Blind Country
Beta SP/HD video/color/sound
18 minutes
1989
DESCRIPTION
Produced, directed, shot and edited by Ericka Beckman
Written and performed by Mike Kelley
Music: Bruce Darby
Featuring: Aura Rosenberg, Bob Gibson, Lolly Lincoln, Amanda Katz, Ian Bearce, Kim Keown, Lori Desantis, Adam Gilmore.
Produced with funds from The New York Foundation for the Arts
“BLIND COUNTRY is a collaboration between myself and filmmaker Ericka Beckman. It was inspired by the H.G. Wells short story ‘The Country of the Blind’, which was a favorite of mine as an adolescent. I was both fascinated and repulsed by this tale of a man having to give up his eyes to live in an alien sightless society. In rereading it as an adult I was struck by the obvious fact, which I was oblivious to as a boy, that it is a castration story, and by the thinly veiled sexual and racial fears within it. BLIND COUNTRY bears no discernable reference to the Wells story but instead plays with these subtle underlying themes.” — Mike Kelley
“This collaboration between two Cal Arts Alumni resulted in an avant-garde horror movie that is creepier than Caligari. Beckman provides the alternately evocative and socko visuals, and Kelley the punning text and painfully naked performance- all body loathing and castration anxiety. Shades of Frida Kahlo and George Orwell.” — Amy Taubin, Village Voice
DISTRIBUTION
VIDEO
PRESS
- Spooner, Cally. “Top Ten.” ARTFORUM, May 2015
- “Ericka Beckman Works 1978 – 2013” MAGASIN, Centre National d’Art Contemporain (press release), 2014
- Taubin, Amy. “The Whitney Biennial.” THE VILLAGE VOICE, April 1991
- Taubin, Amy. “Voice Choices: An Opinionated Survey of the Week’s Events.” THE VILLAGE VOICE, January, 1990
- “Mike Kelley: Post-Renaissance Man.” PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE (program), 1989
- Seid, Steve. “Mike Kelley: Post-Renaissance Man.” PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE (program), 1989