Amurika (Feature Film)
Donation protected
Photograph by Bernadette Van-Huy, model Tess Sahara, shot at the painter Rita Ackermann’s studio
“It’s a circus.” – Angus Young
It is a circus.
The film lands in the lives of a few of the director’s artist and musician friends. Intimate story lines, of real concerns that artists face today, as well as the intimate spaces and rhythms of existing.
(These portraits are stripped-down, mostly story-line, like Curb Your Enthusiasm.)
Each portrait is mostly self-contained, but they all have one thing in common – each friend sees a commercial for a Circus Retreat, advertised as a therapeutic, transformative getaway.
The commercials are jarring, disruptive in nature...
The actors in these commercials are of the Famous kind, and known for storied behavior.
(Ideal) examples would be: Jon Voight chomping on a slice of pizza; Angus Young in his schoolboy uniform…
The film culminates with all the friends at the Circus Retreat. We see them exhibit extraordinary powers and talents: stand on the backs of galloping elephants, perform breath-taking feats of aerial acrobatics, magic, vaudeville. CGI? The Retreat features further cameos in the roles of guides, lecturers.
This segment runs deep. In addition it delivers cultural critique, in the form of a circus act; and still more prolifically, the sets, props and compositions are conceived as artwork, realized through topology, symbology, mathematics, diagrams.
By the film’s end, we wind up at an un-imaginable place.
A partial, working list of actors (mainly artist and musician friends living in New York):
Rita Ackermann
Marika Thunder
Tessa Gourin
Madeline Bach
Wednesday Knudsen
Mike Fellows
Eva Svennung
Gregory Davis
A partial, working list of cameos:
Kate Valk (Actor/Director for The Wooster Group)
Jim Fletcher (Actor for NYC Players, The Wooster Group…)
Richard Maxwell (playwright)
Artist Bio:
Bernadette Van-Huy – Director/Writer
Bernadette Van-Huy is an artist and writer based in New York. She’s a founding member of the artist group Bernadette Corporation, which has exhibited at the ICA (London), the Whitney Museum (N.Y.), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (Berlin). They have been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the L.A. Times, Artforum, the Guardian, the Daily Beast, and recently did a collaboration with the clothing brand Supreme https://www.instagram.com/p/CsRXmlMLfwp/?hl=en
A few articles about the group here:
Don't Have Sex With Each Other
In Chelsea, A Chapter in Abstract Art and Some Long Verse
Bernadette Corporation, 2000 Wasted Years, ICA, London
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/bernadette-corporation-2000-wasted-years-ica-london-8555880.html
How a Radical Art Collective Continues to Shape Fashion 25 Years Later
https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/597wka/how-a-radical-art-collective-continues-to-shape-fashion-25-years-later
Bernadette Corporation: Mutating Art Collective Succeeds in the Avant-Garde
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernadette-corporation-mutating-art-collective-succeeds-in-the-avant-garde
Bernadette Van-Huy also works as a solo artist and a writer. Some interviews by her here:
The Enigma of Bernadette Corporation, the Anonymous 90s Art and Fashion Collective
https://www.ssense.com/en-us/editorial/art/the-enigma-of-bernadette-corporation-the-anonymous-90s-art-and-fashion-collective
Notes From the Underground: With a New Book Out, Bernadette Van-Huy Tracks Her Evolution From Bernadette Corporation to Now
https://www.vogue.com/article/bernadette-van-huy-on-1990s-cult-collective-bernadette-and-how-she-came-to-step-behind-a-camera-to-create-her-first-art-book
You can also visit her photography website:
This GoFundMe campaign is for the first phase of the film’s production currently underway (June-September 2023):
Finish writing the script
Hire other writers
Workshop the script with the actors
Rehearsals
Pre-production
Shop the completed script to additional actors and producers
The goal is to raise $25K by July 20, 2023.
Those who donate between $1000-5000 (Tier 2) and $5000+ (Tier 1) will receive artwork editions.
Organizer
Bernadette Van-Huy
Organizer
Hudson, NY