The Dryden will screen Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, West Germany/Italy 1968, DCP, 94 min., German w/subtitles).

The art and life of Johann Sebastian Bach as observed by his loyal wife Anna Magdalena Bach. This is one of the most unusual, beautiful, and formally rigorous films about music or art. "The point of departure for our Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach was the idea of a film in which music would be used—not as accompaniment, nor as commentary—but as raw material. . . . We also wanted to film a love story like no other: a woman talking about her husband who she loved unto his death. That's the story: no biography can be made without an external point of view, and here it is the consciousness of Anna Magdalena Bach. . . . [In this film] we have almost entirely a documentary reality—the actual music and actual manuscript pages, real musicians—and only one-seventeenth of fiction, and despite it all, the totality becomes very nearly a novel. . . . [There is] no divorce in Bach between art, life and intellect, sacred and secular music." — Jean-Marie Straub

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Sep-26]