Anthology Film Archives

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS FILMS IN ITS CONTINUING SERIES ABOUT NATIVE-AMERICANS

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Nathaniel Kramer A LONG HAUL (2010, 44 minutes, video)
A documentary depicting the struggles of a charter boat captain who is forced to moonlight as a captain on a broken-down commercial fishing trawler to make ends meet.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Amy Tall Chief KI-HI-LA STE: LIFE OF GEORGE TALL CHIEF (2008, 16 minutes, video)
Adam Hirsch FAITH HEALER (2009, 26 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Stuart Culpepper
JORDAN
2009, 77 minutes, video.
Five-year-old Jordan walks miles through the night in the wake of a car accident on an isolated mountain road. But when small-town Sheriff Gil Lujan finally locates the girl’s missing mother, Jordan claims the woman is an impostor, and insists that her real mother is still waiting for help out on the mountain.

–Wednesday, September 1, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:00.

NEWFILMMAKERS GETS READY FOR THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR WITH FILMS ABOUT CHILDREN AND THEIR WORLD

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Dennis Connors BREAKING BOUNDARIES: THE ART OF ALEX MASKET (2009, 18 minutes, video)
Chronicles the story of Alex Masket, a unique and extraordinary artist who has created a deep and varied body of work despite a disability that inhibits what most might consider ‘normal’ human interaction.
Laura McLam I LOVE CHILDREN BUT… (2009, 18 minutes, video)
An autobiographical documentary using the filmmaker’s uncertainty about becoming a mother as a prism to explore contemporary parenting and the changing expectations of women.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Eliza Hittman SECOND COUSINS ONCE REMOVED (2009, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Poz Lang WE COULD HAVE BEEN NINJAS (2009, 12 minutes, video)
Samuel Lemberg EDDIE AND THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE (2010, 25 minutes, video)
Jared Cook THE TELLER’S TALE (2009, 17 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Doug Morse
THE KINDERGARTEN SHUFFLE
2010, 98 minutes, video.
Facing the prospect of a failing local school, Julia must find a kindergarten for her son.

–Wednesday, September 1, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:15.

STAN BRAKHAGE
Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent.
DESISTFILM (1954, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w, sound)
REFLECTIONS ON BLACK (1955, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w, sound)
THE WONDER RING (1955, 4 minutes, 16mm)
FLESH OF MORNING (1956, 25 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
DAYBREAK AND WHITEYE (1957, 8 minutes, 16mm)
WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1959, 12 minutes, 16mm)
Films made during the early, “psychodramatic” period of one of modern cinema’s greatest innovators, including two of his early experiments with sound.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Hypnotically boring, ICE is the first film by the great radical filmmaker Robert Kramer to blur the boundaries between fiction and documentary, an approach he would pursue throughout his subsequent career. An underground revolutionary group struggles against internal strife and stages guerilla attacks against a fictional fascist regime in the U.S., with Kramer intercutting rhetorical sequences that explain the group’s philosophy of radical action and serve to restrain the melodrama inherent in the thriller genre. Shot in the gray landscape of NYC in a gritty cinéma-vérité style, ICE is reminiscent of Godard’s ALPHAVILLE. Writing about the film at the time for the VILLAGE VOICE, Jonas declared it “the most original and significant American narrative film of the late sixties.”

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

A masterwork in which all of Brakhage’s techniques achieve a complex synthesis to produce one of cinema’s supreme epic poems.
“The film breathes and is an organic and surging thing… it is a colossal lyrical adventure-dance of image in every variation of color.” –Michael McClure, ARTFORUM

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

EYES
1970, 36 minutes, 16mm, silent.
“After wishing for years to be given-the-opportunity of filming some of the more ‘mystical’ occupations of our Times – some of the more obscure Public Figures which the average imagination turns into ‘bogeymen’... viz.: Policemen, Doctors, Soldiers, Politicians, etc.: – I was at last permitted to ride in a Pittsburgh police car, camera in hand, the final several days of September 1970.” –S.B.
DEUS EX
1971, 34 minutes, 16mm, silent.
“I have been many times very ill in hospitals; and I drew on all that experience while making DEUS EX in West Penn. Hospital of Pittsburgh; but I was especially inspired by the memory of one incident in an emergency room of San Francisco’s Mission District: while waiting for medical help, I had held myself together by reading an April-May 1965 issue of ‘Poetry Magazine’: and the following lines from Charles Olson’s ‘Cole’s Island’ had especially centered the experience, ‘touchstone’ of DEUS EX, for me: Charles begins the poem with the statement ‘I met Death –’ And then: ‘He didn’t bother me, or say anything. Which is / not surprising, a person might not, in the circumstances; / or at most a nod or something. Or they would. But they wouldn’t, / or you wouldn’t think to either, / it was Death. And / He certainly was, the moment I saw him.’” –S.B.
THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE’S OWN EYES
1971, 32 minutes, 16mm, silent.
“…Brakhage, entering, with his camera, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without our knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes. It is a room full of appalling particular intimacies, the last ditch of individuation. Here our vague nightmare of mortality acquires the names and faces of others.” –Hollis Frampton
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

1964-65, ca. 53 minutes, 16mm, silent.
“SONG 1: Portrait of a lady. SONGS 2 & 3: Fire and a mind’s movement in remembering. SONG 4: Three girls playing with a ball. Hand painted. SONG 5: A childbirth song. SONG 6: The painted veil via moth-death. SONG 7: San Francisco. SONG 8: Sea creatures. SONG 9: Wedding source and substance. SONG 10: Sitting around. SONG 11: Fires, windows, an insect, a lyre of rain scratches. SONG 12: Verticals and shadows caught in glass traps. SONG 13: A travel song of scenes and horizontals. SONG 14: Molds, paints and crystals.” –S.B.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

STAN BRAKHAGE
Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent.
ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT (1958, 40 minutes, 16mm)
CAT’S CRADLE (1959, 6 minutes, 16mm)
THE DEAD (1960, 11 minutes, 16mm)
MOTHLIGHT (1963, 4 minutes, 16mm)
BLUE MOSES (1963, 11 minutes, 16mm, sound)
PASHT (1965, 5 minutes, 16mm)
FIRE OF WATERS (1965, 10 minutes, 16mm, sound)
With ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT, Brakhage leaves psychodrama and enters the “closed-eye vision” period. This program also contains a unique example of a film made without a camera, MOTHLIGHT, and one of Brakhage’s few sound (and ‘acted’) films, BLUE MOSES.
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

Brakhage’s tour-de-force exploration of refracted light in an ashtray. “All that is, is light.” –Dun Scotus Erigena

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

NEWFILMMAKERS SCREENS ‘THE TRUTH ABOUT ANGELS’ WITH SIMON REX AND MANY OTHERS ABOUT LOS ANGELES

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Tony Gault FLEDGLING (2009, 7 minutes, 8mm)
Katie Gregg WCF (2010, 10 minutes, video)
Richard Wiebe ALIKI (2009, 5 minutes, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Archer King MY SISTER’S DATE (2009, 6 minutes, video)
Matthew Guarneri ON A WILLIAMSBURG WHIM (2010, 9 minutes, video)
Shannon Latimer PENNY AND CHARLIE (2010, 14 minutes, 35mm)
Stephen Paratore SANTA ANA WINDS (2009, 16 minutes, 16mm)
Thomas Moore COME HOME WITH ME (2010, 17 minutes, video)
Ari Sklar GOOD SOLDIERS (2009, 18 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Lichelli Lazar-Lea
THE TRUTH ABOUT ANGELS
2009, 79 minutes, video.
The film that has been called “a startling indictment of our times” and “beautifully disturbing” by audiences. It is a true L.A. story in both subject matter and production method, and stars Italian actor Antonio Del Prete, actor/rapper Simon Rex, Monique Gabriela Curnen, and model Dree Hemingway.

–Wednesday, September 8, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 6:30, Feature Presentation at 8:15.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

LUDWIG: REQUIEM FOR A VIRGIN KING / LUDWIG – REQUIEM FÜR EINEN JUNGFRÄULICHEN KÖNIG
With Harry Baer, Peter Kern, Ingrid Caven, and Peter Moland.
Twenty-eight chapters from the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1866) add up to what Syberberg calls “a summary of the Germany of the 19th century as experienced by the Germany of 1972.” Syberberg presents Ludwig as a sort of tortured witness of future times, with culture changing into barbarism, the Bismarckian state into totalitarianism, Wagner into the trivial music of the thirties.
“The story of the last Bavarian King with his euphoria, his anxieties, his dreams told in a style of an oratorio or a medieval passion. Present and past are combined in a film of Wagnerian scenes, music of the thirties, Bavarian legends, ‘Oktoberfest’ waxworks, magic lantern, still life, surrealism, elements of silent films, guillotine, quotations from Goethe, Brecht, Valentin, and Shakespeare.” –Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

The title of Gomes’s debut feature film is derived from the expression, ‘Until the age of thirty, you have the face that God gave you, after that you have the face you deserve.’ A radically bifurcated film, it opens on its protagonist Francisco’s thirtieth birthday, a day that begins inauspiciously: moody, selfish, and petulant, Francisco, who makes a living performing at children’s birthday parties, argues with his girlfriend and then breaks his nose in a fender-bender while driving with his lover, all while dressed incongruously as a cowboy. Having already established its stylized, magical realist approach with a couple beguiling musical numbers, the film changes course completely half-way through, moving into a fantasy-world where seven strange men, inhabiting a country house, live according to a set of bizarre, inscrutable rules – something like a bucolic, innocent version of the House of Fiction in Rivette’s CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING. In Gomes’s words, “The seven characters are like Snow White’s seven dwarfs. But they are also seven childish sides of Francisco’s character. He shall have to settle up with them one-by-one to grow up.”

With Helmut Käutner.
“The film describes the inner world of the last great German mystic at the beginning of the end of the fairy tale…in a kind of monologue in a monstrous intimate play”, Syberberg wrote of his film about the life of Germany’s most popular author. Karl May, a prolific and beloved writer, wrote rousing adventure tales set in America’s Wild West, which mythologized a rustic lifestyle that appealed to German sensibilities and may have inspired the Nazi Party. Syberberg’s meditation on May fuses theater, music, and cinema to offer a perspective on the writer as a man who mythologized himself as an extension of his art.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

HITLER – EIN FILM AUS DEUTSCHLAND
With Heinz Schubert, Harry Baer, Hellmuth Lange, Andre Heller, Peter Kern, and Amalie Syberberg.
“[O]ne of the great works of art of the 20th century and one of the greatest films ever made.” –Susan Sontag, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
The final, and certainly most ambitious, film in Syberberg’s trilogy is an epic nightmare rumination on Adolf Hitler, the cultural mechanisms underlying his mythic rise, and the effect he continues to wield over Germany. In a series of twenty-two tableaux set on a soundstage, Syberberg makes use of puppets, props, a thundering Wagnerian soundtrack, and rear-screen projection to evoke the origins of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany, and the disturbing aftermath.

MEANWHILE / ENTRETANTO (1999, 25 minutes, 35mm)
Parents and teachers have gone away. In the meantime a girl and two boys pass some time together, coming into the grips of a romantic tension that remains unexpressed because of their inability to communicate.
CHRISTMAS INVENTORY / INVENTÁRIO DE NATAL (2000, 23 minutes, 35mm)
“When I was twelve I dreamt that I was putting in motion the static pictures of the crèche. With this film I tried to do the same with the memories of my cousins and relatives, with that house and with those rituals. It’s a fake documentary and a fake animation film, a semi-fiction about children who go to war, play music, and take over.” –Miguel Gomes
31 (2001, 27 minutes, 35mm)
“This is the way you hold the racket to play a forehand. Just move your arm back, the left shoulder facing the ball, step forward with your left foot, hitting the ball.”
PRE EVOLUTION SOCCER’S ONE-MINUTE DANCE AFTER A GOLDEN GOAL IN THE MASTER LEAGUE (2004, 1 minute, 35mm)
A playful one-minute-long variation on the well-known Playstation soccer computer game. A goal. A dance of joy. No music.
CANTICLE OF ALL CREATURES / CÂNTICO DAS CRIATURAS (2006, 23 minutes, 35mm)
2006: A troubadour walks the streets of Assisi, playing the “Song of the Creatures”, written by St. Francis almost 700 years ago. Woods of Umbria, 1212: While preaching to the birds, St. Francis suddenly faints. Reanimated by St. Clare, the saint remembers nothing. When night falls, the animals in the forest sing and praise Francis.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST / AQUELE QUERIDO MÊS DE AGOSTO
NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! “When Gomes found himself with neither cast nor financing for his hefty screenplay, he stared impending failure in the face and, giving in to mad artistic impulse, strode headlong towards his location anyways with crew and camera in tow. Set on a quixotic mission to find their film in the midst of the August music festivals that permeate the heart of rural Portugal, Gomes and company shot everything and everyone possible, leaving no stone unturned in their quest for art and story. What emerged is a lengthy and deliberately chaotic hybrid of documentary and fiction which delicately captures the vibrancy of the local community while simultaneously allowing a reworked meta-narrative – centering on the strange relationship between a father, daughter and nephew in a traveling pop band – to quietly creep in to the proceedings.” –Landon Zakheim, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL “[AUGUST] is truly ‘between documentary and fiction’, sometimes an essay-film, sometimes a family melodrama. What is brilliant is its slippery status, how it slides, without announcing it, from one pole (documentary) to the other (fiction). …[E]very viewer will get lost trying to figure out what came first, the real people or the imaginary characters they play, the stories told in the old, corny songs or the story devised by the director. … Gomes’s film offers its own, remarkable vision of an ‘expanded cinema’, a cinema of multiple levels interacting in space and time – freeing the viewers’ minds and letting their emotions roam. It is, indeed, a revelation.” –Adrian Martin, ROUGE –Friday, September 3 through Thursday, September 9 at 6:30 & 9:15 nightly, with additional shows on Saturday and Sunday, September 4 & 5 at 3:30, Friday, September 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, September 11 at 6:30.

The title of Gomes’s debut feature film is derived from the expression, ‘Until the age of thirty, you have the face that God gave you, after that you have the face you deserve.’ A radically bifurcated film, it opens on its protagonist Francisco’s thirtieth birthday, a day that begins inauspiciously: moody, selfish, and petulant, Francisco, who makes a living performing at children’s birthday parties, argues with his girlfriend and then breaks his nose in a fender-bender while driving with his lover, all while dressed incongruously as a cowboy. Having already established its stylized, magical realist approach with a couple beguiling musical numbers, the film changes course completely half-way through, moving into a fantasy-world where seven strange men, inhabiting a country house, live according to a set of bizarre, inscrutable rules – something like a bucolic, innocent version of the House of Fiction in Rivette’s CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING. In Gomes’s words, “The seven characters are like Snow White’s seven dwarfs. But they are also seven childish sides of Francisco’s character. He shall have to settle up with them one-by-one to grow up.”

HITLER – EIN FILM AUS DEUTSCHLAND
With Heinz Schubert, Harry Baer, Hellmuth Lange, Andre Heller, Peter Kern, and Amalie Syberberg.
“[O]ne of the great works of art of the 20th century and one of the greatest films ever made.” –Susan Sontag, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
The final, and certainly most ambitious, film in Syberberg’s trilogy is an epic nightmare rumination on Adolf Hitler, the cultural mechanisms underlying his mythic rise, and the effect he continues to wield over Germany. In a series of twenty-two tableaux set on a soundstage, Syberberg makes use of puppets, props, a thundering Wagnerian soundtrack, and rear-screen projection to evoke the origins of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany, and the disturbing aftermath.

The title of Gomes’s debut feature film is derived from the expression, ‘Until the age of thirty, you have the face that God gave you, after that you have the face you deserve.’ A radically bifurcated film, it opens on its protagonist Francisco’s thirtieth birthday, a day that begins inauspiciously: moody, selfish, and petulant, Francisco, who makes a living performing at children’s birthday parties, argues with his girlfriend and then breaks his nose in a fender-bender while driving with his lover, all while dressed incongruously as a cowboy. Having already established its stylized, magical realist approach with a couple beguiling musical numbers, the film changes course completely half-way through, moving into a fantasy-world where seven strange men, inhabiting a country house, live according to a set of bizarre, inscrutable rules – something like a bucolic, innocent version of the House of Fiction in Rivette’s CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING. In Gomes’s words, “The seven characters are like Snow White’s seven dwarfs. But they are also seven childish sides of Francisco’s character. He shall have to settle up with them one-by-one to grow up.”

MEANWHILE / ENTRETANTO (1999, 25 minutes, 35mm)
Parents and teachers have gone away. In the meantime a girl and two boys pass some time together, coming into the grips of a romantic tension that remains unexpressed because of their inability to communicate.
CHRISTMAS INVENTORY / INVENTÁRIO DE NATAL (2000, 23 minutes, 35mm)
“When I was twelve I dreamt that I was putting in motion the static pictures of the crèche. With this film I tried to do the same with the memories of my cousins and relatives, with that house and with those rituals. It’s a fake documentary and a fake animation film, a semi-fiction about children who go to war, play music, and take over.” –Miguel Gomes
31 (2001, 27 minutes, 35mm)
“This is the way you hold the racket to play a forehand. Just move your arm back, the left shoulder facing the ball, step forward with your left foot, hitting the ball.”
PRE EVOLUTION SOCCER’S ONE-MINUTE DANCE AFTER A GOLDEN GOAL IN THE MASTER LEAGUE (2004, 1 minute, 35mm)
A playful one-minute-long variation on the well-known Playstation soccer computer game. A goal. A dance of joy. No music.
CANTICLE OF ALL CREATURES / CÂNTICO DAS CRIATURAS (2006, 23 minutes, 35mm)
2006: A troubadour walks the streets of Assisi, playing the “Song of the Creatures”, written by St. Francis almost 700 years ago. Woods of Umbria, 1212: While preaching to the birds, St. Francis suddenly faints. Reanimated by St. Clare, the saint remembers nothing. When night falls, the animals in the forest sing and praise Francis.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

SPECIAL PREMIERE SCREENING! Henry Hills returns to Anthology for the premiere of his latest video, a feature-length documentation of the wonderfully unruly ASTRONOME, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, a collaborative production by playwright/director Richard Foreman and composer John Zorn. Staged at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in Spring 2009, ASTRONOME was, to say the least, a fast, furious flurry of syncopated movement, metaphysical mayhem, and voluminous hardcore music. Shooting with two cameras over the course of six performances, Hills has concocted an amazingly assembled, precisely framed, and altogether amusing video that most definitely stands as a work of its own. In Hills’s ASTRONOME the set, the props, the actors, and the music all meld into a singular, fantastically fluid ensemble production. For those not lucky enough to have seen the show live, you thankfully now have a lot to catch up with…. Starring: Karl Allen, Benjamin Forster, Fulya Peker, Eric Magnus, Morgan Von Prelle Pecelli, James Peterson, and Deborah Wallace. Featuring music by John Zorn with Joey Baron, drums; Trevor Dunn, bass; Mike Patton, voice. Soundtrack available on Tzadik Records. With: FAILED STATES (2008, 10 minutes, 16mm) “[It] is a study of spinning elements, rotation as gesture both mechanized and organic…but above and beyond this, [it] is remarkable because, among its other virtues, it combines multiple layers of avant-garde film history and memory. The link to the fairground, naturally, asks us to think of cinema as an ‘attraction’, a non-narrative mode that provokes the senses.” –Michael Sicinski Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

With Helmut Käutner.
“The film describes the inner world of the last great German mystic at the beginning of the end of the fairy tale…in a kind of monologue in a monstrous intimate play”, Syberberg wrote of his film about the life of Germany’s most popular author. Karl May, a prolific and beloved writer, wrote rousing adventure tales set in America’s Wild West, which mythologized a rustic lifestyle that appealed to German sensibilities and may have inspired the Nazi Party. Syberberg’s meditation on May fuses theater, music, and cinema to offer a perspective on the writer as a man who mythologized himself as an extension of his art.

LUDWIG: REQUIEM FOR A VIRGIN KING / LUDWIG – REQUIEM FÜR EINEN JUNGFRÄULICHEN KÖNIG
With Harry Baer, Peter Kern, Ingrid Caven, and Peter Moland.
Twenty-eight chapters from the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1866) add up to what Syberberg calls “a summary of the Germany of the 19th century as experienced by the Germany of 1972.” Syberberg presents Ludwig as a sort of tortured witness of future times, with culture changing into barbarism, the Bismarckian state into totalitarianism, Wagner into the trivial music of the thirties.
“The story of the last Bavarian King with his euphoria, his anxieties, his dreams told in a style of an oratorio or a medieval passion. Present and past are combined in a film of Wagnerian scenes, music of the thirties, Bavarian legends, ‘Oktoberfest’ waxworks, magic lantern, still life, surrealism, elements of silent films, guillotine, quotations from Goethe, Brecht, Valentin, and Shakespeare.” –Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS SOME FILMS ABOUT LIFE IN NEW YORK

EARLY SHORT PROGRAM
Tal Shamir RUFFCUTS (2009, 1 minute, video)
Anthony Marinelli SUBWAY (2010, 2 minutes, video)
Joyce P. Fields A KINDNESS (2009, 10 minutes, video)
Debra Cohen PEBBLE IN YOUR SHOE (2009, 10 minutes, video)
Leo Fiorca WINDOW SHOPPING: ATTACK OF THE NEW RELEASES (2009, 12 minutes, video)
Hannah Crossley THE DAY I MET HER (2008, 18 minutes, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Skyler Carkhuff CUTTING BREAD (2010, 2 minutes, video)
Josh Badham INNOMMÉ (2009, 6 minutes, video)
Janet Swaby PRAYER OF THE INNOCENT (2009, 20 minutes, video)
Paul Winston SHATTERED ALLEGIANCE (2008, 29 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Jason Cusato
APOSTLES OF PARK SLOPE
2010, 85 minutes, video.
When Mike Callahan loses his mother Mary, the neighborhood rallies the troops and takes him out to a local restaurant to cheer him up. Father Paul takes part in the hopes of convincing Mike and the gang to turn to the Lord during their time of loss. What ensues is an unlikely reunion of friends, with Father Paul coming to understand the true meaning of friendship and finding that sometimes the word of the Lord has four letters.

–Wednesday, September 15, Early Short Program at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:15.

All films are silent.
LOVING (1956, 4 minutes, 16mm)
THE WEIR-FALCON SAGA (1970, 29 minutes, 16mm)
THE MACHINE OF EDEN (1970, 11 minutes, 16mm)
SEXUAL MEDITATION #1: MOTEL (1970, 7 minutes, 16mm)
DOOR (1971, 4 minutes, 16mm)
SEXUAL MEDITATION: ROOM WITH A VIEW (1971, 4 minutes, 16mm)
THE SHORES OF PHOS: A FABLE (1972, 10 minutes, 16mm)
THE RIDDLE OF LUMEN (1972, 14 minutes, 16mm)
A selection from some of Brakhage’s most densely mysterious works.
Total running time: ca. 90 minutes.

Lowell Bodger (1944-2010) was a distinguished typographer, printer, and teacher who also produced an extraordinary body of short films that defy easy characterization. He began making 8mm films while growing up in Sheepshead Bay and moved on to 16mm production while studying at Pratt in the early 1960s. Bodger’s early works are exquisitely photographed and rooted in narrative; however he soon ventured forth into non-narrative animation, producing a number of truly remarkable, highly energetic films throughout the 1970s. During this period, he was actively involved with the Millennium Film Workshop and also screened at the Collective for Living Cinema among other venues. Bodger’s films are utterly entertaining, graphically complex, and almost scientific in their attention to detail, while his use of single-frame animation techniques and attention to color put him in a field all by himself. Tonight we will honor Lowell and commemorate his untimely passing with a special screening of selected short films, all of which are far too rarely seen. Works to be screened will include: WAVE SYMMETRIES (1971, 8 minutes, 16mm) FAVORABLE CONDITIONS (1973, 18.5 minutes, 16mm) A RECENT ANIMATION (1974, 8.5 minutes, 16mm) and many others….

This film reconstructs the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, and incorporates rare, restored courtroom footage shot under the supervision of legendary filmmaker John Ford. The film, narrated by Christopher Plummer, also includes contemporary interviews with survivors and former prosecutors. The trial marked the first time film footage played a major role in judicial proceedings. It was a groundbreaking, worldwide event – the birth of international justice and a landmark account of the holocaust.
“As a historian, Delage is obsessed with the growing role of reproduced images in shaping history. In this light, the emphasis on the myriad cameras recording the trial as well as the documentaries-within-documentaries screened in the courtroom…begins to make structural sense. At the same time, the trial is inseparable from these projected images – which, moved up on the docket to spark flagging interest in the slow-moving proceedings, shocked the courtroom, and sent figures filing out in silence once the lights came back on.” –Ronnie Scheib, VARIETY

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia. The notorious detention center code-named ‘S21’ was the schoolhouse-turned-prison where 17,000 men, women, and children were tortured, interrogated, and executed, their ‘crimes’ meticulously documented to justify their execution. In this award-winning documentary and astonishing historical document, Rithy Panh and his team undertook a three-year investigation involving not only the survivors, but also their former torturers. They persuaded both groups to return to the actual site of what was formerly S21, now converted into a Genocide Museum, to face their past.

In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia. The notorious detention center code-named ‘S21’ was the schoolhouse-turned-prison where 17,000 men, women, and children were tortured, interrogated, and executed, their ‘crimes’ meticulously documented to justify their execution. In this award-winning documentary and astonishing historical document, Rithy Panh and his team undertook a three-year investigation involving not only the survivors, but also their former torturers. They persuaded both groups to return to the actual site of what was formerly S21, now converted into a Genocide Museum, to face their past.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

SOBIBOR, OCTOBER 14, 1943, 4 P.M. / SOBIBÓR, 14 OCTOBRE 1943, 16 HEURES
An essential supplement to Lanzmann’s renowned SHOAH, this film centers on an extended interview with Yehuda Lerner, a young Jew involved in the only successful uprising by Jewish death-camp prisoners. Lanzmann presents Lerner’s tale with a Hitchcockian mastery of suspense, while raising existential and ethical questions about justified violence.
“Lerner’s account…is as gripping as the greatest thrillers and as gratifying as any story of brave and cunning virtue confronting mighty evil. His detailed narration…is as precise and evocative as a novelist’s, his reflections are as profound as a philosopher’s, and his gestures are the apotheosis of the Old World habit of talking with the hands….” –Richard Brody, NEW YORKER

This film reconstructs the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, and incorporates rare, restored courtroom footage shot under the supervision of legendary filmmaker John Ford. The film, narrated by Christopher Plummer, also includes contemporary interviews with survivors and former prosecutors. The trial marked the first time film footage played a major role in judicial proceedings. It was a groundbreaking, worldwide event – the birth of international justice and a landmark account of the holocaust.
“As a historian, Delage is obsessed with the growing role of reproduced images in shaping history. In this light, the emphasis on the myriad cameras recording the trial as well as the documentaries-within-documentaries screened in the courtroom…begins to make structural sense. At the same time, the trial is inseparable from these projected images – which, moved up on the docket to spark flagging interest in the slow-moving proceedings, shocked the courtroom, and sent figures filing out in silence once the lights came back on.” –Ronnie Scheib, VARIETY

SOBIBOR, OCTOBER 14, 1943, 4 P.M. / SOBIBÓR, 14 OCTOBRE 1943, 16 HEURES
An essential supplement to Lanzmann’s renowned SHOAH, this film centers on an extended interview with Yehuda Lerner, a young Jew involved in the only successful uprising by Jewish death-camp prisoners. Lanzmann presents Lerner’s tale with a Hitchcockian mastery of suspense, while raising existential and ethical questions about justified violence.
“Lerner’s account…is as gripping as the greatest thrillers and as gratifying as any story of brave and cunning virtue confronting mighty evil. His detailed narration…is as precise and evocative as a novelist’s, his reflections are as profound as a philosopher’s, and his gestures are the apotheosis of the Old World habit of talking with the hands….” –Richard Brody, NEW YORKER

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

In 1975-79, almost two million Cambodians lost their lives to murder and famine when the Khmer Rouge forced the urban population into the countryside to fulfill their ideal of an agrarian utopia. The notorious detention center code-named ‘S21’ was the schoolhouse-turned-prison where 17,000 men, women, and children were tortured, interrogated, and executed, their ‘crimes’ meticulously documented to justify their execution. In this award-winning documentary and astonishing historical document, Rithy Panh and his team undertook a three-year investigation involving not only the survivors, but also their former torturers. They persuaded both groups to return to the actual site of what was formerly S21, now converted into a Genocide Museum, to face their past.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

NEWLATINO FILMMAKERS PRESENTS ITS REGULAR PROGRAM OF FILMS ABOUT LATINO LIFE AND CULTURE

NewLatino Filmmakers is the best and only independent Latino ‘cinematheque’ showcase in New York City – now in its 8th year! Check www.NewFilmmakers.com for an updated schedule.

–Tuesday, September 21, Reception at 6:00, Film Program at 7:00.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

As part of CROSSING THE LINE 2010 (the fall festival of FIAF, the French Institute Alliance Française), we are pleased to co-present screenings of Bertrand Bonello’s film ON WAR / DE LA GUERRE at FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall on September 21, followed by screenings here at Anthology of Bonello’s film, MY NEW PICTURE, along with the shorts CINDY, THE DOLL IS MINE and WHERE THE BOYS ARE on September 22.

Bertrand Bonello (whose previous films include 2001’s THE PORNOGRAPHER, with Jean-Pierre Léaud) will be here in-person to introduce the program. Following the screening, he will take part in a special Q&A session, along with other luminaries from the film and music worlds, moderated by filmmaker and Anthology archivist Andrew Lampert and FIAF programmer and filmmaker Marie Losier.

CROSSING THE LINE is FIAF’s fall festival, conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of trans-disciplinary artists working in France and New York City. Initiated, conceived, and produced by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, the fourth annual edition of this inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival further develops this focus on artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic.
Special thanks to Pascale Cassagneau, responsable des fonds audiovisuels et nouveaux medias, and the Centre national des arts plastiques/ministère de la culture, for their collaboration on this event, as well as to Bertrand Bonello and Les Films du Bélier.

CINDY, THE DOLL IS MINE
2005, 15 minutes, video. With Asia Argento; music by Blonde Redhead.
A short film inspired by a photograph by Cindy Sherman. A brunette takes a photograph of a blonde and, through the two characters – both played by the great Asia Argento – Bonello creates a haunting exploration of duality and ambiguity.
WHERE THE BOYS ARE
2009, 22 minutes, 35mm.
Four young girls in an apartment dream about a hypothetical boy, while, in front of their building, the construction of the Gennevilliers mosque is completed.
MY NEW PICTURE
2007, 35 minutes, video.
MY NEW PICTURE is a “film for the ears”, a project that musician-turned-filmmaker Bonello began as a music album and translated into other subsequent, independent forms of varying lengths and formats. First, there is the “object that is the CD” – that is, the album, which has a length of 65 minutes. But there is also this “sound film”, an image booklet, and a website. Each of these aspects, each of these atmospheres, can be experienced independently, so that the audience can imagine and create a film that only exists as a mental screening.
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! With Ulla Edström. Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum). This enigmatic, mysterious minimalist feature, a collaboration between CalArts graduate C.W. Winter and photographer Anders Edström, combines elements of narrative fiction, documentary, and even installation art in depicting the daily routine of Ulla, a middle-aged woman living in self-sufficient isolation on a wild island on the Stockholm archipelago. Spending her days maintaining her land, reading, and taking a brief swim every morning (an act that lends a delicate structure to the film), Ulla enjoys a pleasant visit from her daughter who comes with boyfriend in tow. After their departure, though, she discovers that the world she has felt so secure in has been invaded by a strange deer-hunter. Shot with a minimal crew, with Edström’s mother in the lead role, Winter and Edström’s first fiction feature unobtrusively combines silence and the sounds of nature to create hypnotic sequences of great beauty. Beyond the lyricism of these meditative images, THE ANCHORAGE is an ode to a woman whose strength and grace are in perfect harmony with nature. “A meditative, enigmatic portrait of a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a remote Baltic island, it sometimes brings to mind JEANNE DIELMAN – we are, after all, observing a woman’s everyday life, acutely aware of her environment, the passage of time, and the smallest variations in her routine. … But THE ANCHORAGE is more insistent in its minimalism than Akerman (or Ozu, whose pillow shots are another reference point). There’s no plot to speak of, save for the eerie occasional appearance of a passing hunter. A film that forces and rewards close attention (which means not just watching but also, given the intricate sound recording and design, listening), it’s proof that you can make something, if not from nothing, then certainly from the in-between.” –Dennis Lim, ARTFORUM –Friday, September 17 through Thursday, September 23 at 7:15 & 9:15 nightly. Additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday at 5:15.

We are eager to invite you to the New York City premiere of two far-out, fantastic new short films by the uniquely gifted artist Nancy Andrews. Active as an animator since the early 90s, Andrews’s wildly inventive works often focus on fantastic transformations and are constructed from an inspired mix of live action, animation, archival imagery, and faked found footage, among other elements. Humorous and engaging, visually arresting and very moving, Andrews is a filmmaker with a unique touch, a distinctive style, and something real to say. Screening alongside Andrews’s films is a certified classic from one of her main inspirations, the inimitable Fleischer Brothers.

ON A PHANTOM LIMB (2009, 35 minutes, video)
This film examines the journey of a human-made hybrid, a surgical creation – part woman, part bird – passing through death, purgatory, and returning to life. The boundaries of reality, fantasy, documentary, and fiction are blurred in this reprise of classic themes, dilemmas, and consequences of reanimation.
“The monster did not choose this for her self, to be an amalgam for alchemy.”

Dave Fleischer SNOW-WHITE (1933, 7 minutes, 16mm)
Betty Boop stars as you-know-who in this whacked-out reworking of a classic fable. And doesn’t that clown sound a lot like Cab Calloway? All hail the Fleischer Brothers!

THE EARS ARE BEHIND THE EYES (2010, 25 minutes, video)
This mix of 16mm, animation, found footage, and live-action footage follows the research of Dr. Sheri Myes and her revolutionary attempts to expand our perceptions and consciousness. The filmmaker began the project by writing a song cycle, and then imagery was developed through a series of drawings. The film is influenced by classic ‘mad scientist’ horror films like DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and by research into the physiology of insects.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

FILMMAKER IN PERSON! Anthology presents three new works by filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who will be present each evening for discussions following the screenings. “Working since the mid-1980s, variously on lyrical formal shorts and long-form experimental documentary, Lynne Sachs’s body of film and video work has explored the relationships between individual memory and experience in the context of large historical forces. Foregrounding personal history and autobiography, Sachs exalts the intimate gesture as perhaps the most heroic of poetic and political acts. With a keen grasp on cultural theory and media history, Sachs’s films celebrate life and mindful political engagement, presenting complex pictures of the world with lyrical grace and even joy.” –Steve Polta, SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE WIND IN OUR HAIR / CON VIENTO EN EL PELO 2010, 41 minutes, video. Music by Argentine singer Juana Molina. NYC PREMIERE! “Inspired by the writings of Julio Cortázar, [this] is an experimental narrative that explores the interior and exterior worlds of four early-teenage girls in Buenos Aires, and how through play they come to discover themselves and their world. ‘Freedom takes us by the hand – it seizes the whole of our bodies’, a young narrator describes as they head towards the tracks. This is their kingdom, a place where…the girls pose as statues and perform for each other and for passengers speeding by. Collaborating with Argentine filmmakers Leandro Listorti and Pablo Marin, Sachs offers us a series of magical realist vignettes…a collage of 16mm, 8mm, and video. Sachs and co-editor Sofia Gallisá have constructed a bilingual work that places equal value on the intimacy of the girls’ lives and their growing awareness of those social forces encroaching on their kingdom.” –Carolyn Tennant, HALLWALLS CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER THE LAST HAPPY DAY 2009, 38 minutes video. “An experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of Sachs’s. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on a translation of WINNIE THE POOH into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief worldwide fame. Sachs’s essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies, interviews, and a children’s performance to create an intimate meditation on the destructive power of war.” –L.S. THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR (2010, 10 minutes, video) Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” through three studies of the human body. Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

FILMMAKER IN PERSON! Anthology presents three new works by filmmaker Lynne Sachs, who will be present each evening for discussions following the screenings. “Working since the mid-1980s, variously on lyrical formal shorts and long-form experimental documentary, Lynne Sachs’s body of film and video work has explored the relationships between individual memory and experience in the context of large historical forces. Foregrounding personal history and autobiography, Sachs exalts the intimate gesture as perhaps the most heroic of poetic and political acts. With a keen grasp on cultural theory and media history, Sachs’s films celebrate life and mindful political engagement, presenting complex pictures of the world with lyrical grace and even joy.” –Steve Polta, SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE WIND IN OUR HAIR / CON VIENTO EN EL PELO 2010, 41 minutes, video. Music by Argentine singer Juana Molina. NYC PREMIERE! “Inspired by the writings of Julio Cortázar, [this] is an experimental narrative that explores the interior and exterior worlds of four early-teenage girls in Buenos Aires, and how through play they come to discover themselves and their world. ‘Freedom takes us by the hand – it seizes the whole of our bodies’, a young narrator describes as they head towards the tracks. This is their kingdom, a place where…the girls pose as statues and perform for each other and for passengers speeding by. Collaborating with Argentine filmmakers Leandro Listorti and Pablo Marin, Sachs offers us a series of magical realist vignettes…a collage of 16mm, 8mm, and video. Sachs and co-editor Sofia Gallisá have constructed a bilingual work that places equal value on the intimacy of the girls’ lives and their growing awareness of those social forces encroaching on their kingdom.” –Carolyn Tennant, HALLWALLS CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER THE LAST HAPPY DAY 2009, 38 minutes video. “An experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of Sachs’s. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on a translation of WINNIE THE POOH into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief worldwide fame. Sachs’s essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies, interviews, and a children’s performance to create an intimate meditation on the destructive power of war.” –L.S. THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR (2010, 10 minutes, video) Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator” through three studies of the human body. Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS GAY AND LESBIAN FILMS AS PART OF ITS REGULAR GLBT SERIES

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
John Di Stefano YOU ARE HERE (2009, 62 minutes, video)
An autobiographical film that examines the search for home within our era of transnational displacement, chronicling the filmmaker’s trajectory from his ancestral home in Italy, to his native Canada, to New Zealand and beyond.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Mathan Ratinam CITIES OF PREFERENCES (2009, 18 minutes, video)
Pierre Stefanos BEDFELLOWS (2010, 15 minutes, video)
Sandor Weiner READING IN BED (2010, 16 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Ron Pike
FRIENDS & LOVERS
2009, 90 minutes, video.
Jim is a man with a secret, one that has left him mired in a world of abandoned dreams and isolation, unable to move forward into the story of his own life. When he meets Claire at a coffee shop, Jim is struck by her kindness, and they begin dating. But underneath, he fears a strong connection with a woman, and retreats. Jim’s heart isn’t the only thing that’s stalled. His car has broken down, too. At the garage he meets Tom, a mechanic, a man of openness and a passion for life.

–Wednesday, September 29, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:15, Feature Presentation at 8:15.

’38 – AND THAT WAS VIENNA TOO / ’38 – AUCH DAS WAR WIEN
Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
This Academy-Award-winning film, based on a novel by Friedrich Torberg, illustrates the rise of fascism and Nazism in late-30s Vienna, developments whose signficance the film’s protagonists – a well-integrated Jewish journalist (Tobias Engel) and the popular non-Jewish actress to whom he is engaged – are largely unable to comprehend until it is too late. Directed by the prolific Wolfgang Glück, whose career spanned almost four decades, ’38 is a vivid and unforgettable depiction of the year of the Anschluss (the political unification of Nazi Germany and Austria), and is a classic account of individuals who believe themselves detached from political concerns but whose lives are overwhelmed by historical events beyond their control.

THE STUDENT GERBER / DER SCHÜLER GERBER
Six years before making ’38, Glück adapted another Friedrich Torberg novel, THE STUDENT GERBER, written in 1930. The film’s protagonist, played by Gabriel Barylli, one of the best-known Austrian actors of the time, is Kurt Gerber, a student in his final year of high school whose new math professor treats him with unforgiving cruelty. Burdened both by his situation at school and by his father’s illness, Gerber is driven to despair.
“Although the original novel is a criticism of the lingering academic traditions of the Old Order in the First Republic, the film treatment shifts the parable to an examination of the seeds of fascism.” –Robert von Dassanowsky, GREENCINE