Azazel Jacobs has made a short film for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The 90 minute film, called I See, is the first in a series that MoMA plans to commission, at the rate of one per year, from filmmakers who screen work in their spring New Directors/New Films series. I See is screening before programs in MoMA’s Titus screening rooms, and is also posted on the Museum’s YouTube channel. See it embedded below the jump.
Once again it’s late March and with the opening salvos of the 09’ festival circuit already fired in Park City, Berlin and Austin, our friends at some of Midtown’s most venerable arts institutions have picked what they see as the cream of the fresh, young crop for their yearly survey of “new” filmmaking. But what’s so “new” about New Directors/New Films, MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s customary selection of a couple dozen features and a half dozen shorts by recently emergent filmmakers, which opened Wednesday night with Cherien Dabis’ Amreeka, a earnest multi-cultural drama about a woman from Ramallah who moves to middle America with her son and ends up working at White Castle? Yes, this is what you crave, you midtown Manhattan cinephiles, you wine and cheese pasties. Amreeka has quickly won a reputation among the cinerati as reeking, for better or worse, rightly or wrongly, of the Sundance Lab and its liberal indie realist orthodoxy, which might provoke some to dismiss it. I won’t hold it against you.
Art Radio International renegotiated the terms of its lease of the Clocktower Gallery with MoMA recently, consequently serving subleasers The Film-Maker’s Co-op (FMC) with an eviction notice. Founded nearly 50 years ago, FMC is one of the longest-running distributors of experimental and independent film in the world, its offices operating in the same building since 2000. The organization houses thousands of 16mm prints, many of them unique and irreplaceable including those by Stan Brakhage, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneeman, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Jennifer Reeves, Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, Peggy Ahwesh, Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Martha Colburn, Leslie Thornton, and literally hundreds of other artists, as well as an invaluable paper archive of letters, program notes and other materials. According to sources moving these fragile prints will take thousands of dollars the Co-op simply can’t afford.
Art Fag City passes along word that a significant archive devoted to art and experimental film is in danger of becoming homeless. The FMC is petitioning Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin in the hopes she’ll help them either stay in the Clocktower or find a new space (and presumably the resources for the move). More details at the link.
MoMA sent over a press release this morning about an event called Silent but Deadly: An Evening of Comedy Shorts, which looks very cool. Curator Ron Magliozzi and silent film accompanists Steve Massa and Ben Model have put together a program of silent slapstick comedy shorts that “explore social, cultural, and political subjects”; they’ll be screening these, followed by shorts comissioned from contemporary comedians including Nick Kroll and ThunderAnt, AKA Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein.
The press release doesn’t reveal exactly what they’ll be showing in terms of silent films (when I think slapstick silent comedy I think Fatty Arbuckle, but unless the comedy of being fat is a cultural issue, I’m not sure his work qualifies), but I hope the contemporary response pieces fall somewhere along the lines of ThunderAnt’s Boink!, embedded below. It’s a mock, New York Noise-like public access indie rock show, featuring special guest Sadaam Hussein, who strums an acoustic guitar in his “home recording studio in Manhattan” while talking about the life of a dictator in the language of a jaded old punk rocker.
A sampling of movie events happening around town this week:
Flaherty NYC will present its second monthly program of non-fiction shorts tonight at Anthology Film Archives. The lineup includes two pieces by Sylvia Schedelbauer and two by Alison Kobayashi. Pamela Cohn, who will moderate a discussion after the screening, describes Kobayashi as a “very young, Tracey Ullman-esque performance artist” who “does everything by herself–makeup, wardrobe, shooting, editing.” More info on the program here.
Also tonight: Rooftop Films is putting on a free showcase of animated shorts at Chelsea Market. I can’t find info on the specifics of the lineup, but the Rooftop website promises free beer. Here’s the lineup.
David Redmon and Ashley Sabin are bringing one of my favorite non-fiction films of the year, Intimidad, to MoMA this Friday and next Wednesday. You can read my review of the film from SXSW here; more info at MoMA’s website.
I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:
Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light is finally, finally coming back to New York, a year after it screened at NYFF 2007, as part of a retrospective dedicated to the Mexican filmmaker at MoMA. Manohla Dargis raves.
Natural Causes, the relationship drama co-directed by sometime SpoutBlog contributor Michael Lerman (and featuring yours truly in a teeny-tiny cameo), has a one-night-only NYC preview on Monday night at the IFC Center. You can buy tickets here, and read our SXSW coverage of the film here and here.
IFP is launching a new series of screenings called First Weekend, in which they help ensure an indie release has a successful first weekend by inviting their members to buy tickets for a special screening featuring a discussion with the filmmakers and an after party. The first film to get the treatment will be Ballast, which we loved at Sundance, and which director Lance Hammer is self-distributing. It all starts at Film Forum on October 2. More info here.
FILMMAKER Magazine is doing a sort of “where are they now?” with past with former honorees of their “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list (see this year’s installment here). This catch-up with Ronald Bronstein has some interesting bits of news about how the Frownland director/Butterknife star has been spending his time.
First, though Frownland is still without U.S. distribution, it has been added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. “I took this as a good indicator that it was time to stop pushing the forlorned thing, assume it’ll have some kind of life ahead of it, and move onto my next project with more active fervor,” Bronstein says. That project is currently in rehearsals, with plans to shoot this winter.
Meanwhile, Bronstein says he plans to continue his “semi-reluctant plunge into acting” with a lead role in the next feature by Josh and Bennie Safdie. To celebrate that bit of good news, I’ve embedded the Jerry Lewis-inspired Safdie short Jerry Ruis, Shall We Do This? above, which we gave an award to when I was on the short film jury at CineVegas last month.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
A sampling of movie events happening around town this week:
I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:
