Shaving The Baroness

Directed by Lene Berg

In 1921, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray reputedly shot their first film together in New York with the dada artist Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. The film was lost and all that remains is one still-image, conflicting written accounts and a title: Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shaving Her Pubic Hair. Lene Berg’s Shaving the Baroness is a restaging built on rumours and conflicting sources, and can be seen as a tribute to the so-called Dada-Baroness. As no original exists, Berg attempts to recreate the lost filmscene with two actors. A real situation is played out, one that cannot be rehearsed and where the director has little control. We are voyeurs of an intimate exchange something perhaps originally intended as a provocation and which might have changed the baroness’s life and destiny.