Charles Atlas

A Prune Twin (2020)

The collaboration between the two artists began in 1984 when the young dancer, Clark, performed in two single-channel films by Atlas: Parafango and Ex-Romance. However, it was not until the groundbreaking Hail the New Puritan in 1986, that the relationship ...

The Tyranny of Consciousness (2017)

Lady Bunny at the end of the world. ...

A Museum ? (2015)

Charles Atlas has been a pioneering figure in film and video for over four decades. Atlas has extended the limits of his medium, forging new territory in a far-reaching range of genres, stylistic approaches, and techniques. Throughout his production, the a ...

Turning (2012)

In 2006 ANOHNI and the Johnsons and Charles Atlas took their collaborative performance TURNING to major cities in Europe. This documentary film explores the heart of that performance. ...

Check Your Body at the Door (2012)

Check Your Body At The Door is a documentary film about some remarkable underground house dancers in NYC during the golden decade of the 1990s. It follows master free-stylists into the clubs, their jobs, and their everyday lives. Filmed in the studio as we ...

Ocean (2010)

John Cage's original concept of Ocean, in 1991, was for a dance to be performed in a circular space, with the audience surrounding the dancers, and the musicians (112 of them) surrounding the audience. The last performance was in the Rainbow Quarry in Minn ...

Tornado Warning (2006)

Charles Atlas' five-channel video installation, Tornado Warning, draws from the filmmaker's early memories of the tornado alerts in his childhood town of St Louis, Missouri. The piece contrasts an orderly space of grids and numbers with a chaotic environme ...

Rainer Variations (2002)

"For me Rainer Variations is a hybrid: a weave of impressionistic portrait, found footage construction, and video sampler. Aside from formal issues, Yvonne Rainer's knotty process of thinking, her unique brand of humor, and her engaging presence are the th ...

The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2002)

Welcome to the over-the-top, extravagant world of Leigh Bowery, a key figure in New Romanticism and London nightlife in the 1980s. With his bizarre outfits, a mix of kitsch and fetish, and his eccentric performances, he influenced artists, musicians and st ...

Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance (2001)

A history of the work of Merce Cunningham. ...

THE “MARTHA” TAPES, PART 6 (2000)

Starting in 1997 I began to make found-footage montages for a once-a-month downtown NY performance club called 'Martha @ Mother'. It was hosted by the performance artist Richard Move in his satirical impersonation of Martha Graham, the iconic 20th century ...

It's a Jackie Thing (1999)

Based on his own video documentation, Atlas constructs a delirious montage of New York club performances from the late 1990s. Impersonators of pop-culture figures, including Martha Graham, Kurt Cobain giving a "final performance," and Sid Vicious lip-synci ...

Mrs. Peanut Visits New York (1999)

A video portrait of the legendary late performance artist, fashion designer and nightlife icon Leigh Bowery. Atlas's camera follows Bowery as he flamboyantly strolls through Manhattan's Meatpacking District, outrageously costumed in a self-made reinterpret ...

Staten Island Sex Cult (1998)

A gay sex video, directed by Charles Atlas under the pseudonym 'Jack Shoot,' was created as part of a series featuring artists in porn, though it was the only one produced. The film was shot in a brothel on Staten Island and was nominated for Best Porn Com ...

Superhoney (1994)

In this futuristic danse macabre, Charles Atlas creates a fully realized cyber-gothic world, rife with both erotic and physical danger. We follow our heroine on her travels through a world inhabited by libidinal robots, human profligates, statuesque hairdr ...

We Interrupt This Program (1991)

We Interrupt This Program (1991) was a live television broadcast presented by The Kitchen in association with Visual AIDS for Day Without Art 1991. The broadcast was directed by Charles Atlas and includes contributions from artists whose work addressed the ...

Son of Sam and Delilah (1991)

New York City 1988. Raging homophobia. A killer on the loose. Disco dancing till dawn. Performers struggle to survive. Delilah seduces Samson in song. Gender illusionists go shopping. Samson and Delilah, 1991. This tape is an entertaining amalgam of cross- ...

What I Did Last Summer (1991)

The three short, low-tech works in this compilation celebrate downtown New York nightlife at the beginning of the 1990's. Set in a New York Meat Market restaurant after hours, Butchers' Vogue features a voguing waiter and waitress, two prostitutes on the r ...

The Myth of Modern Dance (1990)

Collaborating with choreographer Douglas Dunn, Atlas uses anthropological text, satirical movement, and vividly colored chroma-keyed backgrounds in an episodic, often humorous look at the evolution of modern dance. ...

Disco 2000 (1990)

One of a trio of works Atlas made to celebrate downtown New York nightlife at the beginning of the 1990s, DISCO 2000 mixes footage of a crowded dance floor, homemade optical effects, and a dancing chicken. ...

Because We Must (1989)

The Michael Clark Dance Group perform to the music of T.Rex, Chopin, the Beatles and the Velvet Underground. ...

SSS (1989)

Marina Abramovic collaborated with videomaker Charles Atlas on this striking work of autobiographical performance. Abramovic delivers a monologue that traces a concise personal chronology. This brief narrative history, which references her past in the form ...

Put More Blood Into the Music (1988)

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988. ...

Hail the New Puritan (1986)

A fictionalized portrait of the British dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, depicting a day in his life as he and his company prepare for a performance. ...

Coast Zone (1984)

Coast Zone […] explores the use of deep-focus, contrasting background figures (often in motion) with those in the foreground (sometimes in extreme close-up). Shot in January 1983, the first screenings at Dean Junior College in Franklin, MA, 7 April 1984; ...

From an island summer (1983)

Secret of the Waterfall (1983)

The confluence of words and movement propels this multi-layered collaboration by Atlas, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn's athletic choreography is performed to the rhythms, cadences, and associative meanings of the poe ...

Channels/Inserts (1981)

This work was a dance shot for film at the Cunningham studio. Staging for Channels/Inserts was divided among the main studio, the small studio and the office area. Cunningham employed the use of chance operations to decide the order in which each space wou ...

Merce by Merce by Paik (1978)

Merce by Merce by Paik is a two-part tribute to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Marcel Duchamp. The first section, "Blue Studio: Five Segments", is a work of video-dance produced by Merce Cunningham and videomaker Charles Atlas. The second part, ...

Westbeth (1975)

"Westbeth" was Cunningham's first video collaboration with Charles Atlas, and the first video project to be made at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio on the eleventh floor of Westbeth. ...

Turning (2012)

In 2006 ANOHNI and the Johnsons and Charles Atlas took their collaborative performance TURNING to major cities in Europe. This documentary film explores the heart of that performance. ...