Meet the Filmmakers: Cathy & Harry

Sneak Preview: November 2

Join us after the screening for a discussion and Q&A with Catherine Murphy, Harry Roseman, Daniel Wolff & Marta Renzi, moderated by John Yau.

Directed by Daniel Wolff & Marta Renzi.

Cathy & Harry is a revealing and humorous double-portrait of artists Catherine Murphy and Harry Roseman whose work is in collections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Cathy & Harry documents how their lives revolve in joyous, dizzying intensity around work, food, friends, and each other.

Murphy and Roseman have been both making art and married to each other for over 50 years. The film’s intimacy stems in part from their relationship with the directors, Marta Renzi and Daniel Wolff, two artists who themselves have been married over 40 years – and friends with Cathy and Harry throughout that time. It follows that the film has an insider’s feel. While the art gets examined and explained, the talk stays down to earth, the laughter loud, and the passion to create close to the bone. Both Cathy and Harry are well-known artists with works in major museums and private collections. Cathy & Harry demystifies that, letting us get a feel for the day-to-day work of trying to make something of value. As well as important contemporary artists, Cathy and Harry become people – and people you’d probably like to have dinner with.

44mins / NR
Tickets $18 / Superstar Members $16

Daniel Wolff's writing includes essays, profiles, critical pieces, scientific articles, poetry and fiction. His articles have appeared in many publications including Connoisseur, the Nation, The Village Voice, and Vogue. Nominated for a Grammy award in 2003, Wolff’s other honors include the Ralph Gleason Music Book Award in 1995, two nominations for the General Electric Younger Writer’s Award, and being recognized as a Michigan Notable Book author in 2018. His work has been anthologized in various publications and featured on National Public Radio, Sirius Radio, and in numerous publications from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle. Renzi & Wolff previously collaborated on the 2023 feature documentary Guardians of the Flame, directed by Wolff, edited by Renzi.

Marta Renzi has made more than 75 dances for her Project Company including her Bessie- award-winning Vital Signs. Her site-specific pieces in locations such as the Guggenheim Museum, Union Station and the Staten Island Ferry led naturally to her work in video and film. In 1981 You Little Wild Heart, to music by Bruce Springsteen, was Marta's first half- hour for PBS, followed by Mountainview, made in 1989. Since 2005 Marta has self-produced over three dozen short videodances, which have been presented at over 300 festivals nationally and internationally. Her debut feature film Her Magnum Opus was released in 2017. Renzi & Wolff previously collaborated on the 2023 feature documentary Guardians of the Flame, directed by Wolff and edited by Renzi.

Harry Roseman is a professor emeritus of art at Vassar College. His work encompasses various genres such as sculpture, drawing, photography, and video. He is represented in a number of major museums including, The Cincinnati Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, The Menil Collection, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Walker Art Museum. Two of his most ambitious public commissions are in the NYC Subway and JFK Airport. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. His videos were screened at the Blue Star Animation Festival in San Antonio, TX, and at the Video Art and experimental film festival in NYC. This fall, a video of his, From There to Here, will be screened at the London International  Film Festival (BELIFF). This video is part of an ongoing series started in 2019. He has thus far produced 13 videos in this project. Harry holds a BFA from Pratt.

Catherine Murphy studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1967, where she was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree in 2006. Murphy has also been distinguished with National Endowment for the Arts Grants (1979 and 1989), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1982) and as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (2002). She was a Senior Critic at Yale University Graduate School of Art for 22 years and has been the Tepper Family Endowed Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Murphy has exhibited at institutions throughout the United States, including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington DC; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. Her work is held in numerous public collections including those of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The artist lives and works in Hyde Park, New York.

John Yau is a poet and art critic who has been publishing art since 1978. After serving as the arts editor of The Brooklyn Rail (2007-11), he began writing regularly for Hyperallergic in 2012. He was the recipient of the 2018 Jackson Poetry Prize. In 2021, Yau was awarded the Rabkin Prize for excellence in visual arts journalism. His books of art criticism include Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art;  In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol, and A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, as well as monographs on Thomas Nozkowski, Joe Brainard, Catherine Murphy, Richard Artschwager, and Philip Taaffe.