Beyond The Canon And Screen Epiphanies Come to BAM, March 2019

This March, BAM continues two ongoing programs: Screen Epiphanies featuring Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), chosen by filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer; and Beyond the Canon on March 30, featuring a double bill of Holmer's narrative feature debut The Fits (2015) and Peter Weir's dreamy classic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

Screen Epiphanies-a series inspired by a program at the British Film Institute, in which prominent figures from the artistic community present a film that inspires them-returns with a film that was a career-defining choice for Anna Rose Holmer, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker whose 2016 critically acclaimed narrative directorial debut, The Fits, was nominated for Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Awards and Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her selection, Robert Bresson's iconic Au Hasard Balthazar, starring Anna Wiazemsky, is a tale of the parallel journeys of a young woman entering adulthood and a gentle donkey who passes from master to master. Described by Jean-Luc Godard as "the world in an hour and a half," Balthazar is perhaps the most emblematic work of Bresson's minimal, transcendental style. Beyond the Canon challenges a conception of film history that skews toward lionizing the white male auteur by pairing one canonized classic with a thematically or stylistically-related work by a filmmaker traditionally excluded from that narrative.

In March's Beyond the Canon, the program will explore two mesmerizing, mysterious visions of female adolescence. Holmer's critically-acclaimed The Fits-a lush, surreal portrait of a dance troupe and one girl's journey into adolescence-will screen with Peter Wier's Australian New Wave classic Picnic at Hanging Rock, a hypnotic adaptation of Joan Lindsay's novel, in which three schoolgirls mysteriously disappear on Valentine's Day, 1900. This iteration of Beyond the Canon will feature a newly commissioned essay by Tayler Montague (Little White Lies, Reverse Shot) which will be published on the BAM blog and available as a handout on the day of the screening.