“Notes on Marie Menken” by LESLIE FELPERIN,
May 15, 2006
VARIETY

Handsome tribute is paid to the eponymous experimental filmmaker in “Notes on Marie Menken,” the fourth feature by Austrian docudocu helmer Martina Kudlacek, who previously made “In the Mirror of Maya Deren.” Interviews with various avant-garde luminaries help to excavate Menken’s memory and reputation from the footnotes of film history while clips and entire reels of her rarely seen oeuvre are intercut. Already screened at several fests, pic could chock up more air miles on the fest circuit and at specialty venues in major cities.

“Notes on Marie Menken” von CHRISTIAN HÖLLER,
September 2006, StadtkinoZeitung #431
„I consider all of Marie’s films as part of one extended note-
book“. Mit dieser lakonischen Bemerkung leitet Martina
Kudláˇcek ihre Annäherung an die litauisch-amerikanische
Künstlerin und Filmemacherin Marie Menken ein.

“Notes on Marie Menken” by Christian Höller
September 2006
‘I consider all of Marie’s films as part of one extended notebook’. It is with this laconic remark that Martina Kudláˇcek introduces her exploration of the Lithuanian/American artist and filmmaker Marie Menken. This notion of the ‘extended notebook’ does not only apply to Menken’s lyrical, sometimes diary-like filmmaking but also to the way Kudláˇcek approaches the artist’s life and work:

“Divided Cells” by Rainer Bellenbaum

Marie Menken, who moved in New York’s art scene from the 1950s onwards and rose to fame in the orbit of Andy Warhol’s Factory, has recently been rediscovered as an avant-garde filmmaker. This is primarily due to documentary filmmaker Martina Kudláˇcek, whose homage to Menken shows how, for instance, Menken translated elements of Pop Art into the experimental language of her films.

 

“Notes on MM” by CHARLES BERNSTEIN,
May 1, 2006, New York, Web Log

There is one more Tribeca Film Festival show — on May 2 — of Notes on Marie Menken. Martina Kudlácek’s documentary recounts the life and work of one of the most remarkable independent, Bolex-wielding filmmakers of American alternative film. Marie Menken (1909-1970), a second wave modernist, was a direct influence on Stan Brackage — in the film he says she was his most important immediate influence — and you can see the traces of her work in the 16mm movies of Henry Hills, Abigail Child, and Ernie Gehr (especially their early work).