Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS

“He very much wished to be a great painter, but he wasn’t, so he used theater, and whatever else was available, to make his paintings,” Heiner Müller says at some point about Robert Wilson, and perhaps this aptly encapsulates the creative genius of the Texan artist. This documentary, produced in 1985, presents the inconceivably ambitious project by the CIVIL warS (six different productions of original operas inspired by the American Civil War, in six different locations around the world, involving different composers, and intended to be unveiled as a single 12-hour performance at the Los Angeles Olympic Games) that ultimately resulted in the project remaining unfinished due to funding issues and other challenges that came up along the way. The film’s restoration took 12 years, and the restored version premiered at the New York Festival.