I know it's a bit facile to equate 2 important artists like this, so forget the title. Made you look. Frampton and Body did both leave this earth too early, Frampton at 48 and Body at a shockingly young 39.
Body's influence was huge in Europe during the 80's and he produced a huge BODY OF WORK (a better title) that demands revisit and evaluation. I think of American Postcard, the great feature film he made about the US Civil War era, which toured the States in a program called The Other Side: European Avant Garde Cinema, and which I had the good fortune to see (at the Boston MFA, around 1984). A great film, part Muybridge and part LeGrice, a film containing faded passages lost in effects of early photography and cinema. There I go again, referring to other artists. But the echoes of other great work is so strong in the BODY of work. Great BODYs attract.
Gabor Body produced a large number of films which always seemed ahead of the curve in both subject matter and technique. He initiated the hugely influential video magazine INFERMENTAL. He made early computer graphic films. I'm sure he is revered in Budapest, but that is a very wide hemisphere from here. There is very little material on Gabor Body here in The Web, especially considering his futuristic work and thinking. I have unboxed the wonderful compendium book that Vera Body gave me after I hunted her down in Cologne, and I promise to write more about the book in a future piece here.
This appears to be the official website:
http://www.bodygabor.hu/bg_rol/?id=114
It appears that the Berlin Film Festival will include his last film in a series about Pre-Fall-Of-The-Wall Films this season:
http://altfg.com/blog/film-festivals/berlinale-2009-after-winter-comes-spring/
And I also found this material on his life, with a few minor video klips:
http://www.newmedia-art.org/cgi-bin/show-art.asp?LG=GBR&DOC=IDEN&ID=A000000257
May the world blossom with new openness to the work of the great overlooked filmmakers. More walls to be demolished.
Monday, September 14, 2009
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