Marilyn Freeman

Marilyn Freeman is a writer and media artist. She is a professor at The Evergreen State College and coauthor (with John Bresland) of the forthcoming book, Crafting the Video Essay (University of Chicago Press, 2013). In 2010 her media arts essay, Baptism, was featured in Blackbird’s first (and ongoing) suite of video essays; and she helmed “The Interdisciplinary Essay: A Fusion of Literary and Media Arts,” a panel at NonfictioNow in Iowa City where she showcased Confession Diptych—from her Seven Holy Sacraments Series of autobiographic essays and installations about growing up Catholic. From that series, Communion: The Labyrinth Project—a 50x50 foot multimedia installation including 6 video channels and 16 monitors—exhibited at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts in 2008. Freeman’s contemplative video essays, collectively entitled, CinemaDivina, screen regularly at spirituality centers and have been featured at film venues and galleries including New York City’s Powerhouse Arena (2010). Her CinemaDivina piece, Reverence, featured at Ninth Letter in 2009, is part of the journal’s permanent collection. Frameline released Freeman’s feature film, Group—starring Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein—on-demand in 2011 and on DVD in 2009 following its 2002 theatrical release and its extended run in education markets. Also in 2011, Illumine Entertainment optioned Freeman’s screenplay, Sophisticated: The Hollywood Story of Miss Dorothy Arzner. Freeman is presently in development with In the Way of Intimacy, a feature about a hipster turned unlikely heroine; and she is in post-production with The R Word, a documentary about the self-advocacy movement of people with developmental disabilities. She is cofounder (with Anne de Marcken) of the digital media arts studio, Wovie. For more, visit www.wovie.com and marilynfreeman.com.

Works by this contributor:

On the Form of the Video Essay

Views

The Moving Face (for Roger Ebert)

The first time I ever really thought about Roger Ebert it was because I knew he was warm, dry, and celebrating and I was cold, wet and furious. It was January 2005 in Chicago, and unsurprisingly it was snowing on me and members of Not Dead Yet as we staged a protest outside the Union League Club, surrounded by a row of news trucks.
On the Early English Essay: An Experimental Array

"Essay" enters into English untamed.
The Facts of the Matter

Here is how it happened: The door to the suite was open that night when I walked past and saw her splayed across a couch, one foot on the floor, one leg hooked over an arm rest.
Excerpt from Office Girl

On that Monday at the end of January, Jack Blevins, a questionable young man of twenty-five, rides his blue bicycle beneath the flurry, with tape recorder in hand.

Interviews

Douglas Foster: Interview

"We’re quite rightfully concerned by the level of unemployment in the United States and the ways people were devastated by the financial crisis of 2008, but in the circumstances people face in a place like South Africa, 10 percent unemployment would be heaven."
Stephen Elliott: Interview

“We all change; the things you want from writing, at a certain age, become different from the things you want later. I’ve avoided any obligations, and I still live like a child. I don’t have a wife and kids. I’m on my own. It’s a choice.”
B.J. Hollars: Interview

"Blurring the Boundaries was inspired by my own frustration with facts."
Karen Rigby: Interview

My poetry won’t suit everyone. It has been described as dense; I’m aware of that response, so I wouldn’t say “I hope everyone reads it.”

Reviews

Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons by Fiona Deans Halloran

In Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons, Fiona Deans Halloran provides a superb overview of Nast's life, from his family's origin in Germany's Palatinate to his youth in 1850s Lower Manhattan among a dynamic mix of Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant cultures.
City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave

Ryan G. Van Cleave’s new anthology of Chicago poetry, City of the Big Shoulders, succeeds in displaying the essentials as defined and described by a diverse crowd of Chicagoans.
The Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett

At the heart of this collection, Barnett’s second, is an engagement with Kant’s idea of the sublime, namely that the self experiences both terror and dread in the face of the infinite—whether death or, as the Romantics understood it, the implacable force of Nature.
Whatever is Contained Must be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist, by Heléne Aylon

The memoir, like the artist herself, swerves between cutting-edge installation art, the ancient passages of the Bible, and centuries-old Jewish law and tradition.

Blog Posts

How Poems Move #12

Apr 25, 2013
How Poems Move #11

Apr 23, 2013
How Poems Move #10

Apr 18, 2013
How Poems Move #9

Apr 17, 2013