Rock Hudson’s Home Movies and more now streaming
Mark Rappaport’s cinema work, which includes more than 30 films, is streaming now courtesy of Kino Lorber.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and residing in Paris since the early 2000s, Mark Rappaport is known as a trailblazer of the video essay form, thanks to his decades-long career creating painstakingly assembled works that interrogate the cinematic medium through his striking juxtapositions. Rappaport’s career began in 1966 and continued through the 1970s and ’80s, often with experimentation.
His collaborators included many of the most creative downtown artists of the time, including Charles Ludlam, members of the Mabou Mines Theater Company, Ron Vawter of the Wooster Group, and cinematographer Fred Murphy, who shot three of Rappaport’s features.
Over 30 films including Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, From the Journals of Jean Seberg, and Color Me Lavender are available to stream here.
“[Rock Hudson’s Home Movies] shaped the art of documentary filmmaking… In one of the most original of all essay-films, Rappaport brilliantly and empathetically connects Rock Hudson’s private life as a gay man and his public one as a movie star,” wrote Richard Brody in The New Yorker.
“Rappaport uses nostalgia for old movies in a thrilling way… Rappaport’s insight and intellectual curiosity matches any serious scholar’s […] but because Rappaport uses actual film clips as his medium—not traditional literary discussion—his analyses have sensual rhythm and kinetic wit,” wrote Armond White in Out magazine.
