MARIA is a feature-length film by Nina Danino that transfigures images of the iconic opera singer Maria Callas through experimental film. It includes Callas’ opera performances and her role in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Medea (1969).
Film Poster: MARIA (2023) Nina Danino
Image Description: A poster for the film MARIA with two separate images split diagonally. On the left is a colour-negative image of a woman from behind walking up outdoor stone stairs. on the right is a black-and-white image of a woman wearing a floral crown and ceremonial/formal dress. She has one hand pointed outwards and the other holding her chest.
“Only when I was singing did I feel loved…to sing is an expression of your being, a being which is becoming.”
Maria Callas
In MARIA, an experimental film by Nina Danino, Maria Callas is seen in recordings of different performances – Norma, Tosca, Medea. She is transfigured in an audio-visual ICONOSTASIS (a wall of icons) of different archive formats and newly shot footage. MARIA is a hypnotic, cinematic and transcendent vision of an icon, an artist and a woman. It includes the performance of a monologue and spoken word memoir by Nina Danino.
Film Still: MARIA (2023) Nina Danino
Image Description: A black and white film still of a woman’s face. She’s wearing makeup and earrings.
MARIA is Nina Danino’s fifth feature length film and a sister film to SOLITUDE (2022) with Nico (Velvet Underground) as icon, screen and poet. The two films form a diptych about the power of film and cinema in the encounter with icons through medium and material—building on Nina Danino’s long term artistic practice with the voice, jouissance, experimental film and religious iconography.
Key ideas: Inscription-monologue, transfiguration – a change that glorifies, longing, a lone wolf, bravura, whistles. Intertitles: Iconostasis, Thumos, Catharsis, the Greek Orthodox Death prayers ending with the Trisagion, Père Lachaise, The Dead Brakhage, MEDEA by Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Doors.
© Nina Danino 2023
Film Details
Country of Production: UK
Year: 2023
Running Time: 80 minutes
Screening Format: DCP, ProRes422HQ, H264 (mp4)
Sound: 5:1 or stereo 25fps
Original Formats: 16mm, S8, 35mm,VHS
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Language: English
Colour and Black and White
Distributed by LUX
ARTIST’S WEBSITE for further information
Credits
Director, Camera, Editor, Music Arrangement Nina Danino
Specialist Camera James Holcombe
Archive Consultant Kate Griffiths
Music Consultant Diane Hayes
Exhibition Consultant Joanna Blair
Sound Recording and Pre Mix James Bulley
Additional Sound Engineering Ian Tompson
Sound Design and Mix Stefan Smith
Online Editor Edd Maggs
Colourist Jason R Moffat
Graphic Design Adrian Curry
Production Company Temporal Films
With additional support from a Goldsmiths Exceptional RSA Award, Mazibel Films and Gibraltar Cultural Services.
Nina Danino
Nina Danino was affiliated to the London Film Maker’s Co-op in the 80s. Her seminal experimental films Stabat Mater (1990) and “Now I am yours” (1992) are published in the DVD Rupture/Rapture/Jouissance: The Religious Trilogy, LUX (2018). The feature film Temenos (1998) is published by the BFI in “History of the Avant Garde” (2004). Other feature films are Jennifer (2015), I Die of Sadness Crying for You (2019), Solitude (2022), MARIA (2023) is her fifth feature film with funding from an Exceptional Award from the Art Department, Goldsmiths. Her films have been funded by Channel 4, National Lottery, London Development Fund, The Arts Council, British Film Institute and have been screened worldwide in festivals including Ann Arbor, Edinburgh, London, Seville, Chicago. She is Reader in Fine Art, Department of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London.
