New Programming Announced at BAM

BAMcinématek is excited to announce three programs that reflect its mission to provide a platform for marginalized voices in cinema. Screen Epiphanies invites arts and culture luminaries to highlight their cinematic inspirations; Beyond the Canon, pairs well-known classics alongside seminal works from overlooked filmmakers; and Women at Work explores the complex subject of women's work from a broad array of perspectives.

Screen Epiphanies is a once-monthly screening event, inspired by the BFI series of the same name, in which esteemed cultural figures introduce a film that inspired their love of cinema or catalyzed their entry into their chosen field. Our first edition brings multihyphenate artist Jean Grae to BAM on Feb 8 to discuss David Fincher's late-90s touchstone Fight Club (1999). On March 12, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ezra Edelman (O.J.: Made in America) introduces Spike Lee's seminal Brooklyn drama Do the Right Thing (1989). April brings actress and director Adepero Oduye (Pariah, 12 Years a Slave) to introduce Robert Duvall's The Apostle (1997-Apr 9), a searing, Oscar-nominated drama about faith and family.

The Beyond the Canon monthly series will pair one well-known, highly regarded 'canonized' film, with a thematically or stylistically related work that is equally brilliant, but not widely recognized and, most importantly, made by a commonly overlooked filmmaker. The first screening pairs Stanley Donen's 1952 classic musical Singin' in the Rain with Chantal Akerman's 1986 avant-garde musical Golden Eighties. In March, Stanley Kubrick's dystopian masterpiece A Clockwork Orange (1971) is screened alongside Les Saignantes, the 2005 explosively outré sci-fi satire by Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Bekolo. In April BAMcinématek screens a double-bill of noir brilliance: Orson Welles' masterpiece Touch of Evil (1958) alongside Carl Franklin's vastly underrated thriller One False Move (1992). Both films offer taut direction, captivating unpredictability, and fascinating, insightful racial commentary. Of the series, BAM Senior Programmer Ashley Clark explains, "It's no secret that the cinema canon has historically skewed toward lionizing the white, male auteur. With Beyond the Canon, I want to challenge this history and spark conversations with our audience."

The inaugural installment of Women at Work will focus on labor activism, specifically on cinematic portrayals of women's pioneering roles in labor movements through history. It includes bracing documentaries of front-line action in Madeline Anderson's short film I Am Somebody (1969) and Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976), galvanizing portraits of influential women like Union Maids (Klein, Mogulescu, Reichert, 1976), and classic dramas inspired by pioneering real-life figures with Mike Nichols' Silkwood (1983) and Sally Field's Oscar-winner Norma Rae (Ritt, 1979). The series also includes Sally Potter's The Gold Diggers (1983), Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954) screening with A Crime to Fit the Punishment (Mack & Moss, 1982)-about the political atmosphere surrounding the production of Salt of the Earth-and the documentaries The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Field, 1980) and With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women's Emergency Brigade (1979) and The Global Assembly Line (1986), both directed by Lorraine Gray. Closing the series is a new 35mm restoration of Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames (1983), with the director present for a Q&A. Subsequent editions of Women at Work will focus on women's intellectual and domestic labor.

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