Abigail Child is a film and video maker whose work in montage and sound/image relations pushes the envelope of film/video with humor and ephemeral beauty. Her films explore mixed genres and strategies for rewriting narrative, as well as investigating public space through memory and history. Child began filmmaking in 1970 as a documentarian, moving quickly to experimental work, which has been shown in retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, Anthology Film Archives and more. She has also created documentaries for PBS and NBC. While also being a prolific filmmaker, Child has also published several books on the subject. Prism Index #2 will present Child’s “(If I Can Sing A Song About) Ligatures,” a segment from a three part series.

Memo:

“Third in my series of Foreign Films exploring relations of text and image, how text turns the image. In (If I Can Sing A Song About) Ligatures, words taken from lines of Nada Gordon’s unrequited love poems, whose sentences are taken, in their turn, from anonymous web poems, reveal a history of sexuality. Ligatures pronounces the poignancy of desire; its power and its vulnerability. The women are visions, girls, desirous, delicate, illusory. The illusionary nature is made manifest-transversing boundaries, expectations and physical limits-by the close. We in the audience, creating our own identities in the moments, remain trans-fixed.” –AC

Film:
(If I Can Sing A Song About) Ligatures
2009 – 5 minutes – B/W – Sound

Official Site