September 29 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italian master filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007), arguably the most influential director of the postwar era. The National Gallery of Art joins the American Film Institute (AFI) and the Italian Cultural Institute, Washington, in a retrospective of his most distinguished works. The early Italian films, including several shorts and documentaries—loaned through the courtesy of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia–Cineteca Nazionale—are screened at the National Gallery during August and early September, while the English-language classics are shown at the AFI Silver Theatre in September. Fare un film per me è vivere (1996), a documentary that Enrica Antonioni made while her husband was on the set of Beyond the Clouds, screens at the Italian Cultural Institute in September.

The Psychological Landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) A Centenary Tribute (PDF 735K)
Essay by David Gariff

That Aleksei Guerman has completed only a few films merely adds to the mystery surrounding this filmmaker who, though not well known in the West, enjoys a unique reputation in Russia. His fixation on moments of historical consequence for the Soviet Union, coupled with his unconventional approach, has given his work a particular weight. Guerman was born in 1938 in Leningrad to Soviet cultural elite: his father was the distinguished writer Yuri Guerman, and the younger Guerman studied theater and then cinema under Grigory Kozintsev. In spite of recurring problems with authorities, Guerman managed production delays, losses of funding, and the collapse of the Soviet Union to fashion one of the most richly cinematic bodies of work in contemporary culture. His latest, an adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's sci-fi novel Hard to Be a God, will be released this year. This first North American retrospective of Guerman's work is presented in association with Seagull Films and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, with thanks to Lenfilm Studios, Alla Verlotsky, Paul Richer, Scott Foundas, and George Gund III.

Distinguished leader of the Czech new wave and celebrated Hollywood director Miloš Forman (born 1932) turned 80 years old this year. From any perspective, his life has had more than its share of dramatic situations. His parents died in concentration camps, his earliest work was challenged by the authorities, and he was denied admission to drama school, yet managed to graduate from the FAMU film academy and work for Czech television in the 1950s. When barely 30, during the early days of cultural liberalization known as the Prague Spring, he launched his experimental approach to filmmaking under the watch of the communist regime. Yet as the brief but pivotal Prague Spring drew to a close in 1968, Forman was forced to leave for the United States where, somewhat tentatively, he resumed his filmmaking career. This cycle of Forman's work is presented in association with the Czech Film Archive and the Embassy of the Czech Republic, with thanks to Barbara Karpetova, Mary Fetzco, and Michal Bregant.

František Vláčil's historical pageants summon a far-off time and place in a naturalistic style suited to his training in aesthetics and art history. His small body of work stands out from the gritty Czech new wave films of the era and, not surprisingly, was seen as subversive by censors in his native Czech Republic. Thwarted after the 1968 Soviet invasion, Vláčil (1924–1999) maintained that he was only interested in "pure film" and applying poetic license to shape allegory out of ancient tales. His work suggests parallels to other metaphorically rich work of the last century including films by Tarkovsky and Eisenstein. This program encompasses his best known epics and includes the premiere of the new restoration of the medieval Markéta Lazarová. With special thanks to the Embassy of the Czech Republic, the Czech National Film Archive, Barbara Karpetová, Mary Fetzko, and Michal Bregant.

Films featuring scores by Dmitri Shostakovich plus a screening of Tony Palmer's Testimony are presented in association with PostClassical Ensemble's Interpreting Shostakovich festival. "When talking about Soviet film we must remember Lenin's famous statement that 'of all the arts, the most important for us is the cinema.' It was Stalin who turned the dictum into reality . . . . Stalin loved the movies"—Solomon Volkov. Volkov (author of Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich) is a participant in the series, along with filmmaker Tony Palmer, film historian Peter Rollberg, music historian Roy Guenther, and PostClassical Ensemble's music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez and artistic director Joseph Horowitz.

An homage in two parts to the late French filmmaker Chris Marker (1921–2012) recalls his oeuvre through recurring motifs—the mysterious workings of memory and of politics, and his avowed fascination for cats. Marker refined the genre now known as the essay film—a reflective montage of images, ideas, and narrative that goes beyond traditional form to unfold a poetic theme. "We do not remember, we rewrite memory, much as history is rewritten."

A series of new documentary works by Swiss filmmakers on the country's contemporary artists is presented in association with the Embassy of Switzerland.

Opera, theater, and film director Werner Schroeter (1945–2010) resists easy classification. Linked with the new German cinema—the rebellious group of directors who hoped to revitalize postwar film culture—Schroeter's edgy romanticism and fondness for high camp kept him on the margins. He worked with an extraordinary range of actors (Isabelle Huppert, Bulle Ogier, Carole Bouquet, and Magdalena Montezuma, his muse.) "What Schroeter does with a face, a cheekbone, lips, the expression of the eyes. . . is a multiplying and burgeoning of the body, an exultation"—Michel Foucault. These two early features reveal a deep affection for the south of Italy—Schroeter had once been a student in Naples and knew the region's lore. With thanks to the Munich Film Museum and the Goethe-Institut in Washington.

Renowned artist and faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts, James Benning has been lauded as a structural filmmaker though his work is grounded in a variety of film practices. For more than four decades, he has influenced the international avant-garde. Known for composed long takes with an acute sensitivity to out-of-frame sound, Benning's films (and now high-definition recordings) are intense studies of places, travels, landscapes, and more recently, individuals. These three programs are presented in association with the photography exhibition The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years.

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975)—radical poet, philosopher, painter, intellectual, novelist, and filmmaker—would have been 90 years old this year. Controversial during his lifetime for his dissident views on Italian politics and contemporary culture, he is now recognized as a visionary, a creative thinker whose writings continue to influence European writers, politicians, and intellectuals. This three-part program considers his contributions from distinct points of view.

Two of Marcel Carné’s most famous works of poetic realism have been rereleased in bright new digital cinema prints. With special thanks to Rialto Pictures and Janus Film Collection.

Washington premiere

Near the town of Culiacan, Mexico, is a cemetery containing the majestic mausoleums of the drug lords, its silences suppressing the brutal truths about the bodies beneath. Acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Natalia Almada's documentary unfolds through the daily rhythms of the velador (caretaker) who sees it all—the hearses, the families, the politics, the deeply rooted class conflicts. Observational filmmaking at its most artistic, developed through long takes and careful sound recording, El Velador is serene and deferential, "an acknowledgment of the chasm between our lives and theirs"—Elise Nakhnikian. (Natalia Almada, 2011, DCP, Spanish with subtitles, 72 minutes)

Ben Model, piano
Introduction by Andrea Rousova

The seduction of a rural stationmaster's daughter (Ita Rina) by a handsome lothario (Olaf Fjord) is painted in the understated details of Václav Vích's photography and Alexander Hammid's art direction, with a hint of avant-garde élan. Surrealist writer Vítězslav Nezval contributed to the screenplay which, despite a few melodramatic moments (the young woman marries another man, then encounters her seducer years later), is deftly rendered. Andrea Rousova is a curator from the National Gallery, Prague. (Gustav Machatý, 1929, silent with intertitles, 85 minutes)

Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1954), director Roberto Rossellini's modernist breakthrough often compared to James Joyce's writings or Michelangelo Antonioni's films, has just been restored by L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, in collaboration with CSC—Cineteca Nazionale, Rome. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, an upper-class English couple trying to find a buyer for their villa near Naples, experience new anxieties in their marriage. Evoking the ancient southern Italian surroundings, Journey to Italy alludes to the power of this timeless place to transform and heal. (Roberto Rossellini, 1954, DCP, 97 minutes)

Ben Model, piano

Marion Davies, forever linked with the name of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, enjoyed a successful career in the silent cinema. In King Vidor's The Patsy she plays Patricia Harrington, an innocent victim in family feuds involving her mother (Marie Dresler) and sister (Jane Winton), who coyly collects boyfriends. Devising a plot that employs her talents as a mimic—Mae Murray, Lillian Gish, and Pola Negri are specialties—she tries to trap a man. (King Vidor, 1928, 35 mm, 78 minutes) A Library of Congress restoration.

Bruce Bennett, David Bianculli, Ben Model in person

"Intimate vacuum" was comedian Ernie Kovacs' tongue-in-cheek definition of television, the medium he broadened in the 1950s with his absurdist sight gags and pioneering video effects, novel experiments in network TV's early years. This program brings together a variety of dada-like sketches, from the silent Eugene Show to the musical Nairobi Trio to a Dutch Masters commercial in which Kovacs smokes a cigar under water. The comedian's love for classical music, fostered by his wife and collaborator Edie Adams, blossomed on the shows of the late 1950s, and several of his "sound into sight" musical pieces from the ABC specials—early masterworks of video art—are also part of this mix. A discussion with three Kovacs historians—Bruce Bennett, David Bianculli, and Ben Model—follows the screening. (Total running time approximately 120 minutes)

Musical accompaniment by Kim and Kathryn Kluge

Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968) is a unique figure in the history of cinema—a woman positioned squarely at the front lines of international technological change that first distinguished the cinema as a form of mass entertainment. From production and distribution to early sound technology and independent direction, she participated in all aspects of the evolving motion picture business. This program features a selection of early films that Guy made in France for Gaumont, followed by restored single-reel subjects produced by her American company Solax, and finally a reconstruction of one of her three surviving independent features. The original score by composers Kim and Kathryn Kluge creates a conversation between past and present. The program is presented in association with the University of Maryland symposium "Alice Guy Blaché: Transatlantic Sites of Cinéma Nouveau, 1896–1920." With special thanks to Caroline Eades, Elizabeth Papazian, Brian Real, Kim Tomadjoglou, Swedish Film Institute, Embassy of France, and Library of Congress. Films on the program include: Alice Guy tourne une phonoscène (1905), early Gaumont films from the Sieurin Collection (1899–1900), Five O'Clock Tea (1905), Greater Love Hath No Man (1911), Mixed Pets (1911), Falling Leaves (1912), The Ocean Waif (1916), and Parson Sue (1912). (Total running time approximately 100 minutes, followed by discussion)

Václav Havel (1936–2011)—poet, playwright, and cherished first president of the Czech Republic—returned to the stage in 2008 with the new play Leaving (Odcházení). He adapted this absurdist comedy, in which an ex-government official tries to reenter his former life, for the screen. As the action unfolds on a rural estate, comparisons to Havel's own life become clear: "Before the 1989 Revolution, I had an idea for a character like King Lear, who loses power. It might have been the influence of the generation of 1968—the people who had been party members . . . after '68 they were thrown out and started to live ordinary lives, and they pretended that they didn’t mind, but in fact they did"—Václav Havel. (2011, Czech with subtitles, DCP, 94 minutes)

Over half a million visitors to Marina Abramović's groundbreaking 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective lined up for hours for the most alluring aspect of this show—a chance to sit opposite Marina at a table and silently stare, as she stared back. Many were completely devastated by this rigorous, disquieting, and often moving experience. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present chronicles not only the landmark exhibition but the intriguingly evocative career of this Serbia-born, New York–based performance artist, one of the most charismatic public figures of our time. (Matthew Akers, 2011, DCP, 106 minutes)

Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton in performance

Raoul Walsh's 1922 silent melodrama of romantic intrigue in a northwest logging town, based on a popular novel by the prolific Peter B. Kyne, features Walsh's wife, Miriam Cooper, as Nan of the Sawdust Pile, a wronged woman who returns to her hometown to find that her old sweetheart still loves her but cannot marry her. Art direction is by William Cameron Menzies, who moved on to one of the most brilliant careers in Hollywood production design. Pianist Donald Sosin and vocalist Joanna Seaton provide their original musical accompaniment. Print courtesy George Eastman House. (Raoul Walsh, 1922, 35 mm, 90 minutes) Preservation funded by The Film Foundation

The Woodmans investigates the legacy of photographer Francesca Woodman as experienced by her parents and older brother, all of whom are successful practicing artists. Not surprisingly, their perspectives—at once familiar and distanced—rely heavily on the impressive body of provocative work Francesca left before her suicide at age 22. (C. Scott Willis, 2010, HDCAM, 82 minutes)

The Fancy, completed before the recent spate of scholarly interest in Woodman's work, is groundbreaking in its approach to its highly elusive subject. The filmmaker "meticulously sifts physical evidence and sketchy facts in an attempt to uncover the traces of a seemingly suppressed history embedded behind the photographer's pictures"—Nicole Armour. (Elizabeth Subrin, 2000, DigiBeta, 36 minutes)

Illustrated lecture by Thomas Elsaesser

Cultural historian Thomas Elsaesser, one of our most creative and unconventional thinkers on cinematic culture, film history, and digital media, speaks on the interconnections between the cinematic avantgardes of the 1920s and modernist architecture, the nonfiction film, and advertising. Among Elsaesser's 20 authored and edited books is an in-depth study of German cinema in the 1920s (Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary), a monograph on Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis, and European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, covering a broad range of topics from film festivals to national cinemas, and from the high-low culture debate to the cinematic auteurs of France, Britain, and Germany. Elsaesser is presently a senior fellow at the International College of Cultural Technologies and Media Theory in Weimar, Germany. (Approximately 70 minutes) This program is made possible by funds given in memory of Rajiv Vaidya.

A 1960s interview with Barnett Newman from the legendary era of National Educational Television was originally produced for the NET series Television USA: Artists. The film is screened in association with the National Gallery exhibition In the Tower: Barnett Newman. (Lane Slate, 1966, 16 mm, 30 minutes)

The first of two events featuring the award-winning works from this year's International Festival of Films on Art—a unique annual event in Montreal, now in its 31st year—includes the Washington premieres of Coloring Light: Brian Clarke (2011, 58 minutes), a portrait of the British superstar of architectural stained glass; Unfinished Spaces (2011, 86 minutes), on the remarkable complex of Cuban art schools built by Fidel Castro; and Frédéric Back: Grandeur nature (2011, 78 minutes), on the Canadian artist whose animations are among the most beloved short works in the world.

The second program of new films from this year's acclaimed art film festival includes Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favor (2010, 55 minutes), BBC Imagine's recent program on the celebrated Chinese artist; !W.A.R. Women Art Revolution (2011, 82 minutes); and Romain Gary—Le roman du double (2010, 89 minutes), the story of the enigmatic French author, director, and diplomat who was also the spouse of actress Jean Seberg.

Produced by the Gallery, this film uses original footage shot in Manhattan and Maine to chronicle Bellows' career. In his works, Bellows captured the rapidly changing face of early 20th-century New York, explored the rocky coast of Maine, and addressed the social and political issues of the day.

Made possible by the HRH Foundation.
The film screens with minor exceptions.