Once Every Day is the first feature film in over 35 years by legendary avant-garde theater director Richard Foreman. Without a normal narrative “story,” it zeroes in on a group of 14 people acting out a series of semi-ritualistic behavioral patterns, but their eccentric impulses are aborted again and again in unpredictable ways. As the film cuts between colored tableaus, bleached out action sequences, expressionistic black-and-white confrontations, and slow immersion in pure light, we repeatedly hear the voices of the director and his technicians, giving off-camera verbal instructions and comments to the characters. The film was shot in Buffalo, NY as a series of non-connected scenes with multiple performers over only 6 days, with 1 camera controlled by Mr. Foreman and 3 or 4 others free to film whatever was transpiring in each room where filming took place. It was then edited by Mr. Foreman for over a year into a time-mosaic of ‘re-formatted consciousness’ – continuously shifting back and forth between evoking (and echoing) the ‘art-making’ process while sliding again and again into ecstasy and free-floating anxiety.
Richard Foreman, born 1937 in New York, is the founder of the internationally renowned Ontological-Hysteric theater. Since the 1960s he has written, directed, and designed over fifty of his own plays. His work also comprises co-productions with international theater festivals and the directing and design of classical productions and operas with major theaters, the writing and directing of films and videos, as well as numerous book publications. He has received many awards, including twelve ‘Obies,’ the Literature prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a ‘Lifetime Achievement in the Arts’ award from the National Endowment for the Arts, plus the PEN Club Master American Dramatist Award, a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, and an award as Officer of Arts and Letters from the French Government. His other films and videos include: Total Rain (1990), Radio Rick in Heaven and Radio Richard in Hell (1987), Strong Medicine (1981), City Archives (1977), Out of the Body Travel (197
Format: HD
Running time: 64 min
Director, writer, editor: Richard Foreman
Cast: Dana Block, Sarah Brown, Ryan Cupello, Diane Galdry, Neill Garvey, Hannah Lipkind, Abby Marianetti, Paul Martin, Amenda McDowall, Roy Roussel, Linda Stein, R J Voltz, Paul Hern, Yuri Hreshchyshyn
Production: Bridge Film NYC, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, The Center for the Moving Image, Dept. of Media Studies, State University of NY, Buffalo NY
