Release Date: October 11, 2012
National Gallery Fall Film Events Feature Works by Cinematic Pioneers Alice Guy Blaché, František Vláčil, Werner Schroeter, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Chris Marker, Marcel Carné, Plus the Film Scores of Shostakovich and More
Film still from small roads (James Benning, 2011, HDCAM, 103 minutes) to be shown at the National Gallery of Art on Saturday, December 8, 4:30 p.m. as part of the film series, American Originals Now: James Benning. Image courtesy of James Benning
This fall, the free film program at the National Gallery of Art celebrates work by cinematic innovators with an array of premieres, rare screenings, and focused retrospectives of master filmmakers. Films are shown in original 35 mm format unless otherwise noted.
The season kicks off on October 7 with A Sense of Place: František Vláčil, a series surveying the beautiful and subversive work of the Czech filmmaker. On October 27, the Gallery celebrates television pioneer Ernie Kovacs with the program Ernie Kovacs: Video Art for the Intimate Vacuum, featuring a selection of short sketches and a discussion by three Kovacs historians. Beginning November 11, Chris Marker: A Tribute honors the late French filmmaker, who died July 30 of this year and refined the genre of the essay film. On November 24 and 25, Werner Schroeter in Italy presents two films that reveal the film director's deep affection for Italy. In December, Marcel Carné Revived includes new digital prints of two of the filmmaker's most famous works.
Other series include Shostakovich and the Cinema, with films that include scores by the prominent Russian composer, as well as discussions with musicians and film historians; From Tinguely to Pipilotti Rist—Swiss Artists on Film, highlighting Switzerland's contemporary artists; and the Gallery's ongoing American Originals Now series with renowned artist James Benning, presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years, on view through December 31.
Several documentary films closely examine the lives of well-known artists. On November 17 and 18, the Gallery screens Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, a fascinating chronicle of the artist's preparation for her groundbreaking 2010 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. On November 28, 29, and 30, The Woodmans investigates the legacy of late photographer Francesca Woodman. In association with the exhibition In the Tower: Barnett Newman, on view in the East Building through February 24, the Gallery presents Barnett Newman on December 13, 21, and 22.
Films are screened in the East Building Auditorium, located at Fourth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Works are presented in original formats and seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis. Doors open 30 minutes before each show and programs are subject to change. For more information, visit www.nga.gov/programs/film or call (202) 842-6799.
Art Films and Events
October 13–December 22
Journey to Italy
Saturday, October 13, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 14, 4:30 p.m.
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)
Ciné-Concert: The Patsy
Ben Model, piano
Saturday, October 27, 2:00 p.m.
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 Dressler) 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.
Ernie Kovacs: Video Art for the Intimate Vacuum
Bruce Bennett, David Bianculli, Ben Model in person
Saturday, October 27, 4:00 p.m.
"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)
Ciné-Concert: Alice Guy Blaché, Transatlantic Sites of Cinéma Nouveau
Musical accompaniment by Kim and Kathryn Kluge
Saturday, November 10, 2:00 p.m.
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 Blache: Transatlantic Sites of Cinema 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)
Leaving
Saturday, November 17, 2:00 p.m.
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 (Odchazeni). 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)
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
Saturday, November 17, 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 18, 4:30 p.m.
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)
Ciné-Concert: Kindred of the Dust
Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton, piano and voice
Saturday, November 24, 1:00 p.m.
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
preceded by The Fancy
Wednesday, November 28, 12:30 p.m.
Thursday, November 29, 12:30 p.m.
Friday, November 30, 12:30 p.m.
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)
Germany in the 1920s: Expanding the Film Avant-Garde beyond the Political Divide
Illustrated lecture by Thomas Elsaesser
Sunday, December 2, 2:00 p.m.
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 avant-gardes of the 1920s and modernist architecture, the nonfiction film, and advertising. Among Elsaesser's twenty 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.
International Festival of Films on Art—I
Friday, December 14, 12:30 p.m.
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.
International Festival of Films on Art—II
Saturday, December 15, noon
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.
Barnett Newman
Thursday, December 13, p.m.
Friday, December 21, p.m.
Saturday, December 22, 12:30 p.m.
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)
Film Series
A Sense of Place: František Vláčil
October 7–13
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.
The Devil's Trap
Sunday, October 7, 2:00 p.m.
In a drought-stricken Bohemian village, a church inquisitor probes the local miller to find out if his flourishing grain mill is the work of the devil. In this first of Vláčil's three historical-allegorical epics, the miller's discovery of an underground aquifer has become a source of ridicule from villagers. "The opening shot of a gnarled effigy of Christ in agony, dwarfing a distant figure on the horizon, neatly establishes a cruel world where religious authority holds absolute sway and an innocent miller's knowledge of the land is interpreted as evidence of a diabolical pact" — Michael Brooke. (Ďablova past, 1962, 35 mm, Czech with subtitles, 85 minutes)
Markéta Lazarová
Premiere of the restoration
Sunday, October 7, 4:30 p.m.
One of only a handful of filmmakers who has ever tried to recreate the mood of medieval society, Vláčil based Markéta Lazarová on Vladislav Vančura's best-selling 1931 novel, in turn based on a story handed down within Vančura's family. Sets and costumes were even made with traditional tools, and actors tried to portray the raw and unfiltered emotions that presumably prevailed. Heroine Markéta, raped, kidnapped, and forced to serve an enemy clan, finds refuge in the orderliness of religion. Zdeněk Liška's haunting musical score mixes vocal, percussive, and electronic motifs that beautifully buttress the narrative. This screening represents the American premiere of the latest restoration involving a complicated digital scan at 4K resolution, followed by a painstaking cleanup of scratches and other damage to reinstate as closely as possible the original look of the 35 mm film in the form of a new digital cinema print. (1967, DCP, Czech with subtitles, 180 minutes)
The Valley of the Bees
Saturday, October 13, 2:00 p.m.
From another novel by Vančura, The Valley of the Bees tells the odyssey of Ondřej, exiled as a child to a strict order of religious knights—his punishment after attempting to sabotage his father's wedding. When Ondřej reaches maturity, he returns to his native village to seek retribution, even as his monk-guardian tries to bait him back to the order. In bold black-and-white Cinemascope, "Vláčil's spectacular orchestration of landscape, violent chaos, wild animals, and medieval iconography is never less than impressive"—Michael Atkinson. (Údoli včel, 1968, 35 mm, Czech with subtitles, 97 minutes)
Shostakovich and the Cinema
October 20–November 4
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.
King Lear
Musical prelude with Georgetown University Chamber Singers
Roy Guenther and Peter Rollberg, discussants
Saturday, October 20, 2:30 p.m.
Before World War II Russian film director Grigori Kozintsev directed a stage version of King Lear in a Russian translation by Boris Pasternak. In 1970 he revisited this text to make his film adaptation, shooting on austere landscapes in Estonia with a cast of Baltic actors including the revered Jüri Järvet in the title role. On the subject of Shostakovich's music, Kozintsev noted, "I can hear a ferocious hatred of cruelty, the cult of power, and the oppression of justice…a fearless goodness which has a threatening quality." (Grigori Kozintsev, 1971, 35 mm, Russian with subtitles, 139 minutes)
Hamlet
Musical prelude: Shostakovich Satires, op. 109
Irina Mozyleva, soprano, and Vera Danchenko-Stern, piano
Roy Guenther and Peter Rollberg, discussants
Sunday, October 21, 4:00 p.m.
Creatively pruning the text of Shakespeare's play, Russian director Grigori Kozintsev remains true to the structure, although a number of familiar scenes have been shortened or rendered in visual terms sans dialogue. "Hamlet has always been filmed in studios but it seems to me that the key to reincarnating Shakespeare's words in visual imagery can only be found in nature…In decisive places, [we must] oust period stylization of the Tudor era and of English affectation, and express the essentials. I have in mind stone, iron, fire, earth, and sea." Laurence Olivier proclaimed it the best adaptation ever. (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964, 35 mm, Russian with subtitles, 140 minutes)
Five Days, Five Nights
North American premiere
Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants
Sunday, October 28, 4:30 p.m.
When Red Army captain Lenov arrives in Dresden in May 1945, the city has been reduced to rubble. Ordered to find hundreds of old master paintings (including Raphael's Sistine Madonna altarpiece) that had disappeared from the State Art Collection, Lenov succeeds in locating a hidden cache with the help of Dresden residents eager to rebuild. Several more days and nights will go by, however, before the remainder of the collection is found. The first ever GDR-Soviet coproduction, Five Days, Five Nights is a rare fictional work about the wartime looting of art. This screening represents the first time the film has been subtitled in English. Shostakovich composed the score using parts of his String Quartet no. 8. (Fünf Tage, Fünf Nächte, Lew Arnstam, 1960, 35 mm, German and Russian with subtitles, 100 minutes). Made possible through the support of DEFA—Stiftung, Berlin, and the DEFA Film Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Testimony
Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants
Saturday, November 3, 3:30 p.m.
Director Tony Palmer's epic version of Solomon Volkov's edition of Shostakovich's memoirs is a milestone of the biographical film, in part for the way the music illustrates the life. With Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich and Terence Rigby as Stalin, the film features the London Philharmonic conducted by Rudolf Barshai, who in fact knew Dmitri Shostakovich. Palmer notes, "It is clear to me now that if we want to know what it was like to live under Stalin in the Soviet Union from 1924 until 1953, the year of Stalin's death, listen to Shostakovich.
It's all we've got." (Tony Palmer, 1988, 35 mm, 157 minutes)
Song of the Rivers
Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants
Sunday, November 4, 4:00 p.m.
Originally produced on behalf of the 1953 congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions, Song of the Rivers is a footage compilation that became a classic expression of the international solidarity movement. Shot by crews on the Volga, Mississippi, Nile, Yangtze, Amazon, and Ganges, the workers' destinies are united by these rivers coursing through their native lands. At the East German DEFA Stiftung studio in Berlin, the editing was supervised by Joris Ivens and then distributed in 28 languages. The project brought together many artists including Shostakovich, Bertolt Brecht, and Paul Robeson, as well as Ivens and the other filmmakers. (Das Lied der Ströme, Joris Ivens and others, 1954, 35 mm, subtitles, 103 minutes) Made possible through the support of DEFA—Stiftung, Berlin, and the DEFA Film Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Chris Marker: A Tribute
November 11–23
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."
À bientôt, j'espère
followed by Case of the Grinning Cat and Cat Listening to Music
Sunday, November 11, 4:30 p.m.
À bientôt, j'espère immerses the viewer in a 1960s-style protest through dialogue with workers in the midst of a strike at a textile plant in the city of Besançon. The working class, they believe, is at the mercy of a system dedicated to keeping them powerless. Though they achieved very few gains, these strikers helped lay the groundwork for the revolutionary protests of May 1968. (1968, DigiBeta, French with subtitles, 39 minutes)
In Case of the Grinning Cat, Marker illustrates a more recent sort of political consciousness by investigating a wave of graffiti murals around Paris—drawings of an oddly toothy cat. These graffiti first appeared following September 11, 2001, and continued through a period of mounting international discontent. Thoughts about the purpose of public protest and the state of international politics are juxtaposed with ruminations on art. "La poésie est dans la rue" (Poetry is in the street)—Chris Marker. (2004, DigiBeta, French with subtitles, 58 minutes)
The program closes with the reclusive Guillaume-en-Egypte, Marker's beloved pet cat and alter ego, enjoying the mellow rhythms of a piano sonata by Federico Mompou. (1990, DigiBeta, 3 minutes)
Sans Soleil
preceded by La Jetée
Friday, November 23, 3:00 p.m.
In Sans Soleil Marker uses modern Japan, "with its electronic games, its age-old obsessions and atomic bomb memories, as a gameboard for a system of references connecting such diverse subjects as the poverty of Africa, the open spaces of Iceland, and the vertigo of memory as perceived by Hitchcock in San Francisco. He explores memory as an alternate reality; his Japan is one of captured movements and absurd moments, of rituals and inadvertent theatrics…what was memory becomes fiction"—Judy Bloch. (1982, 35 mm, English and French with subtitles, 100 minutes)
In La Jetée, Marker's half-hour futuristic photonovel about the power of memory, a prisoner is haunted by a photographic image from the past. The man is promised a chance to rediscover the meaning of this image, as a participant in a time travel experiment. (1962, 35 mm, English, French, and German with subtitles, 29 minutes)
From Tinguely to Pipilotti Rist—Swiss Artists on Film
November 23–December 29
A series of new documentary works by Swiss filmmakers on the country's contemporary artists is presented in association with the Embassy of Switzerland.
Tinguely
Friday, November 23, 1:00 p.m.
Jean Tinguely cast a spell with his kinetic sculptures and moving machines—the self-destroying Homage to New York (1960) was one of the most celebrated. Twenty years after his death the bande à Jean—old friends and acquaintances—recalls the life and personality of this revolutionary artist, who was as daring in his private life as he was in his work. (Thomas Thumena, 2011, 35 mm, German and French with subtitles, 87 minutes)
Urs Fischer
Sunday, November 25, 2:00 p.m.
Writing in The New Yorker, Calvin Tomkins noted that "Urs Fischer's art, like Fischer himself, is highly memorable but hard to pin down." His Bread House is a case in point—a life-size alpine chalet constructed entirely from loaves of bread in different sizes and shapes. As filmmaker Schumacher notes, "he combines a pop immediacy with a neo-baroque taste for the absurd." (Iwan Schumacher, 2010, DCP, Swiss-German and Italian with subtitles, 98 minutes)
Max Bill, The Master's Vision
Saturday, December 1, 4:30 p.m.
One of the most influential designers of the last century was Max Bill (1908–1994). Studying at the Bauhaus under Albers, Kandinsky, Klee, and Schlemmer, he relied on mathematical precision and "creating rhythm in an enclosed shape." Conceiving everything from watches to typography, Max Bill was also an ardent antifascist with a social awareness and early environmental concern. (Erich Schmid, 2008, 35 mm, German with subtitles, 94 minutes)
Bon Vent Claude Goretta
Friday, December 7, 12:30 p.m.
Filmmaker Lionel Baier travels to Geneva to interview his spiritual mentor, Claude Goretta, one of the most successful Swiss movie directors of all time, to learn a few new tricks. During the encounter, which also included Isabelle Huppert (Goretta directed the actress in her first major role), Nathalie Baye, Frederique Meininger, and Michel Robin, Goretta opens up about his life and his methods. (Lionel Baier, 2011, DigiBeta, French with subtitles, 58 minutes)
Bird's Nest—Herzog and De Meuron in China
Wednesday, December 12, 12:30 p.m.
The National Stadium in Beijing ("Bird's Nest"), built for the 2008 summer Olympics, was a complicated venture helmed by the Basel firm of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Joined by artist Ai Weiwei and others, the team came up with their master plan by carefully studying traditional Chinese forms, an interesting opportunity to build bridges between two cultures. (Christoph Schaub and Michael Schindhelm, 2008, DigiBeta, 87 minutes)
The Visual Language of Herbert Matter
Thursday, December 27, 12:30 p.m.
Friday, December 28, 12:30 p.m.
With the help of historical footage and films shot by Swiss-American artist Herbert Matter (1907 –1984) himself, this feature documentary portrays the career of an almost forgotten creative genius who contributed a vast expertise to the evolution of 20th-century graphic design, typography, and their related fields, such as advertising. (Reto Caduff, 2011, DigiBeta, German with subtitles, 86 minutes)
The Color of Your Socks—A Year with Pipilotti Rist
Saturday, December 29, 12:30 p.m.
Renowned Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist—known for her colorful, cheery, and earthy work about gender and the human body—is seen here in her Zurich studio as well as at a Museum of Modern Art exhibition. For the first time, she has permitted a documentary filmmaker to record her creative process. (Michael Hegglin, 2009, DigiBeta, German with subtitles, 52 minutes)
Werner Schroeter in Italy
November 24 and 25
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.
Palermo or Wolfsburg
Saturday, November 24, 4:00 p.m.
Young Nicola leaves his home in Sicily to seek a fortune in the industrial north, finding employment at a Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, "a land without light, without sun, without song." Humiliation and isolation eventually drive him to settle some scores in this far-off and stressful place, culminating in the film's surreal final act. One of the best of the New German Cinema films to depict complex cultural differences through tales of the guest worker (Gastarbeiter), Palermo oder Wolfsburg was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. "The Passion of the Sicilian migrant in the holy land of capitalism" — Olaf Moller. (Werner Schroeter, 1980, DigiBeta, Italian and German with subtitles, 175 minutes)
The Kingdom of Naples
Introduction by Roy Grundman
Sunday, November 25, 4:30 p.m.
Schroeter took to the streets of Naples to make this unusual chronicle of a poor family, tracing the lives of brother and sister Massimo and Vittoria from the 1940s through the 1970s, while painting a broad context both political and cultural (even reenacting the historic 1964 departure of Michelangelo's Pietà from the port of Naples as it headed to New York for the World's Fair). "Impassioned, bemused, even at times hallucinatory.… Friends and acquaintances in Italy joined in the project, to such an extent that this could be called more an Italian film for Italians than a German one shot in Italy…"—Kevin Thomas. (Il Regno di Napoli, 1978, DigiBeta, Italian with subtitles,125 minutes)
American Originals Now: James Benning
December 8 and 9
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.
Twenty Cigarettes
Saturday, December 8, 2:30 p.m.
Film stock and tobacco usage are both purported to be in decline, seen as cultural remnants only dabbled in by diehards. While recording with cutting-edge digital technology, Benning uses the duration of a lit cigarette as the framing device for each subject in this series of portraits. One pack, 20 people: each intimately framed and alone with the camera in as long as it takes to smoke just one. (2011, HD, 99 minutes)
small roads
James Benning in person
Saturday, December 8, 4:30 p.m.
Forty-seven shots of roads crisscrossing the United States from the Pacific coast to the Midwest: a film best described, according to Benning, "by making a list of the roads in question and the cars that drive on them." An excerpted list of shots 11 through 14: "11. CA Hwy 178: no vehicles. 12. Badwater Rd: 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe, black; 2001 Toyota Sequoia, green. 13. Arizona Hwy 85: 2003 Ford F350 pickup, black; 2009 Lincoln MKX, black; 2008 and 2009 Ford F150 (Border Patrol) pickups, white. 14. White Sands Rte 10: 2008 Toyota Tundra pickup,
black." (2011, HDCAM, 103 minutes)
the war
Work in progress
James Benning in person
Sunday, December 9, 4:30 p.m.
Benning's most recent work utilizes YouTube footage from the radical Russian art collectives Voina (War) and Pussy Riot, both recently involved in legal struggles with the Russian government. (2012, HDCAM, approximately 60 minutes)
On Pier Paolo Pasolini
December 15–29
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.
From Giotto to Pasolini: Narrative in Fresco and Film
Illustrated discussion by David Gariff
Saturday, December 15, 4:00 p.m.
Art historian and lecturer David Gariff discusses the life and career of Pier Paolo Pasolini focusing on his use of Italian medieval and Renaissance painting. "What I see in my mind," said Pasolini, "are the frescoes of Giotto and Masaccio. I cannot conceive any [film] image, landscape, or composition outside the 14th century." (Approximately 50 minutes)
Hawks and Sparrows
Sunday, December 16, 4:30 p.m.
Pasolini's alleged favorite among his works is this madcap fable featuring the incomparable "prince of laughter" Toto, young comic actor Ninetto Davoli, and an officious talking crow who recites a tale of two friars (also Toto and Ninetto) asked by Saint Francis to preach a doctrine of love to the overbearing hawks and lowly sparrows of the field. The three travelers ramble around the countryside, seeing only a defiled and dreary landscape, abused by the greed of industrial society. Ennio Morricone's score features the great singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno (Volare) vocalizing the opening credits in a teasingly self-mocking style. (Uccellacci e uccellini, 1966, 35 mm, Italian with subtitles, 86 minutes) Print courtesy Harvard Film Archive.
La Rabbia: The Rage of Pasolini
Washington premiere
Saturday, December 29, 3:30 p.m.
This 1963 feature essay—a collagelike compilation of moments caught on newsreels, including the revolution in Cuba, workers at a Fiat plant, floods in Europe, even the death of Marilyn Monroe—was stripped of its radical undertone when producer Gastone Ferrante added a section featuring conservative ideologue Giovanni Guareschi. In 2008, 45 years after its release (and 30 years after the filmmaker's death), Giuseppe Bertolucci recaptured his friend's original purpose by reconstructing a new version from Pasolini's notes and original dialogue transcript. (1963 – 2008, 35 mm, Italian with subtitles, 84 minutes) Restoration from Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
Marcel Carné Revived
December 22–30
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.
Port of Shadows
Saturday, December 22, 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.
In the first of two new restorations of classic works by Carné—for both projects, Carné was joined by writer Jacques Prévert and production designer Alexandre Trauner—a waterfront cafe in the lower depths of Le Havre becomes a shadowy backdrop for criminal low-lifes and ill-fated love. Despairing army defector Jean Gabin, hiding from authorities, falls for the restless beauty Michele Morgan while waiting to get out of town. Maurice Jaubert's score and Eugen Schüfftan's camera work reinforce the menace below the murky surface in this prime example of French poetic realism. (Le quai des brumes, 1938, DCP, French with subtitles, 91 minutes)
Children of Paradise
Sunday, December 23, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 30, 2:00 p.m.
A celebration of theatrical life on the famous Boulevard du Crime—once the site of small playhouses (including Théâtre des Funambules) where Parisians strolled nightly, until the city was rebuilt in the 1860s—the tale unfolds around a romantic rivalry for the love of Garance (Arletty), adored courtesan of the boulevard. Several characters are based on historical figures, including the Bohemian-French mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau known as Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault). Marred for many years by poor or incomplete commercial prints, Les enfants du paradis has been digitally restored to its full black-and-white brilliance. (1945, DCP, French with subtitles, 163 minutes)
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