Sunday Screenings at the Chazen: Projecting the Cinema
Sunday Screenings at the Chazen Museum of Art begin again on January 29 and in recognition of the newly opened auditorium and cinema space, we have curated a selection of feature and short films that explore, from an international perspective, the significance of the movie theater throughout film history. The stories in these selections unfold primarily within the confines of cinemas: movie palaces, grindhouses, and even museum cinematheques! The series contains several titles that demonstrate how movie houses functioned in past decades, but it gives equal consideration to the contemporary moviegoing experience, and offers an elegy of sorts to the vanishing single-screen movie house and the disappearing art of 35mm projection.
- Sun., Jan. 29 | 2:00 PMChazen
In a role inspired by legendary movie-gimmick king William Castle, Goodman plays exploitation producer/director Lawrence Woolsey. Arriving in Key West, FL to premiere his latest horror opus, Mant (“Half Man, Half Ant, All Terror!”), Woolsey doesn’t expect the Cuban missile crisis to happen, but he finds it’s not bad for business. Director Dante’s affectionate farce warmly evokes a moviegoing era now long gone. Preceded by SHE WAS AN ACROBAT’S DAUGHTER (Directed by Friz Freleng, US, 1937, Digital Projection, 8 min.)
- Sun., Feb. 5 | 2:00 PMChazen
In beautiful black and white images, director Veiroj lovingly details the daily life of devoted Cinemateca Uruguaya employee Jorge (played by real-life film critic Jellinek). When faced with the prospect of his beloved repertory cinema closing, Jorge must take the first tentative steps towards finding new passions. A love letter to movies and movie theaters, this charmer is directed by one of the most talented artists in Uruguay’s emerging national cinema. A Useful Life is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens Collection. For more information, visit http://www.globalfilm.org. Preceded by FOR THE FIRST TIME (Directed by Octavio Cortázar, Cuba, 1967, Digital Projection, 9 min., subtitled).
- Sun., Feb. 12 | 2:00 PMChazen
In one of the most inventive of his silent features, Keaton is a projectionist who falls asleep on the job and dreams that he’s become the detective in the mystery film on screen. “Keaton's appreciation of the formal paradoxes of the medium is astounding; his observations on the relationship between film and the subconscious are groundbreaking and profound. And it's a laugh riot, too.” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Preceded by THE PLAYHOUSE (Directed by Buster Keaton, US, 1921, 35m, 22 min., silent), one of Keaton’s finest short films, in which he portrays every member of a vaudeville theater company, as well as every member of the audience! Live accompaniment by David Drazin.
- Sun., Feb. 19 | 2:00 PMChazen
As the psycho-thriller The Mommy unspools at a seedy Los Angeles grindhouse, two teenage girls in the audience become aware that a very real maniac is sitting amongst them. Often gruesomely violent and always clever, this meta-suspense film makes the most of its movie-within-a-movie premise. It marked the English language debut of Almodóvar’s talented contemporary Luna (Jamon, Jamon). Preceded by OCCUPATIONS (Directed by Lars von Trier, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min.).
- Sun., Feb. 26 | 2:00 PMChazen
Celebrated filmmaker Davies continues the autobiographical examination of life in working class Liverpool begun in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988). More poetic reverie than narrative storytelling, Davies gracefully, artfully uses sound and image to evoke and explore the most common territories of his youth in the 1950s: home, church, school, and in particular, the cinema. Preceded by HAPPY ENDING (Directed by Ken Loach, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min.)
- Sun., Mar. 4 | 2:00 PMChazen
In a darkened cinema, the expressive faces of 112 women are illuminated by the screen during the projection of a lush, historical epic adapted from a medieval Persian poem. For his radical and often deeply moving experiment, acclaimed filmmaker Kiarostami first photographed his actresses and allowed their reactions to inspire him when he created the elaborate soundtrack. Preceded by WHERE IS MY ROMEO? (Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min., subtitled)
- Sun., Mar. 11 | 2:00 PMChazen
An adult filmmaker (played by Winged Migration director Perrin) recalls his provincial Italian childhood and his friendship with a gruff-but-loveable projectionist (Noiret). One of the most beloved of Italian movies, this sentimental and endearing classic is being presented in its original Italian release version. Ennio Morricone’s score received an Academy Award nomination, and Cinema Paradiso took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Preceded by DIARO DI UNO SPETTATORE (Directed by Nanni Moretti, 2007, Digitial Projection, 5 min., subtitled)
- Sun., Mar. 18 | 2:00 PMChazen
In Allen’s lovely, bittersweet fantasy set during the Depression, Farrow plays a lonely waitress in a small town who is hopelessly addicted to visiting her neighborhood movie house. Daniels plays the dual role of the fictional character who magically walks off the screen to meet her and the Hollywood actor sent to talk his creation back into the film. Preceded by CINÉMA DE BOULEVARD (Directed by Claude Lelouch, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min., subtitled)
- Sun., Mar. 25 | 2:00 PMChazen
A cute young couple inherits a ramshackle silent movie-house and pledge to restore it to its former glory in this nostalgic gem of an English comedy. In one of his finest and funniest early film performances, Sellers plays the theater’s boozy old projectionist. Preceded by LA FONDERIE (Directed by Aki Kaurismäki, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min., subtitled)
- Sun., Apr. 15 | 2:00 PMChazen
In a decaying Taipei movie theater with several hundred seats, a handful of viewers turn up to see a screening of King Hu’s martial arts spectacular, Dragon Inn. The motley denizens of the cinema include senior citizens, pickup artists on the prowl, a lonely ticket clerk and a young projectionist. Luxuriously paced like most of director Tsai’s films, this tribute to the faded glories of moviegoing has atmosphere to spare. Preceded by IT’S A DREAM (Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang, 2007, 5 min., Digital Projection, subtitled)
- Sun., Apr. 29 | 2:00 PMChazen
Set within the confines of a sleazy adult movie theater in Paris, Porn Theater depicts the frequent clandestine affairs that occur amongst the cinema’s gay clientele. While it contains explicit sex scenes, the film is more focused on the nature of human desires and the need to make connections, however fleeting. Preceded by CINÉMA EROTIQUE (Directed by Roman Polanski, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min., subtitled)
- Sun., May. 6 | 2:00 PMChazen
After her family is massacred in a raid led by the ruthless SS Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz, in an Oscar-winning performance), the Jewish Shosanna (Laurent) takes on the identity of a movie theater proprietress in Paris. Her plot to destroy the Nazi high command through the power of cinema converges with another mission to bring down Hitler led by renegade American Army Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt).
- Sun., May. 13 | 2:00 PMChazen
Viewed as reprehensible in its day (while the simultaneously released Psycho enjoyed widespread acclaim), this psychological thriller from director Powell (The Red Shoes, Stairway to Heaven) is today universally seen as a masterpiece. Boehm plays a driven young man who seeks out Lower-London prostitutes; armed with a 16mm camera that kills, his aim is to capture the ultimate expression of fear on film. Remarkable in its complex dealings with voyeurism and culpability, Peeping Tom remains one of the most modern texts yet made on the manipulative power of the moving image. Preceded by AT THE SUICIDE OF THE LAST JEW IN THE WORLD IN THE LAST CINEMA IN THE WORLD (Directed by David Cronenberg, 2007, Digital Projection, 5 min.)