GREGORY CREWDSON
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Film Forum
209 West Houston Street - New York
31/10/2012 - 13/11/2012
Film Forum is pleased to open Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, a new documentary by Ben Shapiro. Gregory Crewdson's riveting photographs are elaborately staged, elegant narratives compressed into a single, albeit large-scale image, many of them taken at twilight, set in small towns of Western Massachusetts or meticulously recreated interior spaces, built on the kind of sound stages associated with big-budget movies. Shapiro's fascinating profile of the acclaimed artist includes stories of his Park Slope childhood (in which he tried to overhear patients of his psychologist father), his summers in the bucolic countryside (which he now imbues with a sense of dread and foreboding), and his encounter with Diane Arbus's work in 1972 at age 10. Novelists Rick Moody and Russell Banks, and fellow photographer Laurie Simmons, comment on the motivation behind their friend's haunting images. But Crewdson remains his own best critic: "Every artist has one central story to tell. The struggle is to tell and retell that story over again - and to challenge that story. It's the defining story of who you are."
Gregory Crewdson's work is in many collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The body of work featured in the film is "Beneath the Roses," and was produced from 2002-2008. Film Forum will be selling the book by the same title during the film's engagement.
