Joan Jonas Movies

Adaptation of an avant-garde play about Rhoda, a hysterical heroine who feels oppressed by the people around her. She suffers through her birthday...

"Commissioned by Dokumenta XI in 2002, Jonas' multimedia performance piece Lines in the Sand takes up two works by the poet H.D. (Hilda...

"Shot vertically and intended to be shown on a video monitor turned on its side, the video May Windows (1976) is a component of the Mirage...

In this experimental film, Borden explores the dynamics among the members of a woman’s group. As she interviews people who know them, such as...

Jonas intercuts scenes of the Nova Scotia countryside with images of a studio set-up reminiscent of a di Chirico painting. The soundtrack includes...

This complex and enigmatic work, which is performed by Jonas and Lois Lane, explores female gestures, poses, the body and narcissism. Mirroring each...

Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but...

A Jamaican fisherman describes fishing practices.

Moving Off the Land celebrates the ocean and its creatures, biodiversity, and delicate ecology.

2015. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. 4 min.

2015. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. Presented as a two-channel diptych: Green Timeline (3:41 min.); Mirror Timeline (3:48 min.). 7 min.

Frenetic silhouettes pass us by.

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated...

Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a...

This short film shot in Iceland and New York, which is based on a thirteenth-century Icelandic Laxdeala Saga, features Tilda Swinton as a young woman...

Jonas's performance piece, an homage to 18th century French outdoor theater, incorporates mythology as well as spontaneously occurring events into...

from Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image (2003)

He Saw Her Burning, which is based on a 1983 performance, is a provocative narrative collage, a surreal juxtaposition of two narrated texts. A man...

Two women kiss.

Barking is infused with a sense of mystery, the anticipation that something is about to happen. A car is parked outside a house in a rural Nova...