The Irrepressible Rush of Marie Menken's Go! Go! Go!

By Angela Joosse. CineAction.93 (June 2013): 23-28.


From the article:
New York visual artist and avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken (1909 – 1970) made over twenty short films between the years 1945 and 1968. Though she is often praised for her liberating influence on major artists such as Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol, writing on her own work amounts to a small collection of essays, chapters, and lectures. Perhaps Scott MacDonald said it best when he stated that “Probably no woman who has had as significant an impact on American cinema as Marie Menken has remained as little celebrated.” Menken's body of work offers a unique cinematic vision that is marked by innovative camerawork, colouristic complexity, a poetic sensibility, and innovative rhythmic compositions. Another aspect of her work, and the one I would like to focus on in this meditation on her film Go! Go! Go! (16mm, 11min, 1962–1963) is the way she makes productive use of the limits of the film form. Though a great deal more can be written about this film, this paper reflects on an irrepressible rush made present in filmic and urban intermittent motions, as well as the phenomenon of engrossment in Go! Go! Go!.