Influential Women Artists Profiled in Films

Meg Partridge’s delightful “Portrait of Imogen” and Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldine’s equally captivating “Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul” (at the Nuart today and Tuesday only) document the lives of two very different San Francisco women who became major figures in 20th-Century art. Photographer Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) is not nearly as familiar to the general public as the flamboyant and controversial Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), but in the course of her 75-year career Cunningham had considerable impact upon her medium with her direct, honest images and her openness to every sort of subject matter. “Anything that can be exposed to light” was her answer when asked what she liked to photograph.

The unpretentious and plain-spoken Cunningham did share with Duncan a concern for the unfettered human form that defied the conventions of the early years of their careers. Just as Duncan insisted on performing in flowing, often scanty Greek robes, Cunningham took photographs of nudes--including her own husband. (She was once told she was the first woman to photograph a nude man, and was roundly condemned for it in the press.)

The 28-minute “Portrait of Imogen” is composed of more than 250 photographs selected by Partridge--her granddaughter--to accompany a taped interview Partridge’s father made with Cunningham in 1970-71. They range from her earliest soft-focus work to documentary-like shots to remarkably natural portraits of Hollywood stars of the ‘30s; Spencer Tracy, not surprisingly, was her favorite. To the end, the photographs and the woman who took them remained unflinchingly vital.

Through the Karel Reisz film and countless books and articles, the incredibly dramatic and tumultuous life of Duncan is well known, strewn as it was with heady romance, political controversy and shattering tragedy. What’s important about Geller and Goldine’s succinct, elegant and illuminating 60-minute film is that it uses Duncan’s own words, spoken beautifully by Julie Harris, and the events of Duncan’s life to frame a series of her dances re-created by Madeleine Lytton and Lori Belilove, both students of Duncan’s adopted daughters or their disciples. The freedom of movement in harmony with nature that Duncan pioneered remains fresh and exhilarating more than 60 years after her bizarre death in Nice when her flowing scarf was caught in the spokes of a wheel on her Bugatti. Information: (213) 478-6379, 479-5269.

Among the series of films USC’s School of Cinema-Television and its African-American Film Assn. are presenting in honor of Black History Month, the most intriguing are those in Sunday evening’s program, the so-called “race films.” Between 1910 and 1950 there actually was a separate black American cinema, composed of films made especially for black audiences. The dean of this always-struggling industry was Oscar Micheaux, who made two dozen melodramas over 30 years that forthrightly (and, yes, preachily) addressed black people’s problems and aspirations. Unfortunately, neither “Oscar Micheaux, Film Pioneer” nor his 1924 landmark silent “Body and Soul” was available for preview.

Also on the program is one of the most famous of all race movies, the 1927 “The Scar of Shame,” directed by a white, Frank Perugini (possibly an alias), but written by a black, David Starkman. Stunningly photographed (by Al Ligouri, said to be a Paramount cameraman), “The Scar of Shame” is a major American silent and reveals, surely unwittingly, black prejudice against poorer--and darker--blacks. It tells of an ill-fated marriage between a wealthy, light-skinned young concert pianist (Harry Henderson) and a working-class beauty (Lucia Moses). Never mind that the pianist is a cowardly snob and his wife a victim of cruel circumstance; all that ensues is held to be her fault--”If only she had turned her mind to higher things,” her insufferable husband laments.

Completing the program, at 6 p.m. in Norris Cinema Theater, is “Black Shadows on a Silver Screen,” a comprehensive 1975 documentary on the image of blacks in mainstream movies and race films alike, written by Thomas Cripps, directed and edited by Steven York and narrated by Ossie Davis. Information: (213) 743-8303.