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Double Lunar Dogs poster
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Double Lunar Dogs

1984 Movie

Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a “spacecraft,” travelling aimlessly through the universe, whose passengers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. As a metaphor for the nature and purpose of memory, the two main characters (portrayed by Jonas and Spalding Gray) play games with images of their past; but their efforts to restore their collective memories are futile, and they are reprimanded by the “Authority” for their attempts to recapture their past on a now-destroyed planet Earth.

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10 Ranked across franchise, crew, cast, themes, genre, era and audience scores
Keep Busy poster
89% match FILM

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue, this film is reminiscent of the playful and parodying elements of the Beat fantasy Pull My Daisy. The interweaving of documentary and fiction with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue presents an absurd buzz of activity reminiscent of Beckett’s abstract comic grotesque.

Keep Busy

1975 Drama

Shares a lead actor · Same director

He Saw Her Burning poster
79% match FILM

He Saw Her Burning, which is based on a 1983 performance, is a provocative narrative collage, a surreal juxtaposition of two narrated texts. A man and a woman begin their respective tales: He saw a woman burst into flames on the street; she saw an American soldier go berserk and drive a tank into a crowd. Produced while Jonas was living in Berlin on an artist's fellowship, the disjunctive narratives are pervaded with a sense of cultural dislocation and alienation. The man and woman occupy separate narrative spaces as they tell their stories, which are intercut with a pastiche of word games, narrative reenactments, filmed sequences, isolated gestures and objects. Memory — elusive and ephemeral, personal and collective — is the catalyst for this complex work.

He Saw Her Burning

1983

Shares a lead actor · Same director

Disturbances poster
71% match FILM

Disturbances extends Jonas' investigation of mirrored surfaces and spaces, as she explores reflections of movement and images in water. The tape begins with Jonas, like Narcissus, leaning over a reflecting pool. Throughout this lyrical exercise, the viewer sees only reflected images and inversions, disturbances of the water's surface. Figures walking at the edge of the pool are seen as abstracted shimmers, upside down and backwards; shadowy figures move underwater and swim through the pool as in a choreographed dance. This simply rendered, evocative work is a phenomenological study of reflection, as Jonas draws a parallel between the spatial and mirroring effects of water and video.

Disturbances

1974 Fantasy

Shares a lead actor · Same director

Regrouping poster
70% match FILM

In this experimental film, Borden explores the dynamics among the members of a woman’s group. As she interviews people who know them, such as Joan Jonas, the group shoots ‘artistic’ scenes of themselves – but Borden feels they aren’t fully grappling with issues of sexuality and politics. Are they a serious group – or just friends? After showing an early edit of the film to the group, its members, upset, close ranks. Undeterred, Borden incorporates the group’s arguments into another edit, filming larger groups commenting both on the original one and on consciousness-raising groups in general. Uncredited voices include those of Barbara Kruger and Kathryn Bigelow.

Regrouping

1976 Documentary

Shares a lead actor · Same director