Films
Falkenstein began making films in the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1940s and continued to experiment with the medium into the 1960s. Film provided a venue for exploring form, motion, juxtaposition, and scale—concerns she was simultaneously investigating in other media. It was also a means of documenting the production and installation of her large-scale public works.
Touching the Quick, 1949
Digital transfer of 16mm film
16 min.
Produced by Claire Falkenstein, Richard Foster, and Richard McCarthy
Music by Ray Green
Viola by Abraham Weiss
Camera by Clyde B. Smith
Sponsored by Art in Cinema, San Francisco Museum of Art
Filmed in the exhibition Mobiles and Articulated Sculpture (1948) at the California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, curated by Jermayne MacAgy
Artists in the exhibition included Jeremy Anderson, Xenia Cage, Herman Cherry, Marcel Duchamp, Claire Falkenstein, Robert Furrer, David Hare, Robert Howard, Adaline Kent, Richard Lippold, Ernest Mundt, Gretchen Schoeninger, and Clay Spohn
Polyester Moon 1957, 1957–58
Digital transfer of 16mm film
4 min.
Photography by Anthony Denny
Music by Terry Riley (Piano) with Pauline Oliveros (French Horn) and Loren Rush (Koto)
Sculpture by Claire Falkenstein from the collection of Michel Tapié
Structures and People, 1965
Digital transfer of 16mm film
31 min.
Music by Ray Green, “Sunday Sing Symphony”
Photography and editing by Claire Falkenstein
Documentation of the installation of Claire Falkenstein’s work at St. Basil Catholic Church, 1968
Digital transfer of 16mm film
38 min.
Recharging the Image, 1968
Digital transfer of 16mm film
2 min.
Music by Terry Riley