02/09/2012 - Bob Wilson's Life and Death of Marina Abramovich follows the collaboration between four great artists: Bob Wilson, Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe and Antony Hegarty

Starting an autobiography with your own funeral is a strange idea, especially of you are still alive. “It’s the only way to attend. Only you can do it,” pled Marina Abramovic when she asked Bob Wilson to transform her life story into a performance, creating a tale of one of the most original contemporary artistic performers told by one of the most visionary authors of avant-garde theatre.

Add to these two great personalities the disruptive talent of Willem Dafoe and the aching music of Antony Hegarty, and you are left with a show impossible not to record.

Giada Colagrande was the one to take up the challenge with her documentary Bob Wilson's Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, presented as a special event during Venice Days in Venice.

The Italian director followed the piece of theatrical work based on the biography of the Serb artist, as well as the collision between these four great talents, from beginning to end. Interviews with the artists at work are intertwined with images from very particular kinds of rehearsals: “Bob is obsessed with light. He cannot imagine scenes in his head, he needs to see them. Every day, we put our make-up and clothes on as if we were doing dress rehearsals,” says Abramovic.

The spectator is carried away by this expressionist universe where lights, music, text and movements poetically melt around the magnetic and imposing figure that is Marina Abramovic – a woman who, even silently and without movement, is able to fill a stage and transfix onlookers.

It all starts with her funeral (“once you turn sixty, it is impossible not to think about it,” she says), to then go on to her unhappy childhood with a despotic mother. Important events of her life are narrated by Dafoe, while Hegarty sings. The drama quickly moves towards the grotesque.

“Two of the four people involved in the show were very dear to me: Marina, who I have known for nineteen years, and Willem, my husband,” says Colagrande, explaining how she first got involved with the project.

“Four extraordinary artists were difficult to represent and fully capture, because they were all going through delicate moments. Marina cried a lot because she was particularly touched, Willem had to memorize ninety pages of text, Antony is emotionally intense and Bob does not like being interviewed.”

A unique collaboration which could have turned into a clash of titans – which it was to a certain extent. The rest is pure magic.

(Translated from Italian)