Gail Turner

Movies

Turtle Dreams
Choreographer
Turtle Dreams, produced for WGBH-TV, originally aired September 2, 1983. Shot by Ping Chong. Composed by Meredith Monk, performed by her and her Vocal Ensemble.
Paris
Assistant Director
A filming of Meredith Monk and Ping Chong's 1973 experimental theatre piece.
Paris
Puppet Face
A filming of Meredith Monk and Ping Chong's 1973 experimental theatre piece.
Ellis Island
Assistant Director
Meredith Monk's "Ellis Island" is a haunting, reflective piece on Ellis Island and the immigrants who passed through there.
Ellis Island
Meredith Monk's "Ellis Island" is a haunting, reflective piece on Ellis Island and the immigrants who passed through there.
Fist of Fear, Touch of Death
The Rape Victim
A television reporter interviews fighters and promoters about Bruce Lee in preparation for a tournament to claim the title of “Successor to the Bruce Lee legacy”. Footage from Bruce Lee's films and interviews are repurposed in pseudo-documentary style.
Quarry
Woman at a table
Monk’s meditation on WWII and recurring cycles of intolerance, fascism, and cruelty in history originated in 1976 as a live stage work utilizing elements of music, images, movement, dialogue, film, sound, and light. This film version, shot on 16mm in the Lepercq Space at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1977, was created in partnership with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as part of their initiative to document ground-breaking live performance for future restaging. QUARRY centers on a sick American child (played by Monk herself) whose world darkens as her illness progresses, this darkening including the rise of a dictator. A unique document of this innovative, boundary-blurring production, and a work of art on its own terms, replete with a film-within-a-film directed by Monk in 1975.