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Rudy Burckhardt


Rudy Burckhardt interviewed by Leonard Lopate, on WNYC, February 9, 1987, and Burckhardt on ABC No Rio on the suicide of Edwin Denby, c. 1975, from the Ben Tripp Tapes

  • Side A (32:01): MP3
  • Side B (32:21): MP3

Note: Ambient background noise

Central Park in the Dark, New York City, NY, 1985

A Collaboration with Charles Ives, Christopher Sweet and Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks


Watch on Media.sas


  • Rudy Burckhardt, Director
  • Christopher Sweet, Director
  • Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, Dance Choreography
  • Charles Ives, Music

"Lurking crime and lingering desire change the atmosphere of this brief but affecting film. The light changes moment by moment. The season is shifting. Figures move like phantoms in the penumbra. Beethoven glowers against the evening; a perfect Alice polishes bronze with her petticoat; traffic in diamonds and rubies twines its way among the trees; snarling youths self-destruct. The false promises of youth, beauty and art are the smoke out the windows of fire along Fifth Avenue."
-- Christopher Sweet

The Automotive Story, 1954

A Cittadura Documentary


Watch on Media.sas


  • Rudy Burckhardt, Director
  • Jane Freilicher, Narration
  • Kenneth Koch, Text
  • Debussy, Poulenc, and Scriabin, Piano Music
  • Frank O'Hara, Music Player

Read the full transcription of a 1976 radio interview with Rudy Burckhardt about Automotive Story at Jacket Magazine.

These films are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2012 The Estate of Rudy Burckhardt. Used with permission of Jacob Burckhardt. Distributed by PennSound.