River of Fundament

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

• 
  Milford Graves

  Norman II
• 
  John Buffalo Mailer

  Norman I
• 
  Ellen Burstyn

  Hathfertiti
• 
  Maggie Gyllenhaal

  Hathfertiti
• 
  Paul Giamatti

  Ptah-Nem-Hotep
• 
  Joan La Barbara

  The Widow of Norman
• 
  Stephen Payne

  Usermare
• 
  Aimee Mullins

  The Ka of Norman / Isis
• 
  Matthew Barney

  The Ka of Norman / Osiris: James Lee Byers
• 
  Elaine Stritch

  Eulogist