Breaking The Frame (100 minutes) by Canadian filmmaker Marielle Nitoslawska is a feature–length profile of the radical New York artist Carolee Schneemann. A pioneer of performance and body art as well as avant-garde cinema, Schneemann has been breaking the frames of the art world for over five decades.
Elliptical in its account, Breaking the Frame rhymes with the sensual quality of Schneeman’s own body of work, framed as revelatory.
– Artspace: New Art Documentaries to Watch in 2014
Nitoslawska deserves special credit for the way her film is about more than the artist’s oeuvre and impact without resorting to mawkish biography.
– David Cohen, ARTCRITICAL.
Breaking the Frame functions as an amalgamation of poem, dream journal, photo album, laboratory log, cultural memento, archeological dig, and liberation manual for an era of artistic experimentation and confrontation. The film is as much a cultural time capsule as a biographical testament.
– G. Roger Denson, Huffington Post.
Nitoslawska achieves an engaging delirium by marrying kaleidoscopically edited archival footage with overlapping conversations and a musical score by the avant-garde composer James Tenney.
– R.C. Baker, The Village Voice.
Breaking the Frame plunges you into Ms. Schneemann’s past and present with few of the usual documentary signposts.
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times.
Intricate montages, moving trains, changing seasons and Schneemann’s cat on the windowsill, advance like stepping-stones along a symbolic labyrinth, navigating Schneemann’s art and life.
– Joyce Beckenstein, The Brooklyn Rail
The effect is haunting and hallucinatory, particularly when viewed in the dark of a cinema.
– Iain Millar, The Art Newspaper.
A work about a formidable artist that is itself an important work of art.
– Mark McElhatten, Views from the Avant-Garde, New York Film Festival.
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Breaking the Frame 