Museum Of The Moving Image Announces Events For Grand Reopening

Rochelle Slovin, Director of Museum of the Moving Image, today announced the complete schedule for the screenings and programs that will celebrate the grand re-opening of America's only museum dedicated to film, television, and digital media. The transformed Museum, which will open to the public on January 15, 2011, will include a new 267-seat theater, a 68-seat screening room, new galleries, and multiple screening spaces for video art.

The entire six weeks of inaugural programs will be titled Celebrating the Moving Image, in honor of the Museum and of screen culture itself. Highlights of programs during the opening weeks include:

· Jacques Tati's Playtime and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey presented in restored 70mm prints on the opening weekend, to show off the extraordinary experience of the new main theater
· Marcel L'Herbier's silent epic L'Argent in a restored print, presented with live music by the Mont Alto Orchestra in a reprise of their triumph at the Telluride Film Festival
· the New York premiere of the restored print of John Ford's Upstream, the long-lost 1927 feature recently rediscovered in New Zealand, with music by four musicians led by acclaimed accompanist Donald Sosin
· the world premiere of a lustrous restored print of Robert Rossen's The Hustler
· a rare screening of Manoel de Oliveira's five-hour masterpiece Doomed Love in a restored print
· a virtually once-in-a-lifetime screening of avant-garde master Gregory Markopoulos's Eniaios: Cycle Five, a section of the 80-hour-long epic film he made for projection at his open-air theater in Greece
· the New York premieres of Kiran Rao's Mumbai Diaries (Dhobi Ghat) and Hong Sang-soo's HaHaHa in the new series Indian Cinema Showcase and Korean Cinema Now
· a special screening on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of an archival print of King: A Film Record...Montgomery to Memphis, the major documentary made for a one-night-only showing at 600 theaters nationwide in 1970
· the introduction of weekend family matinees, including Henry Selick's Coraline presented in digital 3-D on January 17 and the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup on January 15
· and special programs about television, exploring The Art of Televised Baseball, a Panorama of New York Public Access TV, and events with Diahann Carroll and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara

"The opening programs reflect the Museum's wide scope of programming, encompassing silent films with live music, classic Hollywood cinema, avant-garde film, television, contemporary world cinema, and more," said the Museum's Chief Curator, David Schwartz. "Films will always be shown in the highest quality formats possible. We are opening with a series of restored films from archives around the world, and Celebrating the Moving Image will offer the public many unforgettable experiences."

Many of these programs will be presented in the new main theater-a cinema space unlike any other. Designed as a capsule for the imaginary voyage of movie-going, the ceiling and walls of the theater are a woven felt surface of vibrant Yves Klein blue, which slips under the stadium rake seating to give the audience a sensation of floating. Outfitted with an ample screen of classic proportions and projection equipment for formats from 16mm to 70mm and high-definition digital 3-D, the Museum's new theater will provide an unsurpassed filmgoing experience. The screening room will also feature state-of-the-art equipment, and will serve as an intimate space for viewing films and digital media.

The press preview for the museum is scheduled for January 11, at which time there will be opportunities to experience the new theaters and see the exhibitions and projections in the Museum's new galleries: In its new Video Screening Amphitheater, the Museum will present a specially commissioned animated film, Dolls vs. Dictators, by New York-based artist Martha Colburn (who will also participate in the Signal to Noise party on January 15 with an analog VJ/live film loop performance). On the 50-foot-long projection wall in its completely redesigned new lobby, the Museum will show the video work City Glow, by artist Chiho Aoshima in collaboration with animator Bruce Ferguson. In its new gallery for changing exhibitions, the Museum will present Real Virtuality, six experiments in art and digital technology, including three Moving Image commissions (from Workspace Unlimited, OpenEnded Group and Pablo Valbuena), the New York premiere installation of the experimental video game The Night Journey by Bill Viola, and the New York premiere museum installation of RMB City by Cao Fei.

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