VISIONS OF MARY FRANK at Film Forum

VISIONS OF MARY FRANK, a film by John Cohen premiered at New York's Film Forum on April 16.  It runs until April 22.  The film was shot by John and myself, and edited by Edmund Carson.  In the film, John Cohen – filmmaker, photographer, musician, ethnographer – visits with his friend Mary Frank in her Chelsea studio and at her Woodstock home, talking about her life and art. Married young (originally to Robert Frank and, since 1997, to musicologist Leo Treitler), and pregnant at 17, she’s brutally honest about often having put her art before all else, about the early influence of dance upon her brushstrokes, and about being (in Cohen’s words) “hot in a cool world.” Her paintings, her political activism, and her past (the film includes wonderful footage of her with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) tell the story of a deeply-felt, well-lived life.

John Cohen by Harvey Wang

Mary Frank by Harvey Wang

John Cohen shooting Mary Frank in her studio by Harvey Wang