Film Screenings / Programs / Series
AUTO-CINEMA
June 19 – June 25
June 19-25, 2013
2012 saw the near-simultaneous release of David Cronenberg’s COSMOPOLIS and Leos Carax’s HOLY MOTORS, two of the most audacious and astonishing commercial films in recent memory, but also films that are uncannily similar in their conception – each takes place largely within the confines of a stretch limo, which slowly makes its way through a strange and strikingly unreal urban landscape. While one can only conjecture as to why these two works might’ve come into existence at the same time, they’re not the first films to make the seemingly perverse decision to limit their worlds mostly (if not entirely) to the interior of a car. Among narrative filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami has made a habit of setting his films in cars, while Cronenberg previously adapted J.G. Ballard’s cult novel CRASH into a film that elevates the interior of an automobile into a disturbingly and erotically charged space. And avant-garde filmmakers too have betrayed a fascination with the car not so much as a means of transportation but as a kind of miniature world, using the interior of an automobile to mirror our own consciousness, to act as a fruitful formal limitation, or to play with off-screen space. Highlighting some of the extraordinary films that have explored the dramatic and philosophical potential of cars not as cultural objects or means of generating action (no car chases here!), but as enclosed, charged spaces, simultaneously in motion and static, this series demonstrates how diverse the results have been.
Special thanks to Morgan Fisher, Alfred Leslie, Saul Levine, Brian Belovarac (Janus Films), Cassie Blake (Academy Film Archive), Rebecca Cleman (Electronic Arts Intermix), Benjamin Crossley-Marra (Zeitgeist Films), Jamie Muir (Swank), and Marilee Womack (WB).
David Cronenberg
COSMOPOLIS
2012, 109 min, 35mm. With Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, and Samantha Morton.
An adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel of the same name, Cronenberg’s latest film finds him working at the height of his powers, brilliantly utilizing TWILIGHT star Pattinson’s vampiric blankness, and further developing the dramatic, metaphoric, and philosophical dimensions of the car interior that he earlier explored in 1996’s CRASH. COSMOPOLIS charts a day in the life of Eric Packer (Pattinson), a bored and benumbed financial wunderkind, as he journeys slowly across NYC in his chauffeured stretch limo, receiving a succession of visitors and encountering a protesting populace that becomes increasingly angry and violent. In classic Cronenberg fashion, the limo becomes a metaphor of tremendous elasticity and suggestiveness, mirroring Packer’s psychological insularity, his narcissism, and his sheltered detachment from the social and financial reality around him, as well as suggesting the ways in which technology has drawn us all into a kind of bubble, into and out of which information flows rapidly but genuine engagement becomes increasingly rare.
Wed, June 19 at 6:45, Sat, June 22 at 9:15, and Mon, June 24 at 9:15
Leos Carax
HOLY MOTORS
2012, 115 min, 35mm. In French with English subtitles. With Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, and Michel Piccoli.
Leos Carax’s long-awaited new feature stars his favored muse, the inimitable and impish Denis Lavant, as a mysterious figure who (like a nocturnal version of COSMOPOLIS’s Eric Packer) glides through Paris by night in a stretch limo in whose confines he transforms himself into a succession of radically different characters, whose miniature stories play out in separate locations. In COSMOPOLIS the limo functions as a kind of condensed, microcosmic stage, but in HOLY MOTORS it’s more like an existential backstage, where Lavant dons various identities and disguises. A genuinely enigmatic, baffling, but wondrous film, HOLY MOTORS is a true one-of-a-kind.
Wed, June 19 at 9:00, Sat, June 22 at 4:30, and Mon, June 24 at 6:45
SHORT FILM PROGRAM
Alfred Leslie & Frank O’Hara
THE LAST CLEAN SHIRT
1964, 39 min, 16mm, b&w
Filmed in one continuous take from the back seat of a convertible driving in lower Manhattan, this film’s thrice-repeated footage features magnificent subtitles by Frank O’Hara that first appear as a ‘translation’ of the white wife character’s double-talk Danish monologue and then as the unspoken thoughts of her black doctor husband.
Bette Gordon & James Benning
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1975, 27 min, 16mm. Preserved with support from The National Film Preservation Foundation.
A conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and social changes from New York to Los Angeles.
Morgan Fisher
TURNING OVER 1975, 13 min, video, b&w. Courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
In this deadpan video, Fisher drives around San Francisco as his odometer approaches 100,000 miles, marking the momentousness of the event with a hilariously sustained monologue to the camera.
Paul Kos & Marlene Kos
LIGHTNING 1976, 1.5 min, video, b&w
“When I look for the lightning, it never strikes. When I look away, it does.” Filmed inside a car, this tape focuses on observation of natural phenomena, presenting the obverse of the “If a tree falls in the woods…” conundrum.
Andrew T. Betzer
IVAN RUNS SOME ERRANDS, RUNS AMOK 2004, 14 min, 35mm
Ivan, a stranger in a strange land, steals a car with a child in the backseat. He fulfills his domestic urges and then disappears into the night.
Total running time: ca. 100 min.
Thurs, June 20 at 7:00 and Sun, June 23 at 8:30
Chip Lord
MOTORIST
1989, 69 min, video. With Richard Marcus.
This feature-length video by Chip Lord (one of the founding members of the multi-media collective Ant Farm) is a combination roadtrip-, essay-, and collage-film exploring the American preoccupation with car culture. Monologuing from behind the wheel of his 1962 Ford Thunderbird as he travels across the Arizona desert, actor Richard Marcus muses on his own attachment to the automobile, as well as commenting on the roadside motels, diners, and other sights that cater to passing drivers. His dryly comic, deadpan observations are punctuated with glimpses of TV and magazine ads and promotional films, whose romanticized imagery contrasts sharply with the shabby, kitschy places he encounters on his travels.
Thurs, June 20 at 9:00
Abbas Kiarostami
TASTE OF CHERRY / TA’M E GUILASS
1997, 99 min, 35mm. In Persian with English subtitles.
“A middle-aged man who’s contemplating suicide drives around the hilly, dusty outskirts of Tehran trying to find someone who will bury him if he succeeds and retrieve him if he fails. This minimalist yet powerful and life-enhancing 1997 feature by Kiarostami never explains why the man wants to end his life, yet every moment in his daylong odyssey carries a great deal of poignancy and philosophical weight. Kiarostami, one of the great filmmakers of our time, is a master at filming landscapes and constructing parablelike narratives whose missing pieces solicit the viewer’s active imagination.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
Fri, June 21 at 7:00 and Sun, June 23 at 4:00
Abbas Kiarostami
10
2002, 94 min, 35mm. In Persian with English subtitles.
“The minimalism of this Kiarostami film makes it one of the boldest experiments yet by the masterful Iranian filmmaker: its ten sequences transpire in a car driving through Tehran, with a stylish young divorcee at the wheel and a series of six characters in the passenger seat. Shot with two digital video cameras mounted on the dashboard, it’s neither scripted nor directed in any ordinary sense, but Kiarostami spent a long time preparing the nonprofessional actors (all strong performers). […] The film offers a fascinating glimpse of the Iranian urban middle class, and though it eschews most of the pleasures of composition and landscape found in other Kiarostami films, it’s never less than riveting.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
Fri, June 21 at 9:15 and Sun, June 23 at 2:00
Saul Levine
DRIVEN (WITH KATHA WASHBURN)
2008, 82 min, video
“In his ongoing series DRIVEN…Levine rides in the front seat of an automobile while one of his friends talks about his or her life for 82 minutes (the maximum length of a single take using his digital camera). […] Levine’s low-key mode of inquiry and his genuine passion for listening have an infectious power.” –P. Adams Sitney, ARTFORUMIn this installment of his ongoing DRIVEN series, Levine shares a ride and an extended conversation with his charismatic friend Katha Washburn, who shares stories about her experiences pursuing an acting career in NYC, her job as an administrative assistant at MIT, and her night school classes at Mass Art.
Sat, June 22 at 2:30
David Cronenberg
CRASH
1996, 100 min, 35mm. With James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, and Rosanna Arquette.
Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s cult novel of the same name, CRASH paints a nightmarish, dystopic portrait of a subculture that finds car crashes intensely erotic. A brilliant meditation on the extent to which humans have become unavoidably and intimately enmeshed in technology, CRASH portrays a group of men and women who embrace this interwining, who take sexual pleasure from the violent fusion of their bodies with the cold, jagged machines within which we all spend much of our lives.“Uncompromising in its melancholia, CRASH establishes a profound sense of seeking comfort in the crevices of a lacerating, metallic world. In the context of this brilliant science fiction, our species is imagined as vulnerable bits of oozing, sucking, coupling, retracting, yearning protoplasm. Does the thought disturb you? Shown on a double bill with a blithe futurist entertainment like SPEED or STAR WARS, CRASH would emerge as the infinitely more honest and moral movie.” –J. Hoberman
Sat, June 22 at 7:00, Sun, June 23 at 6:15, and Tues, June 25 at 9:15
