16mm/color/sound
28 minutes
1986

Produced, directed, shot and edited by Ericka Beckman
Starring Gigi Kalweit and Mike Kelley
Sound track composed by Brooke Halpin
Vocals by Katy Cavanaugh
Produced with funds from The Jerome Foundation and The New York State Council on the Arts

“CINDERELLA is a musical treatment of the fairy tale. I have broken apart the story and set it as a mechanical game with a series of repetitions where CINDERELLA is projected back and forth like a ping-pong ball between the hearth and the castle. She never succeeds in satisfying the requirements of the ‘Cinderella Game’. The film was shot MOS, the dialogue is lip-synched, and along with the out-front score and effects track magnifies the film’s sense of alienation.” — E.B. 1984

“Ericka Beckman makes films that are playful in the most literal sense. Brightly colored and cheerfully self-absorbed, they take their structure, rhythm and imagery from games. YOU THE BETTER, scandal of the 1983 New York Film Festival, was an inexplicable contest- half dodge ball, half roulette- staged inside an abstract slot machine. Although her new film CINDERELLA is somewhat more narrative, it still owes as much to pinball as to Perrault. Although no less fraught with psychosexual tension than Walt Disney’s version, Beckman drops the fairytale’s sibling rivalry and Oedipal underpinnings, reworking the heroine’s situation as an allegory of female socialization. Vintage Beckman Cinderella exhibits the filmmaker’s characteristic use of ambiguous interior space, stutter-stop development, incantatory songs, and dreamlike condensation.” — J. Hoberman, Village Voice, December 1986

“She is the most self-confident and aggressive stylist of the younger generation”. — P. Adam Sitney, American Film

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• Epps, Philomena. “The Mechanism of Mythology.” ROMAN ROAD JOURNAL, April 5, 2018
• Harrison, Anya. “Fracturing the Fairytale.” BLOUIN ARTINFO, MODERN PAINTERS, April 2018
• Taft, Catherine. “Ericka Beckman.” ARTFORUM, May 2016
• Gaudlitz, Moritz. “ericka beckman über virtual reality…” i-D GERMANY, October 2015
• Woeller, Marcus. “Ich kreiere das Spiel, und ich setze die Regeln.” DIE WELT, October 10, 2015
• Bier, Arielle. “Ericka Beckman.” ARTFORUM, October 6, 2015
• Forrest, Nicholas. “Ericka Beckman on Filmmaking, Gameplay, and Her Berlin Show.” BLOUIN ARTINFO, September 22, 2015
• Neuendorf, Henri. “The 25 Shows Around Europe Everyone Should See.” ARTNET, September 11, 2015
• Larios, Pablo. “Review: Ericka Beckman VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin, Germany.” FRIEZE, October, 2015
• Fulton, Jeni. “Ericka Beckman — Digital Analogue Pioneer.” SPIKE ART MAGAZINE, October, 2015
• Wagley, Catherine. “5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. this Week, Including Cinderella as Badass.” LA WEEKLY, May, 2014
• “Ericka Beckman Works 1978 – 2013” MAGASIN, Centre National d’Art Contemporain (press release), 2014
• “Los Angeles Filmforum presents Ericka Beckman.” LOS ANGELES MOCA (press release), 2014
• Scheller, Jörg. “Ericka Beckman at Kunsthalle Bern.” FRIEZE, September/ October 2013
• Stefan, Olga. “Ericka Beckman at Kunsthalle Bern.” ART IN AMERICA, September, 2013
• Hoberman, J. “Cinema Gamer.” MOUSSE, Summer 2013
• Bieri, Martin. “To Understand the world through Sport and Game.” DER BUND, June 7, 2013
• Harbison, Isobel. “Image Games.” FRIEZE, October, 2012
• Taubin, Amy. “Fairytales of New York.” ARTFORUM MAGAZINE, April 2011
• Joselit, David. “Mind Over Matter.” THE BOSTON PHOENIX, September 7, 1990
• Gordon, Kelly. “Ericka Beckman: Recent Work.” HIRSHHORN MUSEUM (exhibition document), 1989
• Dika, Vera. “Cinema: A Feminist Fairy-Tale.” ART IN AMERICA, April, 1987
• Hoberman, J. “Avant to Live.” THE VILLAGE VOICE, June 1987
• LIKELY STORIES (TLC Program document), 1987
• Hoberman, J. “The Mild Bunch.” THE VILLAGE VOICE, December 16, 1986
• Hoberman, J. “Encore Series: Ericka Beckman.” (series document)
• “A ‘Video Viewpoints’ Special Presentation: ‘Through a Video Window: Technology in the 1990’s’.”
• THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART DEPARTMENT OF FILM (program document)