Video

Happy Birthday

Gerry Gilbert and Carole Itter

1972, 31:30 minutes, B&W, English

TAPECODE 867.00

Happy Birthday is produced in three time frames: In a small floor tub in their kitchen, poets Carole Itter and Gerry Gilbert take turns bathing one another, then pose for a video portrait together; this action is repeated several months later when Carole Itter is in an advanced state of pregnancy; in the third portion of the tape, they bathe their newborn child and pose again before the camera as a family. The soundtrack is composed of readings from the notebooks and poems they wrote describing the unfolding in their lives of the events of love, pregnancy and birth.

Rental and Sales

Single Screening Rental

$240.00

Educational Purchase DVD (Bluray +$15)

$360.00

5 Year Educational Streaming License, Digital File with DVD Circulation Copy

$550.00

Gallery Exhibition and Installation, complete Media Request form for quote

Institutional Archival Acquisition, complete Media Request form for quote

Curators and programmers, please contact distribution@vtape.org to receive a login and password to preview Vtape titles online.

Screening and exhibition rentals and archival acquisitions include public performance rights; educational purchases or licenses include rights for classroom screenings and library circulation. When placing an order the customer agrees to our general online terms and conditions. Payment (or a purchase order number) and a signed licensing agreement must be received before media can be shipped to the client.

Critical Writing

Mirror Machine: Video and Identity
by Janine Marchessault. YYZ Books, McGill University, 1995.
First-generation Video
by Carole Corbeil. The Globe and Mail, June 14, 1988.
First-generation video
by Carole Corbeil. The Globe and Mail, June 14, 1986.
Introduction
by Renee Baert. Vintage Video: Early Canadian Video Art to 1974, 1986. Toronto: Artculture Resource Centre, 1986.