Monk in Pieces

Meredith Monk – composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist – is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its centre, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. In the film’s final chapters, Monk faces mortality. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all of her music theatre works. What will happen to such singular work after she is gone?

Monk in Pieces premiered this year at the Berlin Film Festival and has travelled the world stunning and enlightening audiences and now, at last, it lands in the UK. Featuring animations and design from 1927’s Paul Barritt.

You can come along and see this amazing production on these dates and times:

November 1st a the Barbican Cinema (London):

November 9th, The Castle Cinema (London)

November 20th at the Lighthouse Cinema (Dublin)

These dates are all a part of the Doc ‘n’ Roll Festival (with a QnA by Billy Shebar, the director) so you can grab tickets here:

https://www.docnrollfestival.com/films/monk-in-pieces/

November 29th at ARK as a part of the Margate Film Festival (Margate) where Paul Barritt of 1927 shall be doing an introduction to the film:

https://margatefilmfestival.co.uk/2025-programme/

1927 are collaborating with the Margate Film Festival this year in other ways too. Coming up this half-term week we are doing a drop-in stop-frame animation workshop based on Sea Monsters at the Turner Contemporary. This is from 10am -4 pm on Wednesday 22nd October.

The festival is set to be a real corker this year with a wild variety of groovy films so do check out their website for more details. Some highlights include an appearance by comedian Stewart Lee, some crab and insect based classics at the Crab Museum, some gritty Kent-based realism, a live score silent, some art house eroticism from the archive and much more. If that’s not a reason to come down to Margs for the weekend we don’t know what is!

Hope to see you down at one or all of these exciting events!!