Film UbuWeb

Ericka Beckman (b. 1951) Out of Hand (1988) Blind Country (1989) with Mike Kelley Switch Center (2003) Over her three-decade career, Ericka Beckman’s playful yet formally demanding films challenge traditional aesthetic, and cultural values, that mix games with fairytales to create hybrids with new rules. Beckman uses play in every sense to shape her message. “The result is a ‘satisfying, even delightful slipperiness of meaning, a mental vertigo induced by the changefulness of contexts and rules in regard to a given word or object.” Sally Banes Millenium Film Journal, 1984 Beckman’s work has been shown at festivals, museums, and galleries around the world. Her one-woman shows include: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Washington,D.C., and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. She has been in three Biennials at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Amongst the numerous awards received for her work are: Two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Council on the Arts grants, and one from Massachusetts Council on the Arts. Her works are in the film collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, plus the British Film Institute, as well as The Walker Art Center Media Collection.