Cremaster 4 + Cremaster 1

Director: Matthew Barney, Matthew Barney, Matthew Barney, Matthew Barney, Matthew Barney, Matthew Barney

1994 / 82min / 35mm

Cremaster 4
Barney himself plays the role of the Loughton Candidate, a satyr-like, tap-dancing creature who embarks on the road to maturity with the assistance of four androgynous fairies. The penultimate entry in Barney’s tetralogy—and the first put into production—was shot on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, and whips together images evoking ancient Celtic folklore, Victorian literature, and contemporary images of sidecar motor racing teams into a heady, dreamy, delirious mix.

Cremaster 1
The blue AstroTurf field of Bronco Stadium in Barney’s hometown of Boise becomes the scene of a surreal musical revue extravaganza, replete with chorus girls and not one but two Goodyear blimps from which mysterious beings stage direct events on the Earth below. The first film of the artist’s Cremaster cycle, rich with allegory and filled with dazzling, Busby Berkeley-inspired choreography and Art Moderne architecture, establishes several key motifs that will run through the remainder of his Gesamtkunstwerk pentalogy.