Marina Abramović

Acting

Marina Abramović

Born 1946-11-30 · Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia

Marina Abramović (born November 30, 1946 in Belgrade) is a New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the "grandmother of performance art". Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

Acting credits

OHO Film poster
NR

OHO is considered one of the most interesting, complex and important examples of post-war avant-garde art in Central and Eastern Europe. After achieving major success as one of the first from Eastern Europe to exhibit at New York's MoMA, the group disbanded in 1971. OHO was not just an art collective but a unique cultural phenomenon that explored the visible and the immaterial through art, philosophy, sociology, science and coexistence with the earth and nature. Already in the 1960s, the group was raising relevant questions about anthropocentrism, ecology and the economics of the art. This documentary about OHO by Damjan Kozole is rich in never-before-seen archival material and, for the first time, comprehensively presents this inspiring phenomenon of intertwining art and life. - Slovenian Film Database

OHO Film

2025

Can Creativity Save the World? poster
NR

The final part of the Creativity Trilogy explores existential threats our world is facing. An inspiring film about imagination's power and a hopeful glimpse into the future.

Can Creativity Save the World?

2024

Ulay poster
7.4

Ulay is a conceptual artist whose photography pushed boundaries, and whose love affair with Marina Abramovic produced some of the best pieces of performance art. Diagnosed with cancer shortly after agreeing to film the documentary, Ulay's illness informs Project Cancer, which is part-retrospective, part-visual document of the year he believed could be the last of his extraordinary life.

Ulay

2013

Out of Shadows poster
7.6

An exposé on how Hollywood and the mainstream media manipulate the multitudes by spreading propaganda throughout their content.

Out of Shadows

2020

Homecoming – Marina Abramović and Her Children poster
7.0

The occasion is “The Cleaner,” a travelling retrospective exhibition of work by Marina Abramović, whose final destination is Belgrade, the artist’s hometown. It contemplates her whole life, including dilemmas from her youth in Belgrade, misguided love affairs and a special kind of loneliness. It centres around re-performance as a phenomenon. Who are re-performers?

Homecoming – Marina Abramović and Her Children

2020

Balkan Baroque poster
6.4

Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.

Balkan Baroque

1999

Derek DelGaudio's In & of Itself poster
7.6

Storyteller and Conceptual Magician Derek DelGaudio attempts to understand the illusory nature of identity and answer the deceptively simple question 'Who am I?'

Derek DelGaudio's In & of Itself

2020

Mademoiselle C poster
5.6

A documentary focused on former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief and fashion stylist Carine Roitfeld.

Mademoiselle C

2013

The Space in Between: Marina Abramović and Brazil poster
7.7

Marina Abramović travels through Brazil, in search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, experiencing sacred rituals and revealing her creative process. The route is comprised of poignant encounters with healers and sages from the Brazilian countryside, exploring the limits between art and spirituality. This external trip triggers in Marina a profound introspective journey through memories, pain and past experiences. 

The Space in Between: Marina Abramović and Brazil

2016

Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict poster
6.5

Bouncing between Europe and the United States as often as she would between lovers, Peggy Guggenheim’s life was as swirling as the design of her uncle’s museum, and reads more like fiction than any reality imaginable. Peggy Guggenheim – Art Addict offers a rare look into Guggenheim’s world: blending the abstract, the colorful, the surreal and the salacious, to portray a life that was as complex and unpredictable as the artwork Peggy revered and the artists she pushed forward.

Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict

2015

Body Art poster
NR

Compilation film consisting of material from various artists who are involved in body art

Body Art

1975

4 Performances by Marina Abramovic 1975-1976 poster
NR

Documents four of Abramovic's solo works, exercises in which her body is the vehicle for a rigorous testing of the self — violently brushing her hair and her face, vocalizing until she can no longer breathe, intoning a stream-of-consciousness flow of memories, moving to a drumbeat until she literally drops from exhaustion.

4 Performances by Marina Abramovic 1975-1976

1996

Robert Wilson: The Beauty of the Mysterious poster
6.0

We look back at more than half a century of mysterious artistic creation while trying to crack a unique artistic code. Why are people moved to tears when Robert “Bob” Wilson puts minimalistic petrol pumps into a production of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Why does merciless repetition change our understanding of something? Together with Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe or Marina Abramović we trace back our own experience of Bob’s art. Is it true what Philipp Glass the collaborator of the milestone piece “Einstein on the Beach” laughingly and with apparent pleasure exclaims “what does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything!”?

Robert Wilson: The Beauty of the Mysterious

2022

Why Are We Creative? poster
7.5

A 30 years odyssey: the world's most intriguing artists and thinkers from the fields of visual art, music, filmmaking, acting, literature, philosophy, politics, business and science, are asked the same question: "Why are you creative?"

Why Are We Creative?

2018

InnSæi poster
6.8

A story of soul searching, science, nature and creativity, InnSæi takes us on a global journey to uncover the art of connecting within today's world of distraction and stress.

InnSæi

2016

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present poster
7.3

Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

2012

Balkan Spirit poster
6.6

Filmmaker Hermann Vaske explores the creative Balkan world in the hopes of understanding the meaning of "Balkan spirit".

Balkan Spirit

2013

Franca: Chaos and Creation poster
7.4

Director Francesco Carrozzini creates an intimate portrait of his mother, Franca Sozzani, the legendary editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue. From the ridiculous to the sublime, her astonishing but often controversial magazine covers have not only broken the rules but also set the high bar for fashion, art and commerce over the past 25 years. From the legendary “Black Issue" and the “Plastic Surgery issue" Sozzani remains deeply committed to exploring subject matter off limits to most in order to shake up the status quo and occasionally redefine the concept of beauty.

Franca: Chaos and Creation

2016

No artwork available
9.0

Jay Z performs Picasso Baby at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Picasso Baby

2013

Burden poster
5.8

A probing portrait of Chris Burden, an artist who took creative expression to the limits and risked his life in the name of art.

Burden

2016

Fragments of Paradise poster
6.5

For over 70 years, Jonas Mekas, internationally known as the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema, documented his life in what came to be known as his diary films. From his arrival in New York City as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Fragments of Paradise is an intimate look at his life and work constructed from thousands of hours of his own video and film diaries-including never-before-seen tapes and unpublished audio recordings. It is a story about finding beauty amidst profound loss, and a man who tried to make sense of it all... with a camera.

Fragments of Paradise

2022

Body of Truth poster
6.6

Four female artists have been politicized by experiences with war, violence and suppression and integrated them into their work, using their most personal tool: their own bodies.

Body of Truth

2020

Pretty Good poster
NR

Zoran Popovic and his friends in Edinburgh and surrounding area, around July and August of 1973.

Pretty Good

1973

The Ferryman poster
7.5

In between performance, dance and cerémonies, "The Ferryman” is a choreographic exploration of rituals and animistic roots, a luxurious visualisation of a bewitchment and an exorcism of a man-deer in the borders of the world.

The Ferryman

2016

Behind the camera

Destricted poster
4.3

A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality.

Destricted

2006

Destricted poster
4.3

A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality.

Destricted

2006

Balkan Baroque poster
6.4

Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.

Balkan Baroque

1999

The Space in Between: Marina Abramović and Brazil poster
7.7

Marina Abramović travels through Brazil, in search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, experiencing sacred rituals and revealing her creative process. The route is comprised of poignant encounters with healers and sages from the Brazilian countryside, exploring the limits between art and spirituality. This external trip triggers in Marina a profound introspective journey through memories, pain and past experiences. 

The Space in Between: Marina Abramović and Brazil

2016

Freeing The Body poster
NR

Marina Abramović Freeing the Body was performed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, where Abramović began dancing frantically to the sounds of a bongo player. During the early part of the performance, she still has plenty of energy, and she rocks her hips and upper body vigorously to and fro. Over the course of the six hours, exhaustion sets in. Abramović falls back on a single monotonous movement, now and then visibly exerting herself in an attempt to reivigorate her body. After a final convulsive movement, in which she tries to give her all for one last time, she allows herself to collapse onto the floor and remains lying there, completely exhausted. During the performance, Abramović's head was covered by a black scarf. In this way, the audience was not distracted by Abramović as a person or personality, and attention can be focused on the body, which, due to its anonymity, has become an abstraction.

Freeing The Body

1976

The Abramović Method Practiced by Lady Gaga & Marathon Reading of Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" poster
4.0

At a three-day retreat in upstate New York, Marina instructed Lady Gaga in the Abramovic Method--a series of exercises designed to heighten participants' awareness of their physical and mental experience in the present moment.

The Abramović Method Practiced by Lady Gaga & Marathon Reading of Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris"

2013

The Abramović Method Practiced by Lady Gaga & Marathon Reading of Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" poster
4.0

At a three-day retreat in upstate New York, Marina instructed Lady Gaga in the Abramovic Method--a series of exercises designed to heighten participants' awareness of their physical and mental experience in the present moment.

The Abramović Method Practiced by Lady Gaga & Marathon Reading of Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris"

2013

The Great Wall: Lovers at the Brink poster
NR

In the twilight years of the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese filmmaker slowly becoming blind tours the country screening her last film to peasants. In it, the woman imagines two "alien" lovers walking from end-to-end along the Great Wall to join each other in the middle, one last time. This documentary is an adaptation of Ulay and Marina Abramovic's final collaborative project, the 1988 performance "The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk."

The Great Wall: Lovers at the Brink

1989

Balkan Erotic Epic - Single Channel Version poster
3.7

The film explores the sexual aspects of Serbian folklore. Ancient myths that have trickled into everyday household remedies or explanations are juxtaposed with the joys of the female and male sexual forms from which all human life originates. Functioning as both sexual liberation and reinvented modern myth, Balkan Erotic Epic is a display of the need for a cultural change in viewpoint around sex.

Balkan Erotic Epic - Single Channel Version

2005

Seven Easy Pieces poster
2.0

For Seven Easy Pieces Marina Abramovic reenacted five seminal performance works by her peers, dating from the 1960's and 70's, and two of her own, interpreting them as one would a musical score. The project confronted the fact that little documentation exists from this critical early period and one often has to rely upon testimony from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given performance. The seven works were performed for seven hours each, over the course of seven consecutive days, November 9 –15, 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibilities of representing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.

Seven Easy Pieces

2007

No artwork available
NR

China Ring is an "unedited video notebook" that documents the artists' journey to the Great Wall of China in preparation for their final collaborative project.

China Ring

1988

Stories on Human Rights poster
2.2

20 short films about human rights.

Stories on Human Rights

2008

Relation in Time poster
NR

Marina Abramovic's performance 'Relation in time', with her long time partner Ulay. "We are sitting back to back, tied together by our hair, without any movement for 16 hours. Then the audience came in. We continued sitting for one hour."

Relation in Time

1977

7 Deaths of Maria Callas poster
3.0

A meditation on the female body as a source of both power and pain that focuses on the tragic figure of renowned American-Greek opera singer Maria Callas (1923-77), whose stunning soprano voice captivated audiences around the world in the mid-20th century while her life was wracked by scandal and personal suffering.

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

2022

7 Deaths of Maria Callas poster
3.0

A meditation on the female body as a source of both power and pain that focuses on the tragic figure of renowned American-Greek opera singer Maria Callas (1923-77), whose stunning soprano voice captivated audiences around the world in the mid-20th century while her life was wracked by scandal and personal suffering.

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

2022

AAA-AAA poster
5.6

The video tape shows the half-length portraits of Abramović and her husband Ulay standing opposite each other, looking at each other and producing a long sound with open mouths.

AAA-AAA

1978

Imponderabilia poster
3.3

"Naked we stand opposite each other in the museum entrance. The public entering the museum has to turn sideways to move through the limited space between us. Everyone wanting to get past has to choose which one of us to face" – Marina Abramovich

Imponderabilia

1977

Rest Energy poster
6.2

Ulay and Abramovic draw a large bow and arrow, one holding each side. The arrowhead is pointing at Abramovic's heart. The slightest movement could be fatal. Microphones on their clothes pick up their quickening heart beats and Ulay's irregular breathing

Rest Energy

1980

Rest Energy poster
6.2

Ulay and Abramovic draw a large bow and arrow, one holding each side. The arrowhead is pointing at Abramovic's heart. The slightest movement could be fatal. Microphones on their clothes pick up their quickening heart beats and Ulay's irregular breathing

Rest Energy

1980

Dangerous Games poster
5.0

In a small house with oversized furniture, located in a rice field in Asia, some children wearing army clothes and weapons, start playing war, creating between each other two armies and using children's toys, laser weapons, machine guns and helicopters. Slowly, as the game progresses, they start imitating war scenes as seen on TV, such as negotiations and death scenes. At the end of the film, the children are coming out of the house and they deposit their weapons in front of it. The smallest child comes out in the end with a burning bramble stick in his hand and lights the pile of weapons. All the children leave while the pile is burning. In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts. Dangerous Games is a work of fiction.

Dangerous Games

2008

No artwork available
NR

Capturing herself atop a horse, white flag in hand, billowing against the backdrop of a windy landscape, the piece is an ode to her father, a Yugoslavian World War II hero.

The Hero

2001

Light/Dark poster
NR

Ulay and Abramović take turns hitting each other in the face, gradually increasing speed and intensity with each blow. This performance is best known for being the inspiration for New Order's "True Faith" music video.

Light/Dark

1977

Kaiserschnitt poster
NR

The starting point of Kaiserschnitt is a triangular construction. A horse stands in the centre of a large space, tied to a rope. Ulay and Abramovic are connected to the horse by means of the rope, which runs through two rings fastened to opposite walls.

Kaiserschnitt

1979

Relation in Movement poster
NR

Marina: we even use our car in the performance, in '77, for the Paris Biennale in the front of the museum we made this piece called Relation In Movement, which Ulay is driving the car and I had the megaphone out of the window, and I would say the numbers of the circle as we was passing, because it was just going in a circle, on and on and on. The idea was the car collapsed or we collapsed. and after 16 hours, the motor burned out and created this minimal trace on the marble as a black circle. For us each circle was a kind of imaginary year.

Relation in Movement

1977