MoMA Begins 'Modern Mondays' in November 2010

Modern Mondays is a weekly program that brings contemporary, innovative film and moving-image works to the public and provides a forum for viewers to engage in dialogue and debate with contemporary filmmakers and artists. Modern Mondays presents new-and newly rediscovered-film and media works with the director in attendance, stimulating discourse, dialogue, and interaction in a social setting.

Tickets: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00-8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders.

Organized by the Department of Film and the Department of Media and Performance Art. Modern Mondays is made possible by Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro. Additional support is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Programs:

An Evening with Hala Alabdalla and Omar Amiralay
November 1, 7:00 p.m.

In conjunction with the film exhibition, Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s to Now, Part I, screening October 28-November 22, 2010, Omar Amiralay (Syrian, b. 1944) and Hala Alabdalla (Syrian, b. 1956) present a screening of the documentary Nuron wa Thilal (Light and Shadows, The Last of the Pioneers: Nazih Shahbandar) (1991), which Amiralay codirected with Mohammad Malas and Oussama Mohammad. This portrait of Nazih Shahbandar illuminates his role as a pioneer of Arab cinema production in the 1930s and 1940s. He wrote scripts, built sets, set up a studio fitted with film equipment that was almost entirely of his own fabrication, produced and directed the first Syrian film with sound, and chased his dream of making a 3-D film. This documentary is an ode both to the man and to early Arab cinema, and it provides a fitting prelude to a conversation with two of the most influential and inventive artists of the region during recent decades.

Amiralay was a driving force in the establishment of the Arab Film Institute, a collaborative project uniting young and independent filmmakers in the region that organizes workshops and offers other support. His films have earned a number of awards worldwide, and his cinema has become canon for generations of documentary filmmakers in the Arab world. As the general director of Ramad Films, Amiralay's France-based Production Company, Alabdalla has executive-produced many of Amiralay's films. I Am the One Who Carries Flowers to Her Grave (2006) was her directorial debut.

Program 90 min.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film.

An Evening with Josiah McElheny, Stephen Prina, and Lynne Tillman
November 8, 7:00 p.m.

This evening presents a pairing of recent films-Stephen Prina's The Way He Always Wanted It II (2008) and the U.S. premiere of Josiah McElheny's Island Universe (2008)-that share a fascination with mid-century modernist design and the interplay of architecture, music, and the moving image. In Island Universe, with an original score by Paul Schütze, McElheny (American, b. 1966) considers the origins of the universe as embodied in J.&L. Lobmeyer's famed Space Age chandeliers for New York's Metropolitan Opera House. In The Way He Always Wanted It II, which belongs to a constellation of works under the same name (photographs, watercolors, a video installation, and an unrealized sound installation from 1979), Prina (American, b. 1954) tracks his way through the domestic interior and snowy exterior of the architect Bruce Goff's 1947 Ford House in Aurora, Illinois, setting his images to a score that he arranged and performs from fragments of Goff's own musical compositions and private correspondence. Following the screening, McElheny and Prina will take part in a conversation moderated by the novelist and critic Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy (2006) and the forthcoming short-story collection Someday This Will Be Funny (2011).

Program 100 min.

Organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film.

An Evening with Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
November 15, 7:00 p.m.

In conjunction with the film exhibition, Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema from the 1960s to Now, Part I, screening October 28-November 22, 2010, filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (both, Lebanese, b. 1969) perform Aida, sauve-moi (Aida, Save Me) (2010). This lecture-performance is inspired by an event that took place during the 2006 Beirut premiere of their film A Perfect Day (2005), an event that interrupted that film's release and resonates strongly with the entirety of their work. Aida, Save Me tells a story that measures the distance between recognition and representation of oneself, and recounts an adventure wherein fiction suddenly takes on the appearance of documentation.

Beirut natives Hadjithomas and Joreige are filmmakers, artists, and university teachers. They have directed several feature films, including Around the Pink House (1999) and I Want to See, which was named Best Film of 2008 by the French syndicate of critics. They are also accomplished short-film makers, and their numerous photographic installations and videos, including the Wonder Beirut Project (2008) and Lasting Images (2006), have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

Program 90 min.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film.