Marilyn Rivchin

Last Name: 
Rivchin
First Name: 
Marilyn

Marilyn Rivchin is a filmmaker, photographer and videomaker who has taught filmmaking and digital media at Cornell since 1979. After receiving her B. A. from Barnard College in Art History, she did graduate work in the History of Art at Cornell. While working at Cornell's art museum she also completed an intensive program in 16mm Filmmaking at U.C.L.A. for professionals in other fields. Previous to teaching filmmaking she served as Assistant Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, then lived in Haiti from 1974-1976 working as a photographer and filmmaker. While teaching, she later completed an M.F.A. from Cornell in Fine Arts/ Photography and Cinema Theory. From 2002 to 2006 she also served as president of the board of the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Rivchin often collaborates with dancers, choreographers and others to make projection pieces for live stage performance. She is currently creating the multiple video projections for a major stage production of "Bernstein's Mass" directed by David Feldshuh, to be performed at Cornell's Kiplinger Theatre in April, 2009. In Spring, 2008, she created "Chute," a site-specific video installation with dual war and dance imagery (filmed with dancer Nadia Drake) projected on a suspended parachute in the Schwartz Center lobby at Cornell. In 2007 she collaborated on a four-projection video for the dance performance, "Planes," choreographed by Jumay Chu, based on paintings by Amaechi Okigbo, with lighting design by Ed Intemann and original music by Allen Fogelsanger, for the March Dance '07 concert at the Kiplinger Theatre at Cornell. She created a two-channel video installation for a collaborative presentation, "The Elegance of Motion" on dragonfly flight for the Ithaca Light in Winter Festival, January, 2005, with Cornell physicist, Jane Wang and electronic violinist, Ritsu Katsumata. In 2005 she also created four of the projected video segments for the one-hour dance piece "Reflections in an Eye of Titanium," Cornell Spring Dance Concert, choreographed by Jumay Chu, Byron Suber, Joyce Morgenroth, Janice Kovar and Kathleya Afanador. These include: Lampert Variations III (2003) with Rachel Lampert, Kitchen Theatre; Tracings (1999) with Joyce Morgenroth. She created a 3-channel, 7-monitor installation for Merce Cunningham and the Shrine of Dancing Iguana Consciousness... (1995) with Jim Self, and projections for Self's The Ennead (2001) and she worked for several years with choreographer Lonna Wilkinson to make Slippage (1987), Makimono (1986), Thinking Through the Body (1985), and Point of View (1983), which toured nationally. Her video documentation of dance most recently has included two summers of all performances of the Ithaca Love Shoe Festival, produced by choreographer Jim Self (2007 & 2008). Among her numerous directed and edited documentary films and videos are: AIDS in the Southern Tier: SEVEN STORIES (1999; NY PBS stations); Never Done: The Working Life of Alice Cook (1993); Kay Sage (1978); St. Soleil: Art for a New Life (1976); and Earth (1969), for the Johnson museum's historic Earth Art exhibition. She has worked as a contributing film editor for Borderline: (2003/2005), Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews (2006) and other projects by Emmy-award winning producer/director Slawomir Grunberg. She was a member of the Women's Video Collective that filmed Stronger Than Before (1983) on the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment, and her films about visual artists include Ithaca artist Mary Shelley, Woodcarver (2001), an experimental film Frida: The Knife and Fork of God (1998), and Its Own Sac (formerly Rescued Earth,1985, editor) about New York artist Helene Aylon. Her photographs for "Thousands," (1986) a limited-edition collaborative book photo/sculpture with artist Kumi Korf, was exhibited in "A Survey of Book works by Photographers," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; and at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y. "Thousands" is also in the permanent collections of the Women's Museum, Washington, D.C., the Rare Book Collection, Olin Library, Cornell University, and Mills College. Over the years her photographic work has been exhibited often in Ithaca, New York (at Stills: The Photogaphy Gallery, State of the Art Gallery, Smedley's Gallery and Cornell's Tjaden and Hartell Galleries), and also at the Musée d'Art Haitien in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.