Anthology Film Archives

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MARCEL DUCHAMP ON FILM

July 30 – August 3

July 30-August 3, 2026

By some accounts, the great Dada artist Marcel Duchamp created only a single film: ANÉMIC CINÉMA (1926), a short experimental work that alternates between vertiginous rotating spirals and erotically charged typographical text. This contention is highly misleading, however, since Duchamp in fact created several moving-image works over the course of his career, including the (now-lost) collaboration with Man Ray, ELSA, BARONESS VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN, SHAVING HER PUBIC HAIR (1921), and a collaboration with John Cage called DISCS (1947). Additionally, Duchamp drafted numerous ideas for films that were never actually realized, such as TO INFINITY, which involves projecting a film on a balloon that slowly inflates until the “screen” finally bursts.

Furthermore, Duchamp’s relationship to cinema is not exhausted by analyzing the films he made (or conceived of making) – he also appears as a performer in numerous experimental films by artists like René Clair, Maya Deren, and Andy Warhol. And this is not to mention the dozens of films that have been inspired by Duchamp’s oeuvre, including films by Joseph Cornell, Hannah Wilke, and Hollis Frampton. As the found footage filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky put it, “We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and in the case of Marcel Duchamp, on very broad shoulders!”

This series is presented on the occasion of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “Marcel Duchamp” (on view through August 22), and has been co-curated by Jed Rapfogel and Justin Remes. Remes is the author of “Found Footage Films: A Work of Experimental Scholarship,” “Absence in Cinema: The Art of Showing Nothing,” and “Motion(less) Pictures: The Cinema of Stasis.” Remes is currently working on a book project about Duchamp’s relationship to the cinema.

Special thanks to Miguel Armas (Light Cone); Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy; Abigail Child; Rebecca Cleman, Karl McCool, and Jooyoung Park (Electronic Arts Intermix); Matthew Gray (Warhol Museum); Ivan Grifi; Brett Kashmere & Zachary Epcar (Canyon Cinema); Carla Subrizi (Fondazione Baruchello); and Gerald Weber (sixpack).

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