Museum of the Moving Image Sets Full Schedule and Participating Artists Announced for 2015 FIRST LOOK FESTIVAL
By: Anna Bencivengo Dec. 12, 2014
Tickets for the fourth annual edition of First Look, Museum of the Moving Image's showcase for inventive new international cinema, are now on sale at movingimage.us/firstlook. This year's festival, featuring a lineup that has expanded both in size and scope, opens on January 9 with the U.S. premiere of Austrian director Jessica Hausner's highly acclaimed Amour Fou with Hausner in person, followed by an opening night party hosted by Mundo at The Paper Factory Hotel. First Look, which runs through January 18, 2015, includes nearly 40 international films of varying length, many of them presented as part of a new programming partnership with FIDMarseille, the cutting-edge French documentary festival led by Jean-Pierre Rehm. Nearly all of the films in First Look have played to acclaim at international film festivals, and all are New York premieres (and some U.S. and World premieres).
As part of the festival, the Museum will present Common Areas, a new commissioned video installation by Montreal-based artist Sabrina Ratté, which will be on view in the lobby from January 9 through May 10, 2015. In addition, the Museum will debut seven new animated GIFs commissioned by artists including Mert Keskin a.k.a. Haydiroket (Turkey), Lacey Micallef (U.S.), A. Bill Miller (U.S.), Lorna Mills(Canada), Eva Papamargariti (Greece), Milos Rajkovic a.k.a. Sholim (Serbia), and Gustavo Torres, a.k.a. Kidmograph (Argentina). These GIFs will be shown in the Redstone Theater before select screenings. First Look films were programmed by Chief Curator David Schwartz and Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma. Common Areas, the GIFs, and some video programs were organized by Associate Curator of Digital Media Jason Eppink. Schwartz said, "First Look is not just a festival of new films, it is a festival about new approaches to filmmaking, with works that defy convention, experiment with form, blend fiction and reality, and allow us to see the art form-and the world-in a new way. Whether by emerging artists or established masters, the films in First Look are deeply engaged, not only with the medium but with such essential subjects as work, revolution, romantic obsession, aging, and the clash between tradition and modern life. Distinctly idiosyncratic, the films share an artisan approach; they feel intimate and hand-crafted."
SCHEDULE FOR 'FIRST LOOK 2015,' JANUARY 9-18, 2015
All screenings take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or the Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue in Astoria. Unless otherwise noted, First Look tickets are $12 per screening (free for Museum members at the Film Lover level and above) and available for advance purchase online. All screenings in the Bartos Screening Room are free; tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Museum members may reserve tickets in advance.
OPENING NIGHT FILM
Amour Fou
With director Jessica Hausner in person
Followed by an opening night party hosted by Mundo at the Paper Factory Hotel
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 7:00 P.M.
Dir. Jessica Hausner. Austria/Luxembourg/Germany. 2014. 96 mins. U.S. premiere. The 1811 suicide pact between German Romantic writer Heinrich Von Kleist and Henriette Vogel is depicted with deadpan precision and exquisite period detail. Jessica Hausner's masterful meditation on romance is deeply moving, dryly comic, and philosophical beneath its perfectly realized visual style. Preceded by brouillard-passage #14 (Dir. Alexandre Larose. Canada, 2014, 10 mins. 35mm. New York premiere.) Layering in-camera long takes, Larose condenses the colors and movements of a bucolic landscape into an ecstatic and spectral time-lapsed vision.
Tickets: $15 ($9 members at Film Lover, Dual, and Family levels / free for Silver Screen members and above). Tickets include admission to the opening night party.
With filmmaker Ken Jacobs in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Ken Jacobs. U.S., 2013, 73 mins. New York premiere. Presented in 3-D. Guests at the 1896 wedding of the sister of a Lumière brothers technician ascend the stairs in a one-minute film that legendary New York avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs has expanded into a unique mind-expanding 73-minute silent 3-D movie. Preceded by Wire Fence (Dir. Ken Jacobs. 2014, 22 mins.) The diamond patterns in the wire fencing for construction on his street inspired Ken Jacobs's latest astonishing 3-D extravaganza. Toronto Filmmakers: MDFF and Sofia Bohdanowicz
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2:00 P.M. With critic Adam Nayman in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 5:30 P.M.
This spotlight on three emerging filmmakers from Toronto-Antoine Bourges and Kazik Radwanski (founders of the production and screening collective Medium Density Fibreboard Films) and experimental filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz-will be followed by a discussion (at the Saturday program only) led by film critic Adam Nayman. Cutaway World (Dir. Kazik Radwanski, 2014, 7 mins.) captures fleeting glimpses and intimate details of uncertainty and loss. Green Canyon (Dir. Kazak Radwanski, 2010, 10 mins.) is a luminous portrait of two reckless young boys. Woman Is Waiting (Dir. Antonie Bourges, 2011, 15 mins.) is about a woman faced with poverty. William in White Shirt (Dir. Antoine Bourges, 2014, 12 mins.) follows a young man struggling with the decision about visiting his young son for the first time. Sofia Bohdanowicz's trilogy of short films, Modlitwa (A Prayer) (2013, 7 mins.), Wieczór (An Evening) (2013, 19 mins.), and Dalsza Modlitwa (Another Prayer) (2013, 7 mins.), focus on the filmmaker's relationship with her grandmother.
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. Undervolt & Co. Mixtape
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 4:00 P.M. With an introduction by artist Johnny Woods
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 7:00 P.M. With an introduction by artist Johnny Woods
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 6:00 P.M. With an introduction by artist Peter Burr
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 7:00 P.M.
Video label Undervolt & Co. was founded in 2013 to create an online distribution platform for experimental video art, rejecting traditional ideas of scarcity to embrace an Internet-era model that allows for infinite copies. The artists on Undervolt and Co.'s roster create challenging works of sound and image that explore the vast possibilities of their tools and the very edges of the medium. Underlying their efforts is a collective earnestness that manifests broadly from horror to psychedelia to nostalgia. Works include Green | Red (Peter Burr. 2014, 10 mins.), The Urgency (excerpt) (Extreme Animals. 2014, 5 mins.), 1. Littoral Zones (Sabrina Ratté. 2014, 6 mins.), Devils Reign(Yoshi Sodeoka. 2013, 5 mins.), SN-01-003 (Spectral Net. 2013, 5 mins.), Bubbling Image (Jennifer Juniper Stratford. 2013, 2 mins.),Solitary Depths (Jennifer Juniper Stratford. 2013, 2 mins.), and Dazzling Odyssey: The Electric Mind (excerpt) (Johnny Woods. 2013, 5 mins.).
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demure) and Single Stream
With Single Stream filmmakers Pawel Wojtasik and Toby Lee in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 5:00 P.M.
Dir. Denis Côté. Canada, 2014, 70 mins. New York premiere. Denis Côté (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, 2014 First Look) returns with a fiction/documentary hybrid about factory workers that elegantly blends cacophonous collages of machinery in motion, pensive dialogues between workers, and wistful soliloquies. The film is a probing meditation on the nature of work, made with impeccable craftsmanship. Preceded by Single Stream (Dirs. Pawel Wojtasik, Toby Lee, Ernst Karel. U.S., 2014, 24 mins. New York premiere.) Originally made as a wide-screen video installation (presented at the Museum in 2013) Single Stream explores a recycling facility in Massachusetts, blurring the line between abstraction and observation as it examines the consequences of our society's culture of excess. Everything that Rises Must Converge and Continuity
With director Omer Fast in person
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 7:30 P.M.
Everything that Rises Must Converge (Dir. Omer Fast. Germany, 2014, 56 mins. U.S. premiere.) is the theatrical version of artist Omer Fast's 2013 installation (which debuted in London's Frieze Art Fair in adults-only video booths), an audacious and sexually explicit blend of documentary and staged scenes, with a grid of four simultaneous images showing a day in the lives of real porn actors and fictional characters. This precarious balancing act raises fascinating issues about performance, labor, and art. In the narrative experimentContinuity (Dir. Omer Fast. Germany, 2012, 41 mins. New York premiere.), a German soldier's homecoming to his elderly parents is re-enacted three times by different male prostitutes. Charlie's Country
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Rolf de Heer. Australia, 2013, 108 mins. New York premiere. David Gulpilil, who debuted as a teen actor in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, co-wrote this loosely autobiographical drama about an aboriginal man having trouble fitting in with contemporary society. DeHeer's leisurely pacing and attention to landscape perfectly complements the quiet intensity of Gulpilil's performance, which earned him the Un Certain Regard Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Suitcase of Love and Shame
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2:30 P.M. (Audience will be taped)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 1:00 P.M.
Dir. Jane Gillooly. U.S., 2013, 70 mins. A suitcase, purchased on eBay for $100, contained a treasure trove of audio cassettes that were sent between a Midwestern woman and her lover in the 1960s. Explicit, illicit, tender, intimate, and pathetic, these tapes formed the core of Gillooly's compelling film, which combines the audio with evocative images, inviting the active participation of the audience. For First Look, Gillooly will film the audience at the January 11 screening, to create a new film, Audience, which will premiere on January 18 at 3:00 p.m.
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. Before We Go
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 5:00 P.M.
Dir. Jorge León. Belgium, 2014, 82 mins. U.S. premiere. "Memento mori meets carpe diem" wrote Hollywood Reporter critic Neil Young about Jorge León's deeply moving and unique backstage film, a theatrical blend of documentary and staged encounters and performances-dance, song, and theater-as a trio of terminally ill patients interact with a Brussels theater company. The film captures the life-affirming power of communal artistic activity. Preceded by Ville Marie (Dir. Alexandre Larose. Canada, 12 mins. 35mm.) Images captured by dropping a camera from the tops of buildings are optically printed to form a vertiginous and dynamic free-falling montage. Hard to Be a God (Trudno byt' bogom)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 7:30 P.M.
Dir. Aleksei Guerman. Russia, 2014, 170 mins. New York premiere. Posthumously released after years of production delays and moratoriums, the Boschian sci-fi epic Hard to be a God is Guerman's final magnum opus. Adapted from the popular novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, it centers on a group of men who discover a planet that resembles earth as it was 800 years ago. Staggering and dreamlike, the film bears the essence of "suffering and endurance-a still life in motion."-Olaf Moller, CinemaScope I Touched All Your Stuff (A Vida Privada dos Hipopótomas)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 7:00 P.M.
Dirs. Maíra Bühler, Matias Mariani. Brazil, 2014, 89 mins. DCP. New York premiere. Chris Kirk, an affable and seemingly gullible American man in a Brazilian jail for drug trafficking, recounts his jaw-dropping saga-a romance with an alluring and elusive Japanese-Colombian woman that went remarkably wrong. This riveting tale of obsession and deception, filled with images, emails, and video from Kirk's computer is an offbeat, provocative documentary for the Internet age. Preceded by Einschnitte (Dir. Lina Rodriguez. Canada, 2013, 4 mins.) A Super-8 study of Viennese statues, revealing how history haunts modern Austria. Bx46
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2:00 P.M.
Dirs. Jeremie Brugidou, Fabien Clouette. United States/France, 2014, 78 mins. New York premiere. "Fish and garbage. I don't know if I should talk about the other things going on here, but that's about it," says one of the subjects of this cinematic tour through the Hunts Point region of the Bronx, including the legendary Fulton Fish Market, a waste management plant, and a correctional center barge near Riker's Island. Memorable personalities emerge during this vibrant and distinctly New York ethnographic journey. Two by Gina Telaroli, and Brigadoon
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2:00 P.M.
Filmmaker, archivist, and cinephile extraordinaire Gina Telaroli makes works that artistically examine her love of cinema. Silk Tatters (U.S., 2014, 17 mins. World premiere) is a cine-essay that explores holding onto the past as a way to embrace the future, inspired by Vincente Minnelli's Brigadoon. In Starting Sketches #7 (U.S., 2014, 4 mins. World premiere) Jennifer Jones meets Joan Crawford in a haze of criss-crossing black and white as the two dance out their social-class dreams and nightmares. Followed by a screening of Brigadoon (Dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1955, 102 mins. With Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse), a haunting, enchanting musical about a magical Scottish village that rises out of the mist every hundred years for only a day.
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. I for Iran (I Comme Iran)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 4:30 P.M.
Dir. Sanaz Azari. Belgium, 2014, 50 mins. U.S. premiere. A Belgian filmmaker of Iranian descent learns how to read and write in Persian, her mother tongue, using a textbook dating from the Islamic revolution. With beguiling and deceptive simplicity, the chalkboard lessons ("Dad doesn't give bread, because there is no work.") form an evocative portrait of post-revolutionary Iran. Preceded by International Tourism (Tourisme International) (Dir. Marie Voignier. France, 2014, 48 mins. U.S. premiere) The tension between the utopian political fantasies and the harsher reality of North Korea is deftly revealed in this formally experimental travelogue; and LIVEPAN (Dir. Sasha Parker. Austria, 2013, 2 mins. U.S. premiere), a wry formalist study of a woman ironing and laughing. Our Terrible Country (Notre terrible pays)
SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 7:00 P.M.
Dirs. Mohammed Ali Atassi, Ziad Homsi. Syria/Lebanon, 2014, 85 mins. North American premiere. A filmmaking journalist who puts down his camera to pick up a gun as part of the Free Syrian Army films his friend and mentor, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the well-known writer and political dissident, in this intimate first-person view of the turmoil in Syria. The film was the grand prize winner of the FIDMarseille International Competition. Coming to Terms
With director Jon Jost in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2:00 P.M.
Dir. Jon Jost. U.S., 2013, 89 mins. New York premiere. Director Jon Jost cast fellow filmmaker James Benning as a dying Montana patriarch who gathers his dysfunctional family together for a final request. Jost, a maverick independent filmmaker for the past 50 years, has made a bracing and audacious work that alternates between stark, expressive landscapes and unusually filmed encounters between the father, his estranged sons, and their mothers in which the actors/characters address the audience as much as each other. Preceded byÉphémères (Dir. Yuki Kawamura, France, 2014, 14 mins. ), an evocative, and cinematically dazzling study of fireflies. Audience
With Jane Gillooly in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 3:00 P.M.
Dir. Jane Gillooly. U.S., 2015, 70 mins. World premiere. This unique cinematic hall-of-mirrors experience is a first in film festival history.Audience is an unabridged film of the audience watching Jane Gillooly's Suitcase of Love and Shame a week earlier, in the same exact venue. More than a stunt, Audience amplifies Suitcase's concerns with voyeurism, intimacy, and audience interpretation.
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. August Winds (Ventos de Agosto)
With director Gabriel Mascaro in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 5:00 P.M.
Dir. Gabriel Mascaro. Brazil, 2014, 77 mins. New York City premiere. Two young lovers-a young man who dives for seafood and a woman who dreams of being a tattoo artist-live a tranquil life in a remote coastal village, until a corpse washes up on shore during a tropical storm. Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Mascaro's first foray into fiction is sensual and stunningly photographed by the director. Films by Robert Todd
With Robert Todd in person
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 5:30 P.M.
Prolific Boston-based filmmaker Robert Todd, who crafted the atmospheric sound design for Suitcase of Love and Shame, keeps alive the tradition of 16mm and 35mm film in his own work. A selection of his poetic montage films will be shown: Walks: Boston Trails, Improvised (2013, 14 mins.), Circle Dance (2013, 7 mins.), Seawall (2013, 5 mins.), Perch (2013, 8 mins.), Short (2013, 5 mins.),Shades of Grey (2014, 17 mins.), At Any Time (2014, 6 mins.), and Local History (2014, 4 mins.).
Free admission. Presented in the Bartos Screening Room. Alone with My Horse in the Snow, Axel Bogousslavsky (Tout seul avec mon cheval dans la neige, Axel Bogousslavsky)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 7:30 P.M.
Dir. Alexandre Barry. France, 2014, 70 mins. New York premiere. Alexandre Barry captures Axel Bogousslavsky making music, drawing, dreaming, eating, breathing fresh air, warming up by the fireplace, and walking in the middle of the night. This exquisite study of the daily life of the 76-year-old poet and actor who worked with Marguerite Duras is a meditative and unforgettable experience, a reflection on memory and on living in the moment. Preceded by Two Museums (Dir. Heinz Emigholz. Germany, 2014, 18 mins. New York premiere.) Emigholz continues his cinematic study of great 20th-century architects. His mesmerizing Two Museums explores Samuel Bickel's Museum of Art (Ein Harod, Israel) and Renzo Piano's The Menil Collection (Houston, Texas).
MUSEUM INFORMATION
Museum of the Moving Image (movingimage.us) advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In its stunning facilities-acclaimed for both its accessibility and bold design-the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings of significant works; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, craftspeople, and business leaders; and education programs which serve more than 50,000 students each year. The Museum also houses a significant collection of moving-image artifacts.
Film Screenings: Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and as scheduled. Tickets for regular film screenings are included with paid Museum admission and are free for members at the Film Lover level and above.
Museum Admission: $12.00 for adults; $9.00 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $6.00 for children ages 3-12. Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Tickets for special screenings and events may be purchased in advance online at movingimage.us.
Location: 36-01 35 Avenue (at 37 Street) in Astoria.
Subway: M (weekdays only) or R to Steinway Street. Q (weekdays only) or N to 36 Avenue.
Program Information: Telephone: 718 777 6888; Website: movingimage.us
Membership: movingimage.us/support/membership or 718 777 6877
The Museum is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and located on the campus of Kaufman Astoria Studios. Its operations are made possible in part by public funds provided through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation). The Museum also receives generous support from numerous corporations, foundations, and individuals. For more information, please visit movingimage.us.
Photo: Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou
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