Rainer’s debut feature film announced both her shift from the world of dance towards avant-garde cinema, and what would become a career-long interest in “women’s stories” and the teasing machinations of melodrama. The familiar tale of a man who can’t choose between two women and makes everyone suffer is reworked by Rainer as a jolting and radically austere, anti-illusionist spectacle, comprising dance rehearsals, photography, tableaux, and a flurry of fragments of text, both onscreen and not. Off-camera, multiple voices can be heard—including that of cinematographer Babette Mangolte, who was at the time just beginning work with a young Chantal Akerman.

Lives of Performers has been restored in 4K by the Museum of Modern Art and the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber is the sole worldwide distributor of this film.

This title is a digital-only release.

Other Rainer films include:

FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO... (1974)
KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES (1976)
JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1979)
THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (1985)
PRIVILEGE (1990)
MURDER AND MURDER (1996)

You can purchase the entire collection here.