Mark Rappaport’s short films

Our Stars (2015, 27’)

Stars of the 40s and 50s – were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years later, did the magic still work, did sparks still fly? The movie business – a machine that manufactured romance and desire at the same time that it documented the process of aging. A meditation on youth and beauty, aging, and box office.

The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk (2015, 10’)

A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of Vanity Tables in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past, and the future, and a distorted but nevertheless real vision of the roles that woman are forced to play in society?

John Garfield (2002, 10’)

John Garfield was the first Hollywood star who can be described as a “rebel”. His outsider character on the silver screen forms the prototype for 1950s stars like Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift.

Becoming Anita Ekberg (2015, 18’)

Αn exploration of how the construct of “Anita Ekberg” became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in various movies, both in Hollywood, by Frank Tashlin, and in Europe, by Federico Fellini.