Momart

A documentary program about mothers, and about artists making art with and about their mothers.

00:29Copy video clip URL Title screen: Momart, by Pat Jaffe & Mark Rance. 

00:37Copy video clip URL Videomaker Mark Rance appears onscreen: “I think it’s that I’m afraid of being her son. Because I’m afraid of– I don’t want to go through the same thing. I don’t want to feel that kind of hurt.” 

00:47Copy video clip URL Filmmaker Jonas Mekas discusses filming his mother: “Whatever the camera saw in glimpses and immediate reactions, that was me. That was part of me trying to see what I hadn’t seen – what I missed for 27 years, my mother.”

01:07Copy video clip URL Artist and videomaker Larry Rivers discusses using his mother in his work.

01:15Copy video clip URL Onscreen text repeated: “Everyone has feelings about mother.” Images from Larry Miller’s Mom Eclipses the Mona Lisa and other artworks about mothers,  accompanied by John Lennon’s “Mother.”  

03:15Copy video clip URL Rance discusses making Mom (1974), a documentary film about his mother as she enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology late in life. Footage from Mom, including her participating in a fashion show and her growing angry and scolding Rance at length for wearing a torn shirt. She grows passionate as she discusses needing to live for herself and not for other people. 

18:05Copy video clip URL Onscreen text: “On the other hand… Gloria Deitcher Interviews her Mother. Coming down the Home Stretch.” Deitcher speaks with her mother. They talk about creative pursuits and careers, and about priorities in their lives.

19:59Copy video clip URL A clip from Shirley, a video by Larry Rivers. Rivers watches his tape on a monitor and talks about the tape and about his mother. More footage from Shirley.

23:27Copy video clip URL A scene from Shirley in which Shirley argues with her niece Lena, followed by a scene of Shirley growing emotional at her husband’s grave.  Shirley and Larry having a lengthy conversation about romance and relationships. 

31:46Copy video clip URL Rivers discusses being nearly finished with the video when his mother died. Filming the burial became the end of the movie. 

31:59Copy video clip URL Onscreen text: “Sometimes parents are the only connection to the past.” Footage of Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican (1974). 

37:45Copy video clip URL Onscreen text: “Sometimes the artist makes a journey to recapture the past…” Jonas Mekas discusses visiting Lithuania in 1971 for the first time since he was separated from his mother by the war in 1944. Footage from Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972). 

40:57Copy video clip URL Mekas talks about his time in Lithuania and his escape with his brother. Ending up in forced labor camps. More footage. 

43:38Copy video clip URL Mekas talks about his mother still being in Lithuania, aged 95. He begins crying. “In any case, I’m only one of millions of refugees and displaced persons. And today sometimes just through the photographs or films we can see our relatives – our mothers, our fathers. So I say of course a memory, a document, it’s part of my life.” 

45:19Copy video clip URL Onscreen text: “Sometimes the past is lost in a moment…” Footage from A Film About My Home by Oren Rudavsky, in which he discusses his mother’s death. 

50:55Copy video clip URL End credits play over “Julia” by The Beatles. Producer, Patricia Jaffe. Associate Producer, Mark Rance. Production Manager, Rene Garcia. Camera, Joel Shapiro. Lighting Director, Ned Hallick. Video Engineer, Jon Huntington. Sound, Kay Armstrong. Video Editor, Gary Bradley. Post Production Facilities, Teletronics. Special Thanks, John Godfrey. The Artist and His Mother, Arshile Gorky, Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Arshile Gorky and His Mother Photograph, Courtesy Xavier Fourcade, Inc. My Parents by David Hockney, Courtesy Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York. My Parents Photograph by David Hockney, Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York. Mother and Sister of the Artist, Edouard Vuillard, Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Sadie A. May.