Screenings: 'Robert Wilson on Screen' at Anthology Film Archives (Day 7)

Join the Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance this summer at co-presenter Anthology Film Archives for an extensive film series celebrating the work of the great theater artist Robert Wilson, who passed away in 2025 at the age of 83. Discover fragments of the multiverse of Robert Wilson with screenings of documentaries, productions, videos, and rehearsals at Anthology Film Archives. More about the ROBERT WILSON ON FILM screenings and information about films below.

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

Thursday June 4 @ Anthology Film Archives

6:45 pm

Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE(1972, 80’, Silent)

8:45 pm

Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars by Howard Brookner (1987, 90’)

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

ABOUT THE SERIES:

Robert Wilson on Screen

May 29 – June 5

This summer, in collaboration with the Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance, The Robert Wilson Estate & Trust, and The Watermill Center, Anthology presents an extensive film series celebrating the work of the great theater artist Robert Wilson, who passed away in 2025 at the age of 83. Wilson was a towering figure in experimental theater over the past fifty years, an astonishingly prolific and inventive artist who was responsible for such landmarks of 20th century performance as “The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud” (1969), “Einstein on the Beach” (1976), and “The Civil Wars” (1984), as well as legendary, highly singular productions of everything from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Wagner’s “Parsifal” to Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”, Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”, and Heiner Müller’s “Hamletmachine”. Wilson collaborated with an astonishing range of artists, musicians, writers, and actors (William S. Burroughs, Willem Dafoe, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, and Tom Waits, to name just a few), and in 1991 founded The Watermill Center on Long Island, a “laboratory for performance” that continues to host performances, exhibitions, and residencies, and to develop productions, up to the current day.

One of the hallmarks of Wilson’s work is his ambitious, highly expressionistic, and always defiantly anti-naturalistic style, and his full embrace of every imaginable dimension of the theater: performance, music, costume and set design, and so on. His drive to explore multiple forms and modes of expression led him to make numerous moving-image pieces over the course of his career, including important early video works like VIDEO 50 (1978), DEAFMAN GLANCE (1981), and STATIONS (1982). He also personally oversaw the filming of many of his most important theater productions.

This series includes his own films and videos, a sampling of the filmed versions of his productions, and several documentaries made about his life and work over the years, such as Mark Obenhaus’s definitive chronicle of perhaps Wilson’s most famous work, EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, and Howard Brookner’s revealing portrait film, ROBERT WILSON AND THE CIVIL WARS.

For more info about The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance, visit the Segal Center website.

Fri, May 29 at 6:45 and Thurs, June 4 at 9:00

Mark Obenhaus

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH: THE CHANGING IMAGE OF OPERA

1984, 58 min, 16mm.

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

This film follows the 1984 landmark production of “Einstein on the Beach” staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was the first time since 1976 that its creators, composer Philip Glass and designer/director Robert Wilson, had collaborated on the re-staging of this untraditional opera. The work is examined through the insights of Glass and Wilson and incorporates rehearsal footage with scenes of the actual performance.

Fri, May 29 at 8:45 and Fri, June 5 at 6:45

Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE: A STORY ABOUT A FAMILY AND SOME PEOPLE CHANGING

1972, 80 min, 16mm, silent. Filmmaker Unknown. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives and the New York Public Library.

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE was performed live by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds at 147 Spring Street, NYC, for six hours each day, from 6-9AM and 6-9PM, between April 24-30, 1972. The sizeable cast featured such downtown luminaries as dance critic and poet Edwin Denby, dancer Andy De Groat, theater critic Stefan Brecht, and Wilson’s grandmother, Alma Hamilton. This preservation print was made directly from the 16mm camera original which was discovered in Anthology’s basement along with a group of empty film cans. Archivists at Anthology and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (the repository of the Robert Wilson Audio/Visual Collection) were able to salvage the film and identified it as the most extensive extant documentation of OVERTURE. No soundtrack has surfaced for this film, but its majestic images and wild inventiveness are like a music all their own.

Sat, May 30 at 6:15 and Thurs, June 4 at 6:45, total running time: ca. 85 min.

Robert Wilson

VIDEO 50

1978, 52 min, video

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

“VIDEO 50 is an extraordinary video sketchbook, a highly original, visually dramatic and frequently humorous collection of one hundred abbreviated ‘episodes’ produced for television. Unfolding as a series of thirty-second vignettes, this enigmatic essay in style is characterized by a deadpan theatricality, symbolist imagery, surrealist juxtapositions and repetition of key visual motifs. Indelible images, precisely composed – a man teetering above a waterfall, a floating chair, a winking eye, a parrot against the New York skyline – are accompanied by an ‘architectural’ sound score that includes spoken ‘phonetic patterns’ rather than words. Fusing his surprising visual logic and rhythms with unexpected temporal manipulations, Wilson creates a work of startling wit and poetry.” –ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX

Robert Wilson

DEAFMAN GLANCE

1981, 27 min, video

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

“This haunting work for television has been excerpted and adapted from Wilson’s five-hour ‘silent opera’ of the same title. Wilson tells a stark and stylized story of murder, using time and space, light and movement, and isolated sound in place of spoken words. The ritualistic action, which moves from a spartan kitchen through the silent halls, stairways and rooms of a lonely house, is both dreamlike and sinister. A somber, menacing woman washes white dishes and a gleaming carving knife, pours milk into a glass, and then slowly attacks first one young boy and then another. Not a word of dialogue is uttered. Suggesting the disparate worlds of both ancient Greek tragedy and contemporary tabloid headlines, DEAFMAN GLANCE harbors paradox: the events are terrifying but not violent; characters are both real and symbols of reality; pacing reduces action to abstraction; and morality and mortality are ambiguous.” –ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX

Total running time: ca. 85 min.

Sat, May 30 at 8:30 and Fri, June 5 at 8:45.

Howard Brookner

ROBERT WILSON AND THE CIVIL WARS

1987, 90 min, 16mm-to-DCP

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

One of the great unrealized theatrical productions of the 20th century, “The CIVIL warS” would have been the legendary avant-garde filmmaker’s magnum opus: a twelve-hour historical opera in six distinct parts, each rehearsed in a different country (Germany, France, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.) for a holistic performance at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Over the course of the project’s ill-fated conception, Howard Brookner – who had previously made the documentary BURROUGHS (1983) – follows Wilson, composers Philip Glass and David Byrne, and several production troupes as they seek to perfect an epic that encompasses the American Civil War, the life and death of Frederick the Great, and the unification of Italy, along with imagery from Frank L. Baum, Jules Verne, and Mathew Brady. Struggling to procure timely funding and constantly negotiating with striking Italian theater unions, Wilson nonetheless proves himself a force of nature, determined to follow through on his outsize dream of a Gesamtkunstwerk that brilliantly fuses art and life.

Sun, May 31 at 5:30 and Tues, June 2 at 6:30, total running time: ca. 90 min.

Robert Wilson

STATIONS

1982, 56 min, video

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

“STATIONS is an enigmatic, hauntingly vivid work, in which Wilson envisions the daydreams and fantasies of an eleven-year-old boy as a universe both magical and sinister. Resonating with Wilson’s precise visual stylization, the tape’s pivotal image is a young boy looking through a large window in the kitchen of his home, which becomes the portal for his dramatic, often startling inner fantasies. Fire, metal, wind, glass and water, among other elements, serve as points of departure for a series of elegant pictorial compositions and evocative metaphors. Unfolding without dialogue or spoken language, Wilson’s indelible visions articulate the fear and mystery of the internal life of a child, and his relation to the outside world.” –ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX

Robert Wilson

LA FEMME À LA CAFETIÈRE

1989, 7 min, video

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

Robert Wilson and the dancer Suzushi Hanayagi bring to life Paul Cezanne’s painting, “La Femme à la Cafetière”.

Robert Wilson

LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE

1995, 24 min, video

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

A collaboration in which Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller let Molière die, imagining his death in tableaux with text passages recited by Müller himself. “Cinema watches Death at work.” Wilson’s actors watch Molière die: their vigil is hard work. Müller’s comment: “The poem watches a dying man at work, his name is Molière. The poem is not a film. The film watches an actor playing a dying man called Molière.”

Sun, May 31 at 8:00

Theo Janssen & Ralph Quinke

THE BLACK RIDER

1990, 120 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

This documentary chronicles the production of THE BLACK RIDER, a theatrical collaboration between Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, and William S. Burroughs. Adapted from August Apel’s supernatural short story “Der Freischütz” (which was made famous by Friedrich Kind and Carl Maria von Weber’s 1821 opera), THE BLACK RIDER premiered at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany, in 1990. Janssen and Quinke’s film – one of the finest filmic portraits of Wilson and his process – encompasses documentation of the production’s rehearsals, interviews with Wilson, Waits, and Burroughs, and excerpts of scenes from the opening night performance.

Mon, June 1 at 6:30

Franco Laera

HAMLET: A MONOLOGUE

1997-2000, 95 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

This film – shot during the piece’s presentation at the Teatr Narodowy Warsaw in 1997 – documents Robert Wilson’s production of “Hamlet: A Monologue”. Adapted from Shakespeare by Wilson and Wolfgang Wiens, “Hamlet: A Monologue” was performed by Wilson himself, who variously embodied each of the play’s characters. In his own words, “Initially, I had thought to do it with a group of actors but eventually I decided I would do it myself, as a challenge: first, because it is a classical text, and then because it’s a work where the concentration is primarily on the text, in addition to the images. I did it as a monologue, a kind of dream memory of the entire play. I restructured the text, beginning seconds before Hamlet dies. So the work is seen as a flashback, with Hamlet speaking the text of Ophelia, Gertrude and all the other characters. The play really takes place in Hamlet’s mind. It begins with his last speech and ends with his last speech.”

Mon, June 1 at 8:45

Marion Kessel

THE MAKING OF A MONOLOGUE: ROBERT WILSON’S HAMLET

1995, 62 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

This behind-the-scenes film, drawing on rehearsal and performance footage, reveals how Robert Wilson created his unique one-man performance of Hamlet and captures the rich texture of Wilson’s multi-dimensional theatrical style.

Tues, June 2 at 8:45

Giada Colagrande

BOB WILSON’S LIFE & DEATH OF MARINA ABRAMOVIC

2012, 57 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

This film documents the coming together of Willem Dafoe, director Robert Wilson, performance artist Marina Abramovic, and singer and composer Anohni, to create an experimental opera based on Marina Abramovic’s biography. Through rehearsal footage and interviews with the artists as they are making the piece, director Giada Colagrande provides insight into this unique collaboration, resulting in an intimate portrait that reveals the dynamics, excitement, and insecurities of making such a poetic and visually stunning theatre work.

Wed, June 3 at 7:00

Pauline de Grunne

ROBERT WILSON IN SITU

2017, 90 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

“A few days before the opening of Watermill Center, Robert Wilson is in a race against the clock. After a decades-long international stage career, he looks back at the special laboratory that was the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, the artistic community where he got his start, and decides to return to his roots. With his ever-growing coterie of supporters, he takes possession of a vacant building on Long Island to turn it into an art center. Filmmaker Pauline de Grunne captures Wilson’s relationship with this unique endeavor, while his friends, collaborators, and many of the artists he has worked with provide insight into the man and his project.” –INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF FILMS ON ART

Wed, June 3 at 8:45, total running time: ca. 65 min.

Stefan Kurt

WATERMILL 1993

1993, 20 min, digital

Tomek Jeziorski

WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009

2010, 38 min, digital

Please note these are ticketed screenings and require prior reservation. Buy your tickets here.

These two short films document the work, history, and spirit of The Watermill Center, which Wilson founded on Long Island in 1992. Occupying a former Western Union research facility on the edge of the Shinnecock Reservation, The Watermill Center in 2006 became a year-round space for artists-in-residence, a “laboratory for creative experimentation, where artists can work at the intersection of disciplines, drawing inspiration from nature and Wilson’s extensive collection of art and artifacts.”

ABOUT ROBERT WILSON: Since the late 1960s, Robert Wilson‘s productions have decisively shaped the look of theater and opera. Through his signature use of light, his investigations into the structure of a simple movement, and the classical rigor of his scenic and furniture design, Wilson has continuously articulated the force and originality of his vision. Wilson’s close ties and collaborations with leading artists, writers, and musicians continue to fascinate audiences worldwide.

After being educated at the University of Texas and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Wilson founded the New York‐based performance collective The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in the mid‐1960s, and developed his first signature works, including Deafman Glance (1970) and A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974‐1975). With Philip Glass he wrote the seminal opera Einstein on the Beach (1976).

Wilson’s artistic collaborators include many writers and musicians such as Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, Lou Reed and Jessye Norman. He has also left his imprint on masterworks such as Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande, Brecht/Weill’s Threepenny Opera, Goethe’s Faust, Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables and Homer’s Odyssey.

Wilson’s drawings, paintings and sculptures have been presented around the world in hundreds of solo and group showings, and his works are held in private collections and museums throughout the world.

Wilson has been honored with numerous awards for excellence, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, two Premio Ubu awards, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, and an Olivier Award. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the German Academy of the Arts. France pronounced him Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (2003) and Officer of the Legion of Honor (2014). Germany awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (2014). Wilson was the founder and Artistic Director of The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the Arts in Water Mill, New York.

Robert Wilson In Retrospect is an initiative of the Segal Theatre Center in collaboration with Tomek Smolarski and Anthology Film Archives.

Curated by Clifford Allen, Frank Hentschker and Tomek Smolarski with Jed Rapfogel.

Clifford Allen is a writer, archivist, scholar, historian, and concert presenter living in the Hudson Valley. From 2013-2023 he was the Director of Archives for Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation in New York City.

Jed Rapfogel is the Film Programmer at Anthology Film Archives, an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of alternative, avant-garde, and independent cinema that was founded in New York City in 1970. He has served as the Film Programmer at Anthology since 2006.

For more info about the The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance visit: https://www.thesegalcenter.org/film-festival

Special thanks to Tomek Smolarski, Clifford Allen and Frank Hentschker (The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance); Christof Belka & Noah Khoshbin (RW Work, Ltd.); Paige Laino & Nicole Martorana (The Watermill Center); Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Rebecca Cleman, Karl McCool, and Jooyoung Park (EAI); Pauline de Grunne; Tomek Jeziorski; Stefan Kurt; Franco Laera; Edward McCarry (Cinema Guild); Mark Obenhaus; Ralph Quinke; and Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL).