Jo Ann Kaplan – Body of Work

Jo Ann Kaplan is an acclaimed prize-winning filmmaker whose work has been exhibited in galleries, cinemas, festivals and on television worldwide for the past 40 years. Her work is marked by an extraordinary diversity of forms which includes animation, dance film, fiction, and experimental film, as well as documentaries and arts programmes. Inspiration for her work comes from equally diverse sources: the imagery of Georges Bataille, Robert Burton’s classic text on Melancholy, and the seminal films of Maya Deren. She has collaborated on film projects with writer Angela Carter, dancer Dana Caspersen of the Bill Forsythe Company, and with musicians including Alexander Balanescu, Keith Tippett, Kate and Mike Westbrook, Annabelle Pangborn, Thom Willems and Graham Hadfield. Jo Ann Kaplan’s body of work is characterised by a sensual approach to filmmaking and an exploration of the human and female form as the embodiment of meaning and emotion. Body of Work is a selection of Jo Ann Kaplan’s most personal films, including her authoritative biography of the charismatic filmmaker Maya Deren, released for the first time on DVD, and two recently completed films, one in the form of a dance and the other as an on-going painting. This collection is accompanied by a newly commissioned essay from Lucy Reynolds. Films on the DVD: Invocation: Maya Deren (1986, 53 mins, 4:3) Story of I (1997, 23 mins, 4:3) An Anatomy of Melancholy (2000, 13 mins, 4:3) OneTwoThree (2010, 12 mins, 4:3) Watching Paint Dry (2010, 18 mins, 16:9 FHA) www.joannkaplan.com