Film Screenings / Programs / Series
AMERICANS IN PARIS
March 29 – April 25
March 25-29, 2024
In connection with the exhibition, “Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962”, which will be on view at the Grey Art Museum at NYU from March 2-July 20, 2024, Anthology hosts four programs featuring artists who are showcased in the exhibition.
“Americans in Paris” is the first major exhibition to examine the historical impact of the expatriate art scene in Paris after WWII, and delves into the various circles of artists who made France their home during an era of intense geopolitical realignment. The exhibition covers a seventeen-year period beginning in 1946, when the U.S. Embassy in Paris began processing applications from ex-service members for the new GI Bill. A monthly stipend of $75 allowed many artists, such as Norman Bluhm, Robert Breer, Ed Clark, Harold Cousins, Sam Francis, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Jack Youngerman, to opt for a foreign rather than a domestic learning experience. Seasoned artists, such as Beauford Delaney, Claire Falkenstein, Carmen Herrera, Joan Mitchell, Kimber Smith, and Mark Tobey, like the GIs, were drawn to the storied modernist traditions that still flowed from this fabled City of Light. Intense experimentation among these closely knit, if shifting, circles of artists generated a variety of formal inventions and personal artistic styles.
For this cinematic sidebar to the exhibition, we’ll be showing work by Melvin Van Peebles, Robert Breer, and Kenneth Anger, all of whom made some of their most important early films in France. We’re also taking the occasion to shed light on two artists whose films are very rarely shown in the U.S. – Carmen D’Avino and Shinkichi Tajiri – and to present some of the rarest items in the filmography of the great photographer and filmmaker William Klein: the short documentaries he made for French television in 1962-64.
For more info about the exhibition at the Grey Art Museum at NYU, which is curated by the independent scholar Debra Bricker Balken with Lynn Gumpert, visit https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/exhibition/americans-in-paris/
Special thanks to Leah Sweet (Grey Art Museum); and to Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Christopher Forte; Bob Hunter (Icarus Films); Simona Monizza (EYE Filmmuseum); Sandra Schulberg (IndieCollect); Giotta Tajiri (Shinkichi Tajiri Estate); Mark Toscano & Edda Manriquez (Academy Film Archive); Nosh van der Lely; and Matthew White (4th Coast Productions).
PROGRAM 1: MELVIN VAN PEEBLES
Melvin Van Peebles
THE STORY OF A THREE DAY PASS / LA PERMISSION
1967, 86 min, 35mm-to-DCP. New 4K restoration by IndieCollect in consultation with Mario Van Peebles, with support from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Melvin Van Peebles’s edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into a segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which, LA PERMISSION, would become his stylistically innovative feature debut. Turner (Harry Baird), an African American soldier stationed in France, is granted a promotion and a three-day leave from base by his casually racist commanding officer and heads to Paris, where he finds whirlwind romance with a white woman (Nicole Berger) – but what happens to their love when his furlough is over? Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that is playful, sarcastic, and stingingly subversive by turns, and that laid the foundation for the scorched-earth cinematic revolution he would unleash just a few years later with SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG.
Preceded by:
Melvin Van Peebles 500 FRANCS / LES CINQ CENT BALLES 1961, 12 min, 35mm-to-DCP
Set to a percussive, syncopated soundtrack, this early Melvin Van Peebles short is a small-scale tale of obsession, greed, and violence. In a run-down neighborhood, a boy notices a 500-franc note in a sewer. His improvised efforts to pull it up through the grate fail, and when a poor young man comes along to try his luck, the boy’s jealousy leads to a series of ultimately ineffective attacks. Finally, he makes one last quixotic attempt to get his hands on the precious banknote.
Total running time: ca. 105 min.
Fri & Sat, Mar 29 & 30 at 7:30 each night.
PROGRAM 2: KENNETH ANGER, ROBERT BREER, AND CARMEN D’AVINO
This program brings together work by Robert Breer and Kenneth Anger, two artists whose place in the pantheon of experimental filmmakers is undisputed, as well as painter and animator Carmen D’Avino, whose films were celebrated in their time but have since fallen into relative obscurity. Breer lived in Paris from 1949-59, a period that saw him expand his practice from painting into filmmaking, and develop his highly distinctive and still unparalleled approach to experimental animation. Anger too was in Paris after the war, from 1950-53, during which time he began filming (at the Films du Panthéon Studio) the project that would later become RABBIT’S MOON (the footage languished at the Cinémathèque Française until he was able to retrieve it and complete the film in 1970). Like Breer, Carmen D’Avino’s art encompassed both painting and filmmaking. His films attracted a great deal of attention at the time, both within the avant-garde film scene (where Amos Vogel repeatedly showcased his work as part of his pioneering film society, Cinema 16) and in the wider cultural sphere (both PIANISSIMO and BACKGROUND were nominated for Academy Awards). Though his films were mostly created following his return to the U.S. in 1951, his experiences in France both during and after the war were formative. As part of this program, we’ll be screening two of his greatest early films, THE ROOM (1959) and PIANISSIMO (1963), as well as 1973’s BACKGROUND, which explicitly explores his time in Paris.
Kenneth Anger
RABBIT’S MOON 1950-70, 15 min, 35mm. Preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, with funding from the Film Foundation.
Robert Breer
RECREATION 1956, 1.5 min, 16mm-to-35mm
MOTION PICTURES NO. 1 1956, 4.5 min, 16mm, silent
JAMESTOWN BALOOS 1957, 6 min, 16mm-to-35mm
EYEWASH 1959, 3 min, 16mm-to-35mm
RECREATION, JAMESTOWN BALOOS, and EYEWASH were preserved by Anthology with generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Carmen D’Avino
THE ROOM 1959, 5 min, 16mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
PIANISSIMO 1963, 6 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
BACKGROUND 1973, 19 min, 35mm. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
Thurs, April 4 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 3: WILLIAM KLEIN
Born and raised in New York City, William Klein relocated permanently to France in 1948, where he would create the body of photographic and cinematic work for which he is justly renowned. Despite the attention his films and photography have attracted then and now, there is one relatively ignored corner of his filmography: the short films he made for French television in the early-to-mid 1960s. Created for the news magazine show “Cinq colonnes à la une” (“Five columns on the front page”), LE BUSINESS ET LA MODE (1962), LES TROUBLES DE LA CIRCULATION (1962), and GARE DE LYON (1963) find Klein investigating various dimensions of French culture (the business of fashion, the phenomenon of traffic congestion, and the spectacle of a major train station during the holidays). For the longer-form piece WILLIAM KLEIN AUX GRANDS MAGASINS (1964), which was aired as part of the long-running TV series “Les femmes aussi”, Klein films Simone Signoret as she wanders through a department store, interviews various women she encounters there, and shares her own thoughts on family and work.
William Klein
LE BUSINESS ET LA MODE 1962, 15 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French with English subtitles.
LES TROUBLES DE LA CIRCULATION 1962, 15 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French with English subtitles.
GARE DE LYON 1963, 12.5 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French with English subtitles.
WILLIAM KLEIN AUX GRANDS MAGASINS
1964, 44 min, 16mm-to-digital. In French with English subtitles.
Total running time: ca. 90 min.
Wed, April 17 at 7:30.
PROGRAM 4: SHINKICHI TAJIRI
This program shines a spotlight on artist Shinkichi Tajiri, who is best known for his sculptural work, but who also made a number of fascinating films. Born in Los Angeles to first-generation Japanese immigrants, Tajiri enlisted in the army to escape imprisonment in the Japanese concentration camps that the U.S. government created during the war. Moving to Paris in 1948, he was based there for most of the next decade, a period in which he studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine and painter (and filmmaker) Fernand Léger, collaborated with the CoBrA group of artists, and co-founded Galerie Huit. Tajiri’s first film, VIPERS (1955), which he intended to evoke the experience of taking psychoactive drugs, was awarded the Golden Lion for ‘Best Use of Film Language’ at the Cannes Film Festival, and was followed by several other short films over the next 15 years. For this program, we’ll be presenting four of Tajiri’s short films, as well as the great Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan van der Keuken’s 1962 film portrait of Tajiri and Carmen D’Avino’s 1950 documentary VERNISSAGE OF AMERICAN ARTISTS, which provides glimpses of Tajiri and several other American artists in Paris at the time.
All the films in this program, with the exception of VERNISSAGE OF AMERICAN ARTISTS, are screened courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum.
Shinkichi Tajiri
THE VIPERS 1955, 9.5 min, 16mm. Co-cinematography by Baird Bryant.
MAD NEST 1955, 4.5 min, 16mmFERDI 1955, 12 min, 16mm-to-digital
BICYCLES 1960, 5 min, 16mm-to-digital
Johan van der Keuken
TAJIRI 1962, 12 min, 16mm-to-digital
Carmen D’Avino
VERNISSAGE OF AMERICAN ARTISTS 1950, 18 min, 16mm-to-digital
Total running time: ca. 65 min.
Thurs, April 25 at 7:30.
