The Super-8 Trilogy 1978–1981

The Super-8 Trilogy

Between 1978 and 1981, Ericka Beckman created a landmark suite of experimental films. Known as “The Super-8 Trilogy,” these films are among the most iconic and original works of the “Pictures Generation.”

Featuring herself, and a cast of artist-friends (including James Welling, Matt Mullican, and Mike Kelley), her work is informed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theories on the cognitive development of children, the culture of televised sports, as well as the heyday of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s musicals.

The films: “We Imitate; We Break Up” (1978), “The Broken Rule” (1979), and “Out of Hand” (1981) are not based on dialogues or a classical narrative structure, but on dream-like choreographed movements, songs, keyed-up colors, and special effects. As the artist states: “Film is creating a reality through the makeshift. My films move backward, using narrative structures as does the mind of anyone trying to grasp the meaning of images in their memory.”

Accompanying the DVD (Multizone, PAL/SECAM, 83 minutes) is a booklet containing an introduction by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Douglas Eklund—who organized “The Pictures Generation. 1974–1984” exhibition in 2009—as well as a conversation between the artist, Lionel Bovier, and Fabrice Stroun, curator of her retrospective at Kunsthalle Bern (2013).

Born in Hampstead, NY, in 1951, Ericka Beckman lives and works in New York. She is a filmmaker, photographer, installation artist, and writer.

Published with Kunsthalle Bern.