Mimi Gross

A silent screen-type comedy starring Edwin Denby as Hemlock Stinge, the unlovable billionaire.

“Happy with his luscious daughter Aurora in a rustic setting, Professor Borealis has devised an improved brain and is ready to transplant it. The humor is tenderly black. Burckhardt's fusion of documentary-type photography with fairytale storyline is nearer Keystone than avant-garde with its visual honesty and particular virtuosity.” — Edwin Denby

A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.

" ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BLESSED culminates my involvement with artist Red Grooms and Mimi Gross. It is a diary of our work as we head for the Pacific Ocean in a suicidal plunge for theatrical infamy. The film traces the construction of two craven images made in the likeness of myself by Grooms and Gross. Then it switches to the sandhills of Nebraska where fat cattle walk around. There the film explores Grooms' biggest construction, "The Chicago Installation." The film rolls relentlessly onward to the West Coast showing, for the first time on any screen, a theatrical production we three put in the University of California. It marks my directorial debut on the stage and Red Grooms' comeback after ten years of exile from live theatre." - George Kuchar

A summer sojourn is fleshed out for maximum solar exposure in this video travelogue of sun, sea and epidermal exhibitionism. The states of mind and geographic localities are awash in a flow of imagery that rushes in on a tide of both Pacific and Atlantic origins. The people and places that bathe in this magnificence add both a sacred and profane froth into the salty brew; a witches brew of sculpted creations bubbling up with volatile violations from the depths of unfathomable needs.

An artist and his girlfriend are awakened by a knock at the door. It is the poet Apollinaire, arriving to view his portrait!