Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives

THE FILMS OF MARK MORRISROE

April 26 – April 27

This program features the surviving films of performance artist and photographer Mark Morrisroe (1959-89), a pioneer of queer culture in the 1980s, and a friend and collaborator of Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and others. In addition to the hundreds of photographs Morrisroe produced while studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he created three films: THE LAZIEST GIRL IN TOWN (1981), HELLO FROM BERTHA (1983), and NYMPH-O-MANIAC (1984). These works were filmed in Morrisroe’s apartment or those of his friends – Stephen Tashjian, Jack Pierson, and David Armstrong – and were shot on Super 8 film. Melodramatic, often clownish, and theatrically staged, they present a decadent mise-en-scène of an environment that was deeply personal to the filmmaker. Whether dressed in worn thrift-shop costumes or entirely nude, the actors, including Morrisroe himself, perform roles that blend artifice with personal experiences and fantasies, subverting conventional notions of value and tension in visual representation, of what constitutes fiction for some, and reality for others.

Morrisroe’s three surviving films (a fourth, centered on the murder of his cat, was censored immediately after it was shown, and has been lost) all engage with the experimental cinematic language of their time, incorporating elements of horror cinema, a punk ethos, and the outrageousness of artists like Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters. Much like the early screenings of Nan Goldin’s BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY, Morrisroe’s films were often shown in underground punk bars, independent cinemas, and intimate, occasionally deserted classrooms at Tufts University, frequently with the “actors” as the sole audience. These films, like his photographic works, are valuable not only as standalone pieces but also as part of the historical archive of what was theorized as the Boston Group. Ultimately, Morrisroe’s films remain a poignant testament to a delirious, intimate world; the beautiful memory of a home and a chosen family.

Guest-programmed by Hugo Bausch Belbachir.

Multimedia artist Stephen Tashjian, who collaborated with Morrisroe and appears in the films, will be here in person for the screening on Sat, April 26!

Special thanks to the Mark Morrisroe Estate.

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