Anthology Film Archives

Script by Carl Meyer based on the story “A Trip to Tilsit” by Herman Sudermann.

Photographed by Charles Rosher and Karl Strauss. With George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor.

Murnau’s first American film is an allegory set in no particular time or place, about a man who is temporarily overruled by his passions, inflamed by the power of evil as personified by the city woman, and who finally returns to his senses and the orderly family life of the country. It is a virtuoso exercise representing the expressiveness of the silent film as it neared its end.

Screening as part of the series ESSENTIAL CINEMA

(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)
“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. In the four international critics’ polls organized every ten years (since 1952) by SIGHT AND SOUND, only two films have been constant: one is BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and the other is THE RULES OF THE GAME. And in the 1982 poll, THE RULES OF THE GAME had climbed to second place. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood.

40^th ANNIVERSARY EVENT: JOHN WATERS PRESENTS!
Douglas Heyes
KITTEN WITH A WHIP
1964, 82 minutes, 35mm. With Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown, Patricia Barry, and Richard Anderson.
As part of our continuing series of special events commemorating Anthology’s 40^th anniversary, we welcome the peerless John Waters, who will be here in-person to introduce a rare screening of the low-budget camp classic KITTEN WITH A WHIP, featuring sex siren Ann-Margret in one of her earliest roles, as an escaped juvenile delinquent. Discovering this seemingly vulnerable and confused teenager in his home while his wife is away, suburbanite John Forsythe concludes that fortune has smiled upon him – but little does he know what sort of hellion he has on his hands! Soon she’s holding him captive in his own house, smearing lipstick across a framed photo of his wife, and threatening to accuse him of rape. Cheap, nasty, and irresistible, KITTEN WITH A WHIP is a film whose virtues no one is better suited to celebrate than Waters, the director of such latter-day cult classics as PINK FLAMINGOS, FEMALE TROUBLE, and SERIAL MOM.
“KITTEN WITH A WHIP is jam-packed with faux-Beat dialogue, jazzed up by a sexy TOUCH OF EVIL-esque music score, and set afire by Ann-Margret at her snarly, vampy, jailbait zenith. This one demands to be worshipped on the big screen – and we don’t mean in the remake Lindsay Lohan threatens to star in.” –AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE
“On the heels of her show-stopping numbers with Elvis in VIVA LAS VEGAS, Ann-Margret decided to take the low road with this no-budget, b&w melodrama. A surprisingly sleazy juvenile delinquent flick, with a killer performance from everyone’s favorite sex kitten…[this] is a much-loved, vicious li’l B-movie with Ann-Margret proving once and for all that she’s a slut goddess extraordinaire.” –Steven Puchalski, SHOCK CINEMA

These 35mm prints are the result of a recent preservation project undertaken by the Museum of Modern Art.

DEATH IN THE FORENOON (1934/66, 2 minutes, 35mm, color)
CANARIES (1969, 4 minutes, 35mm, color)
&
FILM PORTRAIT
1971, 81 minutes, 35mm, color.
A pioneering work in autobiographical cinema; masterfully combines actual and staged footage and painting over images. Filmmaker, painter, and composer Jerome Hill was descended from the famous railroad-building family and lived on the same street with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here he re-creates wonderfully – with old family footage – the period and milieu of the American upper class at the beginning of this century.

Total running time: ca. 90 minutes. 

NEW 35MM PRINT!
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the last thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a real-life event – a young man arrested on charges that he fraudulently impersonated well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf – as the basis for a stunning, multi-layered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and life itself. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative strategies, CLOSE-UP continues to resonate with viewers around the world.

“The must-see Iranian Godardian knot of a movie, CLOSE-UP…has artichoke-like layers which, once peeled, are forever resonant. … If Godard was once the giddy Chuck Berry of self-reflexive movie-movie-ness, Kiarostami is the Dylan, moving past the bop and onto the straight goods. Indeed, his unpredictable, and unpredictably moving, investigation into the silent collision between genuine experience and cinema isn’t only about the viewer’s perspective, but Kiarostami’s own. But, like nearly every other Kiarostami film, CLOSE-UP takes questions about movies and makes them feel like questions of life, death, and meaning. He makes movies as if they were the manifest vapor trails of human need, hanging in the air even as we search.” –Michael Atkinson, VILLAGE VOICE
“Kiarostami’s masterpiece is a rich, multi-layered, but beautifully forthright film. Kiarostami constructs a complex (but never complicated) series of interwoven narratives to interrogate notions of fiction and documentary, appearance and reality, truth and falsehood. It’s enormously intelligent stuff, witty, poignant and thoroughly engrossing, and ends with one of the sharpest, funniest deconstructions of film form ever shot. Absolutely wonderful.” –Geoff Andrew, TIME OUT LONDON

Script by Carl Meyer based on the story “A Trip to Tilsit” by Herman Sudermann.

Photographed by Charles Rosher and Karl Strauss. With George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor.

Murnau’s first American film is an allegory set in no particular time or place, about a man who is temporarily overruled by his passions, inflamed by the power of evil as personified by the city woman, and who finally returns to his senses and the orderly family life of the country. It is a virtuoso exercise representing the expressiveness of the silent film as it neared its end.

Screening as part of the series ESSENTIAL CINEMA

NEW 35MM PRINT!
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the last thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a real-life event – a young man arrested on charges that he fraudulently impersonated well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf – as the basis for a stunning, multi-layered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and life itself. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative strategies, CLOSE-UP continues to resonate with viewers around the world.

“The must-see Iranian Godardian knot of a movie, CLOSE-UP…has artichoke-like layers which, once peeled, are forever resonant. … If Godard was once the giddy Chuck Berry of self-reflexive movie-movie-ness, Kiarostami is the Dylan, moving past the bop and onto the straight goods. Indeed, his unpredictable, and unpredictably moving, investigation into the silent collision between genuine experience and cinema isn’t only about the viewer’s perspective, but Kiarostami’s own. But, like nearly every other Kiarostami film, CLOSE-UP takes questions about movies and makes them feel like questions of life, death, and meaning. He makes movies as if they were the manifest vapor trails of human need, hanging in the air even as we search.” –Michael Atkinson, VILLAGE VOICE
“Kiarostami’s masterpiece is a rich, multi-layered, but beautifully forthright film. Kiarostami constructs a complex (but never complicated) series of interwoven narratives to interrogate notions of fiction and documentary, appearance and reality, truth and falsehood. It’s enormously intelligent stuff, witty, poignant and thoroughly engrossing, and ends with one of the sharpest, funniest deconstructions of film form ever shot. Absolutely wonderful.” –Geoff Andrew, TIME OUT LONDON

(LA RÈGLE DU JEU)
“Detested when it first appeared (for satirizing the French ruling class on the brink of the Second World War), almost destroyed by brutal cutting, restored in 1959 to virtually its original form, THE RULES OF THE GAME is now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece and perhaps Renoir’s supreme achievement. In the four international critics’ polls organized every ten years (since 1952) by SIGHT AND SOUND, only two films have been constant: one is BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and the other is THE RULES OF THE GAME. And in the 1982 poll, THE RULES OF THE GAME had climbed to second place. Its extreme complexity (it seems, after more than 20 viewings, one of the cinema’s few truly inexhaustible films) makes it peculiarly difficult to write about briefly.” –Robin Wood.

(MAT)
Based on the novel by Maxim Gorky.
With the simple theme of a working-class mother growing in political consciousness through participation in revolutionary activity, this film established Pudovkin as one of the major figures of the Soviet cinema. A student of Kuleshov and an admirer of Griffith’s films, he was writing his first book of film theory at the same time he was making MOTHER. His expert cutting on movement and his associated editing of unrelated scenes to form what he called a “plastic synthesis” are amply demonstrated here. Although in direct opposition to Eisenstein’s shock montage, Pudovkin used a linkage method advanced far beyond Kuleshov’s theories.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

(CHICHI ARIKI)
A schoolteacher wants his son to marry before entering military service. A key film in Ozu’s career – many critics feel it is here that his early experimental period ends and his later mature period begins.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

Larry Jordan
DUO CONCERTANTES (1962-64, 6 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
HAMFAT ASAR (1965, 13 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
GYMNOPEDIES (1968, 6 minutes, 16mm)
THE OLD HOUSE PASSING (1966, 45 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (1968, 9 minutes, 35mm)
“Fantastic landscapes of the mind is what make the unique work of San Francisco animator Larry Jordan so compelling. With a taste for nostalgic romanticism for intricate turn-of-the-century illustrations, Jordan creates a magical universe of work using old steel engravings and collectable memorabilia. His 50-year pursuit into the subconscious mind gives him a place in the annals of cinema as a prolific animator on a voyage into the surreal psychology of the inner self.” - Jackie Leger

Helen Levitt
IN THE STREET (1952, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
Helen Levitt's short, lyrical documentary portrait of life in Spanish Harlem. Stealthily shot by Levitt, Janice Loeb, and James Agee.

Willard Maas
GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY (1943, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
“The terrors and splendors of the human body as the undiscovered, mysterious continent.” - W.M.

Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

Jodie Mack is an independent animator, curator, and historian-in-training who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and currently teaches animation at Dartmouth College. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling, the tension between form and meaning. The co-recipient of the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium’s Helen Hill Award, Mack has worked with the Florida Experimental Film and Video Festival, Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Eye and Ear Clinic, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and Chicago’s favorite micro-cinema, The Nightingale. Her 16mm films and music videos have screened at a variety of venues – from backyards, basements, and classrooms to Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center; New York’s School of Visual Arts Theater; and on tour with Ok Go.
“Jodie’s films come from a marvelous, idiosyncratic world full of bright colors, perpetually renewed handcrafted technique, and endless wordplay and song.” –Roger Beebe

THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT (2011, 5 minutes, 16mm)
LILLY (2007, 6 minutes, 16mm)
YARD WORK IS HARD WORK (2008, 28 minutes, 16mm)
HARLEQUIN AND LACE (2009, 5 minutes, 16mm, silent)
POSTHASTE PERENNIAL PATTERN (2010, 4 minutes, 16mm)
RAD PLAID (2010, 6 minutes, 16mm)
UNSUBSCRIBE #1: SPECIAL OFFER INSIDE (2010, 4.5 minutes, 16mm)
UNSUBSCRIBE #2: ALL EYES ON THE SILVER SCREEN (2010, 3 minutes, 16mm x 2, b&w, silent)
UNSUBSCRIBE #3 GLITCH ENVY (2010, 6 minutes, 16mm)
UNSUBSCRIBE #4 THE SADDEST SONG IN THE WORLD (2010, 3 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

Filmed 1964-68; edited 1968-69. “Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it’s a retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don’t get it at all.” –J.M.
“I make home movies – therefore I live. I live – therefore I make home movies.” –from the soundtrack.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Cineric, Inc., and Trackwise.
“The film consists of four parts. The first part contains some footage from my first years in America, 1949-52. The second part was shot in August 1971 in Lithuania. The third part is in Elmshorn, near Hamburg, where I spent eight months in a forced labor camp. The fourth part is in Vienna (1971) with Peter Kubelka, Nitsch, Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs, etc. The film deals with home, memory, and culture.” –J.M.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

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.

A Show for Valentine’s Day, A Collection Of Nine Love Inspired Shorts
For the February installment of the Flaherty NYC monthly screening series, The Flaherty will present A Show for Valentine’s Day, A Collection Of Nine Love Inspired Shorts. There will be a post-screening discussion with various filmmakers, moderated by Flaherty NYC programmer Penny Lane, an independent filmmaker, video artist, educator and writer.

Romantic longings and romantic realities collide in this heartwarming and heartbreaking program of films and videos by Jodie Mack, Jacqueline Goss, Peggy Ahwesh, Bradley Eros, Matt McCormick, Ben Coonley, Alison Kobayashi and more. Who said experimental nonfiction was all brain and no heart? Several filmmakers in attendance!

Honeymoon Hotel (Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter, 1971, 4 min)
This humorous short film features interviews with newlyweds staying in an outrageously furnished hotel in America's honeymoon resort capital, The Poconos.

Sincerely, Joe P. Bear (Matt McCormick, 1999, 4 min)
A love letter from a heartbroken polar bear.

From Alex to Alex (Alison Kobayashi, 2006, 6 mins)
In the fall of 2003 I found a letter on the Winston Churchill Blvd QEW overpass. It was labeled, “From: Alex To: Alex.” This is a film based on the contents of that letter.

Eros c’est Lamour (Bradley Eros and Tim Geraghty, 2008, 8 min)
Dorothy's  l'amour fou evoked in evanescent fragments unexpectedly encountered. The missing link between Rose Hobart and Maria Montez via Rrose Selavy's bride stripped bare by the song of the sarong.

Synchronized Fountain #2, Dubai (Peggy Ahwesh, 2010, 3 min)
This is footage of the famous fountain at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai that I shot in April, 2010 when I was there for the art fair. The song is Amvaj (Waves) by Bijan Mortazavi. I made it as a wedding gift for Penny Lane and Brian Frye.

Valentine for Perfect Strangers (Ben Coonley, 2006, 4 min)
A romantic e-card from Otto, a feral cat seeking love from a stranger on the Internet. Otto edits himself into clips from the 1980’s sitcom Perfect Strangers and asks strangers on YouTube to return the favor.

Tying the Knot (Jacqueline Goss, 2010, 2 min)
More risqué than it seems at first, a short ode to marriage.

Yard Work is Hard Work (Jodie Mack, 2008, 28 min)
An experimental animation and mini-musical that wants also to be a romantic comedy. Using various combinations of 2D cut-out and pixilation, the piece follows a pair of newlyweds as they learn the perils of homeownership and life in general.

People In Order #3: Love (Lenka Clayton and James Price, 2006, 3 min)
48 couples arranged by length of relationship.  From a series of films about human lives shot while touring the UK in a camper van.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

In 1962, hired on the spot by Granada TV founder Sydney Bernstein, Fontaine became the station’s youngest director/producer, beginning his career choreographing lip-synch performances by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and The Beatles for the entertainment program PEOPLE AND PLACES. Soon after, the 23-year-old Fontaine began writing and directing episodes for the groundbreaking current affairs program WORLD IN ACTION, working alongside producer Timothy Hewat and director Mike Hodges to create some of the most fearless and controversial programming ever aired on British TV.

WORLD IN ACTION: ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME (1963, 25 minutes, video)
A controversial portrait of the Tory politician whose appointment by Queen Elizabeth II to Prime Minister in October 1963 made him the last member of the House of Lords to occupy the position. Fontaine’s first film, a wry attack on the feudal Lord, was summarily banned as an unwarranted invasion of privacy by the broadcasting authority.
&
WORLD IN ACTION: VIETNAM (1964, 25 minutes, video. Co-directed by Mike Hodges.)
Fontaine’s and Hodges’s effort to get to the bottom of the Gulf of Tonkin incident took them to Washington, DC, and Vietnam, where they interviewed, among others, members of the State Department including William Fulbright and Bill Bundy. A tough, pure piece of investigative journalism, the film explores the significance of the Tonkin affair and how Lyndon Johnson cheated the American people into escalating the war in Vietnam.
&
MADAM SIX
1965, 45 minutes, video.
An impressionistic, award-winning portrait of 24 hours in the life of a highway – the M6, the longest motorway in the UK. This was the first film produced by Denis Mitchell for a new directors series on Granada titled THIS ENGLAND.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

An evocation of the great British journalist James Cameron’s love affair with Nehru’s India thirty years after its birth. This film marks Fontaine’s break from Granada and inaugurates the important and influential BBC series ONE PAIR OF EYES.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
Distributed by New Yorker Films; special thanks to Jonathan Howell and José Lopez.
Winner of the top award at both the Rotterdam and Buenos Aires Film Festivals, THE SKY TURNS is a sublime contemplation of time, memory, and mortality that evokes such great cinema pastorals as PATHER PANCHALI and THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS. After 35 years, Álvarez returns to her native village, Aldealseñor, in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. They represent the final generation of a people after more than 1,000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills – ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Though her film is intensely personal, Álvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians – they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with stoic, quintessentially Spanish humor. Álvarez’s proxy within the film is her friend Pello Azketa, a painter whose encroaching blindness mirrors the theme of dimming memory. Azketa’s nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region’s austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Álvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.

“Here’s a movie about time, space, and the gaze that connects everything: THE SKY TURNS is essential cinema.” –Diego Lerer, FIPRESCI
“A consummately achieved, lyrical meditation on how to capture things before they’re gone forever.” –Jonathan Holland, VARIETY
“Unprecedented…. Likely to become a classic in the history of documentary filmmaking.” –Dennis West, CINEASTE

A discussion with Dick Fontaine moderated by series programmer Michael Chaiken, highlighted by rare films from Fontaine’s personal archive. Screening this evening will be the largely unseen HEROES (1968), Fontaine’s satiric meditation on celebrity produced by Mike Hodges for ABC’s NEW TEMPO series, along with other surprises including Fontaine’s work with the Maysles brothers.

THE FACE ON THE COVER (1964, 30 minutes, video)
More ‘pop’ iconography unveiled – the life of the world’s top model Jean Shrimpton and her svengali photographer David Bailey, filmed by Albert Maysles.
&
HEROES (1967, 30 minutes, video)
A satire on celebrity with a cacophony of gossip merchants, publicists, and “a host of stars.”
Plus additional surprises!

All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
VISUAL VARIATIONS ON NOGUCHI (1955, 4 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
HURRY! HURRY! (1957, 3 minutes, 16mm)
GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN (1957, 5 minutes, 16mm)
DWIGHTIANA (1959, 3 minutes, 16mm, score by Teiji Ito)
BAGATELLE FOR WILLARD MAAS (1961, 5 minutes, 16mm)
NOTEBOOK (1962-63, 10 minutes, 16mm, silent)
MOOD MONDRIAN (1961, 7 minutes, 16mm, silent)
EYE MUSIC IN RED MAJOR (1961, 4 minutes, 16mm, silent)
ANDY WARHOL (1965, 22 minutes, 16mm)
Marie Menken represents the lyrical sensibility in the American avant-garde film. She manages to get the maximum visual intensity from minimally photogenic subjects. Her usage of single-frame and her poetic attitude and purity had a strong influence on many filmmakers of the sixties.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

When, in 1966, Mike Hodges was made a producer for ABC-UK, he called on Fontaine to assist in filling the station’s necessary quota of weekly arts programming. With a budget at their disposal and little interference from management, Fontaine and Hodges moved to Paris, creating intimate portraits of some of the most radical and innovative artists of the day. Produced for the program TEMPO (later NEW TEMPO), the films were a stylistic departure from Fontaine’s earlier work for Granada. With McLuhan’s influence becoming increasingly pronounced, the end results were often as challenging as the subjects themselves, including, among other works, some of the finest portraits of jazz musicians ever committed to film.

WHO’S CRAZY? AKA DAVID, CHARLIE AND ORNETTE (1966, 30 minutes, video)
A meditation on freedom of expression with three avant-garde musicians under the leadership of composer and multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman. Capturing the trio over two days in Paris as they worked on scoring a Living Theatre project titled “Who’s Crazy”, the film famously contains a complete, uninterrupted, performance of “Sadness”, one of Coleman’s most memorable and enduring compositions.

WHO IS SONNY ROLLINS? (1968, 30 minutes, video)
Portrait of the jazz great during his self-enforced exile from his audience as protest against the war in Vietnam. Filmed playing with students in Harlem, in the countryside, and on the Williamsburg Bridge, Rollins’s melodic sense throughout the film is as probing and soulful as ever.

SOUND?? (1967, 30 minutes, video)
Featuring Roland Kirk and John Cage.
Produced by Mike Hodges for the NEW TEMPO series, SOUND?? is a poetic journey from zoo to anechoic chamber in search of the limits of music with blind musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk and composer John Cage. An attempt to make films against conventional televisual rhetoric, NEW TEMPO began as a series of arguments around a single concept (drugs, expendability, celebrity, etc.) between the filmmakers and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, architect Cedric Price, and poet Al Alvarez. These discussions were later realized as films, with SOUND?? the first of Fontaine’s two contributions to the series.

Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

All films preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
WRESTLING (1964, 8 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
MOONPLAY (1962, 5 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
DRIPS IN STRIPS (1961, 3 minutes, 16mm, silent)
GO! GO! GO! (1962-64, 12 minutes, 16mm, silent)
LIGHTS (1964-66, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
SIDEWALKS (1966, 7 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
EXCURSION (1968, 5 minutes, 16mm)
WATTS WITH EGGS? (1967, 12 minutes, 16mm, silent)
ARABESQUE FOR KENNETH ANGER (1961, 4 minutes, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

“Dick is an extraordinarily deft documentarian. He’s sort of like Zelig. He’d pop up at the most incredible moments with his crew. For instance, I’d be arrested at the Pentagon and thrown into a bus. There was Dick. I’d get out of jail. There was Dick. I ended up with a huge respect for the ability that a documentarian needs. They need all the skills of a top cameraman, all the skills of a top investigative journalist, and all the skills of a ‘Johnny on the Spot’ reporter. Dick had all of these.” –Norman Mailer

WILL THE REAL NORMAN MAILER PLEASE STAND UP?
1968, 60 minutes, video.
The filmed counterpart to Mailer’s Pulitzer-winning nonfiction novel, THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, focusing on his participation in the antiwar protest movement. Mailer, Robert Lowell, and The Fugs (accompanied by a quarter of a million others) attack the Pentagon in October 1967. Mailer goes to jail, is sprung, and recites his sermon on the mount. In addition, the film provides behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Mailer’s second feature film BEYOND THE LAW, an interview conducted by a twenty-something James Toback, and a brilliantly performative appearance by Mailer on THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW.
&
NORMAN MAILER VS. FUN CITY, USA
1970, 50 minutes, video.
A document of Mailer’s 1969 bid for the Mayor’s office in NYC. The author charismatically works the press and the public with a provocative platform that ultimately fails. Co-starring Gloria Steinam as Dulcinea and Jimmy Breslin as Sancho P.

Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

FILMMAKER IN PERSON! NYC PREMIERE OF NEW WORK!
Anthology is delighted to present a program of films by French experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder, featuring several brand-new works which will be enjoying their NYC premiere!
Lowder has been a prolific practitioner of perceptual experiments with 16mm film since the 1970s. She has composed more than 50 films, mostly in and around her home in the beautiful Avignon region of France. Lowder’s breathtaking and carefully composed films explore landscape and cityscape using a unique single-frame structure.
After training as a painter and sculptor in artist studios and art schools in Lima, Lowder worked in London as an artist while earning a living as a film editor. Since 1977 she has been active as a film curator, as well as a filmmaker. In order to make her body of work available to a wider public, she compiled a collection of films and paper documents, The Experimental Film Archive of Avignon (1981). In 1982, she co-founded the experimental film distribution organization, Lightcone, which currently circulates more than 3,500 films throughout Europe and the U.S. Lowder is still active with Lightcone and regularly tours France and Europe as a film curator.
Lowder has not visited the U.S. since the late-80s, and so we are overjoyed to welcome her back for this evening’s program.
“I have shot many reels of film, and I build on my past experience, but each reel covers new ground. To me, a project isn’t interesting if I know exactly what’s going to happen. I could film a flowerpot, but that would be cinematographically totally boring. I want the subject that I’m filming to be living its own life.” –Rose Lowder

LES TOURNESOLS COLORÉS / COLORED SUNFLOWERS (1983, 3 minutes, 16mm, silent)
QUIPROQUO (1992, 13 minutes, 16mm. Music by Katie O’Looney.)
BOUQUETS 1-10 (1994-95, 11.5 minutes, 16mm, silent)
JARDINS DU MARAIS / MARSH GARDENS (2010, 2.5 minutes, 16mm, silent)
FLEUR DE SEL / SEA SALT FLOWER (2010, 32 minutes, 16mm. Music by François Alexis Degrenier)
Total running time: ca. 65 minutes.

BEAT THIS! A HIP HOP HISTORY
1983, 60 minutes, video.
“As indelible original school imagery goes, you can’t beat BEAT THIS! Amongst its brain-staining frames: footage of hip-hop godhead Kool Herc chauffeuring a pair of monstrous speakers through the South Bronx in a Caddy drop top; Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force crashing Gotham’s ozone on the last spaceship from Planet Rock; and the Cold Crush Brothers performing ‘Heartbreakers’ at Danceteria in their wildest punk-rock-rap-inspired attire. But Fontaine’s heavily stylized 1984 BBC production is much more than sci-fi/fantasy-infused eye candy. It is, like the title says, a real historical re-telling of rap’s genesis and evolution, with legendary NYC radio host Gary Byrd providing rhymed narration.” –EGOTRIP MAGAZINE/MAYSLES FILM INSTITUTE

BOMBIN’
1986, 60 minutes, video.
The Bronx founders of hip hop culture carry their message to the ghettos of Britain and find they’re close to home. Co-produced and written with Pat Hartley and members of the hip hop community, including Bronx graffiti writer Brim Fuentes and future drum and bass icon Goldie, then known primarily for his artwork on his Wolverhampton estate.

WORLD DESTRUCTION (1984, 5 minutes, video)
Afrika Bambaataa and Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten anticipate the Apocalypse.

Total running time: ca. 130 minutes.

BETTY CARTER: NEW ALL THE TIME (1994, 18 minutes, video)
The entirely original jazz singer who pushes her brand-new recruits to find a voice of their own.
&
ART BLAKEY: THE JAZZ MESSENGER
1990, 90 minutes, video.
Portrait of inspirational jazz drummer and teacher Art Blakey with Dizzy Gillespie and his pupils Wayne Shorter, the Marsalis Brothers, Terence Blanchard, and a surprising new generation of musicians and dancers. The documentary presents Blakey recruiting promising young musicians, and driving them to their limits on the bandstand.

Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

All films in this program are b&w and silent.
THE CONJUROR / L’ILLUSIONISTE FIN DE SIÈCLE (1899, 1 min, 35mm)
TRIP TO THE MOON / VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (1902, 12 min, 35mm)
THE PALACE OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS / LE PALAIS DES MILLE ET UNE NUITS (1905, 21 min, 35mm)
DELIRIUM IN A STUDIO / ALI BARBOUYOU ALI BOUF À L’HUILE (1907, 5 min, 35mm)
MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN / LES QUATRES CENT FARCES DU DIABLE (1906, 18 min, 35mm)
Magician, master of special effects, Méliès broke with the realistic (Lumière) mode of cinema and celebrated unlimited fantasy and artificiality (in its best sense).
Total running time: ca. 60 min.

DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY (1972, 30 minutes, video)
An evocation of the life and ideas of Soledad Brother George Jackson after his assassination in San Quentin Prison. Produced with the Black Panther Party and featuring Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
&
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
1980, 85 minutes, video. Produced by Pat Hartley.
In 1979, Fontaine moved to NY and formed his own production company, Grapevine Pictures, with his partner and longtime collaborator, writer/director/actress Pat Hartley. Perhaps their most notable production was this collaboration with writer James Baldwin and his brother David about the survivors of the civil rights movement. Re-examining the movement’s ideals twenty years later, this film “charts the post-civil-rights return of James Baldwin to cities of struggle in the South beginning with a central question posed by the author: ‘What has happened to these people? What happened to this country? And what does this mean for the world?’” –The Brecht Forum/Red Channels
&
MALCOLM X: NO SELL OUT (1984, 6 minutes, video)

Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

The films on this program are hand-tinted and silent.
THE CASCADE OF FIRE / LA CASCADE DE FEU (1904, 3 min, 35mm)
A DIABOLICAL TENANT / UN LOCATAIRE DIABOLIQUE (1909, 8 min, 35mm)
THE HUNCHBACK FAIRY / LA FÉE CARABOSSE (1906, 13 min, 35mm)
VOYAGE ACROSS THE IMPOSSIBLE / LE VOYAGE À TRAVERS L’IMPOSSIBLE (1904, 20 min, 35mm)
Total running time: ca. 50 min.

All films in this program are b&w and silent.
EXTRAORDINARY ILLUSIONS / ILLUSIONS FUNAMBULESQUES (1903, 3 min, 16mm)
THE ENCHANTED WELL / LE PUITS FANTASTIQUE (1903, 3 min, 16mm)
THE APPARITION / LE REVENANT (1903, 3 min, 16mm)
TUNNEL UNDER THE CHANNEL / LE TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE (1907, 25 min, 35mm)
SIGHTSEEING THROUGH WHISKY / PAUVRE JEAN OU LES MESAVENTURES D’UN BUVEUR (1909, 5 min, 35mm)
THE DOCTOR’S SECRET / HYDROTHÉRAPIE FANTASTIQUE (1909, 11 min, 35mm)
Total running time: ca. 55 min.

In early 1969, inspired by the post-May ’68 collectivist filmmaking practices of the Dziga Vertov Group and Groupe Medvedkine, Fontaine joined Nic Knowland in the founding of Tattooist International, a loose confederation of filmmakers, cinematographers, and editors working together to produce and distribute newsreels, music films, and underground features.

DOUBLE PISCES, SCORPIO RISING
1970, 45 minutes, video.
Fontaine’s ironic autobiographical film (with real and imagined characters) features music by Pete Townsend and stars Jean Shrimpton, Robert Brownjohn, Norman Mailer, Pat Hartley, and Amanda Lear. Produced by Tattooist, it was one of two British entries to the 1970 New York Film Festival. Described by Times critic Howard Thompson as a “visual rollercoaster”, the film culminates with Fontaine assembling a machine gun atop a Cambridge college. “The audience,” he tells us ominously, “waits for me to begin…” End of cinema, end of the sixties.
&
Yoko Ono
RAPE
1969, 77 minutes, 16mm.
Produced by Tattooist International and shot by Nic Knowland, RAPE follows “the implacable, continuous, and brutal harassment of a girl by a male camera crew” (Tate Modern), played by Eva Majlata, a 21-year-old Hungarian actress who couldn’t speak a word of English. John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a press conference after the film premiered at which John commented: “We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn’t just about The Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam, everywhere.”

Total running time: ca. 130 minutes.

NEW YORK LAW
1989, 60 minutes, video.
The New York court system and the work of public interest lawyers observed largely by watching cases being fought and decided in the court rooms of Brooklyn and The Bronx.
&
HANDSWORTH CALLING: CAN YOU SEE US? (2010, 41 minutes, video)
Executive produced by Dick Fontaine; produced by Gugulethu Mseleku.
For this glimpse of life in a troubled area in modern-day Birmingham, several young residents of the neighborhood – all of whom had participated in the making of Penny Woolcock’s documentary feature 1 DAY – were given the opportunity to create short films themselves, telling stories that provide an insight into their daily lives, hopes, and aspirations.

Plus:
THIS IS WHO I AM – SONNY ROLLINS (work in progress)
A preview of a new portrait – forty years after Fontaine made WHO IS SONNY ROLLINS? – of the life and music of “the unchallengeable old lion of the tenor saxophone” (THE GUARDIAN).

Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

In 1962, hired on the spot by Granada TV founder Sydney Bernstein, Fontaine became the station’s youngest director/producer, beginning his career choreographing lip-synch performances by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and The Beatles for the entertainment program PEOPLE AND PLACES. Soon after, the 23-year-old Fontaine began writing and directing episodes for the groundbreaking current affairs program WORLD IN ACTION, working alongside producer Timothy Hewat and director Mike Hodges to create some of the most fearless and controversial programming ever aired on British TV.

WORLD IN ACTION: ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME (1963, 25 minutes, video)
A controversial portrait of the Tory politician whose appointment by Queen Elizabeth II to Prime Minister in October 1963 made him the last member of the House of Lords to occupy the position. Fontaine’s first film, a wry attack on the feudal Lord, was summarily banned as an unwarranted invasion of privacy by the broadcasting authority.
&
WORLD IN ACTION: VIETNAM (1964, 25 minutes, video. Co-directed by Mike Hodges.)
Fontaine’s and Hodges’s effort to get to the bottom of the Gulf of Tonkin incident took them to Washington, DC, and Vietnam, where they interviewed, among others, members of the State Department including William Fulbright and Bill Bundy. A tough, pure piece of investigative journalism, the film explores the significance of the Tonkin affair and how Lyndon Johnson cheated the American people into escalating the war in Vietnam.
&
MADAM SIX
1965, 45 minutes, video.
An impressionistic, award-winning portrait of 24 hours in the life of a highway – the M6, the longest motorway in the UK. This was the first film produced by Denis Mitchell for a new directors series on Granada titled THIS ENGLAND.
Total running time: ca. 100 minutes.

This screening series celebrates the work of NYWIFT members. Films that are included in the NYWIFT Screening Series must be directed, co-directed, produced, written, edited or shot by women. Whenever possible, the filmmakers are present for discussion and socializing after their works are shown. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue @ 2nd Street.

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.

From traumatized adults to bored teens, this month's line-up of entertaining short films features a brilliant array of genres and styles - a true testament to the diverse talents of NYWIFT members.

Paper Bag Blues, directed by Ralph Patterson Andrea is volunteering for the first time in her adult life on a political campaign. The night is going badly. The campaign is losing. The work is relentless and she’s famished. Rae, a campaign veteran, becomes Andrea's accidental ally in the pursuit of food. Their missions intersect when Andrea submits to the 'dark side' and steals a co-worker's lunch.

Summer with Mrs. Von Mausch, written and directed by David Pomes, produced by Joanna Rudolph Neglected by her divorced father during a visit to New York City, 13 year-old Summer Getty (Molly Learner) develops an unlikely friendship with Claudia Von Mausch (Annie McGreevey), the wealthy, eccentric next door neighbor who is equally bored and lonely. Heartfelt and poignant, Summer's New York City visit is, above all, unforgettable.

Jack & Jill, directed, written and produced by Lorna Ventura, co-produced by Elaine Del Valle, starring Rosa Arredondo  Jill is attractive, successful at her job, and has a beautiful apartment on Central Park South. She seems to have everything going for her. But when she runs into an old colleague, Jack, on a subway platform, she has a horrifying flashback of a traumatic event the two shared 15 years earlier, then is angered to learn that Jack not only seems unaffected by the event, he doesn’t even remember her.  

Boys From Coney Island, written and directed by Julia Suo Three restless teenagers seeking fun and adventure on a hot day in Coney Island get accused of petty theft, which leads to their arrest. The boys proclaim their innocence directly to the camera in this inventive short.
& Laundry, written and directed by Julia Suo
A day in the life of Nick, who helps out his aunt Annie in a East Village N Y Laundromat. The two are confronted with conflicts dealing with difficult and and annoying customers with the regulars at the laundromat; a deaf guy selling postcards, a scatter brain junkie who pesters Nick with repeated questions, the overzealous hip hop artist complaining about his socks not being matched. In the mist of the chaos Nick falls for a young woman trying to get over her breakup with the off screen imprisoned ex boyfriend.

The Dress, produced by Kristen Hester The Dress takes an inside look at one woman's walk down the aisle. The script, inspired by the poem Buoyancy by Rumi, is based on the experiences of more than 400 weddings at Lyndhurst Estate, where Jessica Hester (writer, director and lead actress), worked as a wedding planner for 14 years.  Filled with humor and heart, it explores themes of family, identity and absolute truth.


NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York Council of the Arts and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation.

When, in 1966, Mike Hodges was made a producer for ABC-UK, he called on Fontaine to assist in filling the station’s necessary quota of weekly arts programming. With a budget at their disposal and little interference from management, Fontaine and Hodges moved to Paris, creating intimate portraits of some of the most radical and innovative artists of the day. Produced for the program TEMPO (later NEW TEMPO), the films were a stylistic departure from Fontaine’s earlier work for Granada. With McLuhan’s influence becoming increasingly pronounced, the end results were often as challenging as the subjects themselves, including, among other works, some of the finest portraits of jazz musicians ever committed to film.

WHO’S CRAZY? AKA DAVID, CHARLIE AND ORNETTE (1966, 30 minutes, video)
A meditation on freedom of expression with three avant-garde musicians under the leadership of composer and multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman. Capturing the trio over two days in Paris as they worked on scoring a Living Theatre project titled “Who’s Crazy”, the film famously contains a complete, uninterrupted, performance of “Sadness”, one of Coleman’s most memorable and enduring compositions.

WHO IS SONNY ROLLINS? (1968, 30 minutes, video)
Portrait of the jazz great during his self-enforced exile from his audience as protest against the war in Vietnam. Filmed playing with students in Harlem, in the countryside, and on the Williamsburg Bridge, Rollins’s melodic sense throughout the film is as probing and soulful as ever.

SOUND?? (1967, 30 minutes, video)
Featuring Roland Kirk and John Cage.
Produced by Mike Hodges for the NEW TEMPO series, SOUND?? is a poetic journey from zoo to anechoic chamber in search of the limits of music with blind musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk and composer John Cage. An attempt to make films against conventional televisual rhetoric, NEW TEMPO began as a series of arguments around a single concept (drugs, expendability, celebrity, etc.) between the filmmakers and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, architect Cedric Price, and poet Al Alvarez. These discussions were later realized as films, with SOUND?? the first of Fontaine’s two contributions to the series.

Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

“Dick is an extraordinarily deft documentarian. He’s sort of like Zelig. He’d pop up at the most incredible moments with his crew. For instance, I’d be arrested at the Pentagon and thrown into a bus. There was Dick. I’d get out of jail. There was Dick. I ended up with a huge respect for the ability that a documentarian needs. They need all the skills of a top cameraman, all the skills of a top investigative journalist, and all the skills of a ‘Johnny on the Spot’ reporter. Dick had all of these.” –Norman Mailer

WILL THE REAL NORMAN MAILER PLEASE STAND UP?
1968, 60 minutes, video.
The filmed counterpart to Mailer’s Pulitzer-winning nonfiction novel, THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, focusing on his participation in the antiwar protest movement. Mailer, Robert Lowell, and The Fugs (accompanied by a quarter of a million others) attack the Pentagon in October 1967. Mailer goes to jail, is sprung, and recites his sermon on the mount. In addition, the film provides behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Mailer’s second feature film BEYOND THE LAW, an interview conducted by a twenty-something James Toback, and a brilliantly performative appearance by Mailer on THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW.
&
NORMAN MAILER VS. FUN CITY, USA
1970, 50 minutes, video.
A document of Mailer’s 1969 bid for the Mayor’s office in NYC. The author charismatically works the press and the public with a provocative platform that ultimately fails. Co-starring Gloria Steinam as Dulcinea and Jimmy Breslin as Sancho P.

Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

In early 1969, inspired by the post-May ’68 collectivist filmmaking practices of the Dziga Vertov Group and Groupe Medvedkine, Fontaine joined Nic Knowland in the founding of Tattooist International, a loose confederation of filmmakers, cinematographers, and editors working together to produce and distribute newsreels, music films, and underground features.

DOUBLE PISCES, SCORPIO RISING
1970, 45 minutes, video.
Fontaine’s ironic autobiographical film (with real and imagined characters) features music by Pete Townsend and stars Jean Shrimpton, Robert Brownjohn, Norman Mailer, Pat Hartley, and Amanda Lear. Produced by Tattooist, it was one of two British entries to the 1970 New York Film Festival. Described by Times critic Howard Thompson as a “visual rollercoaster”, the film culminates with Fontaine assembling a machine gun atop a Cambridge college. “The audience,” he tells us ominously, “waits for me to begin…” End of cinema, end of the sixties.
&
Yoko Ono
RAPE
1969, 77 minutes, 16mm.
Produced by Tattooist International and shot by Nic Knowland, RAPE follows “the implacable, continuous, and brutal harassment of a girl by a male camera crew” (Tate Modern), played by Eva Majlata, a 21-year-old Hungarian actress who couldn’t speak a word of English. John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a press conference after the film premiered at which John commented: “We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn’t just about The Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam, everywhere.”

Total running time: ca. 130 minutes.

DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY (1972, 30 minutes, video)
An evocation of the life and ideas of Soledad Brother George Jackson after his assassination in San Quentin Prison. Produced with the Black Panther Party and featuring Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
&
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
1980, 85 minutes, video. Produced by Pat Hartley.
In 1979, Fontaine moved to NY and formed his own production company, Grapevine Pictures, with his partner and longtime collaborator, writer/director/actress Pat Hartley. Perhaps their most notable production was this collaboration with writer James Baldwin and his brother David about the survivors of the civil rights movement. Re-examining the movement’s ideals twenty years later, this film “charts the post-civil-rights return of James Baldwin to cities of struggle in the South beginning with a central question posed by the author: ‘What has happened to these people? What happened to this country? And what does this mean for the world?’” –The Brecht Forum/Red Channels
&
MALCOLM X: NO SELL OUT (1984, 6 minutes, video)

Total running time: ca. 125 minutes.

BEAT THIS! A HIP HOP HISTORY
1983, 60 minutes, video.
“As indelible original school imagery goes, you can’t beat BEAT THIS! Amongst its brain-staining frames: footage of hip-hop godhead Kool Herc chauffeuring a pair of monstrous speakers through the South Bronx in a Caddy drop top; Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force crashing Gotham’s ozone on the last spaceship from Planet Rock; and the Cold Crush Brothers performing ‘Heartbreakers’ at Danceteria in their wildest punk-rock-rap-inspired attire. But Fontaine’s heavily stylized 1984 BBC production is much more than sci-fi/fantasy-infused eye candy. It is, like the title says, a real historical re-telling of rap’s genesis and evolution, with legendary NYC radio host Gary Byrd providing rhymed narration.” –EGOTRIP MAGAZINE/MAYSLES FILM INSTITUTE

BOMBIN’
1986, 60 minutes, video.
The Bronx founders of hip hop culture carry their message to the ghettos of Britain and find they’re close to home. Co-produced and written with Pat Hartley and members of the hip hop community, including Bronx graffiti writer Brim Fuentes and future drum and bass icon Goldie, then known primarily for his artwork on his Wolverhampton estate.

WORLD DESTRUCTION (1984, 5 minutes, video)
Afrika Bambaataa and Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten anticipate the Apocalypse.

Total running time: ca. 130 minutes.

BETTY CARTER: NEW ALL THE TIME (1994, 18 minutes, video)
The entirely original jazz singer who pushes her brand-new recruits to find a voice of their own.
&
ART BLAKEY: THE JAZZ MESSENGER
1990, 90 minutes, video.
Portrait of inspirational jazz drummer and teacher Art Blakey with Dizzy Gillespie and his pupils Wayne Shorter, the Marsalis Brothers, Terence Blanchard, and a surprising new generation of musicians and dancers. The documentary presents Blakey recruiting promising young musicians, and driving them to their limits on the bandstand.

Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

ANTHOLOGY PRESERVATION PREMIERE!
Rudy Burckhardt made more than 100 films over seven decades, but his delirious featurette MONEY is a standout on all counts. Hard to summarize yet extremely easy to enjoy, MONEY features impeccable photography, silent-film-style acting and a marvelously loopy storyline concerning the hazards of wealth and the freedom found in poverty. With a mesmerizing lead performance from legendary dance critic/poet Edwin Denby as billionaire Hemlock Stynge, and text from celebrated artist/poet Joe Brainard, MONEY features appearances by John Ashbery, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, George and Katie Schneeman, and too many others to name. Guaranteed to amuse, MONEY is a restored and rediscovered cult classic straight out of the 1960s New York art and poetry worlds.
“[The film] deals with old Mr. Stynge, the unlovable billionaire, and many other characters, rich and poor. It shows the luxury and degradation of New York City and the simple fresh air of Maine. The story can’t resist slowing up to look at a girl; it skips a few logical links when it gets too complicated. It is being told by a hard-drinking farmer to his son to inspire him to become a billionaire too. The photography is masterful and draws no attention to itself. The text by Joe Brainard, ditto. The documentary sequences show people and buildings on the kind of real life day when you keep finding comedy wherever you look. The characters are all pretty bad, money is the root of evil, and they ought not to enjoy themselves, but they do anyway.” –Edwin Denby

Screening with:
THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK
1948, 21 minutes, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Mid-1940s New York City preserved in luminous black-and-white and saturated color.
“Shows the relation of New Yorkers to their monumental environment, their nervous movement against the solid calm of their architecture, and the almost impossible difference in scale between the two. From crowded midtown it takes you to a quiet suburb, to Times Square at night, and down into the subway.” –Rudy Burckhardt

This program is presented in tandem with the celebratory 60th anniversary exhibit “Tibor de Nagy Gallery Poets and Painters”, opening at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Saturday, January 15 and running through Saturday, March 5. For more information, please visit: www.tibordenagy.com

Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

A benefit screening for Dara Greenwald @ 3pm
Birthday festivities for Dara and Josh @ 4.30pm

All at Anthology Film Archives!
Video Data Dank of Chicago has assembled a 75 min video program called DANCING FOR DARA composed of work by internationally-recognized artists who have donated their work to benefit Dara Dreenwald who is currently battling cancer.

Lineup:
Pink Bloque DANCING IN THE STREET (excerpts) (2003, 6 minutes)
Ben Coonley ONE TRICK PONY (2002, 5 minutes)
Tara Matiek OPERATION INVERT (2003, 12.5 minutes)
Caspar Stracke & Gabriela Monroy KULESHOV SUKIYAKI (2004, 3 minutes)
Melinda Stone & Igor Vamos SUGGESTED PHOTO SPOTS (1997, 10 minutes)
Jim Finn SHARAMBABA (1999, 3 minutes)
Jem Cohen LITTLE FLAGS (2000, 6.5 minutes)
Paul Chan UNTITLED VIDEO ON LYNNE STEWART AND HER CONVICTION, THE LAW AND POETRY (2006, 17.5 minutes)
Dara Greenwald with Ona Mirkinson THE PACKAGE (2010, 12 minutes)

SUGGESTED DONATIONS (cash or check):
$20 for the screening
$30 for the screening and the birthday after-celebration (with drinks and treats!)
$40 for the screening, after-celebration, and a copy of Dara and Josh’s new book SIGNS OF CHANGE (http://www.justseeds.org/josh_macphee/04signsofcha.html <http://www.justseeds.org/josh_macphee/04signsofcha.html> )

RSVPs may be made to rachaelrakes@gmail.com
Special thanks to The Chocolate Room, Brooklyn, for their sweet sweet donation!

Humphrey Jennings
LISTEN TO BRITAIN (1941, 19 minutes, 35mm, b&w)
Jennings’s film is a masterpiece of sound mixing; it creates an audio landscape of Britain during the war, with images both accompanying and conflicting with the multitude of sounds. From the film’s introduction: “I have been listening to Britain. I have heard the sound of her life by day and by night…. In the great sound picture that is here presented, you too will hear that heart beating. For blended together in one great symphony is the music of Britain at war.”
Dimitri Kirsanoff
MÉNILMONTANT (1924-25, 38 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
A melodramatic story of an orphan girl whose seduction is avenged. Early use of hand-held camera, montage, and superimpositions.
Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy
BALLET MÉCANIQUE (1924, 19 minutes, 35mm, b&w, silent)
Preserved by Anthology Film Archives!
A brief exploration of cubist form, black-and-white tonalities, and various vectors through its constant, rapidly cut movements and compositions. Many of the film’s forms and compositions are reflected in – or themselves reflect – forms and compositions in Léger’s famous cubist paintings from the period.
René Clair & Francis Picabia
ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 minutes, 35mm, b&w)
A masterpiece of dada, a feat of cinema magic. Made as an intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scenario by Francis Picabia. Music by Erik Satie.
Total program time: ca. 105 minutes.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

ANTHOLOGY PRESERVATION PREMIERE!
Rudy Burckhardt made more than 100 films over seven decades, but his delirious featurette MONEY is a standout on all counts. Hard to summarize yet extremely easy to enjoy, MONEY features impeccable photography, silent-film-style acting and a marvelously loopy storyline concerning the hazards of wealth and the freedom found in poverty. With a mesmerizing lead performance from legendary dance critic/poet Edwin Denby as billionaire Hemlock Stynge, and text from celebrated artist/poet Joe Brainard, MONEY features appearances by John Ashbery, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, George and Katie Schneeman, and too many others to name. Guaranteed to amuse, MONEY is a restored and rediscovered cult classic straight out of the 1960s New York art and poetry worlds.
“[The film] deals with old Mr. Stynge, the unlovable billionaire, and many other characters, rich and poor. It shows the luxury and degradation of New York City and the simple fresh air of Maine. The story can’t resist slowing up to look at a girl; it skips a few logical links when it gets too complicated. It is being told by a hard-drinking farmer to his son to inspire him to become a billionaire too. The photography is masterful and draws no attention to itself. The text by Joe Brainard, ditto. The documentary sequences show people and buildings on the kind of real life day when you keep finding comedy wherever you look. The characters are all pretty bad, money is the root of evil, and they ought not to enjoy themselves, but they do anyway.” –Edwin Denby

Screening with:
THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK
1948, 21 minutes, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Mid-1940s New York City preserved in luminous black-and-white and saturated color.
“Shows the relation of New Yorkers to their monumental environment, their nervous movement against the solid calm of their architecture, and the almost impossible difference in scale between the two. From crowded midtown it takes you to a quiet suburb, to Times Square at night, and down into the subway.” –Rudy Burckhardt

This program is presented in tandem with the celebratory 60th anniversary exhibit “Tibor de Nagy Gallery Poets and Painters”, opening at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Saturday, January 15 and running through Saturday, March 5. For more information, please visit: www.tibordenagy.com

Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

“RAPT is, paradoxically, both a film which looks back anachronistically toward the silent era and a work which belongs to the vanguard of sound cinema. Part of that paradox can be resolved by an understanding of the film’s complex utilization of music. RAPT employs very little dialogue, and in this respect it is reminiscent of the part-talkie genre…. It is linked to such abstract and hybrid avant-garde works as VAMPYR and L’?GE D’OR. The radical nature of RAPT, however, resides in its vision of a cinematic musical score. In making the film, Kirsanoff worked closely with the composers Honegger and Hoerce.” –Lucy Fisher

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

ANTHOLOGY PRESERVATION PREMIERE!
Rudy Burckhardt made more than 100 films over seven decades, but his delirious featurette MONEY is a standout on all counts. Hard to summarize yet extremely easy to enjoy, MONEY features impeccable photography, silent-film-style acting and a marvelously loopy storyline concerning the hazards of wealth and the freedom found in poverty. With a mesmerizing lead performance from legendary dance critic/poet Edwin Denby as billionaire Hemlock Stynge, and text from celebrated artist/poet Joe Brainard, MONEY features appearances by John Ashbery, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, George and Katie Schneeman, and too many others to name. Guaranteed to amuse, MONEY is a restored and rediscovered cult classic straight out of the 1960s New York art and poetry worlds.
“[The film] deals with old Mr. Stynge, the unlovable billionaire, and many other characters, rich and poor. It shows the luxury and degradation of New York City and the simple fresh air of Maine. The story can’t resist slowing up to look at a girl; it skips a few logical links when it gets too complicated. It is being told by a hard-drinking farmer to his son to inspire him to become a billionaire too. The photography is masterful and draws no attention to itself. The text by Joe Brainard, ditto. The documentary sequences show people and buildings on the kind of real life day when you keep finding comedy wherever you look. The characters are all pretty bad, money is the root of evil, and they ought not to enjoy themselves, but they do anyway.” –Edwin Denby

Screening with:
THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK
1948, 21 minutes, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Mid-1940s New York City preserved in luminous black-and-white and saturated color.
“Shows the relation of New Yorkers to their monumental environment, their nervous movement against the solid calm of their architecture, and the almost impossible difference in scale between the two. From crowded midtown it takes you to a quiet suburb, to Times Square at night, and down into the subway.” –Rudy Burckhardt

This program is presented in tandem with the celebratory 60th anniversary exhibit “Tibor de Nagy Gallery Poets and Painters”, opening at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Saturday, January 15 and running through Saturday, March 5. For more information, please visit: www.tibordenagy.com

Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.