Series Site
June 12–August 30, 2026
“One of his pictures is equivalent to ten of somebody else’s.” —Martin Scorsese
Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) grew up in the Bronx with a darkroom in his home. A wunderkind with a camera, he sold his first photograph to Look magazine at age sixteen and secured a staff position at the prestigious publication right out of high school. He adapted his photo spread of a boxer into his first motion picture, the short documentary Day of the Fight (1951). From there Kubrick went on to make some of the most revered works in cinema history, both critically lauded—if less so at their time, certainly in retrospect—and hugely successful at the box office, while maintaining a singular vision across genres and frequently excavating the ugliest corners of the human experience.
Kubrick’s deployment of his wicked sense of humor amidst grave scenarios stirred controversy as his films reckoned with how tools of technology and methods of control fuel the basest human instincts and cruelties, behaviors often masked by charisma, lies, or literal disguise. Though an earnest collaborator, his own methods of control over the entire filmmaking process, from the lengthy productions down to the approval of newspaper ads, became the stuff of legend. The resulting indelible images—paired with inspired music selection—and performances from this relentless exploration, innovation, and precision supply his movies with a depth that enriches the longer you keep your eyes wide open.
This series includes each of Kubrick’s features, a few of his early short documentaries, and two films he prepared to make but that were ultimately completed by others (One-Eyed Jacks, A.I. Artificial Intelligence).
—Jeff Griffith-Perham, Associate Film Curator