Matthew Barney’s
River of Fundament
January 17th

January 17th, 2016
12:00 PM
@ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz
320 E. 6th St. Austin, TX 78701
Tickets

Experimental Response Cinema is excited to open our 2016 season with a co-presentation of Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament with the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Theater.

Set across the American landscape, the film River of Fundament is an epic story
of regeneration and rebirth. Its multifaceted protagonist is revealed as three
manifestations of an automobile in the exterior realm, and aspects of four human
characters in the interior. Loosely based on the 1983 Norman Mailer novel Ancient
Evenings, with an ancient Egyptian protagonist who sought reincarnation three
times in the hope of achieving immortality, River of Fundament borrows its structure
from Mailer’s text, corresponding to the seven stages the Egyptian soul undergoes
in its journey toward new life. Conceived as a nontraditional opera written in
collaboration with Jonathan Bepler, the film combines documentary footage of
three live acts performed outdoors in Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York with liveaction
cinema largely set in a careful re-creation of Mailer’s Brooklyn brownstone
apartment, where the late author’s wake is underway.