“Meredith Understood That I Needed the Freedom to Create My Own Interpretation of Her Work and Life”: Billy Shebar on his Berlinale-Premiering Meredith Monk Doc, Monk in Pieces

Billy Shebar’s Monk in Pieces stars Meredith Monk, an artist so singular as to be unclassifiable. (A collage of Zoom-interviewed academics who expound on the titular composer-singer-director-choreographer – and creator of new opera, music theater works, films and installations – is like watching proverbial blind men describing an elephant.) A progenitor of what we now call “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk began her career in the downtown NYC art scene of the ’60s and ’70s — a time and place not all that kind to female boundary busters. (Indeed, New York Times reviews ranged from scathing to the downright patronizing.) Then again, who cares what stuffy elites like Clive Barnes think when none other than Monk contemporary Philip Glass declares, “She, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” Divided into discrete sections, the film makes ample use of Monk’s own vast archive and of the octogenarian herself, still working in the same Tribeca loft she’s had for over half a century. It also includes notable talking heads (literally in the case of David Byrne). And yet despite this familiar structure, there’s a compelling dissonance between the audio and visual that renders Monk in Pieces nearly experimental. It’s a creative choice that deftly reflects Monk’s own approach to her iconoclastic art, forcing us to listen with a different ear, to look closer not away. A few days prior to the Berlinale premiere of Monk in Pieces (February 18th in the Panorama Dokumente section), Filmmaker caught up with the doc’s Emmy-nominated director-writer-producer and founder of 110th Street Films.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.