The best Kate Valk’s movies

The story of Willard from Ashley's opera Atalanta, recounted in 3 parts.

In The Wooster Group’s HAMLET, Shakespeare’s classic tragedy is re-imagined by mixing and repurposing Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway production, directed by John Gielgud. The Burton production was recorded in live performance from 17 camera angles and edited into a film that was shown as a special event for only two days in nearly 1,000 movie houses across the U.S. The idea of bringing a live theater experience to thousands of simultaneous viewers in different cities was trumpeted as a new form called “Theatrofilm,” made possible through “the miracle of Electronovision.” The Wooster Group attempts to reverse the process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film. We channel the ghost of the legendary 1964 performance, descending into a kind of madness, intentionally replacing our own spirit with the spirit of another.

Inspired in form by American police TV shows and soap operas, The Golden Boat is a madcap, surreal dash through the streets of New York city, telling the mysterious and often hilarious story of an aged street-person named Austin, a comically compulsive assassin, as he joins up with a young rock critic and philosophy student named Israel Williams. In the course of their adventures, Austin pursues his object of desire - a Mexican soap opera star - and along the way engages a host of TV characters and bit players, whose repartee range from gangsterish insults to the question of God's existence.

Told through memory and metaphor, Utopians is a dark and subtly comic character study of three people on the edge: of society, of control, and of collapse. Roger is a yoga teacher. His daughter Zoe returns home from the military and to Rogers dismay resumes her relationship with her allegedly schizophrenic girlfriend Maya. Opposed to Zoe's pursuit of Maya but eager to be a part of his daughters life, Roger becomes entangled in the ups and downs of their relationship. Increasingly late and obviously distracted during his yoga classes, his few remaining students begin to lose patience. When Rogers well-meaning friend Morris offers them a live-in renovation job in an upscale Brooklyn home, the three of them move in and start a job they are not exactly qualified for. Living rent-free provides them with a respite from the responsibilities and expectations of the outside world. Together they try to find comfort in their new reality while being revisited by their troubled pasts.

The OBIE-winning collision of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights with Joseph Mawra's B-movie classic, Olga's House of Shame.