Steve Reinke

(still from Anthology of America Folk Song)

Steve Reinke Artist Talk; Intermedia Class, Art For Lunch, and Queer City Cinema

It was nice to have a more intimate screening with Steve Reinke in the Intermedia class and because I went to all of his screenings, I was able to see a lot of his work and it’s progression. It seems that as of late, Reinke has moved away from humour and is dealing with more dark subject matter. I found that he has found a good balance between humourous and dark subject matter. I imagine that he is a little tired of being equated to Woody Allen and has moved into different subject matter. I really found My Rectum is Not a Grave (which debuted at the Queer City Cinema) beautiful and sad. It was the video that I thought most about. The video was a series of archive images from a man who owned a movie theatre in, I think, North Dakota and made films about the people in the town and showed them in the theatre. They were beautifully captured images of these people and the moment that they were in. It was especially intriguing to me because I really felt a sense of loss. The subtitle to My Rectum is Not a Grave is (To a Film Industry in Crisis) seemed to speak to the incredibly flashy, expensive and bad films that are currently everywhere and something as simple as these images of these everyday people are so much more beautiful, complex, and interesting than the overblown Hollywood industry.