Robert Wilson and the Moving Image

In anticipation of the late Robert Wilson’s return to the Howard Gilman Opera House with Moby Dick this spring, BAM is honoring the man The New York Times deemed America’s “foremost vanguard 'theater artist’” with a film series composed of works from Wilson himself, revolving around him, and some of his cinematic inspirations.

The centerpiece of the program is a new restoration of Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars, a largely unseen documentary tracking the director’s pursuit of his most ambitious theatrical production, the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down. The unrealized work would have been Wilson’s magnum opus: a 12-hour historical opera in six distinct parts, each prepared in a different country ahead of a complete performance planned for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Director Howard Brookner’s 1985 documentary follows Wilson as he collaborates with artists like David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs, while grappling with funding challenges, labor issues, and the daunting scale of his undertaking. After elements of the film were lost or destroyed in Superstorm Sandy, Aaron Brookner, the documentarian’s nephew, devoted 12 years to restoring this extraordinary chronicle.