated from the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing, in Pittsburgh, PA. After appearing in early-1960s Japanese Yakuza films, Bartok went to create a series of conceptual ‘SKYWORKS’ projects in the 1970s; a dramatic art form which consisted of gigantic and symbolic streamers of paper and fabric, dropped from airplanes to make towering, transitory drawings using the entire sky as her own personal canvas.”
Bartok’s son Jayce will join us for this very special evening of LeAnn’s films on 16mm.
Includes a performance with four of Bartok’s “Music Box” sculptures — unseen and unheard by a public audience for over 40 years. Performers: Jayce Bartok, Steven Haines, Ari Light, Jeff Light, with Andre Solomon joining on flute.
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Doors at 7:00, screening starts at 7:30
At the Harris Theater
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ABOUT ESSENTIAL PITTSBURGH
Pittsburgh Sound + Image seeks to redefine our region’s film history with the Essential Pittsburgh series. We acknowledge the depth of creativity which has flourished here by spotlighting vital artists and their films from the 1960s through the 2000s. This landmark series is a continuation of our efforts to celebrate a fuller picture of independent, amateur, industrial, and experimental filmmaking talent, and to better situate Pittsburgh nationally as a place of rich cinematic history.
