A film about identical twins with distinct visions.

Witkin and Witkin explores the worlds of identical twins, Joel-Peter, a world famous photographer and Jerome, a globally renown painter and lifelong educator.

An intensely human film it addresses the personal philosophies, their practices, their art and importantly their personal relationship. Witkin and Witkin is a film about perception and growing older, as the two artists working in different media shared a childhood but whose lives took very different directions.

 Bradley Gibson of Rotten Tomatoes raved… “Ziff has pulled off an astonishing accomplishment with Witkin and Witkin. The film works on many levels. Firstly, the viewer is drawn into the “weird news” curiosity about identical twins who go their separate ways. Then comes the compelling rush of fascination around the art they make. Finally, she delivers a tender, charming look at two very different lives of artists have gone through many experiences and relationships. It combines a sideshow with an art course and a twin biography that is exceedingly entertaining.”

Filmed over 4 years, Witkin and Witkin documents the changes they’ve experienced over time and tells its own distinct and disparate narrative along the way.

Filmmaker Trisha Ziff’s “The Mexican Suitcase,” and “The Man Who Saw Too Much” won two Mexican Academy Awards, and Witkin and Witkin has played extensively on the festival circuit including appearances at:

  • PREMIERED at AFI DOCS Film Festival (2018)
  • DOKU.FEST Berlin (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Morelia International Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Tucson International Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Los Cabos International Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – San Antonio Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – DOCFEST, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Minneapolis International Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Maine International Film Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (2018)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION – IDFA, Docs for Sale (2018)

Art enthusiasts will love this doc” – Now Toronto

“A profound meditation on art and an excellent dual-biopic” – Hammer to Nail

The DVD version includes both a Behind the Scenes Slideshow and special introduction by the Director.

About the twins…

Joel-Peter Witkin is an American artist whose constructed photographs depict macabre often grotesque scenes. Working in the vein of the earlier photographers Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Witkin carefully builds scenes with cadavers, hermaphrodites, and dwarfs which introduce literary, religious, and art historical allusions. Born on September 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, NY, Witkin earned his BA at the Cooper Union School of Art and later an MFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In 2011, a survey book was published, providing a concise insight into the working methods and ideologies of the photographer. Today, his works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The artist currently lives and works in Albuquerque, NM.

Jerome Witkin (born September 13, 1939) is an Americanfigurative artist whose paintings deal with political, social and cultural themes, along with serious portraiture that melds the sitter’s social position with a speaking likeness that reveals inner character. Witkin has been succinctly characterized as “a virtuoso figurative painter whose work mixes elements of the old masters, social realism and Abstract Expressionism. Recognized as a prodigious talent, at fourteen he entered The High School of Music & Art in New York, and subsequently studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Cooper Union, the Berlin Academy, and the University of Pennsylvania. A Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship enabled him to travel, study and further develop in Europe. After his return to the United States, Witkin received a Guggenheim Fellowship, began exhibiting at galleries in New York and joined the faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art. He later taught at the Manchester College of Art in England, Moore College of Art, and in 1971 became a professor of art at Syracuse University.

Documentary / 2017 / 90 minutes / English / A film by Trisha Ziff

HOW TO ORDER:

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In-home/personal use copies are available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AUwN03

Watch the trailer