The Red Film (2018)

By Sara Cwynar

Choreography by Marie Lambin- Gagnon

Art Gallery of Ontario.

In her work with both still and moving images, Sara Cwynar examines the ways in which our lives are mediated through whizzing image circulation and the reproduction of cut-up and reassembled images. As she puts it, “We built an idealized image world on top of the real world and we live in it.” Cwynar’s Red Film (2018)—the third film in a trilogy with Soft Film (2016) and Rose Gold (2017)—considers the consumerism that permeates our lives through the process of studio staging, bridging analog nostalgia with our contemporary economy of endless choice. All three films, as well as Sara’s multilayered photographs, are explored in annotated transcripts, texts, and vivid images in her extraordinary new book Sara Cwynar: Glass Life. Recently Sara and I spoke about Red Film, in which the viewer is confronted with cosmetics, cars, and art in a production line of beauty and desire.

-MOMA.