Warda's Whorehouse - Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso video

Music from a score to Jean Genet's play The Screens (Les Paravents). Footage from Jean Genet's film Un chant d'amour. The Footage: A Song of Love (Un chant d'amour) is French writer Jean Genet's only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned and even disowned by Genet later in his life. Genet does not use dialogue in his film, but focuses instead on close-ups of bodies, on faces, armpits, and penises. The film's highly sexualized atmosphere has been recognized as a formative factor for works such as the films of Andy Warhol. The Music: "The Screens, Jean Genet's last and greatest stage work was first seen in Paris in 1966 at the Theatre Odeon. This landmark work appeared as nothing short of a theatrical explosion during its premiere performances, complete with riots and grandarmerie. The present score, composed collaboratively by myself and Foday Musa Suso, was written for a production of The Screens presented at The Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, and directed by JoAnne Akalaitis in November 1989. The play takes place in the early 1960's in Algeria during the revolutionary struggle for independence from France. In the process of combining themes of colonialism, exploitation and the European notion of "Arab-ness," Genet has given us a rich and enduring dramatic vision." — Philip Glass