With her boundary-pushing, de-glamorized, stripped-down approach to modern dance, Rainer was already established as one of the most innovative forces in choreography before she’d started to make her first standalone films in 1972, bringing the same spirit of invention to this new medium. Inspired by developments in contemporary feminist film theory and her own developing lesbian identity, Rainer would create a cinematic oeuvre that revolutionized the depiction of dance onscreen, while also posing a challenge to traditional filmic representations of the female body. This retrospective provides a chance to sample the transformative motion picture works of this remarkable multi-hyphenate artist, still active in the world of dance today at age 88.   

All films newly restored in 4K by The Museum of Modern Art and the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation, courtesy of Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber.