Anthology Film Archives

Jean Benoit-Levy supervised the production of Epstein’s first film, commissioned for the centennial celebration of Louis Pasteur’s birth. Taken from a biography of Pasteur’s life, and reflecting Epstein’s own interest in science (he studied medicine at school), the film links the scientific rigor and humanitarian aims of this monumental figure while exploring visual motifs that will come into play in Epstein’s later films.

(L’AUBERGE ROUGE)
Epstein’s first fiction feature film, which he adapted from a novel by Balzac, tells the story of a fateful encounter between two soldiers and a man with a tempting cache of diamonds in his possession, all seeking shelter at the same remote inn.

Join the NYC Citizen Corps Council for a complimentary screening of New York Says Thank You at Anthology Film Archives

New York Says Thank You is an epic story of healing and patriotic heroism that charts the journey of four New Yorkers whose lives were touched by September 11 —as they travel the country to help communities rebuild after their own disasters. Along the way, these individuals grow, face their emotions, and ultimately triumph over tragedy through an amazing community effort that evolved from a five-year-old New York City boy’s idea to help others.

This feature-length documentary film casts a hopeful light in the shadow of the tragic day as, every September; New Yorkers are joined by an ever-growing group of disaster survivors and volunteers from around the country to pay forward the support they once received.

For additional information about New York Says Thank You, visit <http://www.newyorksaysthankyou.org/>  or <http://www.newyorksaysthankyoumovie.com/> .

Visit www.NYC.gov/citizencorps <http://www.nyc.gov/citizencorps> for your complimentary tickets.

(COEUR FIDÈLE)
At the time, COEUR FIDÈLE caused a scandal. It was much discussed and lauded among cinephiles, and is especially noted for its eccentric, sensational fairground sequences. Epstein claimed to have written the scenario in one feverish night: the resulting melodramatic plot – of thwarted lovers, a thug, a sick baby, and murder – serves as the excuse for a visual style full of excesses and bravado.

(LA BELLE NIVERNAISE)
One might think of LA BELLE NIVERNAISE as a predecessor to Jean Vigo’s L’ATALANTE: both are tales of blossoming love, jealousy, and adventure told almost completely on a river barge, or concerning the longing for one.

The first of Epstein’s collaborations with the Albatros studio, founded by Russian émigré artists in Paris. Written by and starring Ivan Mosjoukine, it features the collision of an elaborate, exotic costume drama with a modern story about filmmakers.

Following a 19th-century play penned by Benjamin Antier, the figure of Robert Macaire, bandit and rogue, enjoyed popularity in several contexts. One of the most detailed treatments may be found in Epstein’s LES AVENTURES DE ROBERT MACAIRE, which he executed in five interrelated episodes.

Join the NYC Citizen Corps Council for a complimentary screening of New York Says Thank You at Anthology Film Archives

New York Says Thank You is an epic story of healing and patriotic heroism that charts the journey of four New Yorkers whose lives were touched by September 11 —as they travel the country to help communities rebuild after their own disasters. Along the way, these individuals grow, face their emotions, and ultimately triumph over tragedy through an amazing community effort that evolved from a five-year-old New York City boy’s idea to help others.

This feature-length documentary film casts a hopeful light in the shadow of the tragic day as, every September; New Yorkers are joined by an ever-growing group of disaster survivors and volunteers from around the country to pay forward the support they once received.

For additional information about New York Says Thank You, visit <http://www.newyorksaysthankyou.org/>  or <http://www.newyorksaysthankyoumovie.com/> .

Visit www.NYC.gov/citizencorps <http://www.nyc.gov/citizencorps> for your complimentary tickets.

The scenario for LE DOUBLE AMOUR was one of several written for Epstein by his sister Marie. Nathalie Lissenko plays a countess who contends with the effects of her love for two generations of gamblers.

Luis Buñuel assisted Epstein in the direction of this period piece about high society brigands, after the novel by George Sand. MAUPRAT is the first film Epstein developed through his own production company.

6½ x 11 / SIX ET DEMI, ONZE
1927,73 minutes , 35mm.
&
SA TÊTE
1929, 36 minutes, 35mm.
Two gems in Epstein’s filmography. SIX ET DEMI, ONZE refers to a camera format, and that camera plays a dramatic role in this tale of two very different brothers and the woman who attempts to dupe them both. SA TÊTE narrates a nimble, efficient tale of love, murder, and social estrangement. Both films are distinguished by extraordinary cinematography and graceful, deft storytelling.

Join the NYC Citizen Corps Council for a complimentary screening of New York Says Thank You at Anthology Film Archives

New York Says Thank You is an epic story of healing and patriotic heroism that charts the journey of four New Yorkers whose lives were touched by September 11 —as they travel the country to help communities rebuild after their own disasters. Along the way, these individuals grow, face their emotions, and ultimately triumph over tragedy through an amazing community effort that evolved from a five-year-old New York City boy’s idea to help others.

This feature-length documentary film casts a hopeful light in the shadow of the tragic day as, every September; New Yorkers are joined by an ever-growing group of disaster survivors and volunteers from around the country to pay forward the support they once received.

For additional information about New York Says Thank You, visit <http://www.newyorksaysthankyou.org/>  or <http://www.newyorksaysthankyoumovie.com/> .

Visit www.NYC.gov/citizencorps <http://www.nyc.gov/citizencorps> for your complimentary tickets.

THE THREE-SIDED MIRROR / LA GLACE À TROIS FACES
1927, 38 minutes, 35mm.
&
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER / LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER
1928, 62 minutes, 35mm.
These two films have become canonical for studies of Epstein’s work. They are both accessible and experimental in their subtly non-linear narratives and their explorations of camera techniques, including subtle slow and fast motion.

The first of Epstein’s semi-documentaries filmed on the islands off Brittany, FINIS TERRAE follows an argument among four kelp fishermen working a season in a primitive, remote setting. It’s also a story of friendship and social custom, with life-and-death stakes, in a pre-modern setting. Epstein would several times return to this region to make films: his love for the area and its population is already vividly evident in FINIS TERRAE.

The screening on Wednesday, June 6, will be followed by a special panel discussion on Epstein’s silent films, with participants including scholars Ludovic Cortade (NYU), Sarah Keller (Colby), and Stuart Liebman (CUNY Graduate Center); please visit anthologyfilmarchives.org for more details.

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

TUESDAY 6/5
7PM Should’ve Kissed - Opening Double Feature (Q&A w/ director and actors)
9PM Magic and Loss - Opening Double Feature (co-presented with Japan Society)

This portrait of Epstein focuses on his work in the region of Brittany (including FINIS TERRAE), and particularly its islands, which once fed his profound aspirations for cinema. With rare film excerpts, photos, and articles, as well as interviews with Jean Rouch and Epstein’s sister Marie, the film constructs an introduction to the theories of this fiercely independent director often cited as “the first philosopher of cinema.”

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS TWO ACTION FILMS

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Max Weinman NORTH SOUTH (2011, 14 minutes, video)
Melissa Nicolardi THE PASS IT ON PROJECT (2011, 46 minutes, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
John Espinal 749 A JUAN BOOMS FILM (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Alex Governatori SIMON’S WORLD (2010, 8 minutes, video)
Lauren Patrice Nadler ABEING BRIELLE (2011, 12 minutes, video)
Dane Webster SUNYATA (2012, 27 minutes, video)

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION
Ralph Henriquez
STAND OFF
2011, 62 minutes, video.
A group of elite female bank robbers is thrown into a Mexican stand off when they discover that someone on their team might be an informant.

SECOND FEATURE PRESENTATION
Moziko Wind
THE RULE OF LAW
2010, 89 minutes, video.
FBI Director Frank Fitzgerald is helping an Iranian terrorist group frame innocent American citizens. Their seventh victim, Tom Cali, is on the run trying to prove his innocence.

–Wednesday, June 6, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:15, First Feature at 8:15, Second Feature Presentation at 9:30.

The first of Epstein’s semi-documentaries filmed on the islands off Brittany, FINIS TERRAE follows an argument among four kelp fishermen working a season in a primitive, remote setting. It’s also a story of friendship and social custom, with life-and-death stakes, in a pre-modern setting. Epstein would several times return to this region to make films: his love for the area and its population is already vividly evident in FINIS TERRAE.

The screening on Wednesday, June 6, will be followed by a special panel discussion on Epstein’s silent films, with participants including scholars Ludovic Cortade (NYU), Sarah Keller (Colby), and Stuart Liebman (CUNY Graduate Center); please visit anthologyfilmarchives.org for more details.

Following the Wednesday, June 6 screening of Jean Epstein's FINIS TERRAE, there will be a special panel discussion on Epstein’s silent films, with participants including scholars Sarah Keller (Colby), Stuart Liebman (CUNY Graduate Center), and Christophe Wall-Romana (University of Minnesota), and filmmaker James June Schneider.

THE THREE-SIDED MIRROR / LA GLACE À TROIS FACES
1927, 38 minutes, 35mm.
&
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER / LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER
1928, 62 minutes, 35mm.
These two films have become canonical for studies of Epstein’s work. They are both accessible and experimental in their subtly non-linear narratives and their explorations of camera techniques, including subtle slow and fast motion.

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

TUESDAY 6/5
7PM Should’ve Kissed - Opening Double Feature (Q&A w/ director and actors)
9PM Magic and Loss - Opening Double Feature (co-presented with Japan Society)

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

THURSDAY 6/7
7PM Shorts Selection (Q&A w/ directors)
930PM Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe (DVDs for sale)

(COEUR FIDÈLE)
At the time, COEUR FIDÈLE caused a scandal. It was much discussed and lauded among cinephiles, and is especially noted for its eccentric, sensational fairground sequences. Epstein claimed to have written the scenario in one feverish night: the resulting melodramatic plot – of thwarted lovers, a thug, a sick baby, and murder – serves as the excuse for a visual style full of excesses and bravado.

As eccentric a picture of America as has emerged in the last two decades. Like Buba’s earlier short films, it chronicles the decline of Braddock, PA, a hard-luck town which once flourished as “Pittsburgh’s shopping center”. It concerns a director (Buba, playing himself) trying, without much success, to make a movie with a crazy street hustler named Sal, who considers himself responsible for Buba’s (modest) success. Like Errol Morris, Buba has a fascination with the idiosyncratic details of daily life, and uses his formidable sense of humor to document the decay of industrial America.

“A triumph of pragmatic populism with a cast of union organizers, street hustlers, and Buba himself, [it] should be required viewing at every Sundance seminar; this ‘rustbowl fantasy’ is one of the few regional movies to successfully and unsentimentally peel off the national smile button.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Followed by a trailer for THUNDER OVER BRADDOCK.

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

FRIDAY 6/8
7PM Ultimate Christian Wrestling - Centerpiece (Q&A w/ directors)
9PM Shorts Competition  (Q&A w/ directors)

Buba’s first fiction feature – based on a short story by the writer Jim Daniels – is a story about work and love and animals. It’s about the end of an age, mythical or real, when a job was a job, love was true, and everybody had a dog. Graceful, modest, beautifully-acted, and increasingly moving, it’s a frank, perceptive, unvarnished portrait of working-class American life – the kind of film that, sadly, is exceedingly rare.

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

SATURDAY 6/9
12PM Faces of Seoul
2PM Helena’s Flushing (work-in-progress for Cast and Crew)
3PM Magic and Loss
430PM Shorts Selection (Q&A w/ directors)
7PM One Day on Earth - Spotlight (Q& A w/ director and producer)
930PM Should’ve Kissed

Unless otherwise noted, all films are silent.
ROSE HOBART (1939, 20 min, 16mm, sound)
COTILLION (1940s-1969, 8 min, 16mm, b&w)
THE MIDNIGHT PARTY (1940s-1968, 3.5 min, 16mm, b&w)
THE CHILDREN’S PARTY (1940s-1968, 8 min, 16mm)
CENTURIES OF JUNE (1955, 10 min, 16mm)
AVIARY (1955, 11 min, 16mm, b&w)
GNIR REDNOW (1955, 5 min, 16mm, photographed by Stan Brakhage)
NYMPHLIGHT (1957, 8 min, 16mm)
A LEGEND FOR FOUNTAINS (1957/65, 17 min, 16mm, b&w)
ANGEL (1957, 3 min, 16mm)
The poet of magic realities. Pioneer of recycled (found) images. ROSE HOBART and the Trilogy (COTILLION, MIDNIGHT PARTY & CHILDREN’S PARTY) are some of the earliest collage films created. The others were directed by Cornell (and photographed by Stan Brakhage and Rudy Burckhardt among others) at some of his favorite locations.
Total running time: ca. 105 min.

Brings together the numerous short films Buba produced during the 70s and early 80s, a series of remarkable portraits of people and places in and around Braddock. Among the highlights are the acclaimed J. ROY: NEW AND USED FURNITURE, wherein Buba introduces us to a Braddock entrepreneur who has failed at twelve businesses and is busy teaching would-be entrepreneurs self-confidence; SWEET SAL, a portrait of wiry street hustler Sal Carulli, whose cocky patter breaks down at the end of the film when he visits his father’s grave; and THE MILL HUNK HERALD, a trip inside a Steel Valley workers’ magazine, which looks like raw material for a Bruce Springsteen song.

Includes:
TO MY FAMILY (1972, 3 minutes)
J. ROY: NEW AND USED FURNITURE (1974, 11 minutes)
SHUTDOWN (1975, 12 minutes)
BETTY’S CORNER CAFE (1976, 11 minutes)
WASHING WALLS WITH MRS. G. (1980, 6 minutes)
HOME MOVIES (1980, 3 minutes)
HOMAGE TO A MILL TOWN (1980, 3 minutes)
SWEET SAL (1979, 25 minutes)
THE MILL HUNK HERALD (1981, 13 minutes)
PEABODY & FRIENDS (1983, 7 minutes)
BRADDOCK FOOD BANK (1985, 5 minutes)
BIRTHDAY PARTY (1985, 5 minutes)

Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

Buba has collaborated many times with master of horror George Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE CRAZIES), including on one of his masterpieces, MARTIN, a character study of a very troubled young man who may or may not be a vampire. A genre-bending film that’s part horror movie, part psychological case study, and part city portrait, MARTIN is set and filmed in Braddock, and it’s remarkable above all for brilliantly intertwining its horror themes with the kind of portrait of a dying industrial city that closely resembles Buba’s own work.

6th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York
June 5 – 10, 2012 Anthology Film Archives

KAFFNY returns to the Anthology Film Archives for its 6th annual film festival, June 5 – 10, 2012.  This year’s bold new line-up includes 9 features (including 6 premieres) and over 20 short films.

For more information, please visit: http://kaffny.com/

SUNDAY 6/10
12PM LA Riots 20th Anniversary Program (FREE)
3PM Shorts Competition (Q&A w/ directors, Awards announced)
530PM Wedding Palace: Behind the Scenes documentary (FREE)
6PM Ultimate Christian Wrestling (Q&A w/ directors)
8PM Perhaps Somewhere - Closing (Q&A w/ director)

All films are silent.
BOYS’ GAMES (1957, 5 min, 16mm)
BOOKSTALLS (ca. late-1930s, 11 min, 16mm)
BY NIGHT WITH TORCH AND SPEAR (ca. 1940s, 9 min, 16mm)
NEW YORK–ROME–BARCELONA–BRUSSELS (ca. 1940s, 10 min, 16mm)
VAUDEVILLE DE-LUXE (ca. 1940s, 12 min, 16mm)
MULBERRY STREET (ca. 1957, 9 min, 16mm, b&w, with Rudy Burckhardt)
JOANNE, UNION SQUARE (1955, 8 min, 16mm, with Rudy Burckhardt)
CLOCHES À TRAVERS LES FEUILLES (ca. 1957, 4 min, 16mm)
CHILDREN (ca. 1957, 8 min, 16mm)
Rare Cornell; more magic cinema from the master collagist. Variations of films made by Cornell, plus collage films discovered by archivists after his death.
Total running time: ca. 85 min.

Buba’s first fiction feature – based on a short story by the writer Jim Daniels – is a story about work and love and animals. It’s about the end of an age, mythical or real, when a job was a job, love was true, and everybody had a dog. Graceful, modest, beautifully-acted, and increasingly moving, it’s a frank, perceptive, unvarnished portrait of working-class American life – the kind of film that, sadly, is exceedingly rare.

STRUGGLES IN STEEL: A STORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN STEEL WORKERS
1996, 86 minutes, video.
When a local television station ran a program about the closing of the major steel mills in the Pittsburgh region, Ray Henderson, a former mill worker who had worked in the mills for 18 years, couldn’t help notice that not one black worker was shown, despite the fact that African-American workers had formed a critical part of the labor force in western Pennsylvania for 125 years. With his old friend Tony Buba, Henderson set out to collaborate on a history of African-Americans and their contributions not just to the steel industry, but to the labor movement itself. Through eloquent living witnesses and revelatory archival footage, STRUGGLES IN STEEL presents a striking counterpoint to the stereotypical black male image.
&
VOICES FROM A STEELTOWN
1983, 28 minutes, 16mm.
Braddock, Pennsylvania is dying. Who killed it? Politicians? Big Business? Shopping Centers? Racism? And what can we learn from Braddock’s experience? In this film, Braddock’s few remaining residents reminisce about the town’s heyday, displaying a mix of stoicism, puzzlement, and humor as they try to figure out who is responsible for its slow death.

For more information please visit: http://hdc.org/featured/rockaway-movie

Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

Buba has collaborated many times with master of horror George Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE CRAZIES), including on one of his masterpieces, MARTIN, a character study of a very troubled young man who may or may not be a vampire. A genre-bending film that’s part horror movie, part psychological case study, and part city portrait, MARTIN is set and filmed in Braddock, and it’s remarkable above all for brilliantly intertwining its horror themes with the kind of portrait of a dying industrial city that closely resembles Buba’s own work.

As eccentric a picture of America as has emerged in the last two decades. Like Buba’s earlier short films, it chronicles the decline of Braddock, PA, a hard-luck town which once flourished as “Pittsburgh’s shopping center”. It concerns a director (Buba, playing himself) trying, without much success, to make a movie with a crazy street hustler named Sal, who considers himself responsible for Buba’s (modest) success. Like Errol Morris, Buba has a fascination with the idiosyncratic details of daily life, and uses his formidable sense of humor to document the decay of industrial America.

“A triumph of pragmatic populism with a cast of union organizers, street hustlers, and Buba himself, [it] should be required viewing at every Sundance seminar; this ‘rustbowl fantasy’ is one of the few regional movies to successfully and unsentimentally peel off the national smile button.” –J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

Followed by a trailer for THUNDER OVER BRADDOCK.

Brings together the numerous short films Buba produced during the 70s and early 80s, a series of remarkable portraits of people and places in and around Braddock. Among the highlights are the acclaimed J. ROY: NEW AND USED FURNITURE, wherein Buba introduces us to a Braddock entrepreneur who has failed at twelve businesses and is busy teaching would-be entrepreneurs self-confidence; SWEET SAL, a portrait of wiry street hustler Sal Carulli, whose cocky patter breaks down at the end of the film when he visits his father’s grave; and THE MILL HUNK HERALD, a trip inside a Steel Valley workers’ magazine, which looks like raw material for a Bruce Springsteen song.

Includes:
TO MY FAMILY (1972, 3 minutes)
J. ROY: NEW AND USED FURNITURE (1974, 11 minutes)
SHUTDOWN (1975, 12 minutes)
BETTY’S CORNER CAFE (1976, 11 minutes)
WASHING WALLS WITH MRS. G. (1980, 6 minutes)
HOME MOVIES (1980, 3 minutes)
HOMAGE TO A MILL TOWN (1980, 3 minutes)
SWEET SAL (1979, 25 minutes)
THE MILL HUNK HERALD (1981, 13 minutes)
PEABODY & FRIENDS (1983, 7 minutes)
BRADDOCK FOOD BANK (1985, 5 minutes)
BIRTHDAY PARTY (1985, 5 minutes)

STRUGGLES IN STEEL: A STORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN STEEL WORKERS
1996, 86 minutes, video.
When a local television station ran a program about the closing of the major steel mills in the Pittsburgh region, Ray Henderson, a former mill worker who had worked in the mills for 18 years, couldn’t help notice that not one black worker was shown, despite the fact that African-American workers had formed a critical part of the labor force in western Pennsylvania for 125 years. With his old friend Tony Buba, Henderson set out to collaborate on a history of African-Americans and their contributions not just to the steel industry, but to the labor movement itself. Through eloquent living witnesses and revelatory archival footage, STRUGGLES IN STEEL presents a striking counterpoint to the stereotypical black male image.
&
VOICES FROM A STEELTOWN
1983, 28 minutes, 16mm.
Braddock, Pennsylvania is dying. Who killed it? Politicians? Big Business? Shopping Centers? Racism? And what can we learn from Braddock’s experience? In this film, Braddock’s few remaining residents reminisce about the town’s heyday, displaying a mix of stoicism, puzzlement, and humor as they try to figure out who is responsible for its slow death.

NEWFILMMAKERS PRESENTS ANOTHER CHRISTIAN SEX NIGHT

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Daryl Stoneage
DONKEY LOVE
2011, 83 minutes, video.
Funny, shocking and controversial, this film introduces the unknown tradition of Colombians having sex and falling in love with donkeys. This cultural practice is so widely accepted in Colombia that musicians have written songs about it, an author has written a book about it, and there is even a festival that celebrates it.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Eliane Lima LEONORA (2011, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Jacob Brown BLINDERS (2011, 10 minutes, video)
Renata Bialkowska CRUMBLE (2010, 23 minutes, video)
Gregg de Domenico HIP PRIEST (2011, 25 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Amy McClug
CHANGE OF LIFE
2006, 99 minutes, video.
Gary Catell is a bigoted evangelical minister who leads his congregation in the persecution of gays and lesbians. When his gay daughter is outed and commits suicide, Gary looks to God for answers, and awakes to find that time has been rewound, his daughter is still alive, and his spirit now inhabits the body of a gay man.

–Wednesday, June 13, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:45, Feature Presentation at 9:00.

FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON (1951, 15 min, 16mm, b&w)
THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1953, 38 min, 35mm, b&w)
THE BED (1968, 19 min, 16mm)
HIGH KUKUS (1974, 3 min, 16mm)
Four films by an American avant-garde film pioneer. His films are celebrations of the joy of living. If there is such a thing as American Zen, Broughton is the master of it.
Total running time: ca. 80 min.

THE GOLDEN POSITIONS (1970, 32 min, 16mm)
DREAMWOOD (1972, 45 min, 16mm)
TESTAMENT (1974, 20 min, 16mm)
Total running time: ca. 100 min.

This film by Julien Temple (ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE) is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims. Detroit was once America’s fourth largest city. Built by the car and for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways, and shopping centers, it was the embodiment of the American dream. Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40% of the land in the center is returning to prairie. But it’s also a source of hope. Streets are being turned into art. Farming is coming back to the center of the city. Young people are flocking to help. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction.

ART (CORE): AVANT-GARDE AND THE CINEMATIC BODY – THE FILMS OF MM SERRA

MM Serra is an experimental filmmaker, curator, author, and Executive Director of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the world’s oldest distributor of independent media. Her most recent piece, BITCH BEAUTY, premiered at the 2011 New York Film Festival, and her other films have screened at the Whitney, the Pompidou, and the Berlin International Film Festival. Titillating, sumptuous, and always subversive, Serra’s short films focus on alternative cultures and intimate moments. They are simultaneously eye-opening and awe-inducing. Whether creating documentary portraits or colorfully dynamic exposés, Serra never fails to go where you would least expect. This career-spanning program will feature the world premiere of a new video about the Lower East Side as well as a special sneak-preview of a work-in-progress.

“Her cinema is marked by a lush sensuality, a concern for light, play, and artfully woven soundtrack.” –Barbara Hammer, YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW, CALIFORNIA WOMEN ARTISTS

EYE ETC. (1982, 2 minutes, 16mm)
Serra’s first acknowledged film, shot on vacation in Hawaii, explores the light, colors, and sensuous movement of the Hawaiian culture.

FIVE FILMS (NYC/NIGHTFALL/FRAMED/PPI/TURNER) (1987, 11 minutes, 16mm)
“In these five films, created over a five-year period, MM Serra emerges as a lyric poet filmmaker with a vividly different eye and ear. … Mysterious, elliptical, extremely slim, and delicate in their making – yet bursting with energy – these films seem to elaborate a particularly feminine aesthetic of sensuality and pleasure.” –PARABOLA ARTS

STASIS SERIES I & II (STASIS I. STILL LIFE; STASIS II. PAPA’S GARDEN) (1991, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Using Pixelvision video transferred to 16mm film, these works map the visual space of emotional investigation.

SOI MEME (1995, 6 minutes, 16mm)
Sound composition by Zeena Parkins.
Erotic dance performance by Goddess Rosemary.

Peggy Ahwesh & MM Serra
NOTES FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE (THE VIEW FROM LUDLOW STREET)
2010, ca. 30 minutes, video. Camera by Angela Christlieb. World Premiere!
Experimental documentary filmed over a two-year period in the L.E.S. includes such personalities as Clayton Patterson, performance artist Penny Arcade, Anthology’s own Jed Rapfogel, and other amazing HOWL Fest personalities.

DARLING INTERNATIONAL (1999, 22 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
Collaboration with Jenn Reeves. An exploration of sexual fantasies of a NY metal worker.
“An evocative work whose sexual sadomasochistic scenario, grainy visual texture, and layered soundtrack render it highly tactile, fairly begging to be touched.” –Shannon Kelly, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

ART PARADE (2007, 5 minutes, video)
“In ART PARADE the Karen Black girls show beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The female form, big hair, and suggestive movements attract and fascinate us and the question of gender can be an illusion or for some still very tantalizing. I liked the use of strong color. It reminded me in nature insects use color to attract. In this film the color intensifies the [female masquerade] and makes [it] more alluring.” –Diane Leon

CHOP OFF (2008, 6 minutes, video)
“Exposes the dark, fearful recesses of the human psyche by filming the body modification of performance artist R.K. Literally risking ‘life and limb’, R.K.’s body is his medium and amputation is his art. The very act of filming him often
stimulates a cascading range of emotions, from disgust to fear to dread.” –TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

“Please please show this film! It’s unique, it’s real, it’s not like any other film. What one sees in it cannot be seen anywhere else. It will shock some, but the fact is that there are shocking things in this world and we should know it and see it, nothing human should be hidden from knowledge. You made a very REAL film about REAL people. One of the most difficult things to do in cinema. I congratulate you.” –Jonas Mekas

BITCH-BEAUTY (2011, 7 minutes, video)
An experimental documentary profiling the life of Anne Hanavan, whose experiences as part of the underground scene in the East Village of the 1980s paralleled those of now-deceased actor and screenwriter Zoë Tamerlis Lund (BAD LIEUTENANT). Using Hanavan’s films, performances, readings, and music, as well as footage from Lund’s work, BITCH-BEAUTY is an intense seven-minute time capsule of addiction, the perils of street prostitution, and subsequent renewal or revival through cathartic self-expression.

BREATHE DEEP: CRYSTALLUM (2011, ca. 5 minutes, video)
Work-in-progress. An experimental portrait of the Goddess of Crystallum, Katherine Bauer, profiling her creative engagement with death and rebirth through the crystallization of roadkill.
Total running time: ca. 105 minutes.

James Gaffney, Martin Lucas, and Jonathan Miller
TIGHTEN YOUR BELTS, BITE THE BULLET
1980, 48 minutes, 16mm.
This film focuses on the 1970s fiscal crises in NYC and in Cleveland, Ohio, and contrasts New York’s political response to the crisis with that of Cleveland, where then Mayor Dennis Kucinich and his supporters waged “The Battle of Cleveland” over what they viewed as nothing less than control of the city itself. Using animation, news footage, and exclusive interviews, this is an enlightening history of a difficult period in recent urban history.
MARTIN LUCAS & JONATHAN MILLER WILL BE HERE IN PERSON FOR ONE OR BOTH OF THE SCREENINGS; check back in late May for more details.
&
Stephen Lighthill
TAKING BACK DETROIT
1980, 55 minutes, video.
In the 1970s and early 80s Detroit was the setting for an unusual development in U.S. urban politics, as voters elected two socialists to citywide office: City Council member Ken Cockrel and Recorders Court Judge Justin Ravitz. TAKING BACK DETROIT examines these people and their organization against the backdrop of a city in extreme economic crisis.

A remarkably gritty, rough-hewn, and deeply personal video portrait of Cleveland, SOMETIMES CITY features Clevelanders speaking about their hometown, its problems, and the things they like. Conceived as a mixture of documentary, home movie, personal memoir, and fiction, it obliquely suggests Cleveland’s history, its neighborhoods and landscape, and the huge heart of the people who inhabit it. Its accumulation of unspectacular filmed encounters gradually form an incredibly revealing mosaic of a deeply troubled urban community, making SOMETIMES CITY something of a lo-fi, minimalist version of THE WIRE.

With Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Ellen Burstyn.
Familial love, romantic love, and love of money collide in Bob Rafelson’s seminal (and surreal) crime drama. Radio personality David (BBS stalwart Jack Nicholson) and his crook brother Jason (Dern) head to Atlantic City with washed-up beauty queen Sally (Burstyn) to perpetrate a real estate scam that doesn’t exactly go according to plan…. The outstanding ensemble cast is aided and abetted by Jacob Brackman’s inspired script and László Kovács’s indelible cinematography.

This film tells the story of the wholesale changes that took place in the American city in the decades after WWII, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis. Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, Pruitt-Igoe has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians, and policy makers. THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH explores the social, economic, and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project’s residents.

With Tim Curry.
Youths-in-revolt Pamela and Nicky run away from home, start a punk band and conquer New York in Allan Moyle’s aboveground-underground musical drama. Notable for its all-star soundtrack (featuring the likes of the Ramones, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Roxy Music) and for the fact that Moyle was fired by producer Robert Stigwood before the film’s completion, TIMES SQUARE is a powerful statement on art’s capacity to disrupt the order of things, and one of Brackman’s greatest achievements.

With Rock Hudson. Archival print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
An enigmatic organization known only as “The Company” helps jaded Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) to stage his own death and be reborn as Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson at his nuttiest). Shadowed by “The Company’s” menacing representatives, Arthur/Tony wrestles with his new identity when he starts a relationship with Nora and finds that the pleasures his old life lacked are less fulfilling than expected. John Frankenheimer’s sci-fi freak-out abounds with psychedelic effects and a pervasive sense of dread amplified through Carlino’s rendering of David Ely’s novel.

Tony Conrad
THE FLICKER
1966, 30 minutes, 16mm, sound.
Mathematical and rhythmical orchestration of white and black frames.
&
Ken Jacobs & Bob Fleischner
BLONDE COBRA
1959-63, 35 minutes, 16-to-35mm blow-up. Featuring Jack Smith.
Preserved by Anthology, with the generous support of the Film Foundation, the National Film Preservation Foundation, Simon Lund and Cineric, Inc.
“BLONDE COBRA is an erratic narrative – no, not really a narrative, it’s only stretched out in time for convenience of delivery. It’s a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950s, 40s, 30s disgust. Silly, self-pitying, guilt-strictured and yet triumphing – on one level – over the situation with style… enticing us into an absurd moral posture the better to dismiss us with a regal ‘screw off.’” –K.J.
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

With Sondra Locke, Robert Shaw, Sally Kellerman, and Sarah Ure.
Carlino continues to explore the parent-child relationship by way of psychological horror in this story about a little girl (Locke) who yearns for the loving attention of her absentee father (Shaw) and feels alienated by her emotionally unavailable mother (Ure). When Daddy comes to visit with a woman he calls his fiancée (Kellerman), a sequence of mysterious deaths ratchets up the tensions within the already dysfunctional family.

James Gaffney, Martin Lucas, and Jonathan Miller
TIGHTEN YOUR BELTS, BITE THE BULLET
1980, 48 minutes, 16mm.
This film focuses on the 1970s fiscal crises in NYC and in Cleveland, Ohio, and contrasts New York’s political response to the crisis with that of Cleveland, where then Mayor Dennis Kucinich and his supporters waged “The Battle of Cleveland” over what they viewed as nothing less than control of the city itself. Using animation, news footage, and exclusive interviews, this is an enlightening history of a difficult period in recent urban history.
MARTIN LUCAS & JONATHAN MILLER WILL BE HERE IN PERSON FOR ONE OR BOTH OF THE SCREENINGS; check back in late May for more details.
&
Stephen Lighthill
TAKING BACK DETROIT
1980, 55 minutes, video.
In the 1970s and early 80s Detroit was the setting for an unusual development in U.S. urban politics, as voters elected two socialists to citywide office: City Council member Ken Cockrel and Recorders Court Judge Justin Ravitz. TAKING BACK DETROIT examines these people and their organization against the backdrop of a city in extreme economic crisis.

With Jack Nicholson, Warren Oates, and Millie Perkins.
Monte Hellman’s acid western went a long way toward launching the careers of Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates. Stoic cowboy Willet Gashade (Oates, a Hellman axiom) reluctantly agrees to help a nameless woman (Perkins) track down a man with the assistance of nihilistic contract killer Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson). Motives evaporate and identities mutate as the group journeys across the vast, merciless plains of Utah. Rife with gruff dialogue and dehydrated existentialism, THE SHOOTING is a crucial installment in the bodies of work of Hellman, Oates, Nicholson, and Eastman.

A remarkably gritty, rough-hewn, and deeply personal video portrait of Cleveland, SOMETIMES CITY features Clevelanders speaking about their hometown, its problems, and the things they like. Conceived as a mixture of documentary, home movie, personal memoir, and fiction, it obliquely suggests Cleveland’s history, its neighborhoods and landscape, and the huge heart of the people who inhabit it. Its accumulation of unspectacular filmed encounters gradually form an incredibly revealing mosaic of a deeply troubled urban community, making SOMETIMES CITY something of a lo-fi, minimalist version of THE WIRE.

With Jack Nicholson and Karen Black.
The much-revered drama that proved that BBS was more than just EASY RIDER features Jack Nicholson as a former piano prodigy turned grumpy lumpenprole whose decision to quit his job on an oil rig and visit his dying father (accompanied by his goofball girlfriend, memorably played by Karen Black) exacerbates preexistent resentments within his family. Eastman’s dynamite script is the foundation for one of the most complex and compelling performances of Nicholson’s career.

With George C. Scott, Tony Musante, Trish Van Devere, and Colleen Dewhurst.
George C. Scott stars as Harry Garmes, an aging mob driver hoping to make one last big haul and retire. Garmes is persuaded by his old cronies to drive an escaped criminal (Musante) and his girlfriend (Van Devere) across Spain to safety, but of course things don’t go as planned. Though John Huston was originally slated to direct, he was replaced after a series of confrontations with Fleischer, who turned out a terrific, no-nonsense 70s crime flick, boasting taut action sequences, gorgeous cinematography from Sven Nykvist, and a great performance from Scott, starring alongside both his then-wife, Colleen Dewhurst, and his wife-to-be, Trish Van Devere.

Viking Eggeling
SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE
1924, 8 minutes, 35mm.
&
Alberto Cavalcanti
RIEN QUE LES HEURES
1928, 52 minutes, 35mm.
A “city symphony” interweaving documentary, experimental, and narrative elements that provide vivid images of Paris in the mid-1920s.
Total running time: ca. 65 minutes.

With Burt Lancaster.
Sharp’s revisionist western stars Burt Lancaster as McIntosh, a compassionate Army scout ordered to lead a small cavalry in tracking down the Apache chief Ulzana, who has escaped from the San Carlos Indian Reservation and set out on a brutal spree of killing, raping, and pillaging with a war party under his command. Aiding McIntosh is Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay; the two men forge a rapport that leads McIntosh to reevaluate his own prejudices about Native Americans and white colonization of the Great Frontier.

This film tells the story of the wholesale changes that took place in the American city in the decades after WWII, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis. Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, Pruitt-Igoe has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians, and policy makers. THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH explores the social, economic, and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project’s residents.

With Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda, Paul Winfield, and Jackie Earle Haley.
Adapted from Robert Zelazy’s sci-fi novel, DAMNATION ALLEY begins with Nuclear Armageddon and the outbreak of World War III. A group of Air Force officers travels across a perpetually stormy landscape in search of a mysterious radio signal (and the hope of finding more survivors); along the way they are forced to fend for their lives in skirmishes with shotgun-wielding lunatics and monstrous mutant cockroaches. At once a wild anti-bomb parable and a lucid critique of the Arms Race, this film was undeservingly obscured by the shadow of STAR WARS.

This film by Julien Temple (ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE) is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims. Detroit was once America’s fourth largest city. Built by the car and for the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways, and shopping centers, it was the embodiment of the American dream. Now it is truly a dystopic post-industrial city, in which 40% of the land in the center is returning to prairie. But it’s also a source of hope. Streets are being turned into art. Farming is coming back to the center of the city. Young people are flocking to help. Detroit leads the way again but in a very different direction.

With Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon.
A cultural phenomenon upon its release in 1970, but rarely-screened since, JOE represented the first produced screenplay by Norman Wexler, who at the time was a middle-aged ad-copywriter. Channeling the political paranoia of the time, JOE is a nightmare vision of the class- and generation-divide in the late-60s/early-70s, featuring Susan Sarandon (in her first professional acting role) as a drug-addled hippie whose well-to-do father, in a fit of rage, murders her boyfriend, before wandering into a bar where he meets the racist, hippie-hating, foul-mouthed steamfitter Joe (Peter Boyle, in a star-making performance). Joining forces, these two upstanding citizens embark on an odyssey that concludes in carnage. Savagely dividing audiences, the film was screened around the clock in some New York theaters, with audience members shouting back at the screen, as Joe became both laughable enemy and virtuous hero.

With John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney.
At long last, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER comes to Anthology! Though it can hardly be described as a neglected film, today it may be more recognized than actually watched. In any case, it’s a classic example of 70s commercial cinema, of a time when even many mainstream films displayed a palpable sense of working-class lives, of real-world texture and detail. Depicting the disco as a place where Travolta’s Tony Manero is able to escape the constriction and limitations of his Bay Ridge existence, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER focuses equally on what Tony escapes to and what he escapes from, on the liberation he experiences on the dance floor and the desperation of his daily life. It’s hugely entertaining but also surprisingly moving.

With Tim Curry.
Youths-in-revolt Pamela and Nicky run away from home, start a punk band and conquer New York in Allan Moyle’s aboveground-underground musical drama. Notable for its all-star soundtrack (featuring the likes of the Ramones, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Roxy Music) and for the fact that Moyle was fired by producer Robert Stigwood before the film’s completion, TIMES SQUARE is a powerful statement on art’s capacity to disrupt the order of things, and one of Brackman’s greatest achievements.

With Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Ellen Burstyn.
Familial love, romantic love, and love of money collide in Bob Rafelson’s seminal (and surreal) crime drama. Radio personality David (BBS stalwart Jack Nicholson) and his crook brother Jason (Dern) head to Atlantic City with washed-up beauty queen Sally (Burstyn) to perpetrate a real estate scam that doesn’t exactly go according to plan…. The outstanding ensemble cast is aided and abetted by Jacob Brackman’s inspired script and László Kovács’s indelible cinematography.

NEWFILMMAKERS CELEBRATES ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Tucker Capps WHAT WE HAVE JUST LEFT BEHIND (2011, 3 minutes, video)
Gabrielle & Juan Javier Pescador JUST BECAUSE I AM (2011, 46 minutes, video)

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Katrina Lencek-Inagaki TOTALLY SMOOTH (2011, 5 minutes, video)
Yelena Sabel P-WORD PIZZA (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Paul Baker ANDIE (2011, 7 minutes, video)
Jean-Pierre Bergeron ALONE WITH MR. CARTER (2011, 17 minutes, video)
Paul Festa THE GLITTER EMERGENCY (2010, 20 minutes, video)
Adam Rose QUEEN (2011, 22 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Rory Bradley & Elizabeth Levitt EL CAFFINATO (2011, 12 minutes, video)
&
VP Boyle
IT IS WHAT IT IS
2011, 40 minutes, video.
A movie musical with a completely original score, IT IS WHAT IT IS explores the lives of seven young New Yorkers during a twenty-four hour period of near misses, tattered relationships, and crumbling dreams.

–Wednesday, June 20, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 7:00, Feature Presentation at 8:45.

With George C. Scott, Tony Musante, Trish Van Devere, and Colleen Dewhurst.
George C. Scott stars as Harry Garmes, an aging mob driver hoping to make one last big haul and retire. Garmes is persuaded by his old cronies to drive an escaped criminal (Musante) and his girlfriend (Van Devere) across Spain to safety, but of course things don’t go as planned. Though John Huston was originally slated to direct, he was replaced after a series of confrontations with Fleischer, who turned out a terrific, no-nonsense 70s crime flick, boasting taut action sequences, gorgeous cinematography from Sven Nykvist, and a great performance from Scott, starring alongside both his then-wife, Colleen Dewhurst, and his wife-to-be, Trish Van Devere.

With Burt Lancaster.
Sharp’s revisionist western stars Burt Lancaster as McIntosh, a compassionate Army scout ordered to lead a small cavalry in tracking down the Apache chief Ulzana, who has escaped from the San Carlos Indian Reservation and set out on a brutal spree of killing, raping, and pillaging with a war party under his command. Aiding McIntosh is Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay; the two men forge a rapport that leads McIntosh to reevaluate his own prejudices about Native Americans and white colonization of the Great Frontier.

With John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney.
At long last, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER comes to Anthology! Though it can hardly be described as a neglected film, today it may be more recognized than actually watched. In any case, it’s a classic example of 70s commercial cinema, of a time when even many mainstream films displayed a palpable sense of working-class lives, of real-world texture and detail. Depicting the disco as a place where Travolta’s Tony Manero is able to escape the constriction and limitations of his Bay Ridge existence, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER focuses equally on what Tony escapes to and what he escapes from, on the liberation he experiences on the dance floor and the desperation of his daily life. It’s hugely entertaining but also surprisingly moving.

René Clair and Francis Picabia ENTR’ACTE (1924, 22 minutes, 35mm)
A masterpiece of Dada and a feat of cinema magic. Made as intermission entertainment for the Ballet Suédois from an impromptu scene by Francis Picabia.
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1928, 22 minutes, 35mm)
Twenty-two minutes of pure, scandalous dream-imagery, a stream of images from which anything that could be given a rational meaning was rigorously excluded. It’s still the unsurpassed masterpiece of the surrealist cinema.
Luis Buñuel LAND WITHOUT BREAD / LAS HURDES: TIERRA SIN PAN (1932, 28 minutes, 35mm. With English narration.)
“A documentary describing, matter-of-factly, a region of Spain so ravaged by epidemic poverty that there our worst fantasies find their objective correlative.” –Raymond Durgnat
Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

With Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon.
A cultural phenomenon upon its release in 1970, but rarely-screened since, JOE represented the first produced screenplay by Norman Wexler, who at the time was a middle-aged ad-copywriter. Channeling the political paranoia of the time, JOE is a nightmare vision of the class- and generation-divide in the late-60s/early-70s, featuring Susan Sarandon (in her first professional acting role) as a drug-addled hippie whose well-to-do father, in a fit of rage, murders her boyfriend, before wandering into a bar where he meets the racist, hippie-hating, foul-mouthed steamfitter Joe (Peter Boyle, in a star-making performance). Joining forces, these two upstanding citizens embark on an odyssey that concludes in carnage. Savagely dividing audiences, the film was screened around the clock in some New York theaters, with audience members shouting back at the screen, as Joe became both laughable enemy and virtuous hero.

“For me, this film reveals a new cinematographic language.” –Jean Rouch
Reis and Cordeiro’s indisputable masterpiece exploded the meaning and possibilities of ethnographic cinema with its lyrical exploration of the still-resonant myths and legends embodied in the people and landscapes of Portugal’s remote Trás-Os-Montes region. Evoking a kind of geologically Bergsonian time, with past and present layered upon one another, TRÁS-OS-MONTES interweaves evocative recreations of the ancient worlds and encounters with atavistic peasantry, following the pilgrim’s path traced by Reis and Cordeiro as they led their skeletal crew from village to village in search of the poetic essence of the Portuguese language and imagination. Painstakingly researched and shot over the course of one year, Reis and Cordeiro became intimate with every person included in their ambitious film, carefully selecting the different voices, faces, and gestures that would together provide an extraordinary composite, associative, and mythological response to the question of how to define a ‘national cinema’.

With Sondra Locke, Robert Shaw, Sally Kellerman, and Sarah Ure.
Carlino continues to explore the parent-child relationship by way of psychological horror in this story about a little girl (Locke) who yearns for the loving attention of her absentee father (Shaw) and feels alienated by her emotionally unavailable mother (Ure). When Daddy comes to visit with a woman he calls his fiancée (Kellerman), a sequence of mysterious deaths ratchets up the tensions within the already dysfunctional family.

With Rock Hudson. Archival print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
An enigmatic organization known only as “The Company” helps jaded Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) to stage his own death and be reborn as Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson at his nuttiest). Shadowed by “The Company’s” menacing representatives, Arthur/Tony wrestles with his new identity when he starts a relationship with Nora and finds that the pleasures his old life lacked are less fulfilling than expected. John Frankenheimer’s sci-fi freak-out abounds with psychedelic effects and a pervasive sense of dread amplified through Carlino’s rendering of David Ely’s novel.

(ACTO DE PRIMAVERA)
Newly restored print from the Cinemateca Portuguesa!
While location shooting for another film, Oliveira stumbled upon the subject for RITE OF SPRING, the annual passion play enacted in a village in the same remote northern region of Portugal that would inspire Reis’s most important work. Intrigued by the ritualistic and incantatory qualities of the vernacular production, Oliveira returned with Reis and set about directing the villagers in a re-enactment of the passion play, adding a rich performative layer to the film. A fascinating meta-ethnographic study of local tradition and history that folds in on itself, RITE OF SPRING climaxes unexpectedly in a furious Bruce Conner style apocalyptic montage that links Christ’s death to the violent lunacy of the Vietnam era.

(UMA RAPARIGA NO VERÃO)
One of the great Portuguese films of the 1980s, A GIRL IN SUMMER immediately announced Vítor Gonçalves as the foremost director of his generation. A moody and atmospheric portrait of a young woman unable to make the crucial decisions needed to move forward with her life, it is also a fascinating portrait of post-Salazar youth culture. A senior professor at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Gonçalves now occupies the position of Reis, his former teacher.

With Burt Lancaster.
Sharp’s revisionist western stars Burt Lancaster as McIntosh, a compassionate Army scout ordered to lead a small cavalry in tracking down the Apache chief Ulzana, who has escaped from the San Carlos Indian Reservation and set out on a brutal spree of killing, raping, and pillaging with a war party under his command. Aiding McIntosh is Apache scout Ke-Ni-Tay; the two men forge a rapport that leads McIntosh to reevaluate his own prejudices about Native Americans and white colonization of the Great Frontier.

António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
JAIME
1974, 35 minutes, 35mm.
While working at Lisbon’s famed Miguel Bombarda sanatorium, psychologist Margarida Cordeiro discovered a series of arresting drawings by the subject of her first film with Reis, a recently deceased former patient and paranoid schizophrenic named Jaime Fernandes. Keeping a deeply respectful yet never tentative distance from the asylum world as a realm of unfathomable mystery, Reis and Cordeiro linger over Fernandes’s remarkably expressive drawings, assembling a profoundly moving and hypnotic portrait of a gifted artist and powerful emblem of Portugal’s virtual imprisonment during the repressive Salazar regime.
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António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
ROSE OF SAND / ROSA DE AREIA
1989, 87 minutes, 35mm.
Reis and Cordeiro’s most abstract, conceptual, and literary work marks a stylistic and philosophical turn away from their earlier features. Employing a collage-structure that gathers texts from multiple sources – including Kafka and Montaigne – ROSA DE AREIA creates a world of theatrical artifice far from the documentary inspired naturalism of ANA and TRÁS-OS-MONTES. Reis and Cordeiro’s least-known film has lingered in obscurity and never recovered from the unfairly negative reviews that resulted in its severely limited release. Reis died less than two years later, just as he and Cordeiro were about to begin an ambitious adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s PEDRO PARÁMO.

With Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda, Paul Winfield, and Jackie Earle Haley.
Adapted from Robert Zelazy’s sci-fi novel, DAMNATION ALLEY begins with Nuclear Armageddon and the outbreak of World War III. A group of Air Force officers travels across a perpetually stormy landscape in search of a mysterious radio signal (and the hope of finding more survivors); along the way they are forced to fend for their lives in skirmishes with shotgun-wielding lunatics and monstrous mutant cockroaches. At once a wild anti-bomb parable and a lucid critique of the Arms Race, this film was undeservingly obscured by the shadow of STAR WARS.

With George C. Scott, Tony Musante, Trish Van Devere, and Colleen Dewhurst.
George C. Scott stars as Harry Garmes, an aging mob driver hoping to make one last big haul and retire. Garmes is persuaded by his old cronies to drive an escaped criminal (Musante) and his girlfriend (Van Devere) across Spain to safety, but of course things don’t go as planned. Though John Huston was originally slated to direct, he was replaced after a series of confrontations with Fleischer, who turned out a terrific, no-nonsense 70s crime flick, boasting taut action sequences, gorgeous cinematography from Sven Nykvist, and a great performance from Scott, starring alongside both his then-wife, Colleen Dewhurst, and his wife-to-be, Trish Van Devere.

(O SANGUE)
A lushly stylized romantic fable, Costa’s auspicious debut demonstrates his love and knowledge of classical Hollywood and European art cinema. With poignant echoes of Nicholas Ray, Robert Bresson, and F.W. Murnau, Costa explores the plight of two brothers and a young kindergarten teacher being pursued by some unseemly characters, including the boys’ nefarious uncle.

(DESTE LADO DA RESSURREIÇÃO)
A meditative study of loneliness and longing, the latest film by Joaquim Sapinho tells the story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the dissolution of their family. A former champion surfer who spends his days in pursuit of the most dangerous waves, the young man is torn between the Estoril beaches and the nearby monastery where he has recently taken his first vows. With THIS SIDE OF RESURRECTION Sapinho offers a minimalist and elemental fable about faith, using poetic montage to boldly juxtapose the surging drama of the sea with the cloistered world of the monastery. A former student of Reis, Sapinho reveals the influence of his mentor in the innate communication between his characters and their environment, between the surfer and the seascapes that both inspire and threaten to destroy him.

With Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon.
A cultural phenomenon upon its release in 1970, but rarely-screened since, JOE represented the first produced screenplay by Norman Wexler, who at the time was a middle-aged ad-copywriter. Channeling the political paranoia of the time, JOE is a nightmare vision of the class- and generation-divide in the late-60s/early-70s, featuring Susan Sarandon (in her first professional acting role) as a drug-addled hippie whose well-to-do father, in a fit of rage, murders her boyfriend, before wandering into a bar where he meets the racist, hippie-hating, foul-mouthed steamfitter Joe (Peter Boyle, in a star-making performance). Joining forces, these two upstanding citizens embark on an odyssey that concludes in carnage. Savagely dividing audiences, the film was screened around the clock in some New York theaters, with audience members shouting back at the screen, as Joe became both laughable enemy and virtuous hero.

António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
ANA
1982, 114 minutes, 35mm.
More than a decade after their first feature, Reis and Cordeiro returned once more to the Trás-os-Montes region, using the breathtaking landscape as the evocative setting for an intergenerational portrait of family as a variation of the poetically non-linear time explored in their earlier film. Ripe with floating symbols of the ancient and modern world, ANA is a meditation on history and human civilization and the infinitesimally small but profound role of the individual within the larger movement of longue durée. The film’s minimal and Rilke-inspired dialogue reveals Reis and Cordeiro’s interest in a deeper, non-verbal mode of communication, not only between generations but also between the land and those passing through it. At the center of the sweeping cycle of life described by ANA is the haunting figure of Cordeiro’s own mother, cast as an aging matriarch whose intimacy with her children, grandchildren, and with the windswept landscapes around her is tinged with the melancholy of her imminent, final departure.
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João Pedro Rodrigues THE SHEPHERD / O PASTOR (1988, 12 minutes, 16mm)
The Escola Superior thesis film of João Pedro Rodrigues reads as a tribute to his mentor Reis with its minimalist portrait of a day in the life of a shepherd.

With Jack Nicholson and Karen Black.
The much-revered drama that proved that BBS was more than just EASY RIDER features Jack Nicholson as a former piano prodigy turned grumpy lumpenprole whose decision to quit his job on an oil rig and visit his dying father (accompanied by his goofball girlfriend, memorably played by Karen Black) exacerbates preexistent resentments within his family. Eastman’s dynamite script is the foundation for one of the most complex and compelling performances of Nicholson’s career.

(MUDAR DE VIDA)
The second and arguably most important film by Paulo Rocha, one of the central figures of the Novo Cinema, MUDAR DE VIDA is a direct response to Oliveira’s RITE OF SPRING (and, indirectly, to Varda’s POINTE COURTE) and an important precursor to the radical documentary shaped fiction of TRÁS-OS-MONTES and, much later, the work of Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes. Captivated by the remote Portuguese fishing village of Furadouro, Rocha chose not to make a traditional documentary but rather to engage the specificities of the people and place through fiction, crafting a melancholy story about a soldier’s return to a changing world. Inspired by his experience working with Oliveira on RITE OF SPRING and THE HUNT, Rocha “cast” the local villagers as themselves, interspersed with experienced actors led by the great Isabel Ruth, who would go onto become an Oliveira regular and an iconic presence in Costa’s OSSOS. The poetry of the local vernacular is captured in the textured dialogue written by Reis, who met Rocha through Oliveira. Despite the steadily building critical acclaim that followed the release of MUDAR DE VIDA – and despite its controversial depiction of a disillusioned Angola War veteran – Rocha effectively ceased filmmaking until the 1980s.

With Jack Nicholson, Warren Oates, and Millie Perkins.
Monte Hellman’s acid western went a long way toward launching the careers of Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates. Stoic cowboy Willet Gashade (Oates, a Hellman axiom) reluctantly agrees to help a nameless woman (Perkins) track down a man with the assistance of nihilistic contract killer Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson). Motives evaporate and identities mutate as the group journeys across the vast, merciless plains of Utah. Rife with gruff dialogue and dehydrated existentialism, THE SHOOTING is a crucial installment in the bodies of work of Hellman, Oates, Nicholson, and Eastman.

(O SANGUE)
A lushly stylized romantic fable, Costa’s auspicious debut demonstrates his love and knowledge of classical Hollywood and European art cinema. With poignant echoes of Nicholas Ray, Robert Bresson, and F.W. Murnau, Costa explores the plight of two brothers and a young kindergarten teacher being pursued by some unseemly characters, including the boys’ nefarious uncle.

Written by Manuela Viegas & Joaquim Saphino.
The first and only feature film to date by influential editor Manuela Viegas (Costa’s O SANGUE, João Cesar Monteiro’s SILVESTRE) is a stylish coming-of-age tale and a moving portrait of the slow death of a rural Portuguese town. Co-written by Viegas and Joaquim Sapinho, GLÓRIA is a nuanced exploration of first love’s dangerous exhilaration, awakened in the eponymous thirteen-year-old by the release from prison and homecoming of the stationmaster’s older and enigmatic son. A central figure of the Portuguese film scene of the 1980s and 90s, Viegas taught alongside Reis in the Escuela Superior.

NYWIFT’s Member Screening Series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting. Screenings take place at Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue (at 2nd Street). There will by a Q&A with the filmmakers following the screening, and an after-party with cash bar and complimentary food at Dempsey's Pub, 61 2nd Avenue (between 3rd and 4th Streets).

Join us for a screening of short films: CAUGHT, HER TELLING HEART, I AM JULIA, THE JOHNSON MERGER and SALAM GHOURBA.

CAUGHT
Hannah is “caught”—she has spent her life trying to do the right thing, but despite her efforts she cannot win the sought-after affection of her mother or the respect of her scheming brother. Hannah finds solace in softball. But, in the end, she must make some tough decisions. This nontraditional sports film is directed, produced, and edited by member Elizabeth Page, written and produced by Lori Martini, and produced by member Maria Rusolo.

HER TELLING HEART
When a young woman’s secret past resurfaces in the form of realistic nightmares, she begins to fear the evil vulture-eye of her watchful uncle. She’s caught in a collision of reality and delusion. Edgar Allan Poe’s timeless chiller The Tell-Tale Heart takes on a feminist perspective and a suspenseful new twist in this short film by Eli Meissner.

I AM JULIA
16-year-old Julia recently moved from Colombia. Now attending an inner-city high school, she finds herself as a fish out of water. Longing for her home country, and with her sister as her only friend, Julia must fend off bullies and struggle with a language problem. The film’s director and producer Marisol Carrere plays the role of the mother.

THE JOHNSON MERGER
Maintaining a strong work ethic is the way to climb the corporate ladder, and Celeste is one merger away from tapping the glass ceiling. Could a titillating proposal help her put the merger to bed? This light, sexy comedy about mistaken identity by Nyna Sargent marks her directorial debut.

SALAM GHOURBA
In an underprivileged Moroccan neighborhood, Fatima receives a letter from her husband in exile. She is waiting anxiously to join her husband, who migrated to France over a year ago. Does the letter bear the good news that will potentially relieve her and her son from an indeterminate future? The film, by Lamia Alami, has received festival awards and recognition in both the U.S. and Europe.

NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are made possible, in part, by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo, the New York State Legislature, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation.
Additional co-sponsorship by Tyrone Jackson, Internet Media and Entertainment, Inc.

“For me, this film reveals a new cinematographic language.” –Jean Rouch
Reis and Cordeiro’s indisputable masterpiece exploded the meaning and possibilities of ethnographic cinema with its lyrical exploration of the still-resonant myths and legends embodied in the people and landscapes of Portugal’s remote Trás-Os-Montes region. Evoking a kind of geologically Bergsonian time, with past and present layered upon one another, TRÁS-OS-MONTES interweaves evocative recreations of the ancient worlds and encounters with atavistic peasantry, following the pilgrim’s path traced by Reis and Cordeiro as they led their skeletal crew from village to village in search of the poetic essence of the Portuguese language and imagination. Painstakingly researched and shot over the course of one year, Reis and Cordeiro became intimate with every person included in their ambitious film, carefully selecting the different voices, faces, and gestures that would together provide an extraordinary composite, associative, and mythological response to the question of how to define a ‘national cinema’.

NEWFILMMAKERS GETS READY FOR SUMMER

DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Ana Nogueira
ROADMAP TO APARTHEID
2011, 96 minutes, video.
Ana Nogueira is a white South African and Eron Davidson a Jewish Israeli. Drawing on their first-hand knowledge of the issues, the producers take a close look at the apartheid comparison often used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Scott MacArthur THE BARE SHOW (2010, 11 minutes, video)
Tina Salmassi TUMBLING (2011, 12 minutes, video)
Anna Nuse WHAT COMES BETWEEN FEAR AND SEX (2011, 14 minutes, video)
Margarita Jimeno SWIMMING AWAY (2010, 15 minutes, video)
Joseph Lyons SALVAGING (2011, 15 minutes, video)
Logan Sandler ALL IT WILL EVER BE (2011, 18 minutes, video)

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Ann Oren
INCONTACT
2011, 88 minutes, video.
A love triangle unfolds through an online platform called InContact, which is a hybrid of Facebook and reality TV, giving users a constant live video feed from their friends’ computers.

–Wednesday, June 27, Documentary Series at 6:00, Short Film Program at 8:00, Feature Presentation at 9:45.

António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
JAIME
1974, 35 minutes, 35mm.
While working at Lisbon’s famed Miguel Bombarda sanatorium, psychologist Margarida Cordeiro discovered a series of arresting drawings by the subject of her first film with Reis, a recently deceased former patient and paranoid schizophrenic named Jaime Fernandes. Keeping a deeply respectful yet never tentative distance from the asylum world as a realm of unfathomable mystery, Reis and Cordeiro linger over Fernandes’s remarkably expressive drawings, assembling a profoundly moving and hypnotic portrait of a gifted artist and powerful emblem of Portugal’s virtual imprisonment during the repressive Salazar regime.
&
António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro
ROSE OF SAND / ROSA DE AREIA
1989, 87 minutes, 35mm.
Reis and Cordeiro’s most abstract, conceptual, and literary work marks a stylistic and philosophical turn away from their earlier features. Employing a collage-structure that gathers texts from multiple sources – including Kafka and Montaigne – ROSA DE AREIA creates a world of theatrical artifice far from the documentary inspired naturalism of ANA and TRÁS-OS-MONTES. Reis and Cordeiro’s least-known film has lingered in obscurity and never recovered from the unfairly negative reviews that resulted in its severely limited release. Reis died less than two years later, just as he and Cordeiro were about to begin an ambitious adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s PEDRO PARÁMO.

(DESTE LADO DA RESSURREIÇÃO)
A meditative study of loneliness and longing, the latest film by Joaquim Sapinho tells the story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the dissolution of their family. A former champion surfer who spends his days in pursuit of the most dangerous waves, the young man is torn between the Estoril beaches and the nearby monastery where he has recently taken his first vows. With THIS SIDE OF RESURRECTION Sapinho offers a minimalist and elemental fable about faith, using poetic montage to boldly juxtapose the surging drama of the sea with the cloistered world of the monastery. A former student of Reis, Sapinho reveals the influence of his mentor in the innate communication between his characters and their environment, between the surfer and the seascapes that both inspire and threaten to destroy him.

(UMA RAPARIGA NO VERÃO)
One of the great Portuguese films of the 1980s, A GIRL IN SUMMER immediately announced Vítor Gonçalves as the foremost director of his generation. A moody and atmospheric portrait of a young woman unable to make the crucial decisions needed to move forward with her life, it is also a fascinating portrait of post-Salazar youth culture. A senior professor at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Gonçalves now occupies the position of Reis, his former teacher.

RECENT SHORTS FROM STRAUB/HUILLET, PEDRO COSTA, JEAN-CLAUDE ROUSSEAU, AND LUC MOULLET
“The world of sound is much more vast than the visual world,” said Jean-Marie Straub. These very different shorts from Europe’s old avant-garde all start from a similar concept: a document of a single location over a few days, hours, or minutes, through blocks of time – long, concrete shots, and fluid, shifting soundtracks of sounds just beyond the frame. Each becomes an evocation of phantom stories and events in an everyday place-turned-amphitheater: all the things that could happen in a place either off-screen or beyond the cuts. In these extremely rare, short sketches by four of Europe’s most significant filmmakers, the documentary’s hard evidence of everyday life becomes a lyricist’s – and comedian’s – proposition of lives as they might be lived and places as they might be seen.
Special thanks to Pedro Costa, Luc Moullet, Jean-Claude Rousseau, Jean-Marie Straub, Barbara Ulrich, Céline Paini, Ted Fendt, and Andy Rector. Programmed by David Phelps.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
EUROPA 2005 – 27 OCTOBRE
2006, 14 minutes, video.
A recollection of the suburban power plant where two boys were electrocuted while fleeing the police. “And I Straub, I say to you that it is the police, the police armed by Capital, who kill.” Shot by Rousseau.
With:
JOACHIM GATTI (2009, 2 minutes, video)

Pedro Costa
OUR MAN / O NOSSO HOMEM
2010, 23 minutes, video.
“I was a good mason. I never made a wall slanted. My boss never had a complaint. One day the work stopped, I lost my benefits. No pension, no welfare. I looked for work everywhere, but nothing. I brought no money home; Suzete threw me out the door.”

Jean-Claude Rousseau
KEEP IN TOUCH
1987, 25 minutes, 16mm.
Reminiscences of New York. “I was in New York, at a friend’s house. I had a camera, but the place wasn’t right, it was too full. Finally, I dared to open a very small door that was rather empty. And there, there was something to see, a frame that I seized.” –J.R.
With:
DERNIER SOUPIR (2011, 2 minutes, video)
&
NUIT BLANCHE (2011, 2 minutes, video)

Luc Moullet
THE BELLY OF AMERICA / LE VENTRE DE L’AMERIQUE
1996, 25 minutes, video.
In search of America in Des Moines, a daylight graveyard that looks like it was built by a rustic Jacques Tati. Possibly Moullet’s driest, funniest movie.
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

RECENT SHORTS FROM STRAUB/HUILLET, PEDRO COSTA, JEAN-CLAUDE ROUSSEAU, AND LUC MOULLET
“The world of sound is much more vast than the visual world,” said Jean-Marie Straub. These very different shorts from Europe’s old avant-garde all start from a similar concept: a document of a single location over a few days, hours, or minutes, through blocks of time – long, concrete shots, and fluid, shifting soundtracks of sounds just beyond the frame. Each becomes an evocation of phantom stories and events in an everyday place-turned-amphitheater: all the things that could happen in a place either off-screen or beyond the cuts. In these extremely rare, short sketches by four of Europe’s most significant filmmakers, the documentary’s hard evidence of everyday life becomes a lyricist’s – and comedian’s – proposition of lives as they might be lived and places as they might be seen.
Special thanks to Pedro Costa, Luc Moullet, Jean-Claude Rousseau, Jean-Marie Straub, Barbara Ulrich, Céline Paini, Ted Fendt, and Andy Rector. Programmed by David Phelps.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
EUROPA 2005 – 27 OCTOBRE
2006, 14 minutes, video.
A recollection of the suburban power plant where two boys were electrocuted while fleeing the police. “And I Straub, I say to you that it is the police, the police armed by Capital, who kill.” Shot by Rousseau.
With:
JOACHIM GATTI (2009, 2 minutes, video)

Pedro Costa
OUR MAN / O NOSSO HOMEM
2010, 23 minutes, video.
“I was a good mason. I never made a wall slanted. My boss never had a complaint. One day the work stopped, I lost my benefits. No pension, no welfare. I looked for work everywhere, but nothing. I brought no money home; Suzete threw me out the door.”

Jean-Claude Rousseau
KEEP IN TOUCH
1987, 25 minutes, 16mm.
Reminiscences of New York. “I was in New York, at a friend’s house. I had a camera, but the place wasn’t right, it was too full. Finally, I dared to open a very small door that was rather empty. And there, there was something to see, a frame that I seized.” –J.R.
With:
DERNIER SOUPIR (2011, 2 minutes, video)
&
NUIT BLANCHE (2011, 2 minutes, video)

Luc Moullet
THE BELLY OF AMERICA / LE VENTRE DE L’AMERIQUE
1996, 25 minutes, video.
In search of America in Des Moines, a daylight graveyard that looks like it was built by a rustic Jacques Tati. Possibly Moullet’s driest, funniest movie.
Total running time: ca. 95 minutes.

A once-in-a-calendar opportunity to take a peek at the teeming hive of creativity hiding behind the scenes at Anthology, thanks to the film- and video-making efforts of AFA’s staff, friends, fellow-travelers, and devotees.