MenuFLIXANO
Start Your Free Trial
Search
Marie Menken

Marie Menken

Marie Menken was born Marie Menkevicius in New York City on May 25, 1909, the daughter of Catholic Lithuanian immigrants. She grew up in Brooklyn with a brother and a sister, in a home used to frequent financial difficulties. Both she and her sister Adele later changed their surname to Menken. Marie Menken and Willard Maas had got married in 1937, moving into a Brooklyn penthouse at 62 Montague Street, which they would inhabit until their deaths. She died on December 29, 1970. Four days after her death, on January 2, 1971, Willard Maas died.

Sign up to watch Free Marie Menken Movies

Movies Made By Marie Menken (24)

Excursion (1968)

A boat trip with friends round Manhattan, shot in single-frame mode ...

Watch Now

In Search of the Miraculous (1967)

In the Search of the Miraculous is a multi-levelled story realized with extremely personal techniques and with the kind of atmosphere of Poetry and Introspection, only a poet could create. It is, in fact, the story of a poet searching himself through his l ...

Watch Now

Watts with Eggs (1967)

"By 1967, Menken had become interested in the work of Fluxus artist Robert Watts and made a short animation piece, Watts with EGGS, in which she animates his chrome-casted Box of Eggs. The film opens with lights reflected in the eggs (of course), then, thr ...

Watch Now

Lights (1966)

Shot over a period of three years. Marie Menken photographed New York window displays during the Christmas holiday. In order to avoid foot and street traffic interrupting the shots, Menken filmed from midnight to 1:00 in the morning, but had to keep the ca ...

Watch Now

Sidewalks (1966)

Photography: Willard Maas and John Hawkins. "Looking down instead of around, while walking, finding the magic patterns in the pavements of a city. ...

Watch Now

Andy Warhol (1965)

Andy Warhol is a lyrical exploration of Warhol's creative process by filmmaker, painter, and actress Marie Menken. Using a hand-held camera, Menken captures Warhol and his assistants, including Gerard Malanga, as they work at the Factory. The result is an ...

Watch Now

Wrestling (1964)

A wrestling match shown on television, shot on film-- A tv 'concrete'. ...

Watch Now

Dionysus (1964)

In 1963 Boultenhouse wrote, produced, and directed Dionysius,which he described as a "free treatment of Euripides' The Bacchae."It starred the dancers Louis Falco, Anna Duncan, and Nicolas Magallanes as Dionysius, Agave, and Pentheus respectively, and the ...

Watch Now

Lita's Party (1964)

Film shot by filmmaker Marie Menken in the mid-1960s. Preserved by the Anthology Film Archive (AFA). ...

Watch Now

Go! Go! Go! (1964)

Various forms of everyday motion in and around a city are shown at rapid speed. ...

Watch Now

Notebook (1963)

A short, diaristic film; A series of impressions, animations and playful vignettes in color and B&W. Early/ Outtake footage of Menken's Lights can be seen here, as well as camera techniques she'd expand upon in later films. ...

Watch Now

Moonplay (1962)

An expansion upon an idea put forward in Marie Menken's film Notebook; single-frame footage of the moon shot on various nights, blinking and darting around within Menken's field of vision. ...

Watch Now

Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961)

Filmed at the Alhambra in Spain in just one day, according to Marie Menken. Arabesque for Kenneth Anger concentrates on visual details found in Moorish architecture and in ancient Spanish tile. The date 1961 refers to the addition of Teiji Ito's soundtrack ...

Watch Now

Bagatelle for Willard Maas (1961)

"This is a new version of the now famous film made for her husband, the poet and film-maker. Returning from the Brussels fair, she shot this at Versailles and the Louvre. There is wit, irony and prophecy here (though perhaps not apparent to those who do no ...

Watch Now

Eye Music in Red Major (1961)

"A study in light based on persistence of vision and enhancement from eye fatigue." -- M.M. ...

Watch Now

Mood Mondrian (1961)

A film of a painting of a sound. Piet Mondrian's 'Broadway Boogie-Woogie' is translated into visual boogie rhythm. ...

Watch Now

Drips in Strips (1961)

"Spattered paint responding to gravity, forming its own patterns and combinations of color." -- M.M. ...

Watch Now

Dwightiana (1959)

Menken's 16mm, stop-motion tribute to the art of Dwight Ripley was filmed in 1959 in his apartment at 416 East Fifty-eighth Street in New York. She used his drawings as flats.The remarkably contemporary soundtrack for steel drum, guitar, flute, and voice w ...

Watch Now

Glimpse of the Garden (1957)

Experimental film showing film clips of a garden, with birds chirping for the soundtrack. ...

Watch Now

Hurry, Hurry! (1957)

In this strange little film, Marie Menken photographs billowy flames superimposed over microscopic medical footage of writhing spermatozoa. ...

Watch Now

Image in the Snow (1952)

A young male protagonist dreams of a muscleman hero, a black dancer, and a princess who gives him a magic urn. When he wakes he rejects his mother (Menken) and wanders the cold streets, where he finds his dream characters corrupted or dying. ...

Watch Now

Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945)

A voice occasionally says a word or two: "on the sidewalk" or "lithium" or a woman's name. A hand-held camera frames parts of sculptures, or moves across their surfaces, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, almost always in close-up. The soundtrack, in add ...

Watch Now

The Geography of the Body (1943)

A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes views of a man and a woman's bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an e ...

Watch Now

Movies Starring Marie Menken (10)

Notes on Marie Menken (2006)

A look at avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken. ...

Watch Now

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches (1968)

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas's first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it ...

Watch Now

Chelsea Girls (1966)

Follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. ...

Watch Now

Andy Warhol Screen Tests (1965)

The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of fi ...

Watch Now

The Life of Juanita Castro (1965)

A playwright taunts a number of actors into improvising a truly ridiculous but subtlely meaningful meditation on Fidel Castro and his family. ...

Watch Now

Bitch (1965)

"Andy Warhol called Marie Menken and Willard Maas 'the last of the great bohemians,' and, in 1965, made Bitch, his real-life parody of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Willard and Marie sitting on the couch in their living room, dr ...

Watch Now

Prison (1965)

Inspired by Bibbe Hansen's experiences in a juvenile detention center. ...

Watch Now

Narcissus (1957)

A film poem, a re-telling of the Greek myth in modern terms. In the traditional pool the water has become muddy and Narcissus finds that mirrors are more rewarding for the study of his changing reflections. There are three mirrors, each reflecting a dramat ...

Watch Now

Image in the Snow (1952)

A young male protagonist dreams of a muscleman hero, a black dancer, and a princess who gives him a magic urn. When he wakes he rejects his mother (Menken) and wanders the cold streets, where he finds his dream characters corrupted or dying. ...

Watch Now

The Geography of the Body (1943)

A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes views of a man and a woman's bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an e ...

Watch Now