In her earliest film, which has been newly transferred to video, Schneemann presents an abstracted portrait of the American composer Carl Ruggles, known for his irascible personality and finely-crafted atonal music. Ruggles is seen enjoying pie a la mode and ruminating on subjects ranging from Christmas to his incomplete opera The Sunken Bell. The hand-painted film stock heightens the impressionistic vitality of this snapshot of the 84-year-old composer, who is heard paraphrasing Freud: "Everything that you do is a matter of sex. That is the great passion of life."
This is a video transfer of a work initially shot on film. This is best shown as a projection, to reflect the original medium.
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