Danièle Wilmouth
Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the unconscious choreography of ordinary life and how cinema can reveal the miraculous spectacle of the everyday. She creates hybrid forms of film, video, installation, and live art that explore ritual, pattern, monotony, and impermanence. Her work investigates mediation of the choreographed body—constructing performances exclusively for the camera, as well as experimental approaches to social issue documentary. Collaboration is essential to her work, and she has been fortunate to work with gifted dancers, musicians, circus acrobats, and performance artists. She studied filmmaking, new media and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and Tyler School of Art. In 1990 she began a six-year residency in Japan, where she researched post-war Japanese artistic collectives, studied Butoh dance, and co-founded Hairless Films, a multi-national independent filmmaking collective.
Wilmouth's works have been exhibited at a variety of venues and film festivals around the globe. Recently, a collection of her short films was included in the 2023 Chiayi International Art Documentary Film Festival in Taiwan. She was a featured ‘Artist in Focus’ at the 2022 Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-Image Festival, as well as the 2016 BODY+ACT exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. In 2013, she was featured in Dance Films Association’s ‘Meet the Artist Series’ with a solo show at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Retrospectives of Wilmouth's works have been held in Russia (2004, St. Petersburg International Dance Film Festival), and South Korea (2012, EXiS Film Festival, Korean Film Archives, Seoul).
Danièle Wilmouth teaches Film, Video, New Media and Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
During the filming of 'Curtain of Eyes'
Photo by Kazuya Tachikawa
Featured Artworks
Tracing a Vein
Photos by Mayumi Lake
Experimental Dance Film, 16mm, 15 minutes, 2001. Combining live action and stop motion cinematography with Japanese Butoh dance, ‘Tracing a Vein’ is an ecstatic ceremonial dance for performers and camera. Drawing on a range of mythology and folklore, 'Tracing a Vein' attempts to re-appropriate the spiritual power of ancient performance - to rediscover the performer as priest, warrior and healer.
Curtain of Eyes
Photos by Kazuya Tachikawa
Experimental Dance Film, 16mm black & white, 13 minutes, 1997. Japanese Butoh dance merges with psychological imagery to explore intimacy and bi-cultural identity.
FANFARE for MARCHING BAND
Photos by Sanghoon Lee
Experimental Music & Dance Film, Super 16mm finished on HD, 16 minutes, 2012. A collaboration with the band Mucca Pazza & choreographer Peter Carpenter. Referencing depression era musicals, FANFARE for MARCHING BAND follows a ragtag musical militia, as they stage 'musical actions for joy' at inappropriate locations around the city of Chicago during lean economic times.
Eleanore & the Timekeeper
Photos by Danièle Wilmouth
Documentary, 16mm film finished on HD, 76 minutes, 2010. The complexities of a mother’s sacrifice are discovered, when Eleanore and her intellectually disabled son Ronnie face separation and life transformation after 64 years of companionship and daily ritual in their Pennsylvania farmhouse.
A Heretic's Primer on Love & Exertion
Photos by Joseph Ravens & ChiJang Yin
Experimental Performance Film, 16mm finished on Video, 24 minutes, 2007. A collaboration with the performance duo Morganville. Pilfering from the traditions of vaudeville, dance and performance art, Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen slip from monologue to dance, trousers to dresses, female to male, in a collection of 29 related incidents.
Danièle Wilmouth has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
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- $5,000 raised of $5,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
For years I’ve been making experimental films with deeply personal themes, as well as intimate social issue documentaries. In 2017, I began a new project addressing some mid-life existential questions in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Peter Carpenter. Through the lens of …
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