MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Opens June 13, 2012
Film Forum
209 West Houston St, New York, NY
Two weeks only
1, 3:15, 5:40, 7:50, 10pm
www.filmforum.org

Opens June 15, 2012
Nuart Theatre
11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
One week only
Daily 5, 7:30, 9:55; Fri–Sun matinees at 12 and 2:30pm
www.landmarktheaters.com

And coming to theaters nationwide
www.musicboxfilms.com

www.marinafilm.com
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MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ THE ARTIST IS PRESENT is a mesmerizing portrait of the pioneering and controversial performance artist. Featured in competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and winner of the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival, the film will premiere in New York at Film Forum on June 13, in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt Theatre on June 15. MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ THE ARTIST IS PRESENT is an HBO Documentary Films and Music Box Films release of a Show of Force production.

Seductive, fearless, and outrageous, Marina Abramović has been redefining what art is for nearly forty years. Using her own body as a medium, pushing herself beyond her physical and mental limits, she creates performances that challenge, shock, and move us. Through her and with her, boundaries are crossed, consciousness expanded, and art as we know it is reborn. She is, quite simply, one of the most compelling artists of our time. 

In MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ THE ARTIST IS PRESENT, first-time director Matthew Akers follows the woman affectionately called "the grandmother of performance art" as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art. To be given a retrospective at one of the world's premiere museums is, for any living artist, the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more: it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: "But why is this art?" With total access granted by Abramović and MoMA—where she sat for over 7 hours a day for 3 months silently engaging any audience member who sat opposite her—the film is a captivating cinematic journey inside the world of radical performance, and an intimate portrait of an endlessly intriguing woman who draws no distinction between life and art.


"Critics' Pick! A resonant portrait of an incredible woman…and a gift to all artists."
–New York Magazine

"A moving and masterfully constructed exploration of what makes art—or anything else—worth doing in the first place."
–Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

"Breathtaking…A genuine work of art about a person creating a genuine work of art…You immediately get the sense of how intense and, in many cases, transformative someone's brief one-on-one moment with the Serbian performance artist must have been. The longer you observe her willing partners tremble, cry, beam or return to some primal emotional state, the more you feel yourself moved by the spectacle of two people silently bonding. The movie's power as a potent secondhand art high is damned near peerless."
–David Fear, Time Out New York