18 Facts About Marie Menken

Marie Menken was noted for her unique filming style that incorporated collage.

Marie Menken was one of the first New York filmmakers to use a hand-held camera and trained Andy Warhol on its use.

Marie Menken studied at the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts as well as the Art Students League of New York and honed her craft as a painter.

Marie Menken released her first film, Visual Variations on Noguchi, in 1945 to acclaim within experimental art circles of the time.

Marie Menken began to experiment with various types of animation techniques, including collage and stop-motion cinematography, owing to her background in painting.

Marie Menken continued to make films that both were influenced by and commented on the various art movements her contemporaries took part in, including abstract expressionism in Drips in Strips and pop art in Andy Warhol.

Marie Menken was known for her association with and influence on many of the leading members of the movement, including pop artist Andy Warhol, painter and experimental filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage.

Marie Menken later appeared in several Warhol films, including Screen Tests, The Life of Juanita Castro and Chelsea Girls.

Marie Menken's painting style utilized unconventional mediums, particularly reflective materials such as glass, phosphorescent paint, and sequins.

Marie Menken attributed this to her desire to capture movement in her paintings, something that would eventually influence her move to film as well as her films' emphasis on the theme of light.

Nobody before the invention of the Bolex and the usage of it by Marie Menken has ever had in his brain material of thoughts of this kind.

Marie Menken's films are expeditions, like Columbus, into a country she had not seen before herself.

Marie Menken is lauded as one of the first filmmakers from the New York scene to endow the handheld camera with an elementary freedom, as it swings and sways its way around the scene.

Marie Menken made this film while working as a studio assistant to Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Marie Menken's free, swinging, swooping hand-held pans changed all that, for me and for the whole independent filmmaking world.

For Brakhage in particular, Marie Menken "made a translation of poetic possibilities into the language of cinema".

Marie Menken's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

Marie Menken was highly prolific and worked on many films attributed to the Gryphon group, its members, and other filmmaking circles.