Anthology Film Archives

YVONNE RAINER’S ‘LIVES OF PERFORMERS’
Judson artists themselves were very involved in various mediums, including film. None more so than Yvonne Rainer, who went from choreographer to filmmaker to choreographer again. This screening features her seminal film of a performance of a rehearsal, LIVES OF PERFORMERS, bridging the gap between her extensive performance work and the film work that was soon to follow.

Yvonne Rainer
LIVES OF PERFORMERS
1972, 90 min, 16mm, b&w.
Plus:
Yvonne Rainer
CONNECTICUT REHEARSAL (OF CONTINUOUS PROJECT – ALTERED DAILY)
1969, 40 min,16mm-to-video, b&w. Cinematographer: Michael Fajans.

FALL FEST 2012 BEGINS WITH 7 DAYS OF DOCUMENTARIES, SHORT FILMS, AND FEATURES

FIRST SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Social Issues & Challenges
Jenny Savage & Eric Norcross LANCASTER SQUARE (2010, 5 min, video)
Mario Corry MANIPULATION (2011, 15 min, video)
Joseph Marconi CROTON FALLS (2011, 23 min, video)
Kristina Harris DIMINISHED CHORDS (2011, 30 min, video)

SECOND SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Love & Family
Matt August HOW TO GET TO CANDYBAR  (2012, 15 min, video)
Mario Corry BOLOGNA & LETTUCE  (2012, 11 min, video)
Eric Norcross LIPSTICK LIES  (2012, 26 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Gregg Lachow
CHARLIE AND ME
2012, 70 min, video.
A semi-comic tale of Gregg and his 12-year-old son Charlie who, separated for the first time while Gregg travels alone in Europe, exchange stories of love and desire via Skype.

–Wednesday, October 3, First Short Film Program at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at 7:30, Feature Presentation at 8:45.

These four films all document distinct structures and environments by focusing on qualities of space, time, architecture, and weather. EAST HASTINGS PHARMACY and THE HOME AND THE WORLD also show us the inhabitants of two very different places, a methadone clinic in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side and a live-in care facility in the English countryside for adults with learning disabilities. These places could not be more different, yet the endurance and spirit of the individuals in both situations are documented with a subtle and respectful grace.

Alexandre Larose PORTRAIT DE LA PLACE VILLE MARIE (Canada, 2011, 3 min, 16mm, silent)
Antoine Bourges EAST HASTINGS PHARMACY (Canada, 2011, 46 min, video)
Mike Gibisser THIRD LAW: N. KEDZIE BLVD (USA, 2011, 7 min, 16mm)
Lucy Parker THE HOME AND THE WORLD (UK, 2011, 20 min, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 80 min.

FALL FEST CONTINUES WITH ‘WELCOME TO HARLEM’

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
John Barry CLASSICAL STEEL (2011, 43 min, video)
Tariq Richards AFRICAN DRUM, BEYOND THE BEAT (2012, 48 min, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Julia Suo 528 NEW YORK (2012, 17 min, video)
Lori Nelson UNRAVELED (2011, 20 min, video)
Andrei Enoiu A MISTAKE (2011, 25 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Mark Blackman
WELCOME TO HARLEM
2012, 96 min, video.
A feature-length musical comedy written, directed, produced, drawn, designed, and choreographed entirely by artists living in Harlem, NYC.

–Thursday, October 4, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:45, Feature Presentation at 9:15.

CINEBEASTS PRESENTS:

BRAVE NEW WORLD, SAME OLD SHTICK: CINEMA FROM NEW YORK’S LOWER EAST SIDE
FEATURING FIVE RESTORED ARCHIVAL FILMS FROM THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM

Cinebeasts is a not-for-profit film society that screens unusual films in unusual venues throughout the five Boroughs. Long time fans of Anthology Film Archives, we sought to put together a program that would be “site specific.” Given Anthology’s historic location – 2nd and 2nd – Cinebeasts felt that the films should highlight the Lower East Side’s cinematic heritage.

Before World War II, lower Second Avenue was known as the “Jewish Rialto” – a hotbed of Yiddish-language theaters, cinemas, and amusement halls. In this program, we will revisit the Old Lower East Side during its heyday as the mecca of Jewish culture, highlighting five extraordinary short films, all drawn from the collection of the National Center for Jewish Film, and all restored through their efforts.

The day’s events will include a panel with participants including Eddy Portnoy, Professor of Yiddish Studies at Rutgers University, David Freeland, author of AUTOMATS, TAXI DANCES, AND VAUDEVILLE, and Lisa Rivo from the National Center for Jewish Film.

Special thanks to Sharon Pucker Rivo & Lisa Rivo (National Center for Jewish Film).

Joseph Seiden
I WANT TO BE A BOARDER / ICH VIL ZEYN A BOARDER (1937, 15 min, 35mm, b&w. In Yiddish with English subtitles.)
Edited from outtakes of Joseph Seiden’s feature, I WANT TO BE A MOTHER, this short features AMERICAN MATCHMAKER star Leo Fuchs (“The Yiddish Fred Astaire”) and Yetta Zwerling as a married couple looking to spice up their sex life, tenement-style.

Sidney M. Goldin
A CANTOR ON TRIAL / KHAZAN AFN PROBE (1931, 10 min, 35mm, b&w. In Yiddish with English subtitles.)
Real-life cantor-turned-film star Louis ‘Leibele’ Waldman plays three characters: an Eastern European, a German, and an American “jazz fiend” auditioning for the role of a Downtown synagogue’s newest chazan.

YOSL CUTLER AND HIS PUPPETS / KOTLERS MARIONETN (1935, 18 min, 16mm, b&w. In Yiddish with English subtitles.)
Cartoonist, set designer, artist, and poet, Yosl Cutler was a “Jack-of-all-trades.” This film shows him at the height of his success, as a puppeteer and craftsman whose marionettes provided an artful satire of Yiddish daily life.

Robert Ross
COHEN ON THE TELEPHONE (1929, 9 min, 16mm, b&w. In English.)
At the time of release, stock character ‘Cohen’ had been a fixture in vaudeville and early film for nearly three decades. Here, in one of the earliest sound ‘Cohen’ comedies, our eponymous hero (played by George Sidney) applies his brand of Old World logic to the perplexing New World of telecommunications.

D.W. Griffith
ROMANCE OF A JEWESS (1908, 10 minutes, 16mm, b&w, silent)
Griffith pioneered location shooting with this 1908 short subject. Surreptitiously shot on the streets of the Lower East Side, the film features a combination of Biograph players and honest-to-G-d denizens of the ‘ghetto’.
Total running time: ca. 70 min.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS DOCUMENTARY NIGHT

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Lori Petchers SPIRIT FIGURES (2012, 5 min, video)
Amy Stern MEET ALEX (2012, 7 min, video)
Vika Evdokimenko LET ME GO (2011, 10 min, video)
Julia Doran HOMELESS IN THE HOMELAND (2012, 25 min, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Jonathan Holiff
MY FATHER AND THE MAN IN BLACK
2012, 90 min, 35mm.
The untold story of ‘bad-boy’ Johnny Cash, his talented but troubled manager, Saul Holiff, and a son searching for his father in the shadow of a legend.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Sasha Reuther Brother
BROTHERS ON THE LINE
2012, 80 min, video.
A provocative documentary exploring the legacy of the Reuther brothers, labor and civil rights champions whose leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union transformed the social, economic, and political landscape of a nation.

–Friday, October 5, Documentary Series at 6:00, First Feature at 7:00, Second Feature at 9:00.

THE FLICKER
1966, 30 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with funding provided by The National Film Preservation Foundation.
Mathematical and rhythmical orchestration of white and black frames.
STRAIGHT AND NARROW
1970, 10 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with funding provided by The National Film Preservation Foundation.
A study in subjective color and visual rhythm. Although it is printed on black-and-white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory color effects.
FILM FEEDBACK
1974, 15 min, 16mm, b&w. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with funding provided by The National Film Preservation Foundation.
“Made with a film-feedback team which I directed at Antioch College. Negative image is shot from a small rear-projection screen, the film comes out of the camera continuously (in the dark room) and is immediately processed, dried, and projected on the screen by the team. What are the qualities of film that may be made visible through feedback?” –T.C.
Total running time: ca. 60 min.

(EL ÁRBOL DE GUERNICA)
In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s army met strong resistance from the Basque people as they moved northward. The people of Guernica, poorly equipped, defiantly opposed the Generalissimo, and he answered the challenge by calling in the Nazi Luftwaffe, which wiped out the town. In this environment of desolation and ruthless violence, a pure and sincere love is born from the flames: Goya and Vandale, two lovers who know the blood, hatred, torture, and agony of death.
With:
Robert Hessens & Alain Resnais GUERNICA (1950, 13 min, 35mm, b&w)
Set to a text by poet Paul Éluard and details of Picasso’s epic antiwar painting, GUERNICA is an oddly lyrical call for peace.

Michael is appointed pastor of a socialist town at the time of the uprising of 1936. The town is soon occupied by the Nationalists, and before long the public executions begin. In his struggle to defend the victims, Michael confronts the ecclesiastical and military hierarchy, putting his own life at risk. The young priest finds refuge in his friendship with a village schoolteacher whose husband has been murdered. Based on a true story, the film reveals how the Catholic Church supported the uprising against the Republic.

In 1982, Danspace Project and Bennington College collaborated on “The Judson Project”, a series of performances dedicated to reconstructing Judson-era works with 14 Judson choreographers, including Edward Bhartonn, Remy Charlip, Lucinda Childs, Philip Corner, Brian De Palma, Judith Dunn, Simone Forti, Deborah Hay, Aileen Passloff, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Elaine Summers, and James Waring. The Bennington College Judson Project also filmed interviews with many of the artists that were central to Judson Dance Theater. Danspace Project and Movement Research present a selection of these rarely-seen reconstructions and interviews in a special afternoon screening.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS LATINO & OTHER FILMS

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Sandy Patch EL ULTIMO HIELERO (2012, 15 min, video)
Chloe Smolarski ADMISSIONS (2012, 51 min, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Eliane Lima ALBERTINE (2012, 8 min, video)
David Henry Gerson AMERICAN STANDARD (2012, 13 min, video)
Gabriella Loutfi THE FORGERY (2010, 17 min, video)
Jason Aydelott LIFE WITH SUBTITLES (2012, 22 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Eva Aridjis
LOS OJOS AZULES
2012, 95 min, video.
In this supernatural thriller, a young American couple travel to Chiapas, Mexico on holiday. While there they encounter a shape-shifting witch to whom they are connected through events in the distant past.

–Sunday, October 7, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:15, Feature Presentation at 8:30.

Urkiaga Stephen, known as Lauaxeta, is a poet and journalist who must assume the role of Basque army commander during the siege of the Basque Country. In the ruins of Guernica, the commander Urkiaga watches the flames destroy not only a village, but also all his personal and intimate aspirations.

(LOS NIÑOS DE RUSIA)
During the Civil War, thousands of children were evacuated to various countries to remove them from the sorrows of the conflict. Approximately three thousand were welcomed by the Soviet Union, many of them Basques. Through the testimony of several of these children, now in their seventies, the film chronicles their tumultuous lives. What was originally a temporary evacuation became a long journey, from which many would not return until twenty years later.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS SCI-FI AND HORROR FILMS

FIRST SHORT PROGRAM
Michael Justice FAMILY JUSTICE (2012, 28 min, video)
Michael Rader MAN VS. ULTRAMAN (2011, 40 min, video)

SECOND SHORT PROGRAM
Hilton Ruiz ZOMBIE WITH A SHOTGUN (2012, 5 min, video)
Zoe Calman OTHER GHOSTS (2011, 6 min, video)
Samantha Rivers Cole & Eric Norcross GNARLED HOLLOW ROAD (2011, 6 min, video)
Jonathan Finnigan THE VISITOR (2010, 15 min, 35mm)
Joe Greco SIN DOLOR (2012, 23 min, video)
Marvin Suarez ZOMBIE CHRONICLES: THE INFECTED (2010, 25 min, video)

DOUBLE FEATURE PRESENTATION
Jon Gorman & Tom Seymour
MARK OF THE BEAST
2012, 72 min, video.
This adaptation of the famous horror story by Rudyard Kipling tells the tale of two heroes who lose their way fighting off a silver faceless leper in the woods.

Katie Carman
OFF SEASON
2012, 90 min, video.
Sylvie Stone takes refuge in an isolated beach hideaway after her husband is convicted of financial fraud. Sylvie savors the isolation until she discovers she’s being stalked by a mysterious presence.

–Monday, October 8, First Short Film Program at 6:00, Second Short Film Program at 7:30, Double Feature Presentation at 9:00.

Over three generations, two families in a small valley of Guipúzcoa maintain tortuous relationships, marked by violence and passion. The story begins in Guipúzcoa, in 1875. During a massacre inspired by an out-of-control family feud, an aizcolari (traditional Basque logger) manages to save his life by smearing himself with blood from a dead body and allowing himself to be stacked with the corpses. The sole witness to his escape is a solitary cow, leading to a strange and lasting obession.

(EL ÁRBOL DE GUERNICA)
In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s army met strong resistance from the Basque people as they moved northward. The people of Guernica, poorly equipped, defiantly opposed the Generalissimo, and he answered the challenge by calling in the Nazi Luftwaffe, which wiped out the town. In this environment of desolation and ruthless violence, a pure and sincere love is born from the flames: Goya and Vandale, two lovers who know the blood, hatred, torture, and agony of death.
With:
Robert Hessens & Alain Resnais GUERNICA (1950, 13 min, 35mm, b&w)
Set to a text by poet Paul Éluard and details of Picasso’s epic antiwar painting, GUERNICA is an oddly lyrical call for peace.

Over three generations, two families in a small valley of Guipúzcoa maintain tortuous relationships, marked by violence and passion. The story begins in Guipúzcoa, in 1875. During a massacre inspired by an out-of-control family feud, an aizcolari (traditional Basque logger) manages to save his life by smearing himself with blood from a dead body and allowing himself to be stacked with the corpses. The sole witness to his escape is a solitary cow, leading to a strange and lasting obession.

TONY CONRAD
Tony Conrad returns in-person to Anthology for a stimulating two-night survey of largely unseen and never-before-screened works from his massive back catalog. Active for over five decades, Conrad has found considerable acclaim in the fields of experimental film, video art, contemporary music, and performance. In recent years his fine art work has become more prominent in the gallery and museum world, with exhibits in New York, Germany, and throughout the world. Impossible to pigeonhole and perpetually unpredictable, Conrad is one of the prime agitators of his generation.

In addition to these two evenings, we will be presenting three of Conrad’s works preserved by Anthology in a related Essential Cinema program.

These screenings complement the current exhibit “Tony Conrad: Doing the City”, on view at NYU’s 80WSE gallery, at 80 Washington Square East; for more info, visit: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/

Special thanks to Tony Conrad and Michael Cohen.

BROADCAST & CABLE-ACCESS WORK
Conrad hosts an evening of his video productions made for Buffalo NY cable-access television. Conrad commandeered the airwaves in the 1990s with a program called STUDIO OF THE STREETS and was involved in many other productions made within the Buffalo media community. These collaborative production projects and innovative public-access programs are among Conrad’s least visible works, and deeply deserve further attention. Conrad will offer up his inimitable commentary on a hand-picked selection of clips and episodes.

(LOS NIÑOS DE RUSIA)
During the Civil War, thousands of children were evacuated to various countries to remove them from the sorrows of the conflict. Approximately three thousand were welcomed by the Soviet Union, many of them Basques. Through the testimony of several of these children, now in their seventies, the film chronicles their tumultuous lives. What was originally a temporary evacuation became a long journey, from which many would not return until twenty years later.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS MATT HARRISON’S NEW FEATURE FILM ‘MY LITTLE HOLLYWOOD’

THIRD WORLD NEWSREEL PROGRAM

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Igor Stevanovic WELTSCHMERZ (2011, 4 min, video)
Justin Kulik THIRTY YEARS IN RENO (2012, 10 min, video)
Rob Nguyen THE SHUFFLE (2012, 11 min, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Kathryn Millard
RANDOM 8
2011, 62 min, video.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Matt Harrison
MY LITTLE HOLLYWOOD
2012, 61 min, video.
Humorously and sweetly documents the fantasy world inside the mind of every boy and girl who travels to Hollywood to fulfill their movie dream.

–Thursday, October 11, Special Program at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:30, First Feature at 8:15, Second Feature at 9:30.

TONY CONRAD
Tony Conrad returns in-person to Anthology for a stimulating two-night survey of largely unseen and never-before-screened works from his massive back catalog. Active for over five decades, Conrad has found considerable acclaim in the fields of experimental film, video art, contemporary music, and performance. In recent years his fine art work has become more prominent in the gallery and museum world, with exhibits in New York, Germany, and throughout the world. Impossible to pigeonhole and perpetually unpredictable, Conrad is one of the prime agitators of his generation.

In addition to these two evenings, we will be presenting three of Conrad’s works preserved by Anthology in a related Essential Cinema program.

These screenings complement the current exhibit “Tony Conrad: Doing the City”, on view at NYU’s 80WSE gallery, at 80 Washington Square East; for more info, visit: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/
Special thanks to Tony Conrad and Michael Cohen.

NEW, BUT OLD
Conrad’s archive contains slews of unfinished pieces from earlier days alongside more recent performances still buried on videotapes. Tonight’s show features the unveiling of a plethora of works recently revived by the artist, including documentation of live performances and recently completed short videos. These pieces offer a multi-faceted, frequently hilarious look at a cross-section of Conrad’s incomparable creativity.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS NEW POLISH FILMS AND THEN FILMS ABOUT CRIME

POLISH FILM SERIES
Piotr Zlotorowicz SMOLARZE (2010, 15 min, video)
Rafal Skalski ZAGRAJZEMNA (2010, 30 min, video)
Kuba Czekaj CIEMNEGO POKOJU NIE TZEBA SIE BAC (2010, 36 min, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Dennis Hauck SUNDAY PUNCH (2010, 19 min, 35mm)
Salvatore Pesce STEEL AND GLASS (2010, 28 min, video)
Micki Mihich THE 100TH JOB (2012, 21 min, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Rocco Mesiti
THE JOE BACCALA STORY
2011, 61 min, video.
Using satire and comedy, this faux documentary addresses Hollywood and the mass media’s stereotypical portrayal of Italian-Americans.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Christian Filippella
SILVER CASE
2011, 86 min, video.
In Tinseltown, the world of scheming reaches a nasty low when a powerful producer known as the ‘Senator’ hatches a plan to undermine the future success of the ‘Master’, his shady arch rival. Stars Eric Roberts, Brian Keith Gamble, Claire Falconer, and Seymour Cassel.

–Saturday, October 13, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:30, First Feature at 9:00, Second Feature at 10:15.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS ITS WEB SERIES SHOWCASE AND THE NEW FEATURE ‘PLAYGROUND OF DREAMS

WEB SERIES
Danielle Earle BROOKLYN IS IN LOVE (2012, 26 min, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Alison Chin FISH TANK FANTASY (2011, 3 min, video)
David Liz LUZ (2010, 9 min, video)
Ryan Frost REUNION (2012, 11 min, video)
Dominic Haxton TEENS LIKE PHIL (2012, 20 min, video)
Heather de Michele LACUNA (2011, 30 min, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Shireen Daryadel
PLAYGROUND OF DREAMS
2011, 88 min, video.
A story about a doctor who finds a mysterious book of matches that leads him to an underground tavern off of Angel Island in San Francisco.

–Sunday, October 14, Web Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:30.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

Team is pleased to present the U.S. premiere of a new feature film by Sam Samore. Mirror of Happiness, 2012 (85 minutes) is a fragmented fairy tale about love and the longing for community, situated at a time of global recession.

The artist will be present. The screening will be open to the public. Space is limited.
For tickets, RSVP to: jessica@teamgal.com or (212) 279 9219.

For more information, please visit: http://teamgal.com/exhibitions/250

Judson had an impact much larger than its three year existence would suggest. Many artists were deeply influenced by the ground broken by JDT, either directly or indirectly. This screening looks at work that bears the imprint of Judson but moves beyond the boundaries of that seminal period.

Steve Paxton
FALL AFTER NEWTON
1987, 23 min, video.
A sweeping look at 11 years of practice of Contact Improvisation by Nancy Stark Smith and Steve Paxton. The progression from its beginnings in 1972 through successive years of performances up to 1983 shows one strand of the development of this multifaceted duet dance form.
&
CHANNEL Z
1986, 20 min, video. Live performance excerpt, PS 122, Feb 2, 1986.
Channel Z (1982-90) was a collaborative improvisation group that initially formed out of a series of dance sessions organized by Robin Feld for people who were teaching Contact Improvisation in NYC. Featuring: Paul Langland, Daniel Lepkoff, Diane Madden, Nina Martin, and Randy Warshaw.
&
Richard Rutkowski
THE SPACE IN BACK OF YOU
2011, 65 min, digital video.
This highly visual and visceral documentary investigates the creative life of Suzushi Hanayagi, a powerful, innovative, even radical Japanese dancer and choreographer. For over 20 years she was a close collaborator with and major influence on theater legend Robert Wilson, who referred to her simply as “my teacher”. When Wilson discovers Hanayagi living in an old-age home and suffering from Alzheimer’s, Wilson resolves to work with her once again. Poignant witness to the transition of a life from vibrancy to legacy, this film becomes the final collaboration between a great teacher and her most renowned student.
Total running time: ca. 115 minutes.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
FILMMAKER IN PERSON FOR OPENING NIGHT SCREENINGS, AND FOR THE 7:00 SCREENINGS ON SAT & SUN, OCT 13 & 14!

Ben Rivers renewed his relationship with Jake Williams, a man living in a decrepit house in the Scottish Highlands who had served as the subject of his earlier short film, THIS IS MY LAND (2006), in this feature-length exploration of solitude and the present’s slow crawl into the future. Situated squarely within what seems to be the perfect environment for his sensibility and temperament, Jake goes about his daily routine across the four seasons in the near-complete absence of any human ties, with Rivers’s camera functioning as the lone connection between him and the world beyond his self-imposed isolation. Rivers’s use of anamorphic monochrome 16mm film stock emphasizes Jake’s resistance to the forward march of time, and the patient, uncritical perspective presented in TWO YEARS AT SEA enables Jake to come into focus as an individual who leads his life exactly as he chooses, and as a weathered object moving resolutely against the temporal current.

“[T]his richly gradated black-and-white wide-screen feature pulls you in instantly with its beautiful opening image of a man trudging through the snow, his back to the camera. In time he reaches a house where he lives in solitude, save for the chirping birds and an indoor cat. For 86 minutes [Jake] walks, bathes, cooks, reads, floats on a crude raft and picks through miscellaneous detritus, including photos, with only an occasional incomprehensible murmur. …
“If you want to know what it all means, in the conventional sense of those words, Mr. Rivers won’t oblige. … He doesn’t need to:…interpreting [the film] is far less important (or necessary) than watching it, experiencing the film as it happens instead of trying to wrest meaning from it. What counts is the fog that wreathes the trees, the bloody folk song that the man plays on a record player, the slight pulsing quality of the images and the way that another person’s seclusion can feel like an oasis.” – Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES

(MARCIDES)
The central character in MERCEDES, a surrealist comedy satirizing the political and social strains tearing at Egyptian society, is a misfit named Noubi. The product of a secret liaison between his wealthy mother, Warda, and an African diplomat, Noubi is raised as a Christian and grows up not knowing his true paternity.
THE SCREENING ON THURS, OCT 18 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

(EL MADINA)
Frustrated with life as a butcher’s assistant and living under his father’s thumb, Ali (Bassem Samra) heads for Paris, only to discover that the only work he can get as an illegal immigrant is as a boxer in rigged fights. Nasrallah uses melodrama to depict life in Cairo, and Neorealist grit for Paris – his mix of genres makes for a film as amiable as its hero.
THE SCREENING ON FRI, OCT 19 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Set on the fringe of society in a remote part of the countryside, CURLING takes a keen look at the unusual private life of a father and his daughter. Between his unremarkable jobs, Jean-François Sauvageau (Emmanuel Bilodeau) devotes an awkward energy to Julyvonne (Philomène Bilodeau), until ultimately the fragile balance of their relationship is jeopardized.

(MARCIDES)
The central character in MERCEDES, a surrealist comedy satirizing the political and social strains tearing at Egyptian society, is a misfit named Noubi. The product of a secret liaison between his wealthy mother, Warda, and an African diplomat, Noubi is raised as a Christian and grows up not knowing his true paternity.
THE SCREENING ON THURS, OCT 18 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

(LES ÉTATS NORDIQUES)
Christian has committed a crime, a crime of compassion. A troubled soul, he must now flee not only the law, but the deep ethical consequences of his act. The path he sets upon leads him to where all roads end: a small community by the name of Radisson, 1500km north of Montreal. Slowly, he starts his life anew, among his new neighbours, a new job, a new interest in life. His story drifts along between fiction and reality….

Although Nasrallah’s first film was feature-length (SUMMER THEFTS), only one year later he directed two short films (ONE DAY WITH YOUSSEF CHAHINE & THE EXTRA). Seventeen years later, he directed a segment in the feature-length film 18 DAYS, in which ten different filmmakers made short films in response to the first wave of the Egyptian revolution. The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, where Egypt was the guest of honor. The program will include these three rarely seen short works by Nasrallah.
ONE DAY WITH YOUSSEF CHAHINE (1994)
THE EXTRA (1994)
OBJET TROUVÉ SUR UN TOURNAGE (2010)
Part of the exhibition “Brune/Blonde” at the Cinémathèque Française.
INTERIOR/EXTERIOR (2011)
PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

(NOS VIES PRIVÉES)
After a lengthy virtual relationship over the Internet, Milena and Philip take the plunge and agree to finally meet. Having lived in Montreal for over a decade, Milena, an immigrant of Bulgarian descent, accepts to greet her correspondent Philip, a flirtatious photographer from Sofia. Out in an isolated cottage in Quebec’s countryside, the couple abandon themselves to one another. Between periods of cultural clashes and carnal pleasures, the two assess each other and the possibilities for true love. But strange, uncanny events soon disrupt Milena and Philip’s quiet intimacy as secrecy and silence slowly set in.

(BAB EL SHAMS)
Nasrallah’s powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury’s epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society, and the refugees’ often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, GATE OF THE SUN spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.
THE SCREENING ON SAT, OCT 20 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Jean-Paul Colmor is a 74-year-old man who has been collecting cars, wrecks, and junk for the last 40 years. Living among mountains of debris, he quietly works all day on his unimaginable property, furnishing and dealing car parts to mechanics and other iron aficionados. Colmor occupies the center of what at first appears to be a straightforward, if unusually hypnotic, documentary portrait. But when four intruders materialize in his strange paradise, CARCASSES reveals itself as a hybrid creature, using documentary and fictional elements in an attempt to get at the soul of an unthinkable place.

(ELLE VEUT LE CHAOS)
On a stretch of back road, in a thoroughly isolated village, an ex-Mafiosi and his rebellious daughter-in-law, Coralie, try to find solutions to their dead-end lives, especially their chronic financial problems. Desperate, deeply affected by the recent death of the woman who was wife/mother to them, and surrounded by menacing thugs, the pair look for a way out: peace of mind for him, freedom and a new life for her…

(BAB EL SHAMS)
Nasrallah’s powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury’s epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society, and the refugees’ often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, GATE OF THE SUN spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.
THE SCREENING ON SAT, OCT 20 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

Set on the fringe of society in a remote part of the countryside, CURLING takes a keen look at the unusual private life of a father and his daughter. Between his unremarkable jobs, Jean-François Sauvageau (Emmanuel Bilodeau) devotes an awkward energy to Julyvonne (Philomène Bilodeau), until ultimately the fragile balance of their relationship is jeopardized.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON OPENING WEEKEND!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

(SOBYAN WA BANAT)
With his leading protagonist and friend, Bassam Samra, Nasrallah takes us on an exquisite tour of a subject normally overdramatized by the West. Taking the debate beyond the simplistic approach, and with a familiarity rarely seen, young men and women talk about the ‘hijab’ and its social implications.
THE SCREENING ON SUN, OCT 21 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

(LES ÉTATS NORDIQUES)
Christian has committed a crime, a crime of compassion. A troubled soul, he must now flee not only the law, but the deep ethical consequences of his act. The path he sets upon leads him to where all roads end: a small community by the name of Radisson, 1500km north of Montreal. Slowly, he starts his life anew, among his new neighbours, a new job, a new interest in life. His story drifts along between fiction and reality….

(EL MADINA)
Frustrated with life as a butcher’s assistant and living under his father’s thumb, Ali (Bassem Samra) heads for Paris, only to discover that the only work he can get as an illegal immigrant is as a boxer in rigged fights. Nasrallah uses melodrama to depict life in Cairo, and Neorealist grit for Paris – his mix of genres makes for a film as amiable as its hero.
THE SCREENING ON FRI, OCT 19 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON OPENING WEEKEND!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

(NOS VIES PRIVÉES)
After a lengthy virtual relationship over the Internet, Milena and Philip take the plunge and agree to finally meet. Having lived in Montreal for over a decade, Milena, an immigrant of Bulgarian descent, accepts to greet her correspondent Philip, a flirtatious photographer from Sofia. Out in an isolated cottage in Quebec’s countryside, the couple abandon themselves to one another. Between periods of cultural clashes and carnal pleasures, the two assess each other and the possibilities for true love. But strange, uncanny events soon disrupt Milena and Philip’s quiet intimacy as secrecy and silence slowly set in.

(SARIKAT SAYFEYAH)
Set in the summer of 1961 during Nasser’s land reforms, SUMMER THEFTS is the story of a childhood friendship between the son of a bourgeois landowner and the son of an Egyptian peasant. Their relationship intensifies in adulthood, but the two are separated as one becomes a journalist in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and the other leaves for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Nasrallah’s SUMMER THEFTS is one of the first films to examine the effects this period had on both the bourgeoisie and the peasants of Egypt during this turbulent time.
THE SCREENING ON MON, OCT 22 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

(SARIKAT SAYFEYAH)
Set in the summer of 1961 during Nasser’s land reforms, SUMMER THEFTS is the story of a childhood friendship between the son of a bourgeois landowner and the son of an Egyptian peasant. Their relationship intensifies in adulthood, but the two are separated as one becomes a journalist in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and the other leaves for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Nasrallah’s SUMMER THEFTS is one of the first films to examine the effects this period had on both the bourgeoisie and the peasants of Egypt during this turbulent time.
THE SCREENING ON MON, OCT 22 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON OPENING WEEKEND!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

(ELLE VEUT LE CHAOS)
On a stretch of back road, in a thoroughly isolated village, an ex-Mafiosi and his rebellious daughter-in-law, Coralie, try to find solutions to their dead-end lives, especially their chronic financial problems. Desperate, deeply affected by the recent death of the woman who was wife/mother to them, and surrounded by menacing thugs, the pair look for a way out: peace of mind for him, freedom and a new life for her…

(GENENET AL ASMAK)
Youssef is a hotshot anesthesiologist who often sleeps in his car for privacy. Laila (Hend Sabri) is the careerist host of a late night radio call-in show. These two members of Cairo’s elite, lost souls traveling parallel paths of longing and disconnection, are the principal fish in THE AQUARIUM, a meditation on the intellectual capital of the Middle East, now bent under the sway of repression in all its forms.
THE SCREENING ON TUES, OCT 23 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

Jean-Paul Colmor is a 74-year-old man who has been collecting cars, wrecks, and junk for the last 40 years. Living among mountains of debris, he quietly works all day on his unimaginable property, furnishing and dealing car parts to mechanics and other iron aficionados. Colmor occupies the center of what at first appears to be a straightforward, if unusually hypnotic, documentary portrait. But when four intruders materialize in his strange paradise, CARCASSES reveals itself as a hybrid creature, using documentary and fictional elements in an attempt to get at the soul of an unthinkable place.

(SOBYAN WA BANAT)
With his leading protagonist and friend, Bassam Samra, Nasrallah takes us on an exquisite tour of a subject normally overdramatized by the West. Taking the debate beyond the simplistic approach, and with a familiarity rarely seen, young men and women talk about the ‘hijab’ and its social implications.
THE SCREENING ON SUN, OCT 21 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON OPENING WEEKEND!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

(GENENET AL ASMAK)
Youssef is a hotshot anesthesiologist who often sleeps in his car for privacy. Laila (Hend Sabri) is the careerist host of a late night radio call-in show. These two members of Cairo’s elite, lost souls traveling parallel paths of longing and disconnection, are the principal fish in THE AQUARIUM, a meditation on the intellectual capital of the Middle East, now bent under the sway of repression in all its forms.
THE SCREENING ON TUES, OCT 23 WILL BE PRESENTED BY YOUSRY NASRALLAH!

Jean-Paul Colmor is a 74-year-old man who has been collecting cars, wrecks, and junk for the last 40 years. Living among mountains of debris, he quietly works all day on his unimaginable property, furnishing and dealing car parts to mechanics and other iron aficionados. Colmor occupies the center of what at first appears to be a straightforward, if unusually hypnotic, documentary portrait. But when four intruders materialize in his strange paradise, CARCASSES reveals itself as a hybrid creature, using documentary and fictional elements in an attempt to get at the soul of an unthinkable place.

Donigan Cumming hails from Montreal where he moves feverishly between visual mediums in his ongoing exploration of the body, truth, and what constitutes fiction. For more than 30 years his work has challenged our ingrained notions of representation, the boundaries that an artist must respect, and the complicit role played by the audience as witness. At times darkly funny, and very often unsettling, Cumming’s work tackles ‘realism’ with a skeptical, unflinching eye. He is not afraid to focus on the abject, and in doing so makes us confront that which we so willingly choose to ignore.

Cumming writes that: “This two-night program is chronological and traces my relationship with one figure, Colin Kane. One could call it a tribute to Colin, though he would not, having not a shred of sentimentality about our time together. The intensity of my relationship with Colin raises issues that the audience might wish to discuss. The tapes that I made with Colin raise many other social and political issues as well.”

“Using photography, light, sound recordings, and installation, Cumming tells stories with an acute, disturbing, shocking, and in the eyes of some people, even scandalous, realism. Nettie, Albert, Brenda, Pierre, Colin…are temperamental angels fallen from heaven. They play at being terribly true to character and, whilst being distanced actors of their own lives, their voices, their faces, and their bodies are exposed to the extreme. The encounters Cumming orchestrates with them are dizzying.” –VISIONS DU RÉEL FESTIVAL

The Donigan Cumming screenings are co-presented by Video Data Bank; special thanks to Brigid Reagan Balcom. For more info, visit www.vdb.org

PROGRAM 1:
AFTER BRENDA
1997, 41 min, video.
Cumming’s abject hero is Pierre, a fifty-something male who has lost everything in the name of love. He is homeless and adrift, an unwanted guest with nothing to offer but a tale.

ERRATIC ANGEL
1998, 50 min, video.
In his 50th year, Colin looks back on a life of drug and alcohol abuse. Four years into recovery, he is angry and articulate about addiction, treatment, and the romance of the street. In the chaos and claustrophobia of the ice storm, Colin waits to be reborn. His erratic angel is late.
Total running time: ca. 95 min.

NEW YORK THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN! FILMMAKER IN PERSON OPENING WEEKEND!

Distributed by KimStim.
Anthology presents the week-long NYC premiere run of the new film by Denis Côté, who will be the subject of a simultaneous retrospective. Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Côté’s mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. Filmed at Quebec’s Parc Safari, and a striking departure from Côté’s earlier work, it’s a movie about looking – it starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal – that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is pure cinema.

“For his new film, Côté, one of today’s most visionary and consistently surprising filmmakers – not to mention one of Canada’s greatest cinematic talents – took inspiration from the bestiarum vocabulum, a medieval illuminated manuscript comprised of ornate animal drawings, with each ‘beast’ accompanied by a moral lesson that suggested the animal’s place and meaning in the world. Côté’s BESTIAIRE is itself not unlike an illustrated book, unfolding with vivid tableaux of magnificent hyenas, buffalo, cows, lumbering rhinoceroses, thrashing zebras, and other beautiful beasts, captured by a camera whose gaze is often disarmingly returned. […] Côté’s sober yet striking cinematic inquiry – ‘documentary’ and ‘essay’ are ill-fitting terms for the film – visually recalls the backlit photographs of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, and leaves ample room for musing on the complex and deeply mysterious exchange between animals and humans, between art and representation.” –Andrea Picard, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Born in 1942, during the American occupation of the Philippines, Tahimik is best known for this remarkable, uncategorizable, and entirely unique film, a semi-autobiographical fable that tells the story of his awakening to, and reaction against, American cultural colonialism.

“Tahimik is a disciple of Werner Herzog, and it shows in his stylized landscape shots and his general attitude of sentimental recidivism. But he has a much better eye for visual metaphor than his mentor, and his film is full of surprising, strong images, both poetic and satirical. Made for $10,000, the film is a model of resourcefulness, using film scraps, documentary footage, and postdubbed sound in an original, appealing mix.” –Dave Kehr, CHICAGO READER

Donigan Cumming hails from Montreal where he moves feverishly between visual mediums in his ongoing exploration of the body, truth, and what constitutes fiction. For more than 30 years his work has challenged our ingrained notions of representation, the boundaries that an artist must respect, and the complicit role played by the audience as witness. At times darkly funny, and very often unsettling, Cumming’s work tackles ‘realism’ with a skeptical, unflinching eye. He is not afraid to focus on the abject, and in doing so makes us confront that which we so willingly choose to ignore.

Cumming writes that: “This two-night program is chronological and traces my relationship with one figure, Colin Kane. One could call it a tribute to Colin, though he would not, having not a shred of sentimentality about our time together. The intensity of my relationship with Colin raises issues that the audience might wish to discuss. The tapes that I made with Colin raise many other social and political issues as well.”

“Using photography, light, sound recordings, and installation, Cumming tells stories with an acute, disturbing, shocking, and in the eyes of some people, even scandalous, realism. Nettie, Albert, Brenda, Pierre, Colin…are temperamental angels fallen from heaven. They play at being terribly true to character and, whilst being distanced actors of their own lives, their voices, their faces, and their bodies are exposed to the extreme. The encounters Cumming orchestrates with them are dizzying.” –VISIONS DU RÉEL FESTIVAL

The Donigan Cumming screenings are co-presented by Video Data Bank; special thanks to Brigid Reagan Balcom. For more info, visit www.vdb.org

PROGRAM 2:
if only I
2000, 35 min, video.
Colleen’s life, in her own words, has been “wretched.” She was sexually abused by her father, betrayed by her husband, separated from her children, driven by her love for a heroin addict to attempted suicide. Colleen has survived by taking responsibility for her decisions and dreaming of a safer place.

MY DINNER WITH WEEGEE
2001, 36.5 min, video.
Cumming weaves together two life stories. Marty, once a Catholic labor organizer and peace activist, recalls his friendships with David Dellinger, the Berrigan brothers, Bayard Rustin, Weegee, and James Agee. The other story is Cumming’s in his fifty-fourth year, as he examines his own radicalism in light of the “dirty wheezing beacon” up ahead.

FOUNTAIN (2005, 22 min, video)
In a string of moments with the people who have presented themselves to Cumming’s camera for over twenty years, FOUNTAIN allows the accidental and the absurd to dominate our impressions. Storytelling is evacuated in the process.

3 (2007, 3.75 min, video)
Men asleep, a dream, play, a song; angel and snow, wings and flowers, money and trees; fast then slow, piano decays, laughter.

Total running time: ca. 100 min.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Set in a tiny Philippine village, TURUMBA focuses on one family who traditionally made papier-maché animals to sell during the Turumba festivities. One year, a department store buyer shows up in town and purchases all their stock. When she returns with an order for 500 more (this time with the word “Oktoberfest” painted on them), the family’s seasonal occupation becomes year-round alienated labor.

“[Tahimik again] makes canny use of the accidental and the available, turning junk-littered reality into art the same way that the Filipinos turn the detritus of industrialism into handicrafts. […] TURUMBA’s style is ingenuous [but] the film’s vision of the conflicts inherent in progress on Western and capitalist terms is anything but innocent.” –Pat Aufderheide, CHICAGO READER

Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

SOME MORE RICE (2000, 20 min, video)
Tahimik narrates a story about cultivating rice in Japan and the Philippines by quoting from Kurosawa’s THE SEVEN SAMURAI.

BUBONG! (Roofs of the World! UNITE!) (2006, 20 min, video)
Tahimik finds traces of memories in the ashes of his burnt-down house and challenges himself to build a new roof.

OUR FILM-GRIMAGE TO GUIMARAS / DALAWANG ATANG AT ISANG PASALUBONG (2005, 10 min, video)
Tahimik heads to Guimaras, the island that was the site of a catastrophic 2,000-ton oil spill. He travels around the island hoping to cure (or console) the damaged natural beauty.

ORBIT 50: LETTERS TO MY 3 SONS (1990-92, 17 min, video)
To celebrate his 50th birthday, Tahimik creates 95 video letters for his three sons.

CELEBRATING THE YEAR 2021, TODAY (1995, 20 min, video)
Tahimik initiates a tree-planting project to commemorate the Filipino man, Enrique, who traveled around the world as Magellan’s slave.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Made by re-editing separate films, WHY IS YELLOW THE MIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW? (I AM FURIOUS…YELLOW) became a three-hour-long movie composed of nine chapters, including the epilogue. It depicts the history of the Philippines through home videos, archival footage, and reenactments.

“Perhaps because of its length, WHY IS YELLOW is criminally underseen, and therefore, severely underrated. The film, which is effectively Tahimik’s account of his personal life from 1981 to 1993, is perhaps the most personal work of the director whose films are intimately intertwined with him, his history, and his beliefs. … Shot and presumably made without any script or creative intervention, the film evokes a sense of personal, cultural, and national histories unfolding through the eyes of an active participant.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

An absolute masterpiece from one of the most inspiring innovators of modern cinema.
“Original 1905 film shot and probably directed by G.W. ‘Billy’ Bitzer, rescued via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of Congress. It is most reverently examined here, absolutely loved, with a new movie, almost as a side effect, coming into being.” –K.J.

AVANT-GARDE MASTERS: A DECADE OF PRESERVATION
The Avant-Garde Masters grant was created in 2003 by the National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation to preserve American Avant-Garde cinema. Funded by The Film Foundation, the program has helped save more than 100 films in its first decade, making many works available to audiences for the first time since their creation. Works preserved thus far run the gamut from canonical classics to handmade efforts by artists deserving a second look. These three programs present a consistently surprising selection of films from a number of archives, including Anthology.

All films were preserved through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Jeff Lambert (NFPF), Christa Grauer, Chicago Filmmakers, Patrick Friel, Gerd Stern (Intermedia Foundation), David Joel (Larry Rivers Foundation), Mona Nagai & Jon Shibata (Pacific Film Archive), and Silver Bow Art.

PROGRAM 1:
Larry Rivers
TITS
1969, 60 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Larry Rivers Foundation.
“The first film I made after my African adventure was a documentary on breasts. As the film evolved, it grew to include the chests of Mongolian wrestlers and women of all ages, their bodies and thoughts on their bodies, and many men, including my twenty-four-year-old son Steven, wearing falsies on his hairy chest in quest of the perfect bosom. Even the milk bags and udders of cows, dogs, and sheep found their way into the film, which I called TITS, and which couldn’t have been a redder flag to flap during the cultural wave of feminism.” –Larry Rivers
&
Gerd Stern Y (1963, 12 min, 16mm. Preserved by the Intermedia Foundation. Made in collaboration with Ivan Majdrakoff and Michael Callahan.)
Images of painted lines on the highway intersect with the human body in the most mesmerizing of ways in this award-winning, scandal-provoking short by one of the 1960s premiere artist collectives.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

WHO INVENTED THE YOYO? WHO INVENTED THE MOON BUGGY?
“[S]et in fictional Yodel Ville, with Tahimik, no longer the same jeepney driver of PERFUMED NIGHTMARE but a character that is closer to the real man, spending time with children in his mission to launch a chicken to space via a makeshift vessel. … Without taking away from the unique delights of seeing a grown man treating toddlers as equals in discussions that should not make sense but actually do, the film, while utilizing the often inane resourcefulness of Tahimik’s character as a wellspring for comedy, proposes that it is that trait, arguably endemic to Filipinos, that is the secret ingredient to genius.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

All films preserved with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
THE NAKED AND THE NUDE (1957, 36 min, 8mm-to-16mm blow-up, sound on CD)
The oldest surviving Kuchar mini-epic, this patriotic WWII period piece (made by high schoolers) chronicles the desires and destinies of carnal appetites on the front line.
“Big…Rousing…Memorable! The incredible war saga of our own boys in a Jap-infested jungle in the Botanical Gardens. Hear Lloyd Thorner sing the title song. You’ll come out whistling from both ends.” –G.K.
PUSSY ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1961, 14 min, 8mm-to-16mm blow-up, sound on CD)
“It glows with the embers of desire! It smokes with the revelation of men and women longing for robust temptations that will make them sizzle into maturity with a furnace-blast of unrestrained animalism. A film for young and old to enjoy.” –G.K.
BORN OF THE WIND (1962, 24 min, 8mm-to-16mm)
Preserved by Anthology through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by the Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Special thanks to Cineric, Inc.
“A tender and realistic story of a scientist who falls in love with a mummy he has restored to life… 2,000 years as a mummy couldn’t quench her thirst for love!” –G.K.
TOOTSIES IN AUTUMN (1963, 15 min, 8mm-to-16mm blow-up, sound on CD)
Mike’s cautionary tale about past-their-prime thespians caught up in a typically Kucharian vortex of madness.
Total running time: ca. 95 min.

Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

JAPANESE SUMMERS OF A FILIPINO FUNDOSHI
1996, 41 min, 16mm.
Tahimik spends a summer in Japan, working on several projects in a traditional Filipino costume that resembles the Japanese Fundoshi. He explains, with affection for the next generation, the custom and spirit of the Fundoshi.
&
MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT
1980-2011, 33 min, video.
“Perhaps one of the greatest films that will probably never get made is Tahimik’s account of the first circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, Magellan’s Filipino slave. MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT, a thirty minute collection of scenes from what could have been the film, is, for the moment, the closest the world will ever get to the non-existent film.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

AVANT-GARDE MASTERS: A DECADE OF PRESERVATION
The Avant-Garde Masters grant was created in 2003 by the National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation to preserve American Avant-Garde cinema. Funded by The Film Foundation, the program has helped save more than 100 films in its first decade, making many works available to audiences for the first time since their creation. Works preserved thus far run the gamut from canonical classics to handmade efforts by artists deserving a second look.

All films were preserved through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program funded by The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Jeff Lambert (NFPF), Christa Grauer, Chicago Filmmakers, Patrick Friel, Gerd Stern (Intermedia Foundation), David Joel (Larry Rivers Foundation), Mona Nagai & Jon Shibata (Pacific Film Archive), and Silver Bow Art.

Frank Stauffacher
NOTES ON THE PORT OF ST. FRANCIS (1951, 21 min, 16mm. Preserved by Pacific Film Archive.)
A poetic portrait of San Francisco narrated by Vincent Price.

Rudy Burckhardt
THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK (1948, 21 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.)
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.” –R.B.

Beryl Sokoloff
GAUDI (1962, 14 min, 16mm. Preserved by Silver Bow Art.)
Sokoloff’s cinematic homage to the architect, Antonio Gaudi. The filmmaker intertwines Gaudi’s fantastic forms with the vital streets of Barcelona creating a poetic tension and visual excitement.

Tom Palazzolo
HE (1966, 8 min, 16mm. Preserved by Chicago Filmmakers.)
Men are strange creatures. This film follows a few of them, including an Abe Lincoln look-alike, and a nudist swimmer in January.

Total running time: ca. 70 min.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Set in a tiny Philippine village, TURUMBA focuses on one family who traditionally made papier-maché animals to sell during the Turumba festivities. One year, a department store buyer shows up in town and purchases all their stock. When she returns with an order for 500 more (this time with the word “Oktoberfest” painted on them), the family’s seasonal occupation becomes year-round alienated labor.

“[Tahimik again] makes canny use of the accidental and the available, turning junk-littered reality into art the same way that the Filipinos turn the detritus of industrialism into handicrafts. […] TURUMBA’s style is ingenuous [but] the film’s vision of the conflicts inherent in progress on Western and capitalist terms is anything but innocent.” –Pat Aufderheide, CHICAGO READER

FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
An icon whose renown reverberates well outside the small world of experimental cinema, Mike Kuchar has been in constant pursuit of his muse since his earliest days drawing and shooting 8mm films in the Bronx. Bold hues illuminate artificial atmospheres in his glamorously gleaming films and videos, all of which were made for pennies on the dollar. Ambience in a Mike Kuchar film is as much of a character as his lovelorn protagonists. Kuchar’s attention to color is similarly expressive, especially in the way he uses light to invest his already ethereal images with deeper emotional and comical resonance.

This program brings together three new works with Anthology’s recent preservation of GREEN DESIRE, the filmmaker’s second 16mm production following his revered SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS. Two of the videos are stunning pieces made with the students in his class at the San Francisco Art Institute. They are without a doubt among the strongest works of his lengthy career and should by no means be missed by Kuchar fans and thrill-seekers alike.

MELTDOWN
2012, 12 min, digital video.
“Waiting to live” and “Waiting to die” are the same thing…or is he just plain “Mad”?

STARBOUND
2012, 47 min, digital video.
Dizzy “way out”, “new age” widescreen mayhem seethes within the walls of the Institute for Metaphysical Research and Spiritual Wellness.

GREEN DESIRE
1966, 20 min, 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.
A youth wanders the landscape of grass and sky in search of puzzling impulses. GREEN DESIRE is an exquisite and rarely seen example of Kuchar’s masterful use of color, texture, and tone.

MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL
2011, 34 min, video.
A color-splashed mystery play about revelers at a masquerade ball produced by Kuchar and his San Francisco Art Institute students.

Total running time: ca. 120 min.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Born in 1942, during the American occupation of the Philippines, Tahimik is best known for this remarkable, uncategorizable, and entirely unique film, a semi-autobiographical fable that tells the story of his awakening to, and reaction against, American cultural colonialism.

“Tahimik is a disciple of Werner Herzog, and it shows in his stylized landscape shots and his general attitude of sentimental recidivism. But he has a much better eye for visual metaphor than his mentor, and his film is full of surprising, strong images, both poetic and satirical. Made for $10,000, the film is a model of resourcefulness, using film scraps, documentary footage, and postdubbed sound in an original, appealing mix.” –Dave Kehr, CHICAGO READER

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

WHO INVENTED THE YOYO? WHO INVENTED THE MOON BUGGY?
“[S]et in fictional Yodel Ville, with Tahimik, no longer the same jeepney driver of PERFUMED NIGHTMARE but a character that is closer to the real man, spending time with children in his mission to launch a chicken to space via a makeshift vessel. … Without taking away from the unique delights of seeing a grown man treating toddlers as equals in discussions that should not make sense but actually do, the film, while utilizing the often inane resourcefulness of Tahimik’s character as a wellspring for comedy, proposes that it is that trait, arguably endemic to Filipinos, that is the secret ingredient to genius.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

All screenings on Monday October 29th have been cancelled due to inclement weather. We apologize for the inconvenience.

JAPANESE SUMMERS OF A FILIPINO FUNDOSHI
1996, 41 min, 16mm.
Tahimik spends a summer in Japan, working on several projects in a traditional Filipino costume that resembles the Japanese Fundoshi. He explains, with affection for the next generation, the custom and spirit of the Fundoshi.
&
MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT
1980-2011, 33 min, video.
“Perhaps one of the greatest films that will probably never get made is Tahimik’s account of the first circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, Magellan’s Filipino slave. MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT, a thirty minute collection of scenes from what could have been the film, is, for the moment, the closest the world will ever get to the non-existent film.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

Due to the storm, this screening will be cancelled.  We will most likely re-schedule the screening for a later date, and will post that info to the website (and to www.nywift.com) as soon as possible.

Join New York Women in Film & Television on Oct. 30 for Byron Hurt's documentary Soul Food Junkies, with the film's Associate Producer Lisa Durden, a NYWIFT member. The film asks the question, "Is African American culture a culture of soul food junkies?" There will by a Q&A following the screening, and an after-party with cash bar and complimentary food at a nearby venue.
Food traditions are hard to change, especially when they're passed on from generation to generation. In this PBS documentary, award-winning filmmaker Hurt shares his journey to learn more about the African American cuisine known as soul food.
Baffled by his dad's unwillingness to change his traditional soul food diet in the face of a health crisis, Hurt sets out to learn more about this rich culinary tradition and its relevance to black cultural identity. He discovers that the love affair that his dad and his community have with soul food is deep-rooted, complex, and in some tragic cases, deadly.
Through candid interviews with soul food cooks, historians, and scholars, as well as doctors, family members, and everyday people, Soul Food Junkies blends history, humor, and heartwarming stories to place this culinary tradition under the microscope. Both the consequences and the benefits of soul food are carefully addressed. So, too, is the issue of low access to quality food in black communities, which makes it difficult for some black people to eat healthy. In the end, Hurt determines whether or not black people are addicted to this food tradition that has its origins in West Africa and the black south, yet is loved all over the world.
Soul Food Junkies won Best Documentary at the American Black Film Festival and will air on Independent Lens in January 2013.

KIDLAT TAHIMIK
Kidlat Tahimik, one of the godfathers of Filipino filmmaking, made a triumphant entrance onto the world cinema stage in the late 70s/early 80s with the appearance of his feature films PERFUMED NIGHTMARE and TURUMBA, which remain two of the most uncategorizable, formally audacious, profoundly entertaining, deeply whimsical, yet politically incisive films in post-colonial cinema. Since then, Tahimik’s work has had very little exposure in North America, even as he has been busier than ever, focusing his boundless energy on a series of adventures, projects, and films ranging from the epic to the compact to the fragmentary. With a sensibility at once mischievously comic, passionately committed, and irresistibly oddball, Tahimik is almost guaranteed to be your new favorite filmmaker!

Made by re-editing separate films, WHY IS YELLOW THE MIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW? (I AM FURIOUS…YELLOW) became a three-hour-long movie composed of nine chapters, including the epilogue. It depicts the history of the Philippines through home videos, archival footage, and reenactments.

“Perhaps because of its length, WHY IS YELLOW is criminally underseen, and therefore, severely underrated. The film, which is effectively Tahimik’s account of his personal life from 1981 to 1993, is perhaps the most personal work of the director whose films are intimately intertwined with him, his history, and his beliefs. … Shot and presumably made without any script or creative intervention, the film evokes a sense of personal, cultural, and national histories unfolding through the eyes of an active participant.” –Francis Joseph Oggs Cruz

NEWFILMMAKERS BEGINS ITS FOURTEENTH ANNUAL FALL SERIES

NEWFILMMAKERS ANNUAL HALLOWEEN SHOW
With The Latino Horror Group; curated by Edwin Pagan

–Wednesday, October 31, Annual Halloween Show at 6:00.

With Tom Neal and Ann Savage.
Made at the apex of his extended stint at Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), the bargain basement studio for which he churned out eleven Bs in four short years, the gritty, nasty, and unrelentingly bleak DETOUR stands as Ulmer’s crowning achievement. With Tom Neal as sad sack Al Roberts, a down-and-out jazzman on his way to the coast, and Ann Savage as his acid-tongued nemesis Vera, perhaps the most lethal femme fatale of all time, Ulmer offers a psychologically taut road trip that sours faster than milk left out in the blazing sun.

With Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and David Manners.
Ulmer’s short-lived career at Universal began and ended with his spectacularly defiant entry to the studio’s horror cycle. With Papa Laemmle away on vacation, and Junior’s trusting hand on the till, the mischievous filmmaker packed his picture with retro-expressionist visuals (“From Caligari to Hitler in one lurid package”, as J. Hoberman quipped) and a haunting classical score; he also ran off with the wife of Laemmle’s beloved nephew, script supervisor Shirley Kassler. Co-starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, in the first of eight such tempestuous face-offs, the film’s wry campiness continues to delight.