On the occasion of MoMA’s Carte Blanche to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of MK2’s founding, The Invisible Dog is pleased to host a conversation between prominent film producer and art collector Marin Karmitz and ICP Chief Curator Brian Wallis. They will discuss his approach to photography as a filmmaker, the construction of his rich and eclectic photographic collection, and his dialogue with the artists he collects.
“A man of pictures if ever there was one, Marin Karmitz—filmmaker, producer and creator/director of the MK2 cinema network—is primarily known for his passionate bond with the moving image. It is less well known that Karmitz, who during his period of political activism was also a photographer, has compiled an outstanding collection of artworks that remains his ‘secret garden’: an utterly original collection of photography. […] Christer Strömholm rubs shoulders with Christian Boltanski, Antoine d’Agata converses with Chris Marker, Annette Messager meets Johan van der Keuken, and Anders Petersen and Abbas Kiarostami are neighbours of Gotthard Schuh and many others. […]They combine wonderfully in a vision concerned as much with people, feelings and time as with the sincerity informing the creative process. And, though uncalculated, there are numerous—and certainly essential—echoes of the cinema.”
Christian Caujolle, excerpt of Traverses, Actes Sud, 2010
Marin Karmitz was born in 1938. A graduate in film photography from the IDHEC film school (now Fémis), he first worked as an assistant director for Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and Jacques Rozier. In 1974, Marin Karmitz set up his own production firm, MK2, and soon added a distribution arm. Over thirty years it has produced more than a hundred films and distributed nearly 350. Godard, Resnais, Chabrol, Louis Malle, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Angelopoulos, Gus Van Sant, Jonathan Lossiter, Ken Loach, Jacques Doillon, Pavel Lunguin, Hong Sang Soo, Michael Haneke and many others have been produced by MK2. Karmitz’s work has received many official tributes since the 1980s, by institutions such as the Cinémathèque Française, the Pompidou Centre, MoMA, and the film heritage centres in Tel Aviv, Madrid, Munich and Boulogne. Strongly involved in contemporary art, Karmitz curated in 2009 the exhibition Silences at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, which was restaged later that year at the Berardo Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Lisbon. At the Rencontres d’Arles in 2010, he presented his collection of more than two hundred photographic works for the first time.
In partnership with International Center of Photography – ICP
www.icp.org
Date
Wednesday, June 9
Time
7pm
Admission
Free
Location
Main Space
51 Bergen St