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New York Jewish Film Festival Announces 'Beyond The Screen' Programs
By: Caryn Robbins Jan. 12, 2015
The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center are presenting the 24th annual New York Jewish Film Festival at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, January 14-29, 2015. The festival includes a number of "beyond the screen" programs, including the newly announced January 19 panel discussion about antiwar films with noted artists Martha Rosler and Trevor Paglen; a January 25 panel discussion in conjunction with the documentary film, The Zionist Idea; and a January 18 master class on filmmaking with Susan Korda. Other offerings include a presentation of the work of artist Keren Cytter followed by a January 27 discussion with the artist and Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum; continuous screenings of trailers from films noirs; an exhibition of posters for antiwar movies; and a 25th-anniversary screening of Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning, accompanied by two other films selected by the director. For the complete New York Jewish Film Festival press release visit thejewishmuseum.org/press/press-release/2015-nyjff-release.
War Against War is a series of antiwar films made mostly during the 1950s and 1960s. The film series is accompanied by a small exhibition of film posters for historically important antiwar films in the Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater. With wars raging in many parts of the world, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to East Africa and Central Asia, we live in a time of constant war. Antiwar films have, in various ways, been able to capture the horrors of war and the physical and mental destruction war causes within humans, both soldiers and civilians. The films selected focus less on dramatic spectacles of warfare. Rather, they depict the horrors of war through inner turmoil, surreal plots, and the soul-searching of its characters. In conjunction with the series of films, a panel discussion with Kent Jones, Director of the New York Film Festival, and artists Harrell Fletcher, Trevor Paglen, and Martha Rosler will continue the dialogue. Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum, and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival, will serve as moderator. Monday, January 19, 3:00pm
In conjunction with the world premiere of Oren Rudavsky and Joseph Dorman's documentary film, The Zionist Idea, the festival will present a panel discussion about this crucial topic with the filmmakers; Said Zeedani, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Al-Quds University; and Yael Zerubavel, Founding Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Study, Rutgers University. Richard Peña, Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University and former director of the New York Film Festival, will moderate. Sunday, January 25, 2:00pm MASTER CLASS: SUSAN KORDA
An in-depth conversation on filmmaking with Susan Korda, whose new film Salomea's Nose is included in the festival. The class includes a screening of this short film, and will be introduced by Aviva Weintraub, Director, New York Jewish Film Festival.
Sunday, January 18, 2:00pm
The New York Jewish Film Festival will present an Artist Focus on Israeli-born artist Keren Cytter. Cytter uses visual media in strikingly original ways to build powerful and affecting narratives out of skewed scenes of everyday life. Her films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a nonlinear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought provoking, and inescapably engrossing. This special program will include five works by Cytter and a discussion moderated by Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum, and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival. Tuesday, January 27, 6:15pm GUEST SELECTS: JENNIE LIVINGSTON
The New York Jewish Film Festival presents a "Guest Selects" series, each year showcasing a director who has shaped the course of film history. The series begins with a special screening of Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its release. Livingston has also selected two accompanying films that relate to Jewish culture: Alan J. Paluka's Academy Award-winning Sophie's Choice, starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline; and Stanley Kubrick's provocative black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Livingston's iconic documentary Paris Is Burning offers a dazzling, dynamic, and intimate portrait of 1980s Harlem drag balls, where rival fashion "houses" competed for trophies and cash prizes in categories like "face," "femme queen realness" and "voguing." Winner of a Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Paris Is Burning celebrates how African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender New Yorkers, for whom racism, poverty, and homophobia were daily struggles, created a world of sustenance and joy. Jennie Livingston will introduce all three films. FREE SHORTS
Four new short films will be shown to the public for free. German Shepherd is an animated work that poses difficult questions about our capacity to forgive unimaginable acts of evil in relation to one man's vision of Germany (and Germans). In Longing, a young wife confronts her husband's absence and the deterioration in the intimacy between them, with suspicions arising about his true identity. Some Vacation is a comic tale of what goes wrong when Dad decides to take the family along on his business road trips and calls them vacations. In The Visit, a young woman visits a friend in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, where disagreements about how to spend their time together soon escalate into a larger conflict. FROM THE VAULTS
Three archival films will screen at this year's festival. D.W. Griffith's A Child of the Ghetto (1910) receives the New York premiere of a new restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film. World-renowned banjo player Alison Brown will provide a live accompaniment to this classic, a documentary-like short tale of a woman's innocent crime in New York's bustling Lower East Side and her subsequent escape to the country and romance with a young farmer. Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison's Back to the Soil consists of 1,000 feet of 16mm film shot by Morrison's grandfather in 1927 and newly edited by Morrison, documenting an era when the Soviet government offered over 2.5 million acres of farmland in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Crimea to former merchants whose work had been outlawed under Communist rule. Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women, also receiving the New York premiere of a restoration by the George Eastman House, is a saucy melodrama starring May McAvoy (The Jazz Singer) as an 18-year-old in a dizzying, whirlwind triangle between her estranged socialite mother and a weasel-like suitor who, after getting a whiff of May's trust fund, stays true to his cad nature by wooing the young dame. A rollicking score will be provided through live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. NEW YORK NOIR (1945 - 1948)
New York was a frequent setting for films embracing the cinematic style that came to be defined as film noir. Starting with Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street, a twisted tale of Nazi espionage, directors often interwove documentary techniques into the storytelling, wanting to "film where it actually happened." The films in this series portray the city as a postwar Gotham with endless crime and intrigue. Other films to be screened include Robert Siodmak's Cry of the City, about former childhood friends who confront each other as cop and cop-killer; and Jules Dassin's The Naked City, depicting a police investigation of the murder of a young model in her Upper West Side apartment. MIDNIGHT MOVIE
The festival will present a special Saturday midnight showing of Joel Silberg's Breakin', which helped to bring break dancing to the forefront of mainstream American pop culture. Dated but very entertaining, the 1984 film tells the tale of a struggling jazz dancer who, with the help of street-dancing friends, becomes the new sensation of the crowds, despite disapproval from her dance instructor and the bitter rivalry from another crew. A variety of hybrid breakthrough performances, plus a fantastic soundtrack that included Ollie and Jerry's "There's No Stopping Us" and Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody," made Breakin' a major success for Cannon Films. Presented in conjunction with the documentary The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films. REVIVAL: THE BIRDCAGE (Presented in Tribute to Mike Nichols)
This 1996 adaptation of the iconic French farce La Cage aux Folles, directed by the late Mike Nichols, brings a Jewish twist to the 1978 French-Italian film and the original 1973 stage play. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star as a flamboyant South Beach couple whose straight son brings his fiancée and her ultraconservative gentile parents to dinner. Williams and Lane transform into a happy straight couple for the occasion, with Lane in drag and their Jewish identity hidden. The cast also includes Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, and Hank Azaria. COMING ATTRACTIONS: ART OF THE FILM NOIR TRAILER
Many trailers for films noirs during the 1940s and 1950s, featuring rapid cuts, provocative narration, and dramatic scenarios, were practically films in and of themselves. In homage to the genre and its many talents, the festival will present a 30-minute compilation of noir and neo-noir trailers that will run on a continuous loop in the amphitheater of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center during the festival. Films from such directors as Jules Dassin, Samuel Fuller, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Siodmak, and Billy Wilder will be included. This year's New York Jewish Film Festival was selected by Florence Almozini, Senior Programmer, Film Society of Lincoln Center; Rachel Chanoff, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Jaron Gandelman, Curatorial Assistant for Media, Jewish Museum and Coordinator, New York Jewish Film Festival; Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, Jewish Museum and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival; and Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator, Jewish Museum and Director, New York Jewish Film Festival. The New York Jewish Film Festival is made possible by the Martin and Doris Payson Fund for Film and Media. Generous support is also provided by Mimi and Barry Alperin, The Liman Foundation, and through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support is provided by the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York and the German Consulate General New York. Most of the New York Jewish Film Festival's screenings will be held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. Coming Attractions: Art of the Film Noir Trailer, the free Shorts screenings, and the Talking Movies panel discussions will take place at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. NYJFF tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members. Tickets may be purchased online or in person at the Film Society's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and Walter Reade Theater box offices, 144 & 165 West 65th Street. For our free event ticket policy and complete festival information, visit www.NYJFF.org.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS All programs take place at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street close to Amsterdam Avenue, unless noted.
Panel Discussion: War Against War With wars raging around the world, we live in a time of perpetual armed conflict. Antiwar films have drawn attention to the horrors of war and the physical and mental devastation it inflicts on both soldiers and civilians. This panel discussion is presented in conjunction with a selection of antiwar films made mostly during the 1950s and '60s featured in this year's festival. Participants include Kent Jones, Director of the New York Film Festival, and artists Harrell Fletcher, Trevor Paglen, and Martha Rosler. Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum, and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival, will serve as moderator.
Monday, January 19, 3:00pm
Venue: Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway Panelists:
Kent Jones is Director of the New York Film Festival and a widely published film critic. In 2007 a collection of his writings, Physical Evidence, was published by Wesleyan University Press, and he recently edited the first English-language volume of writings on Olivier Assayas, published by Filmmuseum Synema Publikationem. He is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow. Jones has collaborated for many years on documentaries with Martin Scorsese, beginning with My Voyage to Italy (2001) on which he served as co-writer. He and Scorsese co-wrote and co-directed A Letter to Elia (2010), an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning film about the director Elia Kazan. Scorsese was the producer and narrator of Jones' 2007 documentary about Val Lewton, The Man in the Shadows. Martha Rosler works in video, photography, text, installation, and performance. She has produced works on war and the national security climate, connecting life at home with the conduct of war abroad. In 2012, she presented a new series of photographs, taken during her trip to Cuba in January 1981, and in November, she presented the Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at MoMA. In 2013, her book of essays, Culture Class, which deals with the role of artists in cities and gentrification, was published by e-flux and Sternberg Press. Most recently, she produced the exhibition and public project Guide for the Perplexed: How to Succeed in the New Poland at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland. Harrell Fletcher has produced a variety of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects since the early 1990's. His work has been shown at SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Wattis Institute, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Drawing Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Sculpture Center, The Wrong Gallery, Apex Art, and Smackmellon in NYC, DiverseWorks and Aurora Picture show in Houston, TX, PICA in Portland, OR, CoCA and The Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, WA, Signal in Malmo, Sweden, Domain de Kerguehennec in France, The Tate Modern in London, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. He was a participant in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Fletcher has work in the collections of MoMA, The Whitney Museum, The New Museum, SFMOMA, The Hammer Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum, The De Young Museum, and The FRAC Brittany, France. From 2002 to 2009 Fletcher co-produced Learning To Love You More, a participatory website with Miranda July. Fletcher is the 2005 recipient of the Alpert Award in Visual Arts. His exhibition The American War originated in 2005 at ArtPace in San Antonio, TX, and traveled to Solvent Space in Richmond, VA, White Columns in NYC, The Center For Advanced Visual Studies MIT in Boston, MA, PICA in Portland, OR, and LAXART in Los Angeles among other locations. Fletcher is an Associate Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Trevor Paglen's work deliberately blurs lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us. Paglen's visual work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Modern, London; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the 2008 Taipei Biennial; the 2009 Istanbul Biennial; the 2012 Liverpool Biennial, and numerous other solo and group exhibitions. He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. His most recent book, The Last Pictures, is a meditation on the intersections of deep-time, politics, and art. Paglen has received grants and awards from the Smithsonian, Art Matters, Artadia, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the LUMA foundation, the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, and the Aperture Foundation.
War Against War Films Six films will be featured in the series. Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, based on occurrences during the Algerian War (1954-62) and focusing on the brutal Battle of Algiers, is regarded as among the most disturbing and yet impactful anti-war films made in the 1960s. Fear and Desire (1953), the first feature film by celebrated director Stanley Kubrick and his least-seen work, follows a group of soldiers that survived a plane crash behind enemy lines wandering around in a forest in an unidentified war, seeming to get more and more surreal as they try to return to their own troops. Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain, the story of a Japanese soldier suffering from tuberculosis at the end of World War II, depicts the struggle of life and death in the highly irrational and dehumanizing experience that is war. Konrad Wolf's I Was Nineteen is based on the director's own service during World War II arriving with Soviet troops to fight in the battle of Berlin at the age of 19. The film's narrative structure, the style of editing and camera movement, the dialogue and the acting are highly progressive for the time and seem closely related to the ideas employed by the directors of the French Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers is among the most surreal antiwar movies ever made. Set in a fictional country and at unspecified time, two simple-minded peasants receive a letter from their king that promises them riches and grants them complete liberty regarding any kind of crime if they join the army to fight in an unnamed war. As the war progresses their actions become more and more inhuman yet they remain poor, lose the war and are, to their surprise, held responsible for their crimes. The War Game, written and directed by Peter Watkins, was originally to be presented as a television film by the BBC but taken off the schedule as it was deemed too difficult for TV audiences. Presented to the public in a number of organized screenings and shown abroad, it did not air on the BBC until 20 years later but won the Academy Award for best Documentary Feature in 1967.
Panel Discussion: The Zionist Idea Presented in conjunction with the world premiere of Oren Rudavsky and Joseph Dorman's documentary film, The Zionist Idea, panelists include the filmmakers; Said Zeedani, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem; and Yael Zerubavel, Founding Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Study, Rutgers University. Richard Peña, Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University and former director of the New York Film Festival, will moderate.
Sunday, January 25, 2:00pm
Venue: Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway
Panelists:
Joseph Dorman is a Peabody Award winning documentary filmmaker and co-director of The Zionist Idea. His previous films include Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011), the Academy Award-nominated Arguing the World (1998), and co-authored the the script for The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Journey (2001), which was named the best documentary of 2001 by the National Board of Review. He teaches film history at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Oren Rudavsky is a New York-based filmmaker and former Guggenheim Fellow, and co-director of The Zionist Idea. In 2006, he completed his first feature film The Treatment, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the award for Best Film, Made in New York. His previous film, the non-fiction feature Hiding and Seeking (2004) was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and broadcast on the PBS series POV. His 1997 Academy Award-nominated A Life Apart: Hasidism in America received an Emmy nomination for its national PBS release in 1998. Said Zeedani is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, where he specializes in ethics, aesthetics and human rights. He served as Director General of the Independent Palestinian Commission for Citizens' Rights from 2000 to 2004 and has published widely on Arab-Jewish relations. He speaks about the topic in the film The Zionist Idea. Yael Zerubavel is Founding Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Study, where she is also Professor of Jewish Studies and History. She has taught courses on Israeli culture, Jewish memory, the Jewish immigrant experience, Jewish space, memory and trauma, and Israeli literature, as well as an interdisciplinary graduate seminar in cultural memory. She is nearing completion of her book Desert in the Promised Land: Nationalism, Politics, and Symbolic Landscapes. Richard Peña was the program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the director of the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 2002. A frequent lecturer on a wide variety of film topics, he is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006 to 2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13's weekly Reel 13. The documentary film, The Zionist Idea is a feature-length exploration of one of the most influential, controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. With origins in late-19th-century Europe, Zionism was born out of the Jewish confrontation with modernity along with the renewed persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Now, amid unceasing religious conflicts in the Middle East, it is crucial to better understand the meaning, history, and future of the movement.
Master Class: Susan Korda An in-depth conversation on filmmaking with Susan Korda, whose new film
Salomea's Nose is included in the Festival. The class includes with a screening of this short film, introduced by Aviva Weintraub, Director, New York Jewish Film Festival. Korda studied filmmaking at CCNY and has worked as an editor for 20 years. With David Leitner, she directed and produced the 1989 award-winning documentary Vienna Is Different. She produced another award-winning documentary in 2000, One of Us, Her editing credits include the 1989 Oscar®-nominated documentary For All Mankind and Sandi DuBowski's groundbreaking 2001 Trembling Before G-d. She was a producer on Emily and Sarah Kunstler's William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, and story consultant on Alan Berliner's The Sweetest Sound and First Cousin Once Removed. Korda teaches at Columbia University and conducts editing and storytelling workshops in the U.S., Europe, Israel, and South Africa. She is currently working on her "Jerusalem Project," in which she is finding the similarities and differences in the dreams, fairy tales, superstitions, cooking recipes, and jokes among Jerusalemite Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
Sunday, January 18, 2:00pm
Venue: Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway Artist Focus: Keren Cytter Israeli-born artist Keren Cytter uses visual media in strikingly original ways to build powerful and affecting narratives out of skewed scenes of everyday life. Cytter's films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a nonlinear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought-provoking, and inescapably engrossing.
Tuesday, January 27, 6:15pm (Keren Cytter in attendance) Guest Selects: Jennie Livingston Paris Is Burning - 25th Anniversary Screening!
Jennie Livingston, USA, 1990, 35mm, 71m
Jennie Livingston's iconic documentary offers an at once dazzling, dynamic, and intimate portrait of the Harlem drag balls of the 1980s, where rival fashion "houses" competed for trophies and cash prizes in categories like "face," "femme queen realness," and "voguing." Winner of a Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Paris Is Burning celebrates how African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender New Yorkers, for whom racism, poverty, and homophobia were daily realities, created a world of survival and joy.
Saturday, January 17, 9:15pm (Introduction by Jennie Livingston) Jennie Livingston Selects: Sophie's Choice
Alan J. Pakula, UK/USA, 1982, DCP, 151m
English, Polish, German, French, and Russian with English subtitles
Sophie is a survivor of Nazi concentration camps who has found a reason to live in Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie's narrator, a young American writer fresh to New York City. But Sophie and Nathan's happiness is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions. With stellar performances by Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, Sophie's Choice was nominated for five Academy Awards in 1982, and won for Best Actress.
Sunday, January 18, 6:00pm (Introduction by Jennie Livingston) Jennie Livingston Selects: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Stanley Kubrick, USA/UK, 1964, DCP, 95m
Producer/director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant satire is a provocative black comedy that remains unmatched as a doomsday fantasy of Cold War politics. Built around an inadvertent preemptive nuclear attack and featuring never-funnier turns by Peter Sellers, James Earl Jones, George C. Scott, and the unstoppable Slim Pickens, this landmark film was an intelligent, biting, and unhinged Monty Python-esque response to the apocalyptic fears of the 1960s.
Sunday, January 18, 9:15pm (Introduction by Jennie Livingston)
Free Shorts
TRT: 44m German Shepherd
Nils Bergendal, Sweden, 10m
As a Jew growing up in Baltimore, David's vision of Germany (and Germans) was shaped by the stories of his Holocaust-survivor mother; later in life, he reflects on whether it is possible to overcome this history. Stylistically simple yet philosophically potent, this animated documentary poses difficult questions about our capacity to forgive unimaginable acts of evil. Longing
Nadav Mishali, Israel, 20m
Hebrew with English subtitles
Every month Michal dips herself in the Mikveh and dreams of her husband-but when the long-awaited night arrives, nothing happens. His absence and the deterioration of their intimacy awakens suspicions about his true identity. Some Vacation
Anne S. Lewis, USA, 6m
What could possibly go wrong when Dad decides to take the family along on his business road trips and call them vacations? Everything! The Visit
Lawrence Horwitz, USA, 8m
English and Yiddish with English subtitles
When Esther pays a friend a visit in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, disagreements about how to spend their time together soon escalate into a much larger conflict.
Saturday, January 17, 8:00pm
Saturday, January 24, 8:00pm
Venue: Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway
From the Vaults Three Women
Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1924, 35mm, 84m
Silent with live piano accompaniment
Among the great silents that Lubitsch touched is this saucy melodrama starring May McAvoy (The Jazz Singer, Ben-Hur) as an 18-year-old in a dizzying, whirlwind triangle between her estranged socialite mother and a weasel-like suitor who, after getting a whiff of May's trust fund, stays true to his cad nature by wooing the young dame. Often favoring devastating facial expressions to convey the story's soapy twists and turns over expository intertitles, Three Women is a nimble, nuanced, and surprising dose of Lubitsch movie magic. From the collection of the George Eastman House.
New York Premiere of Restoration
Sunday, January 18, 1:00pm Back to the Soil
Bill Morrison, USA, 2014, 18m
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison has spent his 20-year career recovering and reassembling decaying bits of archival film footage into new works, with results that range from haunting to kaleidoscopic. In his new 18-minute film Back to the Soil, the source material is 1,000 feet of 16mm film shot by Morrison's grandfather in 1927, documenting an era when the Soviet government offered over 2.5 million acres of farmland in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Crimea to former merchants whose work had been outlawed under Communist rule.
Screening with:
Tsili
Amos Gitai, Israel/Russia/Italy/France, 2014, 88m
Yiddish, Ukrainian, Polish, German, and Russian with English subtitles
Of his 1982 book Tzili: The Story of a Life, the Romanian-Israeli novelist and survivor Aharon Appelfeld told Philip Roth: "The reality of the Holocaust surpassed any imagination. If I remained true to the facts, no one would believe me. But the moment I chose a girl, a little older than I was at that time, I removed 'the story of my life' from the mighty grip of memory and gave it over to the creative laboratory." This adaptation of Appelfeld's powerful book gives fresh intimacy and urgency to the story of a young Jewish woman hiding in the Ukrainian forests south of Chernivitsi, her world and family having been ripped away, and her subsequent wandering and search for meaning following the war. U.S. Premiere
Monday, January 19, 3:30pm (Q&A with Amos Gitai)
Tuesday, January 20, 3:30pm (Q&A with Amos Gitai)
New York Noir (1945-1948) In classical Hollywood cinema, New York was frequently the setting for films that came to be defined as film noir. Starting with The House on 92nd Street, directors interwove documentary techniques into their storytelling, wanting to "film where it actually happened." These films portrayed the city as a postwar Gotham with endless crime and intrigues. Cry of the City
Robert Siodmak, USA, 1948, DCP, 95m
Full-fledged noirist Robert Siodmak directed this gritty crime drama about two childhood best friends who take divergent paths: one becomes a cop (Victor Mature); the other, a cop killer (Richard Conte). The killer must grapple with confessing to a murder he did not commit in order to save his girlfriend from being framed for the crime. Shot mostly on location in New York City, the film features a thrilling score by Alfred Newman and is based on a masterful script by uncredited screenwriter Ben Hecht.
Sunday, January 25, 1:00pm The House on 92nd Street
Henry Hathaway, USA, 1945, 35mm, 88m
A twisted tale of espionage in the Big Apple: while newly recruited FBI double agent Bill Dietrich is training in Hamburg, a mysterious street accident victim proves to have been spying on atomic bomb secrets. Dietrich is assigned to the New York spy ring stealing these secrets, which operates from a house in the Upper East Side. Dietrich's mission is to track down "Mr. Christopher" before his ruthless associates unmask and kill him. This first of the so-called "docudramas" to be shot entirely on location, The House on 92nd Street would influence a number of contemporary productions, including The Naked City.
Monday, January 26, 6:00pm The Naked City
Jules Dassin, USA, 1948, 35mm, 96m
Shot entirely on location, The Naked City exposes a raw and menacing New York, from its darkest alleys to its tallest skyscrapers. Allegedly inspired by Weegee's photographs of crime scenes and Italian neorealism, blacklisted director Jules Dassin magnificently captured the city's street life. The film, winner of two Academy Awards for cinematography and editing, depicts a police investigation that follows the murder of a young model in her Upper West Side apartment, and features many memorable chases through the city, including a heart-stopping scene at the top of the Williamsburg Bridge. Special thanks to UCLA Film and Television Archives.
Screening with:
A Child of the Ghetto
D.W. Griffith, USA, 1910, 15m
Silent with live banjo accompaniment
World-renowned banjo player (and Harvard Business School graduate and founder of Compass Records and all around impressive Jewish woman) Alison Brown accompanies this classic from Hollywood legend D.W. Griffith: a documentary-like short tale of a woman's innocent crime in New York's bustling Lower East Side and her subsequent escape to the country and romance with a young farmer. Film restoration and new English subtitles by the National Center for Jewish Film. New York Premiere of New Restoration
Saturday, January 24, 7:00pm
Midnight Movie Breakin'
Joel Silberg, USA, 1984, 35mm, 90m
A Cannon Films production; screening in conjunction with the documentary The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films
Breakin' did perhaps more than any other single work of art of any discipline to bring a marginal street dance form to the forefront of mainstream American pop culture-and to put spandex on the silver screen. Dated but still devastatingly entertaining, the film tells the tale of a struggling jazz dancer who, with the help of street-dancing friends, becomes the new sensation of the crowds, despite disapproval from her dance instructor and the bitter rivalry from another crew. A variety of hybrid breakthrough performances, alongside a fantastic soundtrack that included Ollie and Jerry's "There's No Stopping Us" and Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody," made Breakin' a major success for the iconic low- and medium-budget Cannon Films.
Saturday, January 17, 11:30pm
Revival The Birdcage
Mike Nichols, USA, 1996, 35mm, 117m
This 1996 adaptation of the iconic French farce La Cage aux Folles, directed by the dearly departed Mike Nichols, is as outrageous as the 1978 French-Italian film and the original 1973 stage play, and with a Jewish twist. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star as the flamboyant South Beach couple whose straight son brings his fiancée and her ultraconservative (and not even a little Jewish) parents to dinner. Williams and Lane transform into a happy heterosexual couple for the occasion, with Lane in drag, Gentile-izing themselves in the bargain from Goldman to Coleman ("the D is silent," says Lane's Albert). Mayhem and hilarity ensue. The outstanding cast also includes Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, and Hank Azaria.
Sunday, January 25, 8:45pm
Exhibitions Coming Attractions: Art of the Film Noir Trailer
"A picture of tremendous excitement... A rarity of the screen... A raw slice of life..." Such was the language employed in many trailers for films noirs during the 1940s and '50s, whose rapid cuts, provocative narration, and dramatic scenarios made them films in and of themselves. In homage to the genre and its many talents, we have compiled noir and neo-noir trailers for 14 films from 1944-1970 into a unique 30-minute video presentation that will run on a continuous loop in the amphitheater of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center during the festival.
Venue: Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway War Against War: Exhibition
A small exhibition of film posters of historically important antiwar films in Furman Gallery in the Walter Reade Theater.
THE JEWISH MUSEUM
Led by Claudia Gould, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director, and located on Museum Mile at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, the Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, offering intellectually engaging and educational exhibitions and programs for people of all ages and backgrounds. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of over 30,000 works of art, artifacts, and broadcast media reflecting global Jewish identity, and presents a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed temporary exhibitions. For more information, visit TheJewishMuseum.org. FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, the Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award, whose 2015 recipient is Robert Redford. The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community. The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO, Stella Artois, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com, follow @filmlinc on Twitter, and download the FREE Film Society app, now available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android devices.
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