Michelangelo Antonioni: Zabriskie Point

On the occasion of the »Albrecht Kunkel: QUEST« exhibition, the ZKM is presenting Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult film »Zabriskie Point« in cooperation with the Kinemathek Karlsruhe.

The legend of America as a wonderland of limitless opportunities was – if you follow the gaze of the Italian director – in as sorry a state in 1970 as the unredeemed ideals of the hippie movement. Antonioni allows the violence between the revolutionary movements of students and the restrictive police escalate to civil war-like proportions. Daria and Mark meet each other on the run from this deeply divided society. The cult film is well known for the love-in scene of the two amateur actors in the monumental rock formations of Death Valley and the most epic explosion in film history set to the music of Pink Floyd.

The film, produced using American widescreen format CinemaScope, is projected with a 35 mm copy with German synchronisation.

Before the film, curator Erec Gellautz provides a brief introduction about the references between Kunkel’s work and Antonioni’s drama. In 2006, 36 years after the end of the shooting, Albrecht Kunkel portrayed the leading actress Daria Halprin in a pose, which is based on the apocalyptic end of the film. He also borrowed aerial photographs of the geographic Zabriskie Point for his »Aerial Views« series. In the portrait session, Halprin explained, »In the sixties we still had a tremendous amount of innocence. I hope that young people today have some of that left but I am not so sure. We believed that we could change the world.«