Museum of the Moving Image Presents FIRST LOOK Showcase, 1/9

Museum of the Moving Image has announced the lineup for its First Look Festival, an expanded and reconceived version of its annual showcase for inventive new international cinema. Now in its fourth year, First Look,with a lineup that has expanded both in size and scope, is now officially a festival, the first major moving image event of the year. First Look will take place at the Museum from January 9 through 18, 2015. "First Look reflects the breadth and adventurousness that defines the Museum," said Chief Curator David Schwartz. "This year, we are expanding beyond programs in the Redstone Theater, with screenings in the Bartos Screening Room, and a newly commissioned large-scale video installation." The Museum is also announcing a programming partnership with FIDMarseille, the cutting-edge documentary festival programmed under the leadership of Jean-Pierre Rehm.

First Look opens on Friday, January 9 with the U.S. premiere of Amour Fou, Austrian director Jessica Hausner's rigorous yet surprisingly humorous and moving depiction of the suicide pact between German Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist and Henriette Vogel. The lineup includes nearly 40 films and videos of varying length, a newly commissioned lobby installation by Sabrina Ratté, and seven commissioned GIFs by artists that will be shown before the feature films. Featured countries for other First Look films are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Syria/Lebanon, and the United States. All of the films have played to acclaim at international film festivals, and all are New York premieres (and some U.S. and World premieres).

The lineup includes nine films and several shorts that premiered at FIDMarseille, which takes place in July, in the south of France. "We share an interest in cinema that is artisanal, that defies conventional forms, and creates new modes of cinema that is at once engaged with the real world and with expanding the art form," said David Schwartz. "We are very pleased to launch this programming partnership with FIDMarseille." Jean-Pierre Rehm will be present to introduce a number of films that were shown at FIDMarseille and will be making their New York debuts in First Look.

First Look films were programmed by Chief Curator David Schwartz and Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma. First Look commissioned digital works and some video programs were organized by Associate Curator of Digital Media Jason Eppink. Support has been provided by the French Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, and the Austrian Cultural Forum. Other sponsors will be announced later.

Tickets will go on sale Friday, December 5, at 12:00 p.m. at movingimage.us. A full schedule with descriptions will also be posted at that time.

Featured films in First Look 2015:
• OPENING NIGHT: Amour Fou (Dir. Jessica Hausner. Austria/Luxembourg/Germany. 2014. 96 mins). U.S. premiere. Featured at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, Jessica Hausner's wry period film about love and suicide has a visual style inspired by the paintings of Vermeer.
• Alone with My Horse in the Snow, Axel Bogousslavsky (Dir. Alexandre Barry. France, 2014, 70 mins). New York premiere. An exquisite and contemplative portrait of a 76-year-old poet and actor who worked with Marguerite Duras, capturing his daily life alone in an isolated house in the woods. FIDMarseille.
• August Winds (Dir. Gabriel Mascaro. Brazil, 2014, 77 mins). New York City premiere. Mascaro's picaresque narrative debut after several well-received documentaries follows two young lovers on an island retreat; the film received Special Mention at Locarno
• Before We Go (Dir. Jorge León. Belgium, 2014, 82 mins). New York premiere. A deeply moving back-stage film that is an undefinable blend of documentary and staged scenes, Before We Go captures the "dance of death" of three terminally ill people as they interact with a theater company housed in Brussels's stately Royal Theatre of the Mint. Ultimately, the film is about the life-affirming powers of communal artistic activity. FIDMarseille.
• brouillard - passage #14 (Dir. Alexandre LaRose. Canada, 2014, 10 mins.) New York premiere. Layering in-camera long-takes, Larose brilliantly condenses the colors and movements of a bucolic landscape into an ecstatic time-lapsed vision. Showing with LaRose's Ville Marie (Canada, 12 mins.), the essence of a weightless free-fall. Both films presented in 35mm.
• Bx46 (Dirs. Jeremie Brugidou, Fabien Clouette. United States/France, 2014, 78 mins). New York premiere. The flow of work in the industrial hinterland of Hunts Point in the Bronx is captured with striking images and frank commentary from workers at the legendary Fulton Fish Market and at a waste transfer plant, while a prison barge (part of Riker's Island) looms nearby. An outsider's view of a rarely seen slice of life in New York City. FIDMarseille.
• Charlie's Country (Dir. Rolf de Heer. Australia, 2013, 108 mins). New York premiere. David Gulpilil, the aboriginal actor who debuted as a teen in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout and who starred most recently in two films by de Heer, co-wrote this drama, loosely based on his own life, about an aboriginal man having trouble fitting in with contemporary society. Gulpilil won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for this role.
• Coming to Terms (Dir. Jon Jost. U.S., 2013, 89 mins.). New York premiere. The pioneering and iconoclastic American independent filmmaker (who recently declared his retirement after 50 years of making movies) cast fellow filmmaker James Benning as an aging patriarch who gathers his dysfunctional family together for a final request. Rotterdam Film Festival.
• Einschnitte (Dir. Lina Rodriguez. Canada, 2013, 4 mins.) New York premiere. This study of Viennese statues subtly reveals the complex history that continues to haunt contemporary Austria by emerging Columbian-Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez.
• Éphémères (Dir. Yuki Kawamura. France, 2014, 14 mins.) North American premiere. FIDMarseille.
• Everything that Rises Must Converge (Dir. Omer Fast. Germany, 2014, 56 mins). U.S. premiere. This single-screen theatrical version of video artist Omer Fast's Frieze Art Fair installation (2013) is an audacious and sexually explicit blend of documentary and staged scenes, capturing a day in the lives of four porn actors in Los Angeles; to be shown with Fast's Continuity (2012, 41 mins. New York premiere), a lost soldier's homecoming re-enacted by male prostitutes. The scenario is played out three times by different sets of actors.
• The Guests (Dir. Ken Jacobs. U.S., 2013, 77 mins). New York premiere. With Ken Jacobs in person; showing with Jacobs's shortWire Fence. The legendary New York avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs expands a one-minute 1896 Lumière brothers film of guests arriving at a wedding into a feature-length silent black-and-white 3-D movie. Berlinale.
• Hard to Be a God (Dir. Aleksei Guerman. Russia, 2014, 170 mins). New York premiere. Years in the making, this adaptation of a classic medieval/sci-fi novel, is a stunning final film by Russian director Aleksei Guerman. It debuted in its complete form at the Rotterdam film festival, after Guerman's death.
• I for Iran (Dir. Sanaz Azari. Belgium, 2014, 50 mins). New York premiere. A documentary filmmaker of Iranian descent living in Belgium chronicles her process of learning to speak Persian. This deceptively simple film is structured as a series of language lessons photographed from the filmmaker/student's point of view. FIDMarseille.
• I Touched All Your Stuff (Toquei Todas as Suas Coisas) (Dir. Maíra Bühler & Matias Mariani. Brazil, 2014, 89 mins.) New York premiere. An American man in a Brazilian jail for drug trafficking recounts his jaw-dropping saga, an online romance that went remarkably wrong. Truth is stranger than fiction in this cautionary tale for the Internet age. FIDMarseille.
• In the Basement (Dir. Ulrich Seidl. Austria, 2014, 85 mins.). U.S. premiere. Best known for his recent "Paradise" narrative trilogy, Austrian master Ulrich Seidl returns to the documentary form by visiting the basements of middle-class Austrians to share the odd, disturbing, and often touching findings in these intimate private spaces. Venice Film Festival.
• International Tourism (Dir. Marie Voignier. France, 2014, 48 mins.) New York premiere. This experimental travelogue is an inquiry into the nature of tourism in North Korea, exposing the tension between political fantasy and reality. FIDMarseille.
• Joy of Man's Desiring (Dir. Denis Côté. Canada, 2014,70 mins.) New York premiere. Côté, whose Vic + Flo Saw a Bear debuted atFirst Look last year, returns with a beautifully crafted essay film about factory workers, a unique hybrid film that subtly blends documentary and scripted scenes. Featured at Berlinale, Hot Docs.
• Livepan (Dir. Sasha Pirker. France, 2013, 2 mins.) New York premiere. FIDMarseille.
• Our Terrible Country (Dirs. Mohammed Ali Atassi, Ziad Homsi. Syria/Lebanon, 2014, 85 mins.) New York premiere. A filmmaking journalist who is part of the Free Syrian Army films his friend and mentor, a writer and political dissident, in this first-person view of the turmoil in Syria. Winner of the FIDMarseille International Competition.
• Silk Tatters and Starting Sketches #7. (Dir. Gina Telaroli. 2014.) World premieres. New experimental shorts by Telaroli, the New York-based artist, writer, and manager of Martin Scorsese's video archive.
• Single Stream (Dirs. Pawel Wojticik, Toby Lee, Ernst Karel. U.S., 2014, 24 mins.) New York premiere. Theatrical, single-screen version of Wojticik, Lee, and Karel's wide-screen video installation (which was presented by the Museum in 2013) filmed at a single stream recycling facility.
• Two Museums (Dir. Heinz Emigholz. Germany, 2014, 18 mins.) New York premiere. Part of Emigholz's series on visionary twentieth-century architects, this work captures the common themes in Samuel Bickel's Museum of Art (Ein Harod, Israel) and Renzo Piano's The Menil Collection (Houston, Texas).
• New works by prolific Boston-based filmmaker Robert Todd on 16mm and 35mm.
• A program of short films by Medium Density Fibreboard, a Toronto-based film collective committed to exploring naturalistic, narrative, and documentary forms; works include those by founding member Kazik Radwanski, Antoine Bourges (East Hastings Pharmacy), and Sofia Bohdanowicz.
• Experimental videos by artists represented by Undervolt & Co.

Some short films will be shown before feature films, and others will be shown in the Bartos Screening Room.

In addition, First Look 2015 will feature a unique film/installation piece by artist/filmmaker Jane Gillooly in which the audience watching her film Suitcase of Love and Shame (U.S., 2013, 70 mins.) during the first weekend of First Look will be filmed, thus becoming the subject of a new film, which will make its World premiere the following weekend. The one-of-a-kind Suitcase, which premiered at FIDMarseille in 2013, and was shown at Lincoln Center earlier this year, chronicles an illicit love affair as told between lovers on exchanged audiotapes-a collection Gillooly bought on eBay.

"Some interesting themes emerged during the selection of films this year, including films that deal with life in the workplace (Bx46, Joy of Man's Desiring, and Everything that Rises Must Converge), with obsessive love (Amour Fou, I Touched All Your Stuff, and Suitcase of Love and Shame), and with the acceptance of aging and death (Coming to Terms, Before We Go, and Alone with My Horse in the Snow, Axel Bogousslavsky)," said Schwartz. "What all of the films have in common is that they are contemplative in nature, asking us to see the world, and cinema, in a fresh way."

Opening on Friday, January 9, Sabrina Ratté's Common Areas, a large-scale video installation commissioned by the Museum, will be on view in the lobby through May 10, 2015. The Montreal-based Ratté uses video feedback to create works that evoke architectural spaces and landscapes, often featuring soundtracks by frequent collaborator Roger Tellier-Craig. Another new aspect of First Look this year, in areas beyond film, will be the presentation of seven new artist-created GIFs, short animation sequences, that will be shown before the feature films.

With the exception of the Opening Night film and party, tickets for First Look films will be $12 each (free for members at the Film Lover level and above). Tickets for the January 9th screening of Amour Fou followed by a party will be $15 ($9 members at the Film Lover level and above). An All Festival Pass will be available for $40. Complimentary industry and press passes are available.

About First Look: Museum of the Moving Image established First Look in 2012 to showcase new and inventive international cinema-offering an oasis of thoughtful and provocative filmmaking amid the hype and noise of the awards season. Positioned in early January, before the Sundance, Rotterdam, and Berlin film festivals, First Look is a great way for New York filmgoers to start the year. David Hudson, on Keyframe Daily, called it "one of the most noteworthy curatorial efforts anywhere." Among the hits and discoveries from the first two years are Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, Thomas Andersen's Reconversão, Philippe Garrel's That Summer, Alexandre Rockwell's Little Feet, and Denis Côté's Vic + Flo Saw a Bear.

Press contact: Tomoko Kawamoto, tkawamoto@movingimage.us / 718 777 6830.

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Museum of the Moving Image (movingimage.us) advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In its stunning facilities-acclaimed for both its accessibility and bold design-the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings of significant works; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, craftspeople, and business leaders; and education programs which serve more than 50,000 students each year. The Museum also houses a significant collection of moving-image artifacts.

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