Gwendolyn Audrey Foster Experimental Films - Portfolio

A queer feminist détournement from a found advertising imagery, rendered unidentifiable and sculpted as an abstract and surreal fairy tale film.

An engraved woodcut 'comes to life.' An inexplicable extempore fairy tale; ripe and ambiguous with feminine horror, play, sensuality, fantasy and female bravery.

“Everyone thinks of fairy tales in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.”
―Seanan McGuire

"Fairy tales are the origins of our childhood. At the same time, they are projections into the unknown. As little girls, they allowed us to voyage to the unknown." ―Catherine Breillat

“There are fairy stories to be written for adults. Stories that are still in a green state.” ― André Breton

"Fairy tales are mirrors - abstract and reflective by nature. Fairy tales project on us, just as we project onto them."―Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

"It is time for parents and publishers to stop dumbing down the original classic fairy tales. We do not need puritanical censors to tell us what is good or bad for us." ―Jack Zipes

"Fairy Tale [Excerpt]" is an automatiste détournement of (mis)appropriated materials in the Public Domain, or material released under a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain license.

"Fairy Tale [Excerpt]" - Music and video by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster.

"Fairy Tale [Excerpt]"― by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Copyright © 2017 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All rights reserved.

"Rose is Not for Sale" is a cinécriture study in feminist film portraiture and the politics of the gendered commodified body. A personal film regarding women and sex trafficking.

An example of Illusionist Surrealism.

It is also something of a poetic film homage to Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and poet Christina Rossetti.

For my late sister.

Video and soundscape by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster.

“Rose is Not For Sale” is a détournement from manipulated materials in the Public Domain, or material released under a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain license.

Copyright © 2018 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All rights reserved.

Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1862) can be read here:
poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market

A celebration of all things queer, LGBTQ+, and non-binary, "Bisexual Materialist Ragtime Party" is an homage to the queer fluid jazz age, when so many actors, writers, poets, artists, dancers, filmmakers, and Dadaists openly celebrated and embraced queer, pansexual, bisexual, and fluid gender & sexuality.

A collision of grainy materialist cinema with a queer jazz age dada aesthetic.

Made for Pride Month.
Dance - Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin).
Jazz Music - Anonymous, Public Domain

See also "Kiki's Film" vimeo.com/277732053

“Bisexual Materialist Ragtime Party” is created from found materials in the Public Domain, or released under CC0 license. Copyright © 2018 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All rights reserved.

A return to the ways things were. When men were men and women were "girls.” She tells herself it's all just a horrifying nightmare. She can't seem to wake up.

The typewriter is a "Model 10 Noiseless."

Gender roles are toxic and even lethal. One day we will be free of gender entirely. I cannot wait for that day. In the future, we will be well rid of gender hetero-normativity. That is something to celebrate!--GAF

See also "Making America Straight & White Again"
vimeo.com/276777732

See also, "Making America Straight & White Again [Extended Version EP]"
vimeo.com/275636698

See also "Making Women Great Again"
vimeo.com/200517156

“Making Gender Great Again Again” is a collage of détourned images and sounds found in the Public Domain, or materials released under a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain license.

"Making Gender Great Again Again," a queer punk feminist détournement by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Copyright © 2018 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All rights reserved.

From a Super 8mm diary film that I shot long ago and recently found in the basement. I re-photographed, re-edited, and otherwise distorted my footage and added layers of audio.

I shot this footage many years ago when we moved from the West Village in New York city to the Midwest, which was much like moving to the 1950s. I live here, but this is not my home.

"Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it."―Flannery O'Conner

Some thoughts on film, Super 8mm and 16mm:

Film is alive. It is projected in our imagination. Like a phoenix, film comes to life by magic, by resurrection. Film has a living warmth. It breathes. It is a living thing in a way, something alive and yet not; film is liminal, magical and ethereal.

Film grain, scratches, and light streaks are like scars, freckles and wrinkles; tracings of life.

"No Personal Checks" - a film by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Copyright @ 2018 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All Rights Reserved.

A dream poem for Kiki de Montparnasse, (Alice Prin); artist, Muse, and creative partner of Man Ray. Kiki embodies the very essence of 1920's free queer sexuality and all things Dadaist and Surrealist. An interdisciplinary artist, Kiki was a wildly creative painter, model, writer, nightclub singer, photographer, performance artist, memoirist and vibratn bohemian provocateur at the center of the Dada and Surrealist literary and art scene in Paris, in the 1920s.

Kiki de Montparnasse lives on in her direct frank expressiveness, sensuality, photographs, films, artwork and memoirs. She also (obviously) continues to Muse in her spare time.

Kiki looks directly at the viewer in this exercise in Objective Chance Surrealism (automatism); a dream occult homage; a look through Kiki's eyes in her imagined "lost film."

You are no doubt familiar with Kiki's image, as she appears in so many famous Surrealist films and photographs, including Man Ray's "Le Violon D'Ingres," which shows a naked Kiki, seated and viewed from behind, with two 'f's in her back; a celebration of her violin-curves. Kiki was more than a gorgeous woman who had the audacity to love her curves and flaunt them - in an era when women were expected to be shaped like a thin boy.

Kiki was punk before punk. She was a performance artist before performance art. Ultimately, she was too intense for Man Ray. By the late 1920s, Kiki had her own cabaret, Chez Kiki, She had also begun painting primitives and, in 1927, had a sell-out exhibition. Her memoir, "The Education of a French Model," was banned in America. The more I read about Kiki, the more I fall in love with Alice. --GAF

Kiki (Alice Prin) is featured in my related video, "Bisexual Materialist Ragtime Party": vimeo.com/272007107

“Kiki's Film” is made from materials found in the Public Domain, or released under a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain license.

"Kiki's Film," by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Copyright © 2018 Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. All rights reserved.