Groundbreaking Lineup Set for FIRST LOOK 2017 at Moving Image

Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce THE LINEUP for the First Look Festival, its annual showcase for groundbreaking new moving-image art.

The sixth edition of the Festival, which runs January 6 through 16, 2017, consists of films, a video game, and virtual reality experiences from more than twenty countries. The Festival focuses on works that expand the art form, and nearly all of them are New York premieres.

The Opening Night presentation will be the New York premiere of After the Storm, the latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda, a film that establishes a style and tone all its own, alighting on comedy, family drama, and shaggy-dog noir. The screening will be followed by an opening night reception.

Some emerging themes in this year's First Look include a number of works that use audio as a central element-Havarie, Depth Two, Fear Itself, and an audio documentary program by Radio Atlas-and others that experiment with theatricality and performance, including UFE (Unfilmevenemente), Between Fences, Silencio, and Helmut Berger, Actor. As in past years, there are several programs of avant-garde cinema, including the astonishing program On Resistance: International Avant-Garde Films and Video, and a program of new work by Ken Jacobs. And for the first time, First Look will also present two new, tantalizingly divergent virtual reality experiences, as well as a gripping local multiplayer video game, throughout the festival.

A complete lineup with descriptions and schedule is included below. Tickets will go on sale Tuesday, December 13, at 12:00 p.m. at movingimage.us/firstlook.

First Look 2017 was programmed by Chief Curator David Schwartz, Associate Film Curator Eric Hynes, Curator of Digital Media Jason Eppink, and guest curator Mónica Savirón (for On Resistance). The Festival is pleased to continue its programming partnership with FIDMarseille, the adventurous French festival, with Festival Director Jean-Pierre Rehm in person.

"We are excited by this year's lineup for First Look," said David Schwartz. "One of the strongest undercurrents in the work this year is the notion of empathy and engagement, the way that filmmakers and their subjects relate to each other. All of the work in First Look is idiosyncratic and unique, inspiring strong responses from the audience. It will be a great two weeks of discovery and discussion, as many of the filmmakers will be here to present their work."

"I'm proud that this year's program reflects what we consider to be some of the most exciting developments in film and visual media. Numerous works, through the use of sound, subtitling, and various recording devices, interrogate and even reinvent the cinematic space, while others, such as the video game and VR pieces, transcend cinema entirely," says Eric Hynes. "We're also just really looking forward to hosting some the most innovative young artists from around the world, such as Charlie Lyne, Ognjen Glavonic, Takehiro Ito, Eleanor McDowall, Kazik Radwanski, and Christopher LaMarca."

"The two VR experiences in First Look explore the true potential of virtual reality, treating it not as an extension of cinema, but as its own unique medium," said Jason Eppink. "The local multiplayer game Chalo Chalo will fill the space of the lobby with an exciting drop-in and play racing game that is as fun to watch as it is to play."

Special thanks to the French Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Japan Foundation.

A First Look Festival pass, good for admission to all films, is available for $45.

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Featured Films in First Look 2017:

OPENING NIGHT FILM
After the Storm
FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda. Japan. 2016. 117 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles. A Film Movement release. With Hiroshi Abe, Yoko Maki, Taiyo Yoshizawa, Kirin Kiki.
The latest film from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (After Life, Still Walking) establishes a style and tone all its own, alighting on comedy, family drama, and shaggy-dog noir. Dwelling on his past GLORY as a prize-winning author, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) wastes the money he makes as a private detective on gambling and can barely pay child support. After the death of his father, his aging mother (Kirin Kiki) and beautiful ex-wife (Yoko Maki) seem to be moving on with their lives. Renewing contact with his initially distrusting family, Ryota struggles to find his footing and maintain a relationship with his young son, until a stormy summer night offers them a chance to truly bond again. Preceded by Untitled (Dir. Bjorn Kammerer. 2016, 4 mins. 35mm). Austrian avant-garde filmmaker creates a shimmering study in geometry and light through the slats of a Venetian blind. And Balloonfest (Dir. Nathan Truesdell. 2016, 6 mins.). In 1986, Cleveland sought to lift spirits by launching a record 1.5 million balloons into the sky, but unpredictable winds and a boat accident in Lake Erie brought what might have been a harmless publicity stunt crashing down to earth.

VIDEO GAME
Chalo Chalo
Richard Boeser and Tomasz Kaye. 2016. US premiere.
Chalo Chalo is a minimalist tactical racing game for three to eight players that wrings tense and exciting gameplay out of snail's pace action. Players plot a route and navigate their racer across a dynamically generated landscape of grass, ice, rock, and lava to beat opponents to the goal. Chalo Chalo-intended for players of all experiences-is easy to learn but holds deep play potential.

VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE
Irrational Exuberance
Ben Vance. 2016. App 10 mins. NYC premiere.
Set on an asteroid in outer space, Irrational Exuberance is purely experiential-a mysterious, visceral, zero gravity playground without goal or objective. One of the most effective experiments in virtual reality to date, Irrational Exuberance is wholly transportive, brimming with wonder and tactile delight.

VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE
A Short History of the Gaze
Paolo Pedercini. 2016. App. 10 mins. World premiere.
Presented as a series of brief vignettes, A Short History of the Gaze operates as a virtual reality essay that explores the history of looking and its long relationship with violence, from the dawn of evolution to our self-inflicted panopticon. Eschewing hand-held controllers, A Short History of the Gaze responds only to where your gaze lands, implicating you, the looker, in damning and often unsettling ways.

Screening Sound: The Radio Atlas Adaptations
Hosted by Eleanor McDowall, Radio Atlas
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 3:00 P.M.
Approx. 75 mins. A selection of radio documentaries, including Ladies of the Manor (2011, 53 mins).
Sometimes answering one question accomplishes much more than that, and opens new avenues for creativity and discovery. Radio Atlas, an Internet HUB which originated in the United Kingdom, ingeniously provides screen-basEd English subtitles for foreign-language audio documentaries, making works of sound art suddenly accessible to wider audiences. They offer a practical solution that engenders an exciting side effect: a new and unique form of cinema. Radio Atlas's Eleanor McDowall presents a selection of absorbing audio works from around the world, all accompanied by visually inventive titles to create a theatrical experience unlike any other.

Sincerely (Atentamente)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Camila Rodriguez Triana. Colombia. 2016. 81 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles.
If Camila Rodríguez Triana's title brings to mind the necessity of careful thoughtfulness as well as the emotionally reserved farewell to a letter, it is because feelings are indeed at the core of the film. The setting of this delicate and deeply moving film is a retirement home where we follow two elderly residents, Libardo and Alba. Within the simple setting, the film captures the quiet activity of daily life that is pervaded by memories. As time passes, punctuated by the romantic lyrics of songs on the radio, or the dialogues of the telenovelas that the residents are watching, a love story emerges between Libardo and Alba, and the man's quest to gather the 15,000 pesos needed to allow them a double bed in their own room.

Out There
With Takehiro Ito in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Takehiro Ito. Japan. 2016, 148 mins. With Chun Chih Ma, Haruo Kobayashi, Ayu Kitaura, Ryuzaburo Hattori, Natsumi Seto. In Japanese, Chinese, and English with English subtitles.
Tokyo. Or perhaps, Taipei. A hybrid of fiction and documentary, and navigating mysteriously between the two cities, Takehiro Ito's beguiling film follows a director looking for a new actor, so that he can resurrect a stalled film project. This actor is Ma (as himself), born in Taiwan, who wanders around Tokyo on roller blades. More than searching for a place, he is searching for an emotion: the feeling of being home. The two men wonder how one can exist in this world. Travelling back and forth through secret gates between Tokyo and its former colony, Taiwan, Out There is in turns a documentary, a film within a film, a love story, and a story about wandering. Following Edward Yang's footsteps (the film starts from a failed documentary project on this Taiwanese director), Ito has also created a film in which the cities are among the main characters.

Fear Itself
With Charlie Lyne in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 5:30 P.M.
Dir. Charlie Lyne. England. 2015 88 mins. New York Premiere.
Half-heard whispers. A creaking door. Darkness itself. From Vertigo to Videodrome, the scariest movies exploit our greatest and most basic fears. Narrated by a woman haunted by things she has seen and cannot unsee, Fear Itself weaves together clips from cinema's most terrifying moments to explore how filmmakers scare us-and why we let them. As with his debut film Beyond Clueless, English director Charlie Lyne's second feature is both a probing collagist essay and deft, whip-smart provocation, exploring the soul of cinema from the inside out. Preceded by COPYCAT (Lyne, 2015, 9 mins). In the summer of 1990, a teenage filmmaker successfully raises $100,000 to shoot a pioneering horror film. Twenty-five years later, he tells the story of a cult classic that never was.

UFE (Unfilmévénement)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 7:30 P.M.
Dir. César Vayssié. France. 2016. 153 mins. U.S. Premiere. In French with English subtitles.
A unique experiment in live theater and film, César Vayssié's remarkable collaborative project UFE (Unfilmevenement) centers on a group of young people who plan spectacular artistic, and political, actions, attacking the role of television in an effort to create social chaos. A kidnapped TV anchor is held hostage in a remote villa in the Alps. The location becomes an arts workshop and a base camp for political action, populated by actors, revolutionaries, and a rock band. While it evokes the cinematic essays of Jean-Luc Godard and the theatrical playfulness of Jacques Rivette, UFE is a unique and timely experience that exists only in one copy at a time.

Territory (Territorio)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Alexandra Cuesta. Ecuador/U.S./Argentina. 2016. 66 mins. N.Y. Premiere. In Spanish with English subtitles.
In 1927, French poet Henri Michaux travelled across Ecuador and jotted down his impressions in a diary as he discovered the country's landscapes and populations. With Territorio, Alexandra Cuesta took this fragmented account as her starting point starting, as she journeys from the ocean, across the mountains, and into the jungle. Each frame is composed with great subtlety, and throughout the journey, an unspoken bond forms between the filmmaker and the people who are being filmed or waiting to be filmed. Cuesta, who studied film with James Benning, carefully emphasizes the contract between both sides of the camera. With great mastery, she reveals a sometimes humorous picture of her home country that is both fragmented and visionary. Preceded by Recordando El Ayer (Dir. Alexandra Cuesta, 2017. 9 mins.), an experimental portrait of Jackson Heights that questions the meaning of "home," and A Model Family in a Model Home (Dir. Zoe Beloff, U.S., 22 mins., 16mm), an uncompleted Bertolt Brecht 1940s film project inspired by a Life magazine article about a "model family" of American Midwestern farmers forms the basis for a beguiling and historically fascinating blend of documentary material, drawings, puppets, photographs, home movies, and other material that draws a line between the House Un-American Activities Committee and the 2008 housing crisis.

Boone
With Christopher LaMarca in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Christopher LaMarca. USA. 2016. 75 mins. New York Premiere. A Grasshopper Films release. In English.
Three young goat farmers adapt to the seasons and come to terms with the physical and emotional grit required to live at the mercy of the land. Told without aid of interviews or expert analysis, this empathetic and experiential film is a visceral meditation on a lifestyle born of self-reliance, a sensual homage to the heart and soul of a farmer. Gorgeously filmed by director and renowned still photographer Christopher LaMarca, and with a KNOCKOUT sound design to match, Boone makes for an enrapturing sensorial experience. Preceded by Animals Under Anaesthesia: Speculations on the Dreamlife of Beasts (Dirs. Brian M. Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky. 2016, 14 mins.) Part lyrical document, part farce, part Buñuelian fantasia, this visually and sonically audacious film explores the imagined unconscious of animals. Images of sex, death and the natural world are made manifest in the murky and disquieting dreams of a dog, a cat, a pig and a rabbit.

John Wilson's New York
With John Wilson in person
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. John Wilson. Estimated running time: 75 mins. Titles include: How to Walk to Manhattan (2013, 10 mins), How to Live with Bed Bugs (2013, 9 mins), How to Act on Reality TV (2016, 23 mins), Los Angeles Plays New York (2016, 18 mins), The Spiritual Life of Wholesale Goods (2016, 15 mins) Film Festival Premiere
In possession of a truly singular voice, John Wilson creates films from the aspects of culture that most of us hurry past, treating his own low-fi recordings of city life as folk-art found footage. Whether in creating instructional videos for infuriating tasks (How to Live with Bed Bugs), enacting a pretend lawsuit to get on a pretend legal show that pretends to be shot in L.A. (Los Angeles Plays New York), or following a thread from extraneous messaging on dollar store electronics packaging to the saddest trade show in Las Vegas (The Spiritual Life of Wholesale Goods, receiving its Festival Premiere), Wilson exults in the surreality of modern life, offering his own hilariously shambling voiceover as both ineffective commentary and dryly comedic counterpoint. Wilson will be on hand to present his films and other collected media.

On Resistance: International Avant-Garde Films & Videos
Program of short films introduced by guest curator Mónica Savirón
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 7:30 P.M.
Various artists. 1963-2016, 75 mins. 35mm, 16mm, and digital projection. This international program brings together archival prints of forgotten films never shown in New York before and new countercurrent voices. Avant-garde artists Don Levy, Philippe Cote, and Ute Aurand share the screen with a new generation of MAKERS whose works explore and embody exemplary fights for different forms of freedom. "On Resistance" includes a World premiere, five North American, two U.S., and four New York premieres, from fifteen different countries.

Works include:
Granular Film - Beirut . Charles-André Coderre. 2016, Canada/Lebanon, 35mm, 7 mins. US premiere.
Malaise. Don Levy, 1963-64, UK, 16mm, 3 mins. NY premiere.
Ñores-sin señalar (Misters-Without Blame). Annalisa D. Quagliata, 2016, Mexico, 16mm on HD, 3 mins. North American premiere.
This Bogeyman. Pere Ginard, 2016, Spain, Super8mm on HD, 3 mins. World premiere.
Mirage. Atoosa Pour Hosseini. 2015, Iran/Ireland, Super8mm on HD, 4 mins., North American premiere.
Calypso. Annalisa D. Quagliata, 2016, Mexico, 16mm on HD, 5 mins. North American premiere.
Prospector. Talena Sanders, 2015, India/USA, 16mm to DCP, 14 mins. New York premiere.
De falso a legal en una toma (From False to Legal in One Take). Diego Lama, 2015, Peru, DCP, 4 mins. North American premiere.
River in Castle. Sandy Ding, 2016, China/Croatia, 16mm, 4mins. U.S. premiere.
Sakura, Sakura (Cherry Blossom, Cherry Blossom). Ute Aurand, 2015, Japan, 16mm, 3 mins. New York premiere.
Stadt in Flammen (City in Flames). Schmelzdahin (Jürgen Reble, Jochen Müller & Jochen Lempert), 1984, Germany, 16mm, 5 mins. NY premiere.
L'en-Dedans (Inside the Inside). Philippe Cote, 2002, France, Super8mm on 16mm, 18 mins. North American Premiere.

Special thanks to Cullen Gallagher, Daniel A. Swarthnas, Andrea Franco, Emmanuel Lefrant, Eleni Gioti, Mariya Nikiforova, Victor Gresard, May Haduong, Mark Toscano, Amnon Buchbinder, John Gianvito, The Don Levy Project, Don Levy's family, Light Cone, Canyon Cinema, Experimental Film Society, National Film Board of Canada, and the Academy Film Archive.

Reichstag 9/11 and other new films by Ken Jacobs
With Ken Jacobs in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2:00 P.M.
Total running time approx. 82 mins.
Reichstag 9/11 (2016, 38 mins. U.S. premiere) "Obvious as the facts may be, (and available on the web; tap in the expression Reichstag 9/11), we are all wonderfully free to 'make up our own minds.' The title aligns the Neo-con anticipated 'new Pearl Harbor' with the infamous Reichstag fire the Nazis exploited to solidify their power. The images of Reichstag 9/11 are derived from eyewitness recordings on the web. DECEPTION upon deception, this time optical." (Description by Ken Jacobs). Preceded by Windbreaker (2016, 6 mins., World premiere); Cyclops Observes the Celestial Bodies (2016, 16 mins. U.S. premiere); Popeye Sees 3-D (2014, 22 mins. NY premiere).

Havarie
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Philip Scheffner. Germany. 2016. 93 mins. In Arabic French, English, and Russian with English subtitles.
Out in the Mediterranean Sea, a few dozen miles off the Spanish coast, a frail little skiff full of men is identified by a cruise liner. A camera zooms in on the refugee boat far in the distance, but the picture remains indistinct. German director Philip Scheffner takes a few minutes of eyewitness video and slows it down to feature length, such that every frame registers as a separate pixelated, and metaphorically pained still. Meanwhile the soundtrack offers an ambitiously textured, multilingual account of the historical and cultural forces that gave rise to this confluence of participants and witnesses, such as terrorism in Algeria in the 1990s, the Irish troubles, and the war in the Ukraine. Scheffner orchestrates a moment suspended in time, in which the viewer is invited to appreciate the full complexity, and tragedy, associated with a brief picture caught at sea. Preceded by It Could Be a Film (Kumjana Novakova, 2016, 8 mins). Subtly ruminating on the definition of film itself, this provocative short explores variances of sound while fixing on a single elusive image.

Helmut Berger, Actor
With Andreas Horvath in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 4:30 P.M.
Dir. Andreas Horvath. Austria. 2015, 90 mins. N.Y. Premiere. In German with English subtitles.
Pushing the very limits of "intimacy" in the documentary film, Austrian director Andreas Horvath delivers a frank and unblinking portrait of the legendary actor and former Luchino Visconti muse Helmut Berger. At the height of his stardom and handsomeness Berger epitomized the exuberant jetset lifestyle of the 1970s, but in recent years he has settled for a more secluded and modest lifestyle in a rundown, two-room apartment in the outskirts of Salzburg. Moody, mercurial, and performative to his core, Berger lashes out against but also ravenously consumes the attention of Horvath, his patient but not entirely silent witness. "Maybe the best motion picture of the year is also the worst? The rules of documentary access are permanently fractured here," said John Waters about the film.

Depth Two
With Ognjen Glavonic in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 6:30 P.M.
Dir. Ognjen Glavonic. Serbia. 2016. 80 mins. North American Premiere. In Serbian with English Subtitles.
In 1999, while NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, a truck containing 53 dead bodies plunged into the Danube near the border with Romania. Where did the bodies come from, how did they wind up on a truck near the Danube, and what horrors led to their deaths? Pairing powerful, masterfully edited audio testimony with present-day footage of deceptively banal locations, Serbian director Ognjen Glavonic pieces together the story of a nation's mass crime against its own people and elaborate cover-up. Undeterred by a sparse visual record, Depth Two answers with an extraordinary assertion of cinema.

Silencio
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Christophe Bisson. France. 2016. 53 mins. In French and Portuguese with English subtitles.
In his empathetic and beautiful film, Christophe Bisson finds a new way to create images appropriate for capturing the experience of homelessness. Working in the city of Porto, Portugal, he chose a surprising setting: The whole film takes place in a few large rooms of a once-glorious palace. Within this setting, a group of homeless men and women create a theater space, and share their stories. The film evokes, at times, historical paintings, and works by Samuel Beckett and Luis Buñuel. Ultimately, the film allows its subjects to reveal their deepest feelings and their inner beauty. Preceded by Something About Life (Dir. Nebojsa Slijepcevic. Croatia. 2016. 30 min. U.S. Premiere. In Croatian with English subtitles) Even within her cohort of troubled teens in Slavonia, Croatia, fourteen-year-old Ivana is a girl apart. Once a week, a professional drummer comes to their shared home to teach them to drum in unison, but Ivana refuses, preferring instead to take out her aggressions through boxing. Slowly Ivana starts to reveal herself, constantly weighing her attraction to the idea of a movie being made about her life, and wary of what it may capture.

Between the Fences (Bein gderot)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 4:00 P.M.
Dir. Avi Mograbi. Israel/France. 2016. 84 mins. In Hebrew, Tigrigna, Arabic and English with English subtitles.
In the middle of the Negev Desert in Israel, African asylum seekers languish indefinitely in a detention facility. With the help of theater director Chen Alon and the active participation of filmmaker Avi Mograbi, they begin to use Theater of the Oppressed techniques to express their experiences, thoughts, and frustrations. What leads men and women to leave everything behind and go towards the unknown? Why does Israel, land of the refugees, refuse to accept people exiled by war, genocide and persecution? And can these artists-and by extension the audience-put themselves in the refugee's shoes? Mograbi's reflective, reflexive, and surprisingly exhilarating documentary is not just a call for empathy and understanding, but an unapologetic act of the same. Preceded by A Short Family Film (Igor Bezinovic, 2016, 20 mins) Marica is a voluble older woman eager to open her home and share her life with a visiting documentary crew. But it does not take long for her story to open up into some surprising territory, including a self-reenacted altercation involving her daughter-in-law and a kitchen knife. Staring out through his sober yet stylized frames, Croatian director Igor Bezinovic rides the line between hilarity and mortal unease.

How Heavy This Hammer
With Kazik Radwanski in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 4:30 P.M.
Dir. Kazik Radwanski. Canada. 2015. 75 mins. With Erwin Van Cotthem, Kate Ashley, Seth Kirsh. N.Y. Premiere. In English.
The second feature by Canadian filmmaker Kazik Radwanksi (Tower, 2012) is an intense, intimate, and ruefully funny portrait of masculinity at a crossroads. A married father of two nearing middle age, Erwin (Erwin Van Cotthem) finds the only outlet for his shapeless, sublimated rage in online gaming and bloody rugby action. Withdrawing further and further into his own world, and in danger of completely alienating the people closest to him, Erwin is conscious of and frustrated by his stunted existence, but struggles to pull himself out of his rut.

How I Fell in Love with Eva Ras
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 6:30 P.M.
Dir. Andrew Gil Mata. Portugal/Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2016. 74 mins. North American Premiere. In English.
Up in the cramped projection booth of an old cinema in Sarajevo, Sena presides over her domain. She cleans, eats, naps, and spools out reels of vintage prints. Portuguese filmmaker Andrew Gil Mata has fashioned a film that celebrates and uncannily evokes a swiftly disintegrating milieu, employing long takes both of Sena's ritualized behavior and of the Yugoslavian films she is projecting into the theater. Subtly, entrancingly, we drift into parallel dreams of a forgotten world. Preceded by Panoramis Paramount Paranormal. (Dirs. Constanze Rhum, Emelien Awada, 2015, 23 mins.) The ghost of movie history pervades this impressionistic film photographed at a modern residence that used to be the site of a movie studio.

Film After Film: Shorts Program I
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2:00 P.M.
These five shorts push against the bounds of traditional cinematic form to explore new territories, whether it's blurring the lines between truth, fiction, and fantasy, or testing the materiality and temporality of film itself. Approx Running Time: 71 mins (This program's short films previously shown before feature presentations)

Titles include:

It Could Be a Film (Kumjana Novakova, 2016, 8 mins). Subtly ruminating on the definition of film itself, this provocative short explores variances of sound while fixing on a single elusive image.

Untitled (Dir. Bjorn Kammerer. 2016, 4 mins). Austrian avant-garde filmmaker creates a shimmering study in geometry and light through the slats of a Venetian blind.

Animals Under Anaesthesia: Speculations on the Dreamlife of Beasts (Brian M. Cassidy & Melanie Shatzky, 2016, 14 mins) Part lyrical document, part farce, part Bunuelian fantasia, this visually and sonically audacious film explores the imagined unconscious of animals. Images of sex, death and the natural world are made manifest in the murky and disquieting dreams of a dog, a cat, a pig and a rabbit.

Panoramis Paramount Paranormal (2015, 23 mins.) The ghost of movie history pervades this impressionistic film photographed at a modern residence that used to be the site of a movie studio.

A Model Family in a Model Home (Zoe Beloff, U.S., 22 mins., 16mm) An uncompleted Bertolt Brecht 1940s film project inspired by a Life magazine article about a "model family" of American Midwestern farmers forms the basis for a beguiling and historically fascinating blend of documentary material, drawings, puppets, photographs, home movies, and other material that draws a line between the House Un-American Activities Committee and the 2008 housing crisis.

Strange But True: Shorts Program II
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 3:30 P.M.
These five shorts take vastly different approaches to documentary film, from entirely archival to audio-based essayistic, and from low-rent investigative to collaborative and observational. But one thing they all have in common is a sense of humor and play, exulting in the absurdities of life as a way of reflecting on, or hinting at, larger ideas and universal experience. Approx Running Time: 80 mins. (This program's short films previously shown before feature presentations)

Titles include:

Balloonfest (Dir. Nathan Truesdell. 2016, 6 mins). In 1986, Cleveland sought to lift spirits by launching a record 1.5 million balloons into the sky, but unpredictable winds and a boat accident in Lake Erie brought what might have been a harmless publicity stunt crashing down to earth.

The Spiritual Life of Wholesale Goods (2016, 15 mins). An investigation into the source of extraneous spiritual messages on dollar store electronics packaging leads a thrifty Brooklyn filmmaker to the saddest trade show in Las Vegas.

Copycat (2015, 9 mins). In the summer of 1990, a teenage filmmaker successfully raises $100,000 to shoot a pioneering horror film. 25 years later, he tells the story of a cult classic that never was.

A Short Family Film (Igor Bezinovic, 2016, 20 mins) Marica is a voluble older woman eager to open her home and share her life with a visiting documentary crew. But it doesn't take long for her story to open up into some surprising territory, including a self-reenacted altercation involving her daughter-in-law and a kitchen knife. Staring out through his sober yet stylized frames, Croatian director Igor Bezinovic rides the line between hilarity and mortal unease.

Something About Life (Nebojsa Slijepcevic. Croatia. 2016. 30 min. U.S. Premiere. In Croatian with English Subtitles.) Even within her cohort of troubled teens in Slavonia, Croatia, 14 year-old Ivana is a girl apart. Once a week, a professional drummer comes to their shared home to teach them to drum in unison, but Ivana refuses, preferring instead to take out her aggressions through boxing. Slowly Ivana starts to reveal of herself, constantly weighing her attraction to the idea of a movie being made about her life, and wary of what it could reveal.

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With the exception of Opening Night, tickets for First Look films will be $15 each (free for members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above). Tickets for Opening Night January 6 screening of After the Storm and reception will be $20 ($15 members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels / free for Silver Screen members and above). An All Festival Pass will be available for $45. Advance tickets will be available online at movingimage.us/firstlook (beginning Dec. 13).

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 at First Look are Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, Thomas Andersen's Reconversão, Philippe Garrel's That Summer, Alexandre Rockwell's Little Feet, Ken Jacobs's The Guests, Aleksei German's Hard to Be a God, Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou, Margaret Honda's Color Correction, and Alexandre Sokurov'sFrancofonia.

Museum of the Moving Image 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.

Hours: Wednesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Holiday Hours: Closed December 25. Early closing on December 24 (at 4:00 p.m.) and December 31 (at 5:00 p.m.). Open Monday, December 26, and Tuesday, December 27, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Museum Admission: $15 adults; $11 senior citizens (ages 65+) and students (ages 18+) with ID; $7 youth (ages 3-17). Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Film Screenings: Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and as scheduled. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $15 adults / $11 students and seniors / $7 youth (ages 3-17) / free for Museum members at the Film Lover and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above. Advance purchase is available online. Ticket purchase may be applied toward same-day admission to the Museum's galleries.
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Program Information: Telephone: 718 777 6888; Website: movingimage.us
Membership: movingimage.us/support/membership or 718 777 6877

Museum of the Moving Image is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and has received significant support from the following public agencies: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York City Economic Development Corporation; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Institute of Museum and Library Services; National Endowment for the Humanities; National Endowment for the Arts; and Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation). For more information, visit movingimage.us.