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GEOFFREY BEENE 30 - Fashion Film
Commissioned by American fashion designer Geoffrey Beene to celebrate his thirtieth anniversary as a designer, Geoffrey Beene 30 returns to the era of silent black and white film. Three loosely structured narratives unfold without dialogue, in an associative landscape inspired by the German Expressionist filmmakers of the 1920s, the work of Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel and the Pabst/Louise Brooks film Diary of A Lost Girl among others. Featuring an ensemble cast including Marcia Gay Harden, Russell Wong, Claire Danes and the remarkable Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors in one of her final roles, Geoffrey Beene 30 reunites many of Kalin’s collaborators from his first feature, Swoon.
“A lover’s stolen kiss, a vision of madness through a keyhole, a woman fleeing in the night – these are images from Kalin’s remarkable film about Beene’s clothes. Without dialogue, and no more than a thin story line about women meeting lovers and women being women – capricious, beautiful and essentially inscrutable – the film evokes the tension in Beene’s work between what is seen and what is imagined, between what is revealed and what is hidden.”
Cathy Horyn
Washington Post
“30 is a model of restraint. [A] Cocteauesque tale of jealousy and revenge played out in a castle and its grounds. Imagine the story line of Last Year at Marienbad, the surreal touch of Fellini, a silent-movie cast costumed in elegant evening dresses spanning Beene’s working lifetime and you get the graphic picture.”
Suzy Menkes
International Herald Tribune