Joan Jonas Movies

Adaptation of an avant-garde play about Rhoda, a hysterical heroine who feels oppressed by the people around her. She suffers through her birthday...

Jonas intercuts scenes of the Nova Scotia countryside with images of a studio set-up reminiscent of a di Chirico painting. The soundtrack includes...

In this seminal exploration of the phenomenology of video as a mirror and as "reality," Jonas, face-to-face with her own recorded image, performs a...

Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a...

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...

This short film shot in Iceland and New York, which is based on a thirteenth-century Icelandic Laxdeala Saga, features Tilda Swinton as a young woman...

The film is an adaptation from two sources: Kinesics and Context by Ray L. Birdwhistell, and Choreomania, a performance by Joan Jonas

Two women kiss.

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated...

A Jamaican fisherman describes fishing practices.

Cutting between snowy fields and a raw seashore, Jonas focuses on a group of performers moving through a stark, windswept landscape. The 16mm film...

In this early work, Jonas translates her performance strategies to video, applying the inherent properties of the medium to her investigations of the...

Wind and Songdelay are two of Joan Jonas’s early performances filmed in the open air, in either natural or industrial environments. Fourteen...

2015. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. 4 min.

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...

2015. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. Presented as a two-channel diptych: Green Timeline (3:41 min.); Mirror Timeline (3:48 min.). 7 min.

In Upsidedown and Backwards, two fairy tales — The Frog Prince and The Boy Who Went Out to Learn Fear — are told simultaneously, one...

Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy is based on Jonas' 1972 performance of the same name, the first in which she used video. In an enigmatic ritual of...

1992/1994. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. Presented as a two-channel diptych: Berlin Wall (9:39 min.); Berlin Road (9:35 min.). 19 min.

Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but...