Robert Frank . The Films

Retrospective
Oct 10, 2009 – Dec 6, 2009
Foto: Marc Volk
Foto: Marc Volk
Foto: Marc Volk
Foto: Marc Volk
Foto: Marc Volk
Foto: Marc Volk

“I am always looking outside, trying to look inside.” Robert Frank

In his films, Robert Frank examines the public and private aspects of American everyday life—the modern odysseys, the familiar speechlessness, bacchanalian revelries, and sexual freedom—without pathos, but with a touch of irony. Even in his first film of 1959, Frank set new standards for film themes and visual language. He became a pioneer and classic exponent of “New American Cinema.” Frank’s films are unsettling because they do not draw clear boundaries between genres; biographic, documentary and fictional elements are seamlessly intertwined. In Frank’s films, the grainy, fleeting glimpses of bodies and faces drift into the expressive and abstract, suggesting improvisation and coincidence although everything is precisely calculated.