My Film History - Daniela Comani’s Top 100 Films
Daniela Comani
My Film History - Daniela Comani’s Top 100 Films
January 10 - February 21, 2015
SHOW CATALOG (PDF)
PRESS RELEASE (PDF)
In response to canonical lists like the AFI Top 100, Daniela Comani has created her own list of timeless film masterpieces, and illustrated that list with the movie posters for each film. In Daniela Comani’s Top 100 Films, however, gender assignments are reversed: Bunuel’s Belle de Jour becomes Beau du Jour, and Catherine Deneuve is suddenly mustachioed. All the President’s Men becomes All The President’s Women, the lovely Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford now wear red lipstick. Comani intends the series to unfold slowly, one by one, like a wave of historical reversals. At first glance a witty feminist subversion, collectively the pieces drive moments of recognition of where woman exist in film history, and where they do not. Film narratives are reconsidered along gender lines – what if the Godfather was a woman, or Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown were men? This kind of detournement is typical of Comani’s practice: In previous projects she has applied her subversive touch to the Western literary canon, to contemporary European magazine, and in fact to the key events of the twentieth century.
Daniela Comani was born in Bologna, Italy; she lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Comani’s multimedia installations engage in a dialog about history, language, identity, alienation and intimacy. Her work focuses on media images and text, which she manipulates through photography and video, and combines in her drawings and installations. Her work has been shown internationally, including the Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna and the 54th Venice Bienniale . She is included in the collections of Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; and Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.
Installation
