What’s Showing Today? Tuesday, August 7
Click venue names for ticket info & directions
Featured Screening: Chris Marker’s Grin Without a Cat at Spectacle
Tonight Spectacle runs Grin Without a Cat, regarded by many as itinerant film essayist Chris Marker‘s masterpiece. Though initially planned as the opening of a monthly “Lessons for Radicals” series spotlighting films wrestling with the world, radicalism and culture after the year of powerful upheavals left the world arguably unchanged, it can’t help but bear the feel of an unlikely tribute owing to Marker’s passing July 29 at age 91. (Probably the first of several: Light Industry has announced a star-studded one to run August 26.)
Marker is credit as the first filmmaker to perfect the combination of text, narration, personal reflection, curiosity and polemicism now known as the essay film. And while I don’t believe anyone could have invented something whose discovery seems inevitable, it’s indisputable Marker and his work hold a powerful sway and influence over countless followers and admirers. But perhaps his greatest achievement is to recognize and wield the unexpected plasticity of the medium to engage with an increasingly complex matrix of international, interpersonal and political relationships. His cult, as I perceive it, also seems to rest upon the curious paradox of his seeming international ubiquity evinced by a prolific outpouring of work contrasted against his almost spectral withdrawal from the public eye—few interviews, less than a dozen photographs, etc. (If I remember correctly, Film Comment—who interviewed Marker in 2003—recently ran a blurb about his faintly appearing in the reflection of a subway window in a photograph snapped with his iPhone and blown up for what was otherwise dismissed as an awful photo exhibition.) Grin Without a Cat is, extrapolating Marker’s claim, made by similar figures: “The true authors of this film are the countless cameramen, technical operators, witnesses and activists whose work is constantly pitted against that of the powers that be, who would like use to have no memory.” Further described as “scenes from the third world war,” it’s a dense weaving of material from 1967-1976 covering Vietnam, Che Guevara, the Prague Spring, the Chilean coup, Watergate and events leading to the 1979 Iranian Revolution…
Grin without a Cat runs tonight and Tuesday, August 21 at 7:30 pm.
Today
Bastards of Hitch at 92YTribeca
Series Details
- Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg). Details. 35mm. 1973. 110 min. 7:30 pm.
Universal 100 at Film Forum
Series Details • 2-for-1
- Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman). Details. 35mm. 1971. 101 min. 1:00, 4:45 and 8:30 pm.
- Duel (Steven Spielberg). Details. 35mm. 1971. 90 min. 2:55, 6:40 and 10:25 pm.
50 Years of the New York Film Festival at Film Society of Lincoln Center
Series Details
- Topsy Turvy (Mike Leigh). Details. 35mm. 1999. 160 min. 6:00 pm.
Claude Sautet: The Things of Life at Film Society of Lincoln Center
Series Details
- The Things of Life. Details. 35mm. 1970. 89 min. 9:00 pm.
A View from the Vaults, 2012: Recent Acquisitions at MoMA
Series Details
- Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn). Details. 2011. 100 min. 4:00 pm.
- Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky). Details. 2010. 108 min. 7:00 pm.
Spaceballs (Mel Brooks) at BAMCinématek. Details. 1987. 96 min. 4:30, 6:50 and 9:15 pm.
You Are a Widow, Sir (Vaclav Vorlicek) at Bohemian National Hall. Details. 1970. 97 min. Dusk.
Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker) at Spectacle. Details. 1977. 240 min. 8:00 pm.
Ongoing
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (Pip Chodorov) at Anthology Film Archives. Details. Video. 2010. 82 min. 7:00 and 9:00 pm.
Easy Money (Daniel Espinosa) at Film Forum. Details. 2010. 120 min. 1:00, 3:45, 7:00 and 9:30 pm.
Planet of Snail (Seung-Jun Yi) at Film Forum. Details. 2011. 89 min. 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15 8:10 and 10:10 pm.
Marley (Kevin Macdonald) at Maysles Cinema. Details. 2012. 145 min. 7:30 pm.
Galleries
Museums
- “Spies in the House of Art: Photography, Film and Video” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Closed Mondays. Suggested donation admission. Ends August 26.
- Media Lounge and Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now at MoMA, Midtown. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Ongoing.
- “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” at MoMA, Midtown. Work by Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander and David Thorne. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Through August 6.
- Zackary Drucker “At Least You Know You Exist” at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Ends September 17.
- Jack Smith “Normal Love” at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Ends September 17.
- Solo projects by Edgardo Aragón and Ilja Karilampi at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Ends September 17.
- View all exhibitions at Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, Queens. $12 general/$9 students and seniors/$6 ages 3 to 18. Free admission Friday 4-8 pm. Closed Monday.
- “Ghosts in the Machine” at The New Museum. $14 general/$12 seniors/$10 students. Free Thursday from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Open Wednesday through Sunday. Ends September 30.
- Oskar Fischinger “Space Light Art” at The Whitney Museum. $18 general, $12 students/seniors. Pay-as-you-wish Friday 6:00 to 9:00 pm. Closed Monday/Tuesday. Ends October 28.
Below listed North-South
Chelsea
- Julika Rudelius “Rituals of Capitalism” at Leo Koenig Gallery, 545 West 23 Street. Open Mon-Fri 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends September 8.
- “Commercial Psycho” at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 525 West 22 Street. Work by Chantal Akerman, Mark Leckey, William Wegman, Clegg & Guttmann, Jan Groover, Suzy Lake, Sabine Reitmaier, Franz Erhard Walther and Christopher Williams. Open Mon-Fria 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends August 24.