What’s Showing Today? Thursday, September 20
Click venue names for ticket info & directions
Featured Screening: Star Tony Musante introduces The Bird with the Crystal Plumage at Anthology Film Archives
As if brushed by the svelte leather driving glove of God, today is the jump-off of what’s poised to be one of the greatest things to happen to New York City: GIALLO FEVER!, a ten day, twelve film retrospective of horrific, ultra-stylish Italian crime thrillers programmed by Alessio Giorgetti, Alessio Grana and Yunsun Chae for Anthology Film Archives.
Consider it something of a dark cousin to Film Forum‘s recent spaghetti western series—only leaner, meaner, more baroquely rendered, and with, IMHO, better soundtracks. (Less boi-i-oing, more brassy, acid-drenched funk rock and brooding lounge.) Though on the whole spaghetti westerns are an accepted part of the cinephile cannon, for better or worse, giallo film is far more marginalized in terms of scholarship, programming and its general place in the popular consciousness. Whereas the spaghettis were party eulogy, part revitalization of a faded genre, giallo is, along with Psycho, the jump-off of any subsequently made film about someone with a knife running around killing people. An exceedingly lurid interpretation of tropes established by mystery writers like Edgar Wallace and Agatha Christie, giallo further riffs on the Feuillade’s popular silent Fantômas series while corresponding even more to the explicit violence and sadism of Allain & Souvestre’s original novels. This evening begins with two of its most significant films. Mario Bava‘s The Girl Who Knew Too Much, a hallucinatory story of a woman on vacation in Rome seemingly marked as the next victim of an “Alphabet Killer”, is regarded as the first giallo. Dario Argento‘s Bird with the Crystal Plumage represents the genre’s perfection—a lean, quintessential distillation of signature tropes glossed with an Ennio Morricone score and cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. Star Tony Musante joins the Film Society’s Scott Foundas for a Q&A at tonight’s 7:30 pm show.
Every film in the series is worth seeing, but a few standouts—A Quiet Place in the Country, radical leftist filmmaker Elio Petri‘s unlikely foray into the genre and winner of the Silver Bear at the 19th Berlin Film Festival; Blood and Black Lace, the best of Bava’s giallos; Don’t Torture a Duckling, a depraved fan favorite; The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh by Sergio Martino, one of the genre’s most assured and over-the-top stylists; and Pupi Avati‘s House of the Laughing Windows, which, as the title might suggest, is one of the most byzantine, hallucinatory films of the cycle.
Here’s Raekwon and Ghostface rapping over Goblin’s score for Suspiria. [link]
Today
Greenpoint Film Festival at 186 Huron Street
Festival website
- Deaf Jam (Judy Lieff). Details. Q&A with, subject Aneta Brodski and ASL interpreter Veronica Staehle. Preceded by reception and followed by after party. Digital. 2011. 70 min. 7:00 pm.
Giallo Fever! at Anthology Film Archives
Series Details
- Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento). Details. Tony Musante in attendance. 35mm. 1970. 98 min. 7:00 pm.
- The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Mario Bava). Details. 35mm. 1963. 86 min. 9:30 pm.
Clearview Classics at Chelsea Clearview
Series Details • $7.50 • Early show hosted by drag queen Hedda Lettuce
- Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann). 1992. 94 min. 7:00 & 9:30 pm.
A Tribute to FIFA: The International Festival of Films on Art at Film Society of Lincoln Center
Series Details
- Revolutions of the Night: The Enigma of Henry Darger (Mark Stokes). Details. 2011. 104 min. 6:15 pm.
- Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favor (Matthew Springford) and Nam June Paik: Open Your Eyes (Maria Anna Tappeiner). Details. 2010. 116 min. 8:30 pm.
An Auteurist History of Film at MoMA
Series Details
- Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles). Details. 1955. 99 min. 1:30 pm.
Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today at MoMA
Series Details
- Helpless (Byun Young-joo). Details. 2012. 117 min. 4:30 pm.
- In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo). Details. 2012. 88 min. 7:00 pm.
Kluge: Fascism Persists at Spectacle
Series Details
- Strongman Ferdinand. Details. Digital. 1976. 97 min. 7:30 pm.
Tropicalia (Marcelo Machado) at 92YTribeca. Details. DigitBeta. 2012. 87 min. 7:00 pm.
United in Anger (Jim Hubbard) at Abrons Art Center. Details. With a conversation between ACT UP and Occupy Wall Street. 2012. 7:00 pm. FREE.
Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson) at BAMCinématek. Details. 35mm. 1987. 107 min. 7:00 pm.
Harlem International Film Festival at Maysles Cinema. Details. 3:00 pm.
Themroc (Claude Faraldo) at Spectacle. Details. Digital. 1973. 110 min. 7:30 pm.
Ongoing
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné) at Film Forum. Details. DCP. 1938. 91 min. 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20 and 10:10 pm.
Brazil (Terry Gilliam) at Film Forum. Details. 35mm. 1985. 143 min. 2:00, 4:30, 7:00 and 9:30 pm.
Radio Unnamable (Paul Lovelace & Jessica Wolfson) at Film Forum. Details. 2012. 87 min. 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8:00 and 10:00 pm.
Galleries
Museums
- Regarding Warhol at the Metropolitan Museum. Sixty artists. Admission by recommended amounts enforced with shaming looks. Closed Monday. Closes December 31.
- Media Lounge and Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now at MoMA, Midtown. $25 general/$14 students/$18 seniors. Free Fridays 4:00 to 8:00 pm. Ongoing.
- Quay Brothers “On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets at MoMA, Midtown. $25 general/$14 students/$18 seniors. Free Fridays 4:00 to 8:00 pm. Closes January 7.
- Performing Histories (1) at MoMA, Midtown. $25 general/$14 students/$18 seniors. Free Fridays 4:00 to 8:00 pm. Closes March 11.
- 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. Closes 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. Closes October 28.
Below listed North-South
Chelsea
- Jesper Just “This Nameless Spectacle” at James Cohan Gallery, 533 West 26 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 27.
- Richard Phillips at Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 20.
- Guido van der Werve “Nummer veertien, home” at Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 20.
- Simon Starling “Triangulation Station A” at Casey Kaplan, 525 West 21 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 20.
- Douglas Gordon “The End of Civilisation” at Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 13.
- Susan Philipsz “The Distant Sound” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21 Street. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes October 20.
Downtown
- “Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore” at Grey Art Gallery, NYU Bobst Library, 100 Washington Square East. Open Tues-Sat 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Closes December 8.
- Tony Conrad “Doing the City: Urban Community Interventions” at 80WSE, NYU Steinhardt School, 80 Washington Square East. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
- Alix Pearlstein “The Drawing Lesson” at On Stellar Rays, 133 Orchard Street. Open Wed-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sun noon to 6:00 pm. Closes October 21.
- Bernadette Corporation “2000 Wasted Years” at Artists Space: Exhibitions, 38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor. Open Wed-Sun Noon to 6:00 pm. Closes December 16.
Brooklyn
- Emma Corrall, Mollie McKinley & Eliza Swann “DO IT AWAKE! (on Mysterious Mountain)” at Heliopolis, 154 Huron Street, Greenpoint. Open Sat 2:00 to 6:00 pm and Sun 1:00 to 6:00 pm.
- Joel Schlemowitz “Light Objects” at Microscope Gallery, 4 Charles Place, Bushwick. Open Thu-Mon 1:00 to 6:00 pm. Ends October 7.
- Guido van der Werve “Works 2003 – 2009″ at Luhring Augustine, 25 Knickerbocker Avenue, Bushwick. Open Fri 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sat-Sun noon to 6:00 pm. Closes December 16.