Anthology Film Archives

6:00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
About New York.
Greg Yaskot THE POWDER RIDGE ROCK FESTIVAL (1970, 8 minutes, 8mm)
Greg Yaskot BRAKHAGE – KUBELKA AT FORTY (1970, 3 minutes, 8mm)
Mark Kendall THE TIME MACHINE (2010, 12 minutes, video)
Catherine Stratton A CITY SYMPHONY UNDERGROUND (2010, 13 minutes, video)
Mahawish Rezvi SAVING THE SIDE SHOW (2010, 18 minutes, video)

7:15 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Mesh Flinders FURTHER LANE (2010, 12 minutes, video)
Agneya Singh SIGNIFICANT NON-HAPPENINGS ON SUGAR-HILL (2010, 14 minutes, 16mm)
Tyler Gamble ONLY GOOD THINGS (2009, 40 minutes, 16mm)

8:30 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Tom Monsees
IMPOTENT
2010, 140 minutes, video.
This off-beat comedy tells the story of Charlie, a ne’er-do-well who has spent too much time being an adolescent. He is incapable of ambition, satisfied to drift where the tide will take him, usually alongside his good friend Mike, an experimenter in all things carnal and hedonistic. Everyone seems to know what’s best for Charlie except Charlie.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

The Standby Program, Inc., is a non-profit media arts service organization founded in 1983, dedicated to providing film, video, and preservation services to artists and fellow non-profits. The program operates out of several post-production studios located in and around NYC. A few times a year, Standby partners with other organizations to screen works created and preserved through the program. Anthology is pleased to host this invaluable organization for this evening of very special films.
All things come to life when captured on film and video, but the films in this program demonstrate a hyper-life, meticulously created through the art of animation and archival footage manipulation. Each filmmaker integrates the exploration of word, image, and experience, taking us on a visual journey, sometimes frightening, sometimes ethereal, but always very personal.
For more information regarding Standby, please visit: www.standby.org

Ruth Peyser THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL (2009, 25 minutes, video)
This film utilizes animation, manipulated found images, and film footage to tell six stories from the filmmaker’s life. Her colorful hand-drawn images are a stark contrast to the harrowing tales from childhood to middle-age.

Klaus Lutz TITAN (2008, 11 minutes, 16mm, silent. Courtesy of The Estate of Klaus Lutz/Rotwand Gallery Zurich/Kinemathek Le Bon Film Basel.)
This beautiful and timeless odyssey of stop-motion, time-lapse, and layering of images follows the late Klaus Lutz on a dream-like journey as an astronaut, sailor, and bird, all without leaving his kitchen.

Kelly Spivey MAKE THEM JUMP (2010, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Optically printed from found footage, this experimental film uses snippets from discarded educational films. Through time and image manipulation, we experience themes of control, powerlessness, and isolation.

Cathy Cook
IMMORTAL CUPBOARD: IN SEARCH OF LORINE NIEDECKER
2009, 73 minutes, 16mm-to-video.
An artistic film essay on Lorine Niedecker’s life and poetry. Drawing on their shared Wisconsin heritage, Cook combines original live-action footage, archival images, and Niedecker’s only audio interview to unfurl the poet’s psychological and physical landscape.
Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

With Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Heather Graham, and Marion Cotillard. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Venice Film Festival.

“Though a mere 83 minutes, MARY is its own double bill – a response to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST in which the director (and star!) of a Jesus film (Modine) called THIS IS MY BLOOD is a fantastic amalgam of Mel Gibson and Ferrara himself. Everyone in this jagged construction – which incorporates all manner of newsreel footage – is perched on the edge of hysteria. Speaking for confused filmmakers everywhere, Ferrara’s alter ego winds up barricaded in a projection booth, unclear whether his movie is a terrorist threat to society or vice versa.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

“As inspired and unhinged as any movie [Ferrara] has ever made. … Provocative, incendiary and borderline hysterical, MARY is Ferrara’s most explicit exploration of his own tortured Catholicism.” – Sam Adams, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER 

One of two Italian-themed documentaries Ferrara made in 2009, this is his fond portrait of the neighborhood he has made his NYC base in recent years, Manhattan’s Little Italy – ever-shrinking but, on the evidence of this film, still boasting its fair share of charismatic and memorable characters. Filmed on and around Mulberry Street, during the annual San Gennaro street festival, this documentary is something like a cinematic equivalent of a street fair – festive, supremely laid-back, loosely structured, and extremely enjoyable. And Ferrara is so enthusiastic and unrestrained an on-screen host/tour-guide that MULBERRY ST. becomes, almost incidentally, the documentary portrait of Ferrara at work and at play that we’ve been waiting for.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

Ferrara’s most recent film is not only a portrait of the city of Naples, but a penetrating glimpse into its humanity, at once vital and brutal, passionate and cruel. With the help of ex-prisoner Gaetano Di Vaio, Ferrara carried out a series of interviews with women held in the Pozzuoli female penitentiary. Struck by their testimony, he decided to graft their life stories onto three different narratives, with scripts written by Peppe Lanzetta, Maurizio Braucci, and Di Vaio. Di Vaio’s episode is inspired by his actual experience as a convict; Braucci’s depicts a sad and brutal childhood; and Lanzetta’s is a family melodrama of violence, expectations, and vengeance. By interweaving reality and fiction, this innovative docudrama is a complex and compelling mosaic, fascinating yet indecipherable, much like the city of Naples itself.

Ferrara’s most recent film is not only a portrait of the city of Naples, but a penetrating glimpse into its humanity, at once vital and brutal, passionate and cruel. With the help of ex-prisoner Gaetano Di Vaio, Ferrara carried out a series of interviews with women held in the Pozzuoli female penitentiary. Struck by their testimony, he decided to graft their life stories onto three different narratives, with scripts written by Peppe Lanzetta, Maurizio Braucci, and Di Vaio. Di Vaio’s episode is inspired by his actual experience as a convict; Braucci’s depicts a sad and brutal childhood; and Lanzetta’s is a family melodrama of violence, expectations, and vengeance. By interweaving reality and fiction, this innovative docudrama is a complex and compelling mosaic, fascinating yet indecipherable, much like the city of Naples itself.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

One of two Italian-themed documentaries Ferrara made in 2009, this is his fond portrait of the neighborhood he has made his NYC base in recent years, Manhattan’s Little Italy – ever-shrinking but, on the evidence of this film, still boasting its fair share of charismatic and memorable characters. Filmed on and around Mulberry Street, during the annual San Gennaro street festival, this documentary is something like a cinematic equivalent of a street fair – festive, supremely laid-back, loosely structured, and extremely enjoyable. And Ferrara is so enthusiastic and unrestrained an on-screen host/tour-guide that MULBERRY ST. becomes, almost incidentally, the documentary portrait of Ferrara at work and at play that we’ve been waiting for.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

Now in its 56th year, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is the longest continuously running film event in North America. With our monthly screening series, FLAHERTY NYC, we are able to bring the essential components of the Seminar – ground-breaking cinema and impassioned discussions – to New York City audiences. Each screening will be followed by a dialogue with the filmmaker(s) in which the audience is encouraged to participate. And starting this season, each program will end with a reception where the discussions can continue in a more casual environment.
FLAHERTY NYC is programmed by Penny Lane.

Jennifer Montgomery
DELIVER (2008, 98 minutes, HDV)
Filmmaker in person!
In this all-female remake of DELIVERANCE, a cast of experimental filmmakers (Peggy Ahwesh, Su Friedrich, Jacqueline Goss, Meredith Root, Dani Leventhal, and the director) play characters who are both faithful to their respective male counterparts and barely fictionalized versions of themselves – urban artists looking to unplug in the unspoiled wilderness. The filmmaker closely follows James Dickey’s novel as the gender inversion examines the differing role of women in relation to nature and violence, comments upon the extreme sport of filmmaking and the industry’s endless demand for product, and calls attention to the fact that it is, after all, only women who can, biologically, deliver.

With Vito Acconci, Stanley Bard, Jamie Burke, Ira Cohen, Robert Crumb, Giancarlo Esposito, Milos Forman, Adam Goldberg, Ethan Hawke, Gaby Hoffmann, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Aline Kominsky, and Bijou Phillips.

A fascinating, freewheeling personal journey inside the walls, history, and mythology of Manhattan’s celebrated bohemian landmark, the Chelsea Hotel, famed home to such icons as Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Andy Warhol, and Mark Twain, and perennial shelter to artists great and small. Including interviews with residents past and present, vintage music and archival footage, and dramatic re-enactments summoning ghosts of the Chelsea’s storied past – Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Janis Joplin, and others – CHELSEA passionately shows how it’s often the misfit structures – and citizens – that possess a city’s soul.

6:00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
About the environment.
Emre Ozedemir URVA (2010, 13 minutes, video)
Karin Mak RED DUST (2010, 20 minutes, video)
Josh Dunstian THE SECRET LIFE OF MY SMALL URBAN BACKYARD (2010, 20 minutes, video)

7:15 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Tom Sutch SUBS: THE LUNCH BREAK (2009, 5 minutes, video)
Christian Dietrich OUT OF THE WHITE (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Zachary Espar A TIME SHARED UNLIMITED (2010, 10 minutes, 16mm)
Rebecca R. Davies STAY AWAKE (2010, 10 minutes, video)
Brent Chesanek BRETHREN ARISE (2010, 24 minutes, video)

8:30 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Michael M. Bilandic
HAPPY LIFE
2010, 73 minutes, video.
New York Tunez, an all-techno record store, is going under. The owner, a failed trance DJ, struggles to cope with the changing cultural climate. In a final attempt to save the shop he organizes an ‘old school’ rave. Unfortunately, the 2000s are a far cry from the early 90s.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

With Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Heather Graham, and Marion Cotillard. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Venice Film Festival.

“Though a mere 83 minutes, MARY is its own double bill – a response to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST in which the director (and star!) of a Jesus film (Modine) called THIS IS MY BLOOD is a fantastic amalgam of Mel Gibson and Ferrara himself. Everyone in this jagged construction – which incorporates all manner of newsreel footage – is perched on the edge of hysteria. Speaking for confused filmmakers everywhere, Ferrara’s alter ego winds up barricaded in a projection booth, unclear whether his movie is a terrorist threat to society or vice versa.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

“As inspired and unhinged as any movie [Ferrara] has ever made. … Provocative, incendiary and borderline hysterical, MARY is Ferrara’s most explicit exploration of his own tortured Catholicism.” – Sam Adams, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER 

6:00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Sarah MacDonald COMING HOME (2010, 3 minutes, video)
Amy Jenkins AUDREY SUPERHERO (2010, 9 minutes, video)
Christine Altidor CURRENCY (2010, 15 minutes, video)
Selena Rhine IN OUR CARE (2010, 26 minutes, video)

7:15 SPECIAL PROGRAM
The Women Filmmakers Group and EYE:AM presents: ANOTHER EXPERIMENT by WOMEN
Curated by Lili White.
Tova Beck Friedman HER WORLD (17 minutes, video)
Ann Gusewelle SOMETHING STILL EXISTS (6 minutes, 8mm)
Chloe Smolarski-Heims TO GO TO WORK AGAIN (7 minutes, video)
Alysse Stepanian ROGHIEH (6 minutes, video)
Hey Yeun Jang PORTRAIT PROJECT (SHORT VERSION) (4 minutes, video)
Leslie Supnet FAIR TRADE (5 minutes, video)
Kathy Rugh DON’T LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN (9 minutes, 16mm)
Marie Losier CET AIR LA (3 minutes, video)

8:30 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Elena Beloff
ZARITSAS: RUSSIAN WOMEN IN NY
2010, 71 minutes, video.
This film explores the stereotypes of Russian women that emerged in the 1990s, thanks to the media and hearsay. Through interviews with five different women, conducted in their own environments, the viewer sees the stereotypes dissolve and the flesh-and-blood women come to life.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

One of two Italian-themed documentaries Ferrara made in 2009, this is his fond portrait of the neighborhood he has made his NYC base in recent years, Manhattan’s Little Italy – ever-shrinking but, on the evidence of this film, still boasting its fair share of charismatic and memorable characters. Filmed on and around Mulberry Street, during the annual San Gennaro street festival, this documentary is something like a cinematic equivalent of a street fair – festive, supremely laid-back, loosely structured, and extremely enjoyable. And Ferrara is so enthusiastic and unrestrained an on-screen host/tour-guide that MULBERRY ST. becomes, almost incidentally, the documentary portrait of Ferrara at work and at play that we’ve been waiting for.

Distributed by dGenerate Films; special thanks to Kevin B. Lee & Ariella Tai.
Zhao’s previous feature-length documentary depicts Chinese military police officers rigidly enforcing law and order in an impoverished mountain town near the North Korean border. Whether raiding a private residence to bust an illegal mahjong game, casually abusing a pickpocket accused of throwing away evidence, or berating a confession out of a scrap collector working without a permit, the police switch between precise investigative procedure, explosions of violent fury, and moments of comic ineptitude. A prime example of how independent documentaries are on the vanguard of Chinese cinema, this is an unprecedented look at the everyday workings of law enforcement in the world’s largest authoritarian society.

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

Ferrara’s most recent film is not only a portrait of the city of Naples, but a penetrating glimpse into its humanity, at once vital and brutal, passionate and cruel. With the help of ex-prisoner Gaetano Di Vaio, Ferrara carried out a series of interviews with women held in the Pozzuoli female penitentiary. Struck by their testimony, he decided to graft their life stories onto three different narratives, with scripts written by Peppe Lanzetta, Maurizio Braucci, and Di Vaio. Di Vaio’s episode is inspired by his actual experience as a convict; Braucci’s depicts a sad and brutal childhood; and Lanzetta’s is a family melodrama of violence, expectations, and vengeance. By interweaving reality and fiction, this innovative docudrama is a complex and compelling mosaic, fascinating yet indecipherable, much like the city of Naples itself.

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

With Vito Acconci, Stanley Bard, Jamie Burke, Ira Cohen, Robert Crumb, Giancarlo Esposito, Milos Forman, Adam Goldberg, Ethan Hawke, Gaby Hoffmann, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Aline Kominsky, and Bijou Phillips.

A fascinating, freewheeling personal journey inside the walls, history, and mythology of Manhattan’s celebrated bohemian landmark, the Chelsea Hotel, famed home to such icons as Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Andy Warhol, and Mark Twain, and perennial shelter to artists great and small. Including interviews with residents past and present, vintage music and archival footage, and dramatic re-enactments summoning ghosts of the Chelsea’s storied past – Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Janis Joplin, and others – CHELSEA passionately shows how it’s often the misfit structures – and citizens – that possess a city’s soul.

Distributed by dGenerate Films; special thanks to Kevin B. Lee & Ariella Tai.
Zhao’s previous feature-length documentary depicts Chinese military police officers rigidly enforcing law and order in an impoverished mountain town near the North Korean border. Whether raiding a private residence to bust an illegal mahjong game, casually abusing a pickpocket accused of throwing away evidence, or berating a confession out of a scrap collector working without a permit, the police switch between precise investigative procedure, explosions of violent fury, and moments of comic ineptitude. A prime example of how independent documentaries are on the vanguard of Chinese cinema, this is an unprecedented look at the everyday workings of law enforcement in the world’s largest authoritarian society.

Ferrara’s most recent film is not only a portrait of the city of Naples, but a penetrating glimpse into its humanity, at once vital and brutal, passionate and cruel. With the help of ex-prisoner Gaetano Di Vaio, Ferrara carried out a series of interviews with women held in the Pozzuoli female penitentiary. Struck by their testimony, he decided to graft their life stories onto three different narratives, with scripts written by Peppe Lanzetta, Maurizio Braucci, and Di Vaio. Di Vaio’s episode is inspired by his actual experience as a convict; Braucci’s depicts a sad and brutal childhood; and Lanzetta’s is a family melodrama of violence, expectations, and vengeance. By interweaving reality and fiction, this innovative docudrama is a complex and compelling mosaic, fascinating yet indecipherable, much like the city of Naples itself.

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

One of two Italian-themed documentaries Ferrara made in 2009, this is his fond portrait of the neighborhood he has made his NYC base in recent years, Manhattan’s Little Italy – ever-shrinking but, on the evidence of this film, still boasting its fair share of charismatic and memorable characters. Filmed on and around Mulberry Street, during the annual San Gennaro street festival, this documentary is something like a cinematic equivalent of a street fair – festive, supremely laid-back, loosely structured, and extremely enjoyable. And Ferrara is so enthusiastic and unrestrained an on-screen host/tour-guide that MULBERRY ST. becomes, almost incidentally, the documentary portrait of Ferrara at work and at play that we’ve been waiting for.

Distributed by dGenerate Films; special thanks to Kevin B. Lee & Ariella Tai.
Zhao’s previous feature-length documentary depicts Chinese military police officers rigidly enforcing law and order in an impoverished mountain town near the North Korean border. Whether raiding a private residence to bust an illegal mahjong game, casually abusing a pickpocket accused of throwing away evidence, or berating a confession out of a scrap collector working without a permit, the police switch between precise investigative procedure, explosions of violent fury, and moments of comic ineptitude. A prime example of how independent documentaries are on the vanguard of Chinese cinema, this is an unprecedented look at the everyday workings of law enforcement in the world’s largest authoritarian society.

One of two Italian-themed documentaries Ferrara made in 2009, this is his fond portrait of the neighborhood he has made his NYC base in recent years, Manhattan’s Little Italy – ever-shrinking but, on the evidence of this film, still boasting its fair share of charismatic and memorable characters. Filmed on and around Mulberry Street, during the annual San Gennaro street festival, this documentary is something like a cinematic equivalent of a street fair – festive, supremely laid-back, loosely structured, and extremely enjoyable. And Ferrara is so enthusiastic and unrestrained an on-screen host/tour-guide that MULBERRY ST. becomes, almost incidentally, the documentary portrait of Ferrara at work and at play that we’ve been waiting for.

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

Ferrara’s most recent film is not only a portrait of the city of Naples, but a penetrating glimpse into its humanity, at once vital and brutal, passionate and cruel. With the help of ex-prisoner Gaetano Di Vaio, Ferrara carried out a series of interviews with women held in the Pozzuoli female penitentiary. Struck by their testimony, he decided to graft their life stories onto three different narratives, with scripts written by Peppe Lanzetta, Maurizio Braucci, and Di Vaio. Di Vaio’s episode is inspired by his actual experience as a convict; Braucci’s depicts a sad and brutal childhood; and Lanzetta’s is a family melodrama of violence, expectations, and vengeance. By interweaving reality and fiction, this innovative docudrama is a complex and compelling mosaic, fascinating yet indecipherable, much like the city of Naples itself.

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

With Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Heather Graham, and Marion Cotillard. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Venice Film Festival.

“Though a mere 83 minutes, MARY is its own double bill – a response to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST in which the director (and star!) of a Jesus film (Modine) called THIS IS MY BLOOD is a fantastic amalgam of Mel Gibson and Ferrara himself. Everyone in this jagged construction – which incorporates all manner of newsreel footage – is perched on the edge of hysteria. Speaking for confused filmmakers everywhere, Ferrara’s alter ego winds up barricaded in a projection booth, unclear whether his movie is a terrorist threat to society or vice versa.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

“As inspired and unhinged as any movie [Ferrara] has ever made. … Provocative, incendiary and borderline hysterical, MARY is Ferrara’s most explicit exploration of his own tortured Catholicism.” – Sam Adams, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER 

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

With Willem Dafoe, Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento, Shanyn Leigh, Roy Dotrice, Riccardo Scamarcio, Stefania Rocca, Bianca Balti, Lou Doillon, Sylvia Miles, Burt Young, Joe Cortese, and Anita Pallenberg.
Ferrara’s most recent fictional feature was this enormously entertaining, heartfelt, and rousing strip-club-set ensemble comedy, filmed at Rome’s legendary studio, Cinecittà, and studded with vivid performances from a host of gifted actors, including Matthew Modine, Bob Hoskins, the great Sylvia Miles, and Asia Argento (whose brief but memorable appearance finds her locking lips with a rottweiler). GO GO TALES is presided over by Willem Dafoe, in a tour-de-force performance as Ray Ruby, an impresario/dreamer desperate to save the financially-strapped venue – Ray Ruby’s Paradise Lounge – which in his hands functions as a combination strip-club, vaudeville theater, and rag-tag family. Ray is in many ways a self-portrait on Ferrara’s part, and indeed, the functioning of the club is reflected in Ferrara’s orchestration of the various characters, plot lines, and tones, a (barely) controlled chaos that somehow hangs together brilliantly.
“Ferrara’s 16th feature – and his second, after MARY, since he decamped for Rome a few years ago – is his first flat-out comedy. The press book name-checks Wilder, Sturges, and Capra, and he has described it…as ‘CHEERS meets THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.’ But…GO GO TALES is also an allegory: a portrait of the artist as a hustler, a gambler, a performer, a dreamer, an addict, a throwback, a holdout, and, of course, a purveyor of good old-fashioned T&A, navigating the screw-or-be-screwed questions common to all exploitative professions, indeed to modern capitalist systems. You could say this one comes from the heart.” –Dennis Lim, CINEMA SCOPE

With Vito Acconci, Stanley Bard, Jamie Burke, Ira Cohen, Robert Crumb, Giancarlo Esposito, Milos Forman, Adam Goldberg, Ethan Hawke, Gaby Hoffmann, Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Aline Kominsky, and Bijou Phillips.

A fascinating, freewheeling personal journey inside the walls, history, and mythology of Manhattan’s celebrated bohemian landmark, the Chelsea Hotel, famed home to such icons as Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Tennessee Williams, Charles Bukowski, Andy Warhol, and Mark Twain, and perennial shelter to artists great and small. Including interviews with residents past and present, vintage music and archival footage, and dramatic re-enactments summoning ghosts of the Chelsea’s storied past – Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Janis Joplin, and others – CHELSEA passionately shows how it’s often the misfit structures – and citizens – that possess a city’s soul.

6:00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Eric Trenkamp AMERICAN BOMBER: THE JOHN WILLIAM HIDELL STORY (2010, 22 minutes, video)
A short, documentary-style exploration of the life and death of the first American-born and -raised suicide bomber.

6:45 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Raymond Yeung DOGGY…DOGGY (2009, 12 minutes, video)
Daniel Lir TEXT ME (2009, 12 minutes, video)
Mike Corey GEORGE (2009, 15 minutes, video)
Michael Tanner Cusumano AMANDA (2010, 14 minutes, video)
Giovanni Alberti LOST AT HOME (2010, 17 minutes, video)

8:15 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Paul Guliner SOLDIER’S DAY (2010, 2 minutes, video)
&
Jon Osbeck
MINUS ONE
2010, 82 minutes, video.
When three Army Reservists are called to fight in Afghanistan, they must face the possibility of never returning home. MINUS ONE follows these men as they prepare to ship off to war. In the final days before they deploy, each must face their past as they move toward an uncertain future.

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

Distributed by INA; special thanks to Sylvie Dargnies.
The last decade has brought an extraordinary wave of remarkable documentaries from China, many of them revealing the social and political transformations that have occurred as the country has become an economic giant, and that have often taken a grave toll on the lives of its citizens. PETITION, filmed over the course of more than 10 years, is among the very finest of these often heroic attempts to bear witness. Since 1996, Zhao has documented the ‘petitioners’ who come from all over China to make complaints in Beijing about abuses committed by their local authorities. Gathered near the complaint offices, living in most cases in makeshift shelters, the complainants wait for months or years to obtain justice. Peasants thrown off their land, workers from factories which have gone into liquidation, small homeowners who have seen their houses demolished but received no compensation, they pursue justice with unceasing stubbornness, facing the most brutal intimidation and most often finding that their hopes are in vain. Unfolding like a novel by Zola or Dickens, but with the existential absurdity of Beckett, PETITION reveals the persistent contradictions of China in the midst of powerful economic expansion.
“Zhao’s quietly probing exposé is a moving paean to grassroots resistance that flourishes despite the bureaucracy’s seeming indifference to the plight of ‘common people.’ … [A] seamless, and impassioned, example of revivified cinéma vérité. … Zhao modulates the misery beautifully by editing the film in a fashion that approaches lyricism but never degenerates into didacticism.” –Richard Porton, CINEASTE

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

The Orphan Film Symposium is a multi-day marathon where artists, academics, and archivists share their common love for abandoned, unseen, and unheralded moving images. April 2010 saw the seventh edition of this crucial biennial gathering, and tonight we present a few of the most intriguing works from among the 80 titles screened. Artists, scholars, and The Orphan Film Symposium organizer Dan Streible will be on-hand for introductions and insight. This is an incredible opportunity to see films that have been far too hard to view until now.

Danielle Ash PICKLES FOR NICKELS (2009, 8 minutes, HD)
A stop-motion cardboard world where monkeys steal pickles and neighborhoods change overnight. Presented by Danielle Ash.

Fox Movietone News CHINESE MOTION PICTURE STUDIO (1934, 6 minutes, 35mm, b&w)
Preserved by the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections.
Outtakes from a January 23, 1934 Fox Movietone newsreel shot in Shanghai demonstrating “how motion pictures are filmed in China.” Presented by Mark Cooper.

Max Glandbard THE INVESTIGATORS (1948, 11 minutes, 16mm-to-HD, b&w)
From the Max Glandbard Collection, Yale Film Study Center; digital transfer by the Library of Congress.
A remarkable one-reel musical satire used to support Progressive Party candidates in the 1948 elections. The Union Films production lampoons the House Un-American Activities Committee. Presented by Charles Musser.

Henri Cartier-Bresson & Herbert Kline WITH THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE IN SPAIN (1938, 20 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/NYU Tamiment Library.
A documentary film shot during the Spanish Civil War to raise funds for bringing American volunteers – who had fought against fascism in defense of the Spanish Republic – back home. Presented by Juan Salas.

Scott Nixon THE AUGUSTAS (ca. 1930s-50s, 16 minutes, b&w/color, silent)
Preserved by the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
An intriguing compilation film made by traveling salesman and amateur filmmaker Scott Nixon, THE AUGUSTAS records no fewer than 36 places in the U.S. named Augusta. Presented by Heidi Rae Cooley.

Miles Bros. A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET BEFORE THE FIRE (1906, 12 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent. Score by Agatha Kasprzyk and Rafael Leloup.)
Preserved by Prelinger Archives.
A highly unusual, lyrical, and even structural single-take film documenting San Francisco’s main thoroughfare from the front window of a moving Market Street cable car, just days before the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Ed Emshwiller MARCH ON WASHINGTON (1963, 9 minutes, 16mm)
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
A colorful home movie by filmmaker Ed Emshwiller of the 1963 March on Washington, at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his legendary “I Have A Dream” speech.

Lidia García Millán COLOR (1958, 3 minutes, 16mm)
Preserved by New York University.
A newly restored experimental film from Uruguay. Presented by film preservationist Bill Brand.

Billy Powers [RAMONA & JOSE TORRES WEDDING FILM] (1961, 14 minutes, silent, b&w, 16mm on Blu-Ray disc.)
From Anthology Film Archives; film to HD transfer by Colorlab.

Russell Sheaffer and Jim Bittl PROGRESS, INDEED (trailer for Orphans 7) (2010, 1 minute, DigiBeta.)

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

ZORNS LEMMA
1970, 60 minutes, 16mm. Newly preserved by Anthology Film Archives!
“A major poetic work. Created and put together by a very clear eye-head, this original and complex abstract work moves beyond the letters of the alphabet, beyond words and beyond Freud. If you don’t understand it the first time you see it, don’t despair, see it again! When you finally ‘get it,’ a small light, possibly a candle, will light itself inside your forehead.” – Ernie Gehr

HAPAX LEGOMENA I: (nostalgia)
1971, 36 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
“nostalgia, beginning as an ironic look upon a personal past, creates its own filmic time, a past and future generated by the expectations elicited by its basic disjunctive strategy.” – Annette Michelson
“In nostalgia the time it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating, mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure; for Borges too was one of his earlier masters, and he grins behind the façades of logic, mathematics, and physical demonstrations which are the formal metaphors for most of Frampton’s films.” – P. Adams Sitney
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

SPECIAL SCREENING!
Produced by the Center for Home Movies with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, and Cineric, Inc.
Dramatic, funny, poignant, and even strange, AMATEUR NIGHT presents 16 amateur films from the collections of American film archives. Piecing together family moments, historical scenes, animation, drama, comic routines, and travelogues dating from 1915 to 2005, this groundbreaking compilation ably demonstrates the eclectic array of entertainment, innovation, and enlightenment found in home movies. Featuring films by average joes alongside notables like Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Nixon, animator Helen Hill, and Smokey Bear (yes, the bear), AMATEUR NIGHT supplements the images with archival audio, commentaries from family members, and newly-recorded music, including an original score for the dazzling short OUR DAY (discovered at Anthology’s Home Movie Day event), by Rachel Grimes, formerly of the band Rachel’s. Blown-up from the original reels to 35mm, AMATEUR NIGHT is a feature-length, big-screen journey into the eclectic past – and present – of small-gauge filmmaking.

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

The most enduring of all Flaherty’s films for its simplicity of purpose, structure, and design. It ennobles its subjects rather than exploiting them. Sharp and uncluttered, the film relies on a few well-developed sequences which remain in the memory of the viewer.
“NANOOK is one of the most vital, dramatic and human films that has ever flashed across the screen.” –Rex Ingram

Flaherty’s third major film portrays the lives of a family of fisher folk on the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, Ireland. Flaherty selected this location and subjects because of their isolation as the westernmost outpost of European civilization. In addition, the daily struggle between the islanders and the sea perfectly suited his interests and concerns. The scenes at sea are breathtaking.
“His passionate devotion to the portrayal of human gesture and of a man’s fight for his family makes the film an incomparable account of human dignity. Better than anyone, Flaherty knew how to show the true face of Man.” –Georges Sadoul

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

In January 2010, Anthology started hosting monthly screenings organized by New York Women in Film and Television. These screenings include works by NYWIFT members as well as from women filmmakers around the world.
Films included in the series must be directed, co-directed, produced, written, edited, or shot by women. Whenever possible, the filmmakers are present for a Q&A following the screening, as well as an after-party with cash bar and complimentary food.
The preeminent entertainment industry association for women in New York City, NYWIFT supports women calling the shots in film, television, and digital media. NYWIFT energizes the careers of women in entertainment by illuminating their achievements, providing training and professional development activities, and advocating for equity. Our membership comprises more than 2,000 women and men working both above and below the line. NYWIFT is part of a network of 40 Women-in-Film organizations worldwide, representing more than 10,000 members.
There will be a Q&A following the screening, and an after-party to follow, with Cash Bar and complimentary food @ Dempsey's Pub, 61 2nd Avenue, between 3rd and 4th Streets.

In this month's NYWIFT Screening Series, Iranian-American filmmaker Maryam Habibian opens our eyes to a reality that is far more complex than generally portrayed in the Western media, with two documentaries that reveal the contradictions that are part of life in Iran. 

The Mist explores life and culture in present day Iran through a series of interviews with Iranian women and young people. Behind the hejab (Islamic covering or veil) and behind closed doors, Iranians live their second, private lives. Despite the limitations imposed by society, Iranian youth create their own culture, pushing dress codes, taking new occupations and choosing their own partners. And women function as successful, creative and autonomous beings, making up a large portion of the work force and over half of the university population, owning their own businesses, keeping their maiden names and serving in Parliament. Women poets also play an important role in this feature documentary, with works that speak directly to the dualities at the heart of the film.   

In the short Forugh Farrokhzad: Young Revolutionary Poetess of Tehran, we meet Persian poetry's most influential and controversial woman, who broke through the imprisoning patriarchal ideals of womanhood with her earthy, yet militant poetry. A writer of the senses, she made public the revolutionary cries of an enraged artist. Habibian began work on the documentary after she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to research Farrokhzad's poetry and its significance to the Intellectual Milieu of Tehran during the Pahlavi Era.
Director/Writer: Maryam Habibian
Producers: Maryam Habibian & Brian Kehrer (Reflecting Pool)

Maryam Habibian is a filmmaker whose latest work, the feature documentary The Mist, has been screened at different venues in New York City and at the 2009 New Filmmakers festival. Habibian has also done NEH-funded research on iconic Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, resulting in the documentary short, Forugh Farrokhzad: Young Revolutionary Poetess of Tehran, which has been screened at the Library of Congress, at a gathering of women filmmakers in Tribeca, at the University of Sussex in England, at the CCHA conference in Santa Fe, and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. Other directorial credits include her multimedia play Forugh’s Reflecting Pool, The Ugly Older Sister, as well as a production of The Invitation and Blessed Are the Meek at the off-off Broadway Expanded Arts Theater. 

6:00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES
About Dance.
Joshan Esfandiari Martin NEXT (2010, 5 minutes, video)
Noriko Sakamoto THE HERON AND THE GEISHA: A LIFE IN DANCE (2009, 37 minutes, video)

7:00 SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Todd Goings EVIDENCE IS EVERYWHERE (2010, 5 minutes, video)
Patty Nelson HANDLET (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Emilie Richard-Froozan RUFUR (2010, 7 minutes, video)
Chihiro Amemiya ROOFTOP (2010, 9 minutes, video)
Puppet TIME SPENT (2010, 11 minutes, video)
Brad J. McBridge WHO DIES FIRST (2010, 14 minutes, video)

8:15 FEATURE PRESENTATION
Hassan Ildari
SMALL POTATOES
2010, 90 minutes, 16mm.
Seven wannabees and a was dream of stealing millions in untraceable casino skim money. They plan, they argue, they hover…and at the right moment, swoop in and snatch the loot, triggering a blistering web of betrayal!

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

Distributed by IFC Films; special thanks to Jonathan Hertzberg.
Today, in an unnamed African country. Johnny, 15, a kid-soldier with the look of a gangsta rapper, armed to the hilt, is inhabited by the mad dog he dreams of becoming. With his small commando – No Good Advice, Small Devil, Young Major – he robs, pillages, and slays everything in his path.
Laokolé, 16, pushing her disabled father around in a rickety wheelbarrow, attempting to achieve the glorious future that her studies seem to promise, strives to flee a city occupied by teenage-soldier militias, with her little brother Fofo, 6. As Johnny advances, Laokolé flees…
Under the windows of embassies, NGOs, and the High Commissionership for Refugees, teenagers fed by Hollywood imagery and disinformation play at war. The militias fight enemies dubbed “Patriots”; the “Dogo-Mayis” want to exterminate the “Mayi-Dogos”; the adolescent warlords call themselves “Giap” or “Rambo” and kill each other over a TV set, a basket of fruit, or a misplaced word. Sauvaire’s film – unflinching, harrowing, yet ultimately humane – depicts childhoods cut short, an Africa ravaged by absurd wars, a people who are trying, in spite of it all, to survive and save their humanity.

“Many films can justifiably claim to have captured the horror of war, but few have done so as mesmerizingly. What’s more, this French-made film evokes not just war’s horror, but also its chaotic, vicious and fundamentally infantile nature. … Sauvaire’s cast actually contains several boys who themselves fought as soldiers, even participated in horrors like those represented. But you don’t come away with the sense that the boys are being exploited for shock value, or even for gratuitous authenticity: there’s a sense of ritual re-enactment at work here, a sort of community-project Theatre of Cruelty. Confrontationally intense, [this] is not only one of the most disturbing war films I’ve seen; it is surely among the most troubling films ever made about childhood and its exploitation.” –Jonathan Romney, THE INDEPENDENT

Anthology’s exhibition program encompasses many different categories of screenings each calendar – along with our theatrical premieres, thematic series, and auteur and actor retrospectives, we’re equally dedicated to programming the work of new, emerging, and all-too-rarely-seen avant-garde moving image artists.
Each month we present at least one program of such work under the rubric NEW/IMPROVED/INSTITUTIONAL/QUALITY, an Owen Land-inspired title for a series that, after all, features new (and new to us) cutting-edge works, exhibited at a hallowed institution, and whose high quality we’re more than prepared to guarantee.

JANUARY:
KELLY SPIVEY
Kelly Spivey’s exquisite, beautifully crafted, and sensitive films have popped up in a variety of contexts over the years – at various festivals, including Toronto’s SpliceThis! Super8 Film Festival, the Madcat Experimental Women’s Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Lesbian Film Festival, as well as at Buffalo’s Hallwalls, Brooklyn’s Ocularis, and on PBS’s ReelNY. But opportunities to see her work on a program of their own have been few and far between. A former Associate Director of Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo, a video editor at Mercer Media, and an instructor at Millennium Film Workshop, Spivey has devoted many years of service to the cause of experimental cinema, as programmer, administrator, educator, production advisor, and conservationist. This depth of experience is reflected in her own work, which displays a remarkable facility with a range of methods, including animation, found-footage, collage, and optical printing. We’re very pleased to host her for an evening featuring a selection of the films she’s created over the past decade.

WHY YOU WERE BORN (2001, 6 minutes, Super-8mm)
A Kodachrome Super-8 animation that utilizes found images delicately cut from magazines from the 1940s-70s. A hand-held camera creates agitation and a frenetic frame speed penetrates women’s roles shown in advertising, shattering them and then offering humorous feminist solutions.
POOR WHITE TRASH GIRL – CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS (2003, 6 minutes, 16mm)
A semi-autobiographical fictional animation, based on the life of a poor white girl who lives amidst Fisher Price Little People.
FISH UNDER DELANCEY (2006, 26 minutes, 16mm)
The tunneling of the subways beneath the city, the people who ride the subway, and the slogan, “If you see something, say something”, inspired this stop-motion, eavesdropping, dreamlike journey film, which follows poet and writer Eileen Myles on parts of the journey.
ME, MYSELF & I (2003, 3 minutes, 16mm)
Using paper dolls, magazine cutouts, and vintage valentines, this film plays with ideas of metamorphoses, gender variance, narcissism, and, somewhat subliminally, President George W. Bush.
MAKE THEM JUMP (2009, 11 minutes, 16mm)
Optically printed from found footage of animals with children, with subliminal messages, this film uses snippets from discarded educational films.

Plus: camera rolls from the work-in-progress THERE IS FROM NOTHING, an experimental film portrait of the eco-feminist artist, Helène Aylon.
Total running time: ca. 65 minutes.

Anthology Film Archives, in collaboration with P.S. 122, is pleased to present a film series conceived by the Chicago-based theater company Every house has a door. These film screenings constitute an investigation of abandoned practices, endangered uses, and the fraught nostalgia of utopianism.
Every house has a door's latest theater piece, Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never., was composed largely in response to the films of the legendary Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev. In anticipation of its NYC premiere, Anthology will present two film screenings: a short film program on January 29, curated by filmmaker Melika Bass, whose new film WAKING THINGS showcases performances by the cast of Let us think...; and a special presentation of Makavejev’s landmark feature, WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM.
Special thanks to Melika Bass, Vallejo Gantner (P.S. 122), Shoshona Currier, Lin Hixson & Matthew Goulish (Every house has a door), Brian Belovarac & Sarah Finklea (Janus Films), and Ute Zimmerman (Artadia).

PLEASE NOTE: P.S. 122 plans to present Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. in their 2011-12 season. The performances have been postponed due to performer travel delays.

PROGRAM 1: SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Curator/filmmaker Melika Bass in person!
“The filmmakers featured in this program all explore the corporeal in the everyday, honing atmospheric worlds from fragments of gestures and moments. Many of the figures in these works seem lost to memory, living in a shadowy realm of hushed interior rooms, a rocky mountain slope, or a small, dank village. The visceral textures of these realms offer a silent history of use, as bodies inhabit and move through worn spaces, enacting everyday rituals or labors, possessed by solitude and a wildness of their own physicalities. We observe these characters, figures in their landscapes, left to piece together meaning, story, and poetics.” –Melika Bass

Piotr Dumala FRANZ KAFKA (Poland, 1991, 16 minutes, video, b&w)
Ben Rivers AH, LIBERTY! (Scotland, 2008, 20 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Melika Bass WAKING THINGS (USA, 2011, ca. 25 minutes, 16mm-to-video)
Alla Kovgan and David  Hinton NORA (USA/Zimbabwe, 2008, 35 minutes, digital video)
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

Jean Genet
UN CHANT D’AMOUR
1950, 26 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent.
Jean Genet’s poetic expression of male eroticism pitted against the confines of prison cells and a homophobic state… a powerfully resonant work that explores individual freedom and the laws of desire.
Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie
PULL MY DAISY
1959, 28 minutes, 35mm, b&w.
A largely spontaneous experiment, arranged in 1959 by Robert Frank along with Alfred Leslie. They enlisted the participation of Jack Kerouac, who offered in place of an original screenplay a stage play he’d never finished writing, “The Beat Generation.” The plot is based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn. They’re raising a family and trying to fit in with their suburban neighbors, and one night they invite a respectable neighborhood bishop over for dinner. But Neal’s Beat friends crash the party, and that Marx Brothers-like scenario is the closest thing the film has to a storyline.
Total running time: ca. 60 minutes.

Dwinell Grant
COMPOSITION #2 CONTRATHEMIS
1941, 5 minutes, 16mm, color, silent.
“An attempt to develop visual abstract themes and to counterpoint them in a planned, formal composition.” –D.G.
“Austere and chaste combinations, with subtle manipulation of structure, density and rhythm.”–William Moritz
STOP MOTION TESTS
1942, 3 minutes, 16mm, color, silent.
A self-portrait.
COLOR SEQUENCE
1943, 3 minutes, 16mm, color, silent.
“Pure solid-color frames which fade, mutate and flicker. A research into color rhythms and perceptual phenomena.” –William Moritz

Ken Jacobs
LITTLE STABS AT HAPPINESS
1959-63, 18 minutes, 16mm, color. Featuring Jack Smith.
“Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100’ rolls timed well with music on old 78s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement as well as breaking out of step.” –K.J.

Ken Jacobs & Bob Fleischner
BLONDE COBRA
1959-63, 35 minutes, 16-to-35mm blow-up, b&w/color. Featuring Jack Smith.
Preserved by Anthology, with the generous support of The Film Foundation, The National Film Preservation Foundation, Simon Lund and Cineric, Inc.
“BLONDE COBRA is an erratic narrative – no, not really a narrative, it’s only stretched out in time for convenience of delivery. It’s a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950s, 40s, 30s disgust. Silly, self-pitying, guilt-strictured and yet triumphing – on one level – over the situation with style… enticing us into an absurd moral posture the better to dismiss us with a regal ‘screw off.’” –K.J.

Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

Anthology Film Archives, in collaboration with P.S. 122, is pleased to present a film series conceived by the Chicago-based theater company Every house has a door. These film screenings constitute an investigation of abandoned practices, endangered uses, and the fraught nostalgia of utopianism.
Every house has a door's latest theater piece, Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never., was composed largely in response to the films of the legendary Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev. In anticipation of its NYC premiere, Anthology will present two film screenings: a short film program on January 29, curated by filmmaker Melika Bass, whose new film WAKING THINGS showcases performances by the cast of Let us think...; and a special presentation of Makavejev’s landmark feature, WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM.
Special thanks to Melika Bass, Vallejo Gantner (P.S. 122), Shoshona Currier, Lin Hixson & Matthew Goulish (Every house has a door), Brian Belovarac & Sarah Finklea (Janus Films), and Ute Zimmerman (Artadia).

PLEASE NOTE: P.S. 122 plans to present Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never. in their 2011-12 season. The performances have been postponed due to performer travel delays.

PROGRAM 2:
Dušan Makavejev
WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM / WR – MISTERIJE ORGANIZMA
1971, 84 minutes, 35mm. In English, Serbian, Russian, and German with English subtitles.
“Called ‘an outrageous, exuberant, marvelous work’ by Amos Vogel in FILM COMMENT, WR is a unique blend of fact and fiction. Makavejev’s landmark film deftly juxtaposes the story of a sexual encounter between the beautiful, liberated Milena and a repressed Soviet figure-skating champion, with an exploration of the life and theories of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. The ‘WR’ in the title stands for either ‘Wilhelm Reich’ or ‘World Revolution.’ Makavejev describes it as ‘a black comedy, political circus, a fantasy on the fascism and communism of human bodies, the political life of human genitals, a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others…. If you watch for more than five minutes, you become my accomplice.’” –FACETS MULTIMEDIA

“Based on a true incident, the film chronicles the wanderings of a woman and child looking for work and lodging in Paris. This is the only plot, and Hanoun has little interest in embellishing it with background and motivation: he never even makes it clear, for example, whether the woman is the child’s mother, guardian or companion. UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE is, more than a narrative, a formal stylistic exercise so rigorously disciplined and understated that it makes the visual asceticism of Robert Bresson seem almost Fellini-esque by comparison.” –TIME