MoMA’s 10TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF FILM PRESERVATION
SHOWCASES NEWLY RESTORED MASTERWORKS AND REDISCOVERIES
Festival Features Films by Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Jacques Demy, Sergio
Leone, Joan Littlewood, Dušan Makavejev, Glauber Rocha, Roberto Rossellini,
Raoul Walsh, Andy Warhol, and Lois Weber
Guest presenters include Anouk Aimée, Peter Brook, Dwight Chapin, Sally
Cruikshank, Herbert Danska, Paula Gladstone, Ken Jacobs, and Taylor Mead
To Save and Project: The 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation
October 11–November 12, 2012
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
NEW YORK, September 13, 2012—The Museum of Modern Art presents To Save and Project:
The 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, an annual festival of preserved
and restored films from archives, studios, and distributors around the world, from October 11
through November 12, 2012. This year’s festival comprises over 75 feature films and short
subjects from 15 countries, virtually all of them having their New York premieres, and some
shown in versions never before seen in the United States. The 10th anniversary of To Save and
Project is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of
Modern Art, and guest curator J. Hoberman, a film journalist, historian, author or co-author of 12
books, and for 30 years a critic at The Village Voice.
Opening this year’s festival on October 11 are several rediscoveries preserved by MoMA,
including the outrageously risqué Clara Bow talkie Call Her Savage (1932) and Raoul Walsh’s
entertaining Western romance, Wild Girl (1932), with Joan Bennett in the title role. The following
night features a newly restored print of Jacques Demy’s Lola (1961). One of the best-loved
movies of the French New Wave, Lola will be introduced by its star, Anouk Aimée. This brand new
restoration, overseen by Agnès Varda and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, represents a major
effort to return the film to its original glory after the original negative was destroyed in a fire. On
October 13, Ms. Aimée introduces another of her films, a studio archival print of George Cukor’s
rarely screened triumph of studio mise-en-scène, the sensuous, haunting Justine (1969), inspired
by Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet; and on October 15, in a special copresentation between
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and MoMA, Ms. Aimée presents a new print of
Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (1966) at the Academy Theater. Also screening is Manuel
Conde and Lou Salvador’s epic Genghis Khan (1950), a breakthrough feature from the Philippines
featuring its original English dialogue track by James Agee.
The opening weekend features a restoration of the rarely screened European theatrical
version of Sergio Leone’s 1984 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America, the director’s final
work, starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. Also that weekend is a preserved print of Lois
Weber and Phillips Smalley’s The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916). Unseen for decades, this lavish
adaptation of Daniel Auber’s 1828 opera La Muette de Portici is the only feature to star the
legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova, then at the peak of her fame. Two hybrid works, Joan
Littlewood’s Sparrers Can’t Sing (1963), a key work in the development of British “kitchen sink”
naturalism, and Peter Brook’s Tell Me Lies (A Film about London) (1968), with appearances by
Glenda Jackson, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Kingsley Amis, and Stokely Carmichael, are both
innovative movies based on influential collaborative theater works previously staged by their
directors. Peter Brook presents his film on October 14.
On October 16, in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum, MoMA presents the world
premiere of Andy Warhol’s last hands-on production, San Diego Surf (1968/1996), as completed
by Warhol’s associate Paul Morrissey, who worked from Warhol’s notes and rough cut under the
supervision of the Warhol Foundation. The great Taylor Mead, who co-stars in the film with Warhol
superstar Viva, introduces the screening. Another special evening is devoted to home movies from
the White House: a selection culled from the hundreds of Super-8 rolls shot by Richard Nixon’s
aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin documenting the historic moments and
everyday occurrences of the Nixon presidency. Nixon staff-member and chronicler Dwight Chapin
speaks at the screening, along with filmmakers Brian Frye and Penny Lane, who are currently at
work on a documentary, Our Nixon, incorporating much of this fascinating footage.
The Nixon home movies are presented in the context of an election-year sidebar devoted
to movies about American presidents and political campaigns. These include MoMA’s restoration of
D. W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln (1930); the sensational Hearst-produced Gabriel over the White
House (1933), together with its newly discovered British version; Harry Hurwitz’s follow-up to The
Projectionist, the long-lost satire Richard (1972), co-directed by Loreen Yerby; and Robert
Aldrich’s rarely screened thriller Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977); as well as selection of newsreels,
cartoons, and campaign films from candidates as disparate as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry
Wallace, Robert Kennedy, and George Wallace, and the fictional Betty Boop and Rufus Jones.
Other group shows are dedicated to the lost Lower East Side and Coney Island, including
Ken Jacobs’ Orchard Street (1955), restored by MoMA, and Paula Gladstone’s Super-8 sound film
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People (1980), both presented by their filmmakers on October
21; the cinema of industrial noise, a show that encompasses Jean Mitry’s Symphonie méchanique
(1955) and the vintage CBGB documentary Punking Out (1978); and a program of early Japanese
talkies, including shorts with benshi-recorded soundtracks—among them, a condensed version of
Harold Lloyd’s Why Worry? (1923/1930s) and Heinosuke Gosho’s “jazz comedy,” The Neighbor’s
Wife and Mine (1931).
Still more festival highlights include the newly restored original director’s cut of Roberto
Rossellini’s Il General della Rovere (1959), in which Vittorio De Sica plays a con man compelled by
the Gestapo to impersonate a partisan hero; Herbert Brenon’s The Spanish Dancer (1923), with
silent star Pola Negri as a gypsy singer (a role originally intended for Rudolph Valentino); and
Herbert Danska’s Right On! (1970), a documentary with the pre-hip-hop political rap artists the
Last Poets, introduced by the director on November 8.
To Save and Project pays tribute to two inimitable independent artists, animator Sally
Cruikshank and avant-garde filmmaker Saul Levine; and presents preserved prints of three
Brazilian classics across six decades—Humberto Mauro’s Ganga Bruta (1933), Glauber Rocha’s Der
Leone Have Sept Cabeças (1970), and Ozualdo Candeias’s prize-winning, documentary-inflected
prostitution drama The Option (1981). In keeping with this year’s political theme, the festival also
includes three examples of hitherto unknown anarchist cinema from the Spanish Civil War,
presented by Edouard Waintrop, the Artistic Director of the Director’s Fortnight section of the
Cannes Film Festival, a former film critic for Liberation, and the author of The Spanish Anarchists,
a history of anarcho-syndicalism in Spain; as well as two preserved prints of World War II combat
movies directed by the most popular of Soviet genre specialists, Ivan Pyr’ev, a figure virtually
unknown in the United States. In addition, the festival features two forgotten, yet prophetic,
Hollywood genre films of the “Mad Men” era: William Asher’s Johnny Cool (1963) and Edward
Dmytryk’s Mirage (1965), starring Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, and Walter Matthau.
This year, MoMA celebrates the preservation work of the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna,
with screenings of Robert Florey’s 1941 noir The Face behind the Mask, starring Peter Lorre;
James Benning’s magnum opus, American Dreams (Lost and Found) (1984); and a program of
experimental ethnography by Forough Farrokhzad, from Iran, Dušan Makavejev, from Yugoslavia,
and Ulrich Seidl, from Austria; as well “The Clock: or, 89 Minutes of ‘Free Time,’” a program on
cinematic temporality, all presented by Alexander Horwath, Director, Austrian Film Museum. The
festival also honors the preservation work of The National Museum of Cinema, Turin, with
presentations of trick films by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca from 1906–08; two silent
Italian femme fatale melodramas directed by Giovanni Pastrone and starring his wife, the diva
Pina Menichelli, Il Fuoco (The Fire) (1915) and Tigre Reale (1916); Luigi Zampa’s controversial
postwar drama Anni difficili (1948); and Elio Petri’s early masterpiece I giorni contati (1962),
introduced by Alberto Barbera, Director of the National Cinema Museum, Turin, and Artistic
Director of the Venice Film Festival.
All of the films in To Save and Project have been recently preserved and restored by
archives around the world, including MoMA’s Department of Film, as well as by Hollywood and
European studios and distributors. Electronic subtitling provided by Sub-Ti Ltd.
No. 46
Press Contact: Sarah Jarvis, (212) 708-9757, [email protected]
Brien McDaniel, (212) 708-9747, [email protected]
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Screening Schedule
To Save and Project: The 10th MoMA
International Festival of Film Preservation
October 11–November 12, 2012
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
Thursday, October 11
4:00
Call Her Savage. 1932. USA. Directed by John Francis Dillon. Screenplay by
Edwin J. Burke. With Clara Bow, Gilbert Roland, Thelma Todd. Pre-Production
Code movies don’t come any crazier—or less tasteful. Silent star Clara Bow’s fulltalking comeback features one jaw-dropping scene after another, including a
prologue in which a bit of hanky-panky in a Texas-bound Conestoga wagon
precipitates an Indian attack; a crazed hophead rising from his deathbed to rape
the screeching heroine; and a much anthologized sequence set in a Greenwich
Village gay bar favored by “wild poets and anarchists.” In continual danger of
bursting out of her dress, Bow herself is a constant motion machine—jumping,
gesticulating, and rough housing with her dog. Preserved by The Museum of
Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation and
Turner Classic Movies. 88 min.
6:30
Wild Girl. 1932. USA. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Screenplay by Doris Anderson,
Edwin Justus Mayer. With Charles Farrell, Joan Bennett, Ralph Bellamy, Eugene
Pallette, Irving Pichel. Raoul Walsh infuses a creaky vehicle with Kickapoo Joy
Juice in this sensationally entertaining western romance, adapted from an oftproduced play based on the Bret Harte story “Salome Jane’s Kiss.” Introducing
MoMA’s newly preserved print at Bologna’s annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival,
Dave Kehr called The Wild Girl “a significant rediscovery, an affectionate parody of
the silent westerns Walsh himself made as a young director [that] evolves into a
lyrical romance filmed with tenderness and sincerity.” And, we might add, a
rowdy, near-vaudevillian sense of humor, thanks to its energetic cast—headed by
a young Joan Bennett—not to mention an underlying sense of scenic grandeur and
heady verticality, having been largely filmed on location in California’s Sequoia
National Park. Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the
Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation and the National Endowment for the
Arts. 80 min.
Friday, October 12
4:00
Genghis Khan. 1950. Philippines. Directed by Manuel Conde, Lou Salvador.
Screenplay by Conde. With Elvira Reyes, Inday Jalandori, Jose Villafranca,
Salvador. The multi-talented, ferociously active director Manuel Conde had made
seventeen films before landing a breakout international hit with Genghis Khan, the
first Filipino film to show at the Venice Film Festival. It was at this prestigious
event that the epic film was picked up for American theatrical distribution, and it
played to great success on the repertory circuit for the next quarter century.
Genghis Khan is a biopic of the early days of the Mongol leader, still known under
his peasant name Temujin (and played by Conde himself), as he ascends to power
through bloody land struggles and daring acts of vengeance. The film was a noted
favorite of the novelist and critic James Agee, who wrote a narration for American
audiences to help explain the original Tagalog dialogue and historical details.
Restored by the Film Development Council of the Philippines/National Film Archive
of the Philippines and La Biennale di Venezia (projected digitally). Restoration
done by L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna. English-track version by James Agee on
October 12; Tagalog-track version with English subtitles on October 17. 91 min.
6:45
Lola. 1961. France. Written and directed by Jacques Demy. With Anouk Aimée,
Marc Michel, Alan Scott, Jacques Harden, Elina Labourdette. Demy’s insouciant
first feature—shot by Raoul Coutard in black-and-white CinemaScope—is also his
most New Wave, and Lola herself, the stunningly beautiful Anouk Aimée, kicks off
To Save and Project by introducing it. Dedicated to Max Ophuls, Lola begins with a
white Cadillac convertible parked on a French beach. American sailors roam
through the port (Demy’s hometown of Nantes) and a sad young man, just fired
from his boring job, seeks solace in an obscure Mark Robson movie with an aging
Gary Cooper. This fondness for fantasy America extends to Lola’s heroine: Aimée’s
romantic character may be named for Marlene Dietrich’s femme fatale, but
basically she’s playing a Gallic version of Marilyn Monroe—at once brazen and
vulnerable, voluptuous, and childlike. Full of breathy chatter and giggly innocence,
she’s a siren who explains: “There’s a bit of happiness in simply wanting
happiness.” The original negative of Lola was destroyed in a fire. This brand new
restoration by Ciné-Tamaris, Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage and
Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema, overseen by Agnès Varda and Raoul
Coutard, represents a major effort to return the film to its original glory. Courtesy
Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 85 min. Introduced by Anouk Aimée.
Saturday, October 13
1:00
The Dumb Girl of Portici. 1916. USA. Directed by Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley.
Screenplay by Weber, Marion Orth. With Anna Pavlova, Rupert Julian, Wadsworth
Harris. Legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) made her lone feature film
appearance in Universal’s lavish adaptation of Daniel Auber’s 1828 opera La
muette de Portici—notable for introducing dance into opera having a mute
heroine—directed by the studio’s leading director Lois Weber with her husband
Phillips Smalley. The movie was hailed in its day: “Cabiria stood for spectacle, The
Birth of Nation for emotional thrill, Carmen for individual force, The Dumb Girl of
Portici for artistic force,” enthused the critic for the Chicago Tribune. It returns as
a revelation. Not only does Pavlova embody an essence of silent cinema, her grace
and charisma amply evident, but in choreographing the forty-minute finale in
which the residents of seventeenth-century Naples revolt against their Hapsburg
rulers, Weber shows herself to be the original Kathryn Bigelow, a female director
with confident command of epic action. Preserved by the BFI, London. Silent,
piano accompaniment by Ben Model. Approx. 112 min.
4:15
Justine. 1969. USA. Directed by George Cukor. Screenplay by Lawrence B.
Marcus. With Anouk Aimée, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Forster, Anna Karina, Philippe
Noiret. It’s been called “one of the most beautiful 1930’s movies ever made.”
George Cukor took over a troubled production of unadaptable material, Lawrence
Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, and, seamlessly mixing Tunisian locations with the
Twentieth Century Fox studio, produced a movie of tremendous style and grace.
Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called Anouk Aimée—who
introduces the October 13 screening—“a perfect Justine,” and an actress who
“epitomizes all the mysteries and contradictions of a fabulous literary character.”
He also deemed Cukor’s film an unexpected delight: “A vastly entertaining
romance set in an East that is as mysterious and lovely as any Hollywood has ever
depicted…, Justine is a movie of so much opulence that the eye and the ear are
constantly persuading the mind to take a rest.” Preserved by Twentieth Century
Fox. 116 min. Introduced by Anouk Aimée.
7:00
Once Upon a Time in America [European theatrical release]. 1984.
USA/Italy. Directed by Sergio Leone. With Robert De Niro, James Woods, Jennifer
Connelly, Elizabeth McGovern, William Forsythe. Inspired by Harry Grey’s
autobiographical novel The Hoods—written pseudonymously while he was serving
time in Sing-Sing—Leone and an army of writers (which at various points included
such luminaries as Norman Mailer, Kim Arcalli, Enrico Medioli, Franco Ferrini, and
Stuart Kaminsky) fashioned an epic story centering on a Jewish clan of childhood
friends, led by “Noodles” (De Niro) and “Max” (Woods), who over the span of four
decades become notorious New York City criminals. “Leone is the singer of this
anthem to the cinema. However, if he hadn’t had some of the greatest artists from
the golden age of Italian cinema by his side, he would never have been able to
create a gem so richly faceted, so luminous….Thriller, melodrama, citations from
gangster cinema classics, as well as the cinema of Chaplin, Welles and Neorealism all come together in a voyage towards oblivion and death, in which we
slowly discover, within this unreal cinematographic grandeur, Noodles’ desperation
and anguish” (Gian Luca Farinelli, Il Cinema Ritrovato festival catalogue, 2012).
Restored through funding by Gucci and The Film Foundation, and in partnership
with Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, Andrea Leone Films,
The Film Foundation, and Regency Enterprises. 229 min.
Sunday, October 14
1:00
ANARCHIST MOVIES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Edouard Waintrop, the Artistic Director of the Director’s Fortnight section of the
Cannes Film Festival and a former film critic for Liberation, is also the author of
The Spanish Anarchists, a history of anarcho-syndicalism in Spain. He presents
two programs of anarchist films made during the Spanish Civil War.
Reportaje del movimiento revolucionario (Report on the Revolutionary
Movement). 1936. Spain. Directed by Mateo Santos. An activist in Confederacion
National del Trabajo (CNT), the anarcho-syndicalist confederation of labor unions,
Mateo Santos began to shoot this footage in the streets of Barcelona on July 20,
1936, at the moment the military coup failed and the anarchists took control of
the city. The first of three documentaries Santos made from an anarchist
perspective, Report has exceptional immediacy in documenting what André
Malraux called the “lyrical illusion” of revolution. Preserved by the Filmoteca
Española, Madrid. In Spanish; English subtitles. 22 min.
Carne de fieras (Flesh of Beasts). 1936. Spain. Written and directed by
Armand Guerra. With Miguel Ángel Navarro, Manuel Jiménez. A printer, labor
organizer, and anarchist journalist, the peripatetic Guerra (born José Estivalis in a
village outside Valencia) founded a film cooperative in pre-World War I Paris and
directed a movie about the Paris Commune, was exiled to Switzerland, made a
series of movies in Spain, moved on to Germany, and returned to Spain with the
creation of the Republic. Carne de fieras—in which a boxer with an unfaithful wife
falls in love with a carnival dancer who performs naked in the lions’ cage—was in
production when civil war broke out. Bombs were falling before Guerra finished
the movie; he then left for the front to make documentaries for the CNT. He died
in Paris in 1939. Preserved by the Filmoteca Española, Madrid. In Spanish; English
subtitles. 68 min. Introduced by Edouard Waintrop.
3:30
Barrios Bajos. 1937. Spain. Directed by Pedro Puche. Screenplay by Lluís Elias.
With Matilde Artero, Baltasar Banquells, Esperanza Barrero. In the lone example of
anarcho-syndicalist “poetic realism,” a young bourgeois shoots his wife’s lover and
takes refuge in the Barcelona slums, hidden by a good-hearted longshoreman with
a beautiful goddaughter. The Franco regime missed the movie’s political
implications and Puche was able to continue his career (albeit briefly) after the
Republic’s fall. Preserved by the Filmoteca Española, Madrid. In Spanish; English
subtitles. 94 min. Introduced by Edouard Waintrop.
6:15
Tell Me Lies (A Film about London). 1968. Great Britain. Directed and adapted
by Peter Brook. With Mark Jones, Pauline Munro, Eric Allan, Glenda Jackson, Peggy
Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Kingsley Amis, Stokely Carmichael. The war in Vietnam
inspired an international engagée Theater of Confrontation: “The images of a
napalm-burnt Vietnam shocked our small group from the Royal Shakespeare
Company in exactly the same way,” recalled Peter Brook. “So what should we do?
The answer was obvious. We had a troupe of actors at our disposal. That was
enough.” Adapted from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production-in-progress
US—which the Lord Chamberlain office, responsible for censoring plays in London,
lambasted as “bestial, anti-American and Communist”—Peter Brook’s long-unseen
semi-fictional, semi-documentary Tell Me Lies, filmed in 1967 in London, is a living
chunk of the 1960s. A group of young actors play and analyze themselves—
interspersed with newsreel footage, demonstrations, and antiwar skits. The
supporting cast includes Glenda Jackson, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Kingsley
Amis, and Black Power icon Stokely Carmichael. Restored by Groupama Gan
Foundation for the Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage. 118
min. Introduced by Peter Brook.
Monday, October 15
4:00
Lola. 1961. France. Written and directed by Jacques Demy. In French; English
subtitles. 85 min. (See Friday, October 12, 6:45.)
7:15
Justine. 1969. USA. Directed by George Cukor. 116 min. (See Saturday, October
13, 4:15.)
OFF-SITE EVENT
7:00
Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman). 1966. France. Produced,
directed, and photographed by Claude Lelouch. Screenplay by Pierre
Uytterhoeven, Lelouch. With Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant. One of the
great international box-office triumphs of the 1960s, Lelouch’s tender drama of a
widow who embarks on an intense affair with an equally melancholy racecar driver
garnered dozens of awards, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Academy Awards
for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay, a Best Actress Oscar nomination for
Anouk Aimée and a Best Director nomination for Lelouch. Building on the success
of last year’s tribute to Saul Bass in To Save and Project, this special copresentation between MoMA and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences—taking place at the Academy Theater, 111 East 59 Street—caps off a
weekend of films presented by the great Anouk Aimée. It also showcases the
Academy Film Archive’s recently announced Film-to-Film initiative, a project that
accelerates the work of the Archive to acquire and create new film prints from atrisk elements. New print courtesy the Academy Film Archive. In French; English
subtitles. 102 min. Introduced by Anouk Aimée. At The Academy Theater, 111
East 59 Street. On Sale October 1, 2012. Limited ticket availability through
www.oscars.org.
Tuesday, October 16
7:00
San Diego Surf. 1968/1996. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol. With Viva, Taylor
Mead, Joe Dallesandro, Louis Waldon, Ingrid Superstar. The most influential artist
of the latter half of the twentieth century, Andy Warhol has been a frequent
presence in To Save and Project (past editions of the festival have included The
Chelsea Girls, Face, and The Velvet Underground in Boston). A characteristically
informal narrative, San Diego Surf concerns an unhappily married couple (Taylor
Mead and Viva), new parents who rent their beach house to a group of surfers.
Filmed with two 16mm cameras by Warhol and Paul Morrissey in May 1968, San
Diego Surf was the first movie Warhol made in California in the five years since
Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort of…. It was also one of the last films in which the
artist had direct involvement; in June 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas,
after which his work behind the movie camera came largely to an end. San Diego
Surf was only partially edited and never released. In 1995, The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. commissioned Paul Morrissey to complete the
editing, based on existing notes and the rough cut. Never before shown to the
public—and presented by its irrepressible star, the great Taylor Mead—San Diego
Surf is a significant addition to an epic oeuvre. Restored by The Andy Warhol
Foundation and released by The Andy Warhol Museum as part of the museum's
larger mission of promoting and safeguarding Andy Warhol's legacy. 90 min.
Introduced by Taylor Mead.
Wednesday, October 17
4:00
Sparrers Can’t Sing (aka Sparrows Can’t Sing). 1963. Great Britain. Directed
by Joan Littlewood. Screenplay by Stephen Lewis. With James Booth, Barbara
Windsor, Roy Kinnear. A sailor’s search for his wife, after he returns home to find
his flat demolished, provides the pretext for a tour of London’s East End. Pungent,
breezy, and steeped in local color, a low-budget neo-realist comedy of workingclass disorder and a key work in the development of British “kitchen sink”
naturalism, Joan Littlewood’s all but plotless ensemble comedy began as a quasiimprovisation on Stephen Lewis’s text, developed and first performed at her
Theatre Workshop in 1960 (the company that famously premiered Brecht’s Mother
Courage and Her Children in London in 1955, and also produced Oh, What a
Lovely War! and A Taste of Honey). The film brought the ensemble production on
location amid the East End’s tarts, tradesmen, spivs, and drunks. The territory
was new to the screen. The rhyming slang and heavily Cockney accents made the
film unintelligible even for many Londoners. With its cast of brilliantly versatile and
by-now familiar actors, including the wonderful Welsh actor Victor Spinelli, who
died earlier this year, and a cameo by the notorious gangster twins The Krays,
Sparrers is a true rediscovery. Preserved by the BFI, London; courtesy Rialto
Pictures. 94 min.
6:30
Genghis Khan. 1950. Philippines. Directed by Manuel Conde, Lou Salvador. (See
Friday, October 12, 4:00.)
Thursday, October 18
4:30
Wild Girl. 1932. USA. Directed by Raoul Walsh. 80 min. (See Thursday, October
11, 6:30.)
7:00
JAPAN SPEAKS! EARLY JAPANESE TALKIES
Tsukigata Hanpeita. 1925. Japan. Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. With Shojiro
Sawada, Zenichiro Kito, Tadashi Torii. Made by Kinugasa a year before his
celebrated A Page of Madness (a highlight of To Save and Project in 2010),
Tsukigata Hanpeita is a version of an oft-filmed kabuki play initially exhibited with
sound-on-disc benshi narration; this extremely concentrated digest was originally
released on 9.5mm film and intended for home viewing. Preserved by the National
Film Center of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In Japanese; English
subtitles. 13 min.
Kyojin Seifuku (Why Worry?). 1923/1930s. USA/Japan. Directed by Fred C.
Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. With Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, John Aasen.
Enormously popular in Japan, Harold Lloyd was in effect naturalized in this
condensed version of his 1923 feature Why Worry?, rereleased in the 1930s with a
music soundtrack and recorded benshi commentary. This version was confiscated
by the American occupying authorities and later repatriated to Japan. Preserved
by the National Film Center of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo;
courtesy Harold Lloyd Entertainment, Inc. In Japanese; English subtitles. 29 min.
Madamu To Nyobo (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine). 1931. Japan. Directed
by Heinosuke Gosho. Screenplay by Komatsu Kitamura, Akira Fushimi. With
Atsushi Watanabe, Kinuyo Tanaka, Mitsuko Ichimura. A slapstick comedy or
nansensu-eiga [nonsense film] that at times approaches the sound-image
playfulness of a Disney Silly Symphony, The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine was Japan’s
first popular and critically successful talking picture. Inventive by any standard,
sound is essential to the plot, which concerns a blocked writer driven to distraction
by the Mammy Jazz Band rehearsing next door—not to mention its lively young
singer. All films preserved by the National Film Center of The National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo; courtesy Janus Films. In Japanese; English subtitles. 56 min.
Program 98 min.
Friday, October 19
4:30
JAPAN SPEAKS! EARLY JAPANESE TALKIES
Tsukigata Hanpeita. 1925. Japan. Directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. In Japanese;
English subtitles. 13 min.
Kyojin Seifuku (Why Worry?). 1923/1930s. USA/Japan. Directed by Fred C.
Newmeyer, Sam Taylor. In Japanese; English subtitles. 29 min.
Madamu To Nyobo (The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine). 1931. Japan. Directed
by Heinosuke Gosho. In Japanese; English subtitles. 56 min. Program 98 min.
(See Thursday, October 18, 7:00.)
7:00
The Face behind the Mask. 1941. USA. Directed by Robert Florey. Screenplay
by Paul Jarrico. With Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don Beddoe. “Peter Lorre has
never exploited his sensitive face to more heartbreaking ends than in this tragic
noir about an immigrant watchmaker who turns to a life of crime” (Guy Maddin). A
veteran of Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Lorre was immeasurably more versatile
than the roles that Hollywood usually reserved for him. Nonetheless, the AustroHungarian Jewish émigré was unsurpassed in playing piteous murderers and
madmen, his still-haunting performance as the child killer in Fritz Lang’s M leading
to similarly anguished performances in The Man Who Knew Too Much, Mad Love,
Stranger on the Third Floor, and The Maltese Falcon, along with his sole directorial
effort, Der Verlorene (The Lost Man). Lorre found in Robert Florey a director who
brought out unforeseen shadings of his familiar image, and self-image, as a
desperate outcast. Florey, whose Murders in the Rue Morgue remains one of the
most sinister of the 1930s Universal horror films, here substitutes a tender
understanding for cheap thrills, preserving the disfigured watchmaker’s dignity
through oblique camera angles and shadows, while allowing Lorre’s emotional
range and physicality to be brought into higher relief. The two would collaborate
once more on The Beast with Five Fingers, in 1946. Preserved print from the
Austrian Film Museum; courtesy Sony Pictures Repertory. 69 min. Introduced by
Alexander Horwath, Director, Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.
Saturday, October 20
1:30
THE CLOCK: OR, 89 MINUTES OF “FREE TIME”
1/48”. 2008. Mexico. Directed by Jorge Lorenzo Flores Garza. Approx. 1 min.
Meissen Porcelain! The Diodattis’ Living Sculptures at the Berlin
Conservatory [fragment]. 1912-1914 [?]. France/Germany. Produced by
Gaumont. Approx. 2 min.
The Case of Lena Smith. 1929. USA. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. Surviving
5 min. fragment.
Mosaik Mécanique. 2008. Austria. Directed by Norbert Pfaffenbichler. 9 min.
HA.WEI. March 14, 1938 [archival title]. 1938. Austria. Anonymous. 13 min.
Spare Time. 1939. Great Britain. Directed by Humphrey Jennings. 15 min.
Yours. 1977. USA. Directed by Jeff Scher. 4 min.
Recreation [original French version]. 1956-57. USA/France. Directed by
Robert Breer. 2 min.
Schwechater. 1958. Austria. Directed by Peter Kubelka. 1 min.
Anthem. 2006. Thailand. Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 5 min.
Roller Coaster Rabbit. 1990. USA. Directed by Rob Minkoff. 8 min.
The Present. 1996. USA/Switzerland. Directed by Robert Frank. 24 min.
“This program is a somewhat surreal-populist attempt at telling a story of the
twentieth century. In a more serious vein, it relates to three different notions of
cinematic temporality: it talks about leisure or ‘free time’ (a realm of life usually
regarded as the province of movie-going); it addresses the ‘time of film’ (a
passing era that also produced new concepts of history and memory, both of
which are now becoming more tenuous by the nanosecond); and it celebrates our
imprisonment in ‘film time’ when experiencing a theatrical projection (the distinct
duration of a film, its irrevocable passing at a specific pace of ‘X’ frames per
second). Another way of looking at this film selection is through the eyes of Amos
Vogel, who was born in Vienna in 1921, and who died in New York this past April. I
hope that the program can also serve as a tribute to Amos. Among his many
achievements in film culture was a new approach toward placing films alongside
each other in an evening’s program, freed from their traditional groupings by era,
genre, aesthetic, etc. In addition, the Viennese amateur film shown here—HA.WEI.
March 14, 1938—is a document of the historical moment that turned seventeenyear old Amos Vogelbaum into an exile” (Alexander Horwath, Director, Austrian
Film Museum). All films from the collection of the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.
Program 89 min. Introduced by Alexander Horwath.
4:15
FORUGH FARROKHZAD, DUšAN MAKAVEJEV, ULRICH SEIDL:
ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS
Prokleti praznik (Damned Holiday). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dušan
Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 9 min.
Boje sanjaju (Dreaming Colors). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dušan
Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 7 min.
Slikovnica pčelara (Beekeper’s Scrapbook). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by
Dušan Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 9 min.
Der Ball (The Prom). 1982. Austria. Directed by Ulrich Seidl. In German; English
subtitles. 50 min.
The House Is Black. 1962. Iran. Directed by Forugh Farrokhzad. In Farsi;
English and French subtitles. 22 min.
“This program represents a vastly underrated strand in the discipline of film
curatorship: experimental ethnography. Three young filmmakers, united neither
by their circumstances, nor the tone they apply to their subjects of research, but
by a free spirit and determination to confront the dominant traditions of
documentary in their respective nations. Dušan Makavejev, still bracketed as an
‘amateur’ (read: ‘experimental’) filmmaker in 1958 Yugoslavia, was commissioned
to make a number of short Kultur films for Zagreb Film and turned them into
fanciful color field studies. Ulrich Seidl’s The Prom, produced
at Vienna’s Film Academy (and the main reason for his being expelled there), is a
different kind of field study: a belated return to his hometown in Lower Austria,
observing the local students and notables as they celebrate high-school
graduation. The House Is Black, Persian poet Forugh Farrokhzad’s only completed
film—she died in a road accident at age 32—is widely considered the first
masterpiece of the Iranian New Wave. In contrast to Seidl’s film, Farrokhzad’s
account of a leper colony in northern Iran has no place for irony, but her gaze is
equally penetrating. This is how she begins: ‘There is no shortage of ugliness in
the world. If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more’” (Alexander
Horwath, Director, Austrian Film Museum). All films preserved by
the Austrian Film Museum. The restoration of The House Is Black derives from a
first-generation print made (and subtitled in French) for the film’s expected world
premiere in Cannes, 1963. Instead, the director and her producer Ebrahim
Golestan premiered it a few weeks later, at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival,
where the original copy has been kept ever since. Program 97 min. Introduced
by Alexander Horwath.
7:00
American Dreams (Lost and Found). 1984. USA. Directed by James Benning. A
key work in Benning’s oeuvre, as well as a personal favorite of the filmmaker,
American Dreams has been painstakingly restored by the Austrian Film Museum in
Vienna. Bérénice Reynaud writes in Film Comment, “As the soundtrack unfolds a
collage of popular songs (Peggy Lee, Charlie Rich, Bob Dylan…) and public
speeches recorded from 1954 to 1976 (McCarthy hearings, radio announcement of
the Kennedy assassination, an address by Malcolm X…), the screen is filled with
images of baseball cards spanning the career of Hank Aaron, while at the bottom
Benning has optically printed handwritten excerpts of the diary of Arthur Bremer,
who shot Governor Wallace in 1972, faithfully reproducing its idiosyncrasies and
misspellings. Each of these elements defines its own imaginary landscape. The
soundtrack suggests an ideological ‘map’ of America at the time. The visuals imply
a gap between a successful home run champion and a (failed) white drifterturned-assassin, one hitting the American dream and the other missing it.”
Restored by the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. 55 min. Introduced by
Alexander Horwath.
Sunday, October 21
1:00
THE LOWER EAST SIDE AND CONEY ISLAND: LOST AND FOUND
Orchard Street. 1955. USA. Directed by Ken Jacobs. In 1955, fresh out of the
Coast Guard, Ken Jacobs bought a 16mm Bell & Howell and began documenting
his immediate environment, a Lower East Side shopping street that reminded him
of his childhood in Depression-era Williamsburg. He purposefully avoided
romanticism and satire: “I wanted to get Orchard Street, without commenting on
it.” Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos
Fund for Film Preservation. 12 min.
The Seward Park Branch and the Neighborhood It Serves. 1934-59. USA.
“View and experience Seward Park as the portrait of the neighborhood changes
from crisp black and white to vivid color, as streets once filled with pushcarts
become lined with sharp-finned cars, and as children sled on snowy sidewalks
before sitting down for ‘story time’ in a green park. The earliest footage, from
1934–5 and 1941, was captured and edited by Grace Hardie, a former Seward
Park Branch staff member. In 1959, Bill Sloan, head of the Donnell Library
Center’s Film Library, and his wife Gwen shot the color section using a 16mm
Bolex. At this time, Donald W. Fowle, a clerk at the Seward Park Branch, created
the script as part of the branch’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. His narration has
been read aloud at screenings of the film ever since. Mr. Fowle and the Sloans
were assisted by Jean E. McIntosh, assistant branch librarian at Seward Park. A
detailed account of the action – a shot list – was prepared by Tara D. Kelley of the
Reserve Film and Video Collection in 2012” (New York Public Library). Preserved
by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 36 min.
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People. 1980. USA. Written and directed by
Paula Gladstone. Gladstone, a true Coney Islander, wrote, directed, produced and
edited this film, and arranged the soundtrack using music by Duke Ellington and
the Drifters with a voiceover of her own poetry. Shot over two years, the film is an
abstract meditation on life under the boardwalk and a poetic document of a
vanished world that emulates ‘city symphonies’ of the 1920s such as Dziga
Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, The
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with partial funding from the
Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film and Television, the
New York City Council and Eastman Kodak. 67 min. Program 115 min.
Introduced by Ken Jacobs, Paula Gladstone
4:00
The Dumb Girl of Portici. 1916. USA. Directed by Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley.
Silent, piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. Approx. 112 min. (See Saturday,
October 13, 1:00.)
6:45
A CINEMA OF INDUSTRIAL NOISE
Symphonie mécanique. 1955. France. Directed by Jean Mitry. An abstract ballet
of industrial images and sounds. The celebrated French composer Pierre Boulez,
known for his musique-concrète arrangements from the 1950s, scored his sole
electro-acoustic piece to accompany Mitry’s busy triptych widescreen collage.
Filming machines and sundry factory activity, Mitry creates unexpected poetic
symmetry out of mechanical shapes and movements. Preserved print courtesy
Tamasa Distribution. 13 min.
Punking Out. 1978. USA. Directed by Maggi Carson, Juliusz Kossakowski, Fredric
A. Shore. With the Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Lydia Lunch. A film of
screaming immediacy, Punking Out documents the scene at CBGB at its height.
Writing on the movie after a screening at the 2001 New York Underground
Film Festival, Mike Everleth found its “most engaging aspect” to be the interviews
with the music’s fans. “High on the excitement of seeing their favorite punk bands
playing live, and possibly high on other substances, the fans’ barely coherent
ruminations on their passion are hysterical. People caught in the heat of the
moment and asked the right questions are necessary fodder for a great
doc.” Preserved by the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of
New York. 25 min.
Monday, October 22
4:00
HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION
An eclectic assortment of presidential campaign films and cartoon spoofs, proving
that when it comes to the hard sell for the Highest Office in the Land, some things
never change. Particularly fascinating and historically important are the Truman,
Dewey, and Wallace campaign films made during their bitterly fought 1948 race.
Betty Boop for President. 1932. USA. Produced by Fleischer Studios. Directed
by Dave Fleischer. The gags and political jabs come fast and furious in this New
Deal-era cartoon classic (including sendups of Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, and
Prohibition), as Betty Boop upstages opponent Mr. Nobody by offering promises
more ridiculous and grandiose by the second. 7 min.
Hell-Bent for Election. 1944. USA. Produced by John Hubley. Directed by Chuck
Jones. A rarely screened UPA Studio wartime cartoon, made for the United Auto
Workers and featuring the rousing anthem “We’re Going to Win the War” by
Wizard of Oz songwriters Earl Robinson and Yip Harburg. Representing America’s
shining, victorious future, Franklin D. Roosevelt is a streamlined Raymond Loewy
locomotive—the “Win the War Special”—speeding past Republican opponent
Thomas E. Dewey’s tired old “Defeatest Limited, no. 1929.” 13 min.
A People’s Convention. 1948. USA. Produced by Union Films. Perhaps the most
poignant of the three 1948 campaign films, as delegates at the Progressive Party
convention rally around presidential hopeful Henry Wallace in support of his antisegregationist platform and his aspirations for universal government health care
and an end to the Cold War. Digitally preserved by NYU. 15 min.
The Dewey Story. 1948. USA. Produced by Louis de Rochemont. Archival print
courtesy the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation,
Washington, D.C. 10 min.
The Truman Story. 1948. USA. Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive, Los
Angeles. 10 min.
“The Republican nominee after winning a radio debate with his rival Harold
Stassen, [Governor Thomas Dewey] hired Louis de Rochemont to produce The
Dewey Story using reenactments and staged scenes with actors in the tradition of
his series The March of Time. They planned to send 3,000 prints of the 10-minute
film into U.S. movie houses as paid political advertising….[President Harry]
Truman protested and got his own campaign film—The Truman Story, which was
made almost entirely of newsreel material and assembled at Universal. The Dewey
Story was then released to the nation’s theaters as a public service on October
14….[T]he powerful Truman film was shown to Americans after the Dewey picture
and one week before the election. [It] proved to be a key element in Truman’s
come from behind, upset victory” (Charles Musser).
George Wallace in California: The Beginning. 1968. USA. Directed by Jim
Guillott. Written by David Wolfe. Narrated by Tom Paxton. Running for president in
1968, Alabama governor George Wallace famously declared that there “wasn’t a
dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties. Still, in order to get his
American Independent Party on the California ballot, the Wallace campaign had to
register 66,000 voters. With almost no West Coast contacts, the AIP got that
many and then some. This film celebrates their successful “Stand Up For America”
campaign, accompanied by some startlingly contemporary political rhetoric and
many renditions of the Roger Miller song “Walkin’ in the Sunshine, Sing a Little
Sunshine.” Preserved by Alabama Dept. of Archives and History, Montgomery. 30
min.
RFK ’68. 1968. USA. Directed by John Frankenheimer. Documenting Robert
Kennedy’s whistle stop tour through the Indiana heartland, Frankenheimer, media
adviser to RFK, also directed his official campaign film, which bears a curious
resemblance to then box office smash Bonnie and Clyde. Digital preservation.
Courtesy Evans Evans Frankenheimer. 25 min. Program 110 min.
6:45
Il Generale della Rovere (General della Rovere) [original director’s cut].
1959. Italy/France. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. Screenplay by Sergio Amidei,
Diego Fabri, Indro Montanelli, based on the novel by Montanelli. With Vittorio De
Sica, Hannes Messemer, Sandra Milo. Presented for the first time since its
premiere at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, this is Rossellini’s original edit for one
of his most commercially and critically successful (if traditional) dramas—ten
minutes longer than the theatrical release. General della Rovere marked a return
to WWII themes of treachery and courage for the director of such landmarks as
Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1947). Rossellini
grudgingly accepted the project after the commercial failure of his India Matri
Bhumi (1958) and cast his friend and Neorealist contemporary Vittorio De Sica as
a conman compelled by the Gestapo to impersonate a partisan hero. “I don’t
believe that the feelings that move men are solely ambition, desire for power,
violence and sex,” said Rossellini. “I think they are interested in and motivated by
nobler motives as well.” Restored by La Cineteca Nazionale, Rome, and
Minerva/RaroVideo in collaboration with Il Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, and
La Biennale di Venezia. In Italian; English subtitles. 138 min.
Wednesday, October 24
4:30
American Dreams (Lost and Found). 1984. USA. Directed by James Benning.
55 min. (See Saturday, October 20, 7:00.)
6:30
The Face behind the Mask. 1941. USA. Directed by Robert Florey. 69 min. (See
Friday, October 19, 7:00.)
Thursday, October 25
4:30
FORUGH FARROKHZAD, DUšAN MAKAVEJEV, ULRICH SEIDL:
ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS
Prokleti praznik (Damned Holiday). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dušan
Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 9 min.
Boje sanjaju (Dreaming Colors). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dušan
Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 7 min.
Slikovnica pčelara (Beekeper’s Scrapbook). 1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by
Dušan Makavejev. In Serbo-Croatian; English subtitles. 9 min.
Der Ball (The Prom). 1982. Austria. Directed by Ulrich Seidl. In German; English
subtitles. 50 min.
The House Is Black. 1962. Iran. Directed by Forugh Farrokhzad. In Farsi;
English and French subtitles. 22 min.
Program 97 min. (See Saturday, October 20, 4:15.)
7:00
Call Her Savage. 1932. USA. Directed by John Francis Dillon. 88 min. (See
Thursday, October 11, 4:00.)
Friday, October 26
4:00
Il Generale della Rovere (General della Rovere) [original director’s cut].
1959. Italy/France. Directed by Roberto Rossellini. In Italian; English subtitles.
138 min. (See Monday, October 22, 6:45.)
7:15
Sally Cruikshank: Underground Maestra of the Animated Musical Comedy
Extravaganza
Heir to the crazy cartoons of the 1930s (and the head comix of the 1960s).
animator Sally Cruikshank is a national treasure. Back in 1981, American Film
praised her for all but singlehandedly resurrecting the Depression-era “funny
animal” cartoon—“as authentic an American idiom as jug band music or situation
comedy.” Since then she has soldiered on, creating acerbically hilarious,
wonderfully detailed candy-colored cartoons about neurotic ducks and fashionista
horses. This tribute, presented by Cruikshank herself, includes newly preserved
prints of her cel-animation classics, Quasi at the Quackadero (1975, elected to the
United States National Film Registry in 2009), Make Me Psychic (1978), and Face
Like a Frog (1987, featuring an original soundtrack by Oingo Boingo), interspersed
with a sampling of her commercial movie credits, including the trailer for Ruthless
People (1986), beloved Sesame Street spots, and several of her wonderfully
eccentric versions of the old Fleischer brothers’ Song Car-Tunes that eschew the
hot jazz of the early 1930s for the mellow doo-wop of the 1950s. Program 90 min.
Introduced by Sally Cruikshank.
Saturday, October 27
1:00
UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. In 2005, UNESCO established
October 27 as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. With the 2012 presidential
election rapidly approaching, the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation
Program at New York University has assembled a collection of archival audiovisual
material from New York City institutions that centers on the belief that every
citizen should have a say in his or her own government. From celebrations of the
electoral process in the inspiring 1972 Tellin’ the World to memories of those who
fought to have their voices recognized in never-before-heard interviews from
StoryCorps, these recorded images of political history compel us to question our
understandings of democracy, freedom and equality—ideas that are invoked and
all-too often exploited by politicians. Campaigns, elections, and the process of
democracy throughout the past century are examined on local, national, and
international stages. The program culminates with raw footage captured by
Human Rights Watch during the Arab Spring, edited into its award-winning
2012 piece Uprising. Program approx. 120 min.
5:00
Rufus Jones for President. 1933. USA. Directed by Roy Mack. Screenplay by A.
Dorian Otvos, Cyrus Wood. With Ethel Waters, Sammy Davis, Jr. 21 min.
Gabriel over the White House [American release version]. 1933. USA.
Directed by Gregory La Cava. Screenplay by Carey Wilson, Bertram Bloch, based
on the novel by T. F. Tweed. With Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone.
See Oct. 28 for description. Preserved by the Library of Congress Packard Campus
for Audio Visual Conservation. 94 min.
7:30
HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION
An eclectic assortment of presidential campaign films and cartoon spoofs, proving
that some things never change when it comes to the hard sell for the Highest
Office in the Land. Particularly fascinating and historically important are the
Truman, Dewey, and Wallace campaign films made during their bitterly fought
1948 race.
Betty Boop for President. 1932. USA. Produced by Fleischer Studios. Directed
by Dave Fleischer. 7 min.
Hell-Bent for Election. 1944. USA. Produced by John Hubley. Directed by Chuck
Jones. 13 min.
A People’s Convention. 1948. USA. Produced by Union Films. 15 min.
The Dewey Story. 1948. USA. 10 min.
The Truman Story. 1948. USA. 10 min.
George Wallace in California: The Beginning. 1968. USA. Directed by Jim
Guillott. 30 min.
RFK ’68. 1968. USA. Directed by John Frankenheimer. 25 min.
Program 110 min. (See Monday, October 22, 4:00.)
Sunday, October 28
1:00
When Lincoln Paid. 1913. USA. Directed by Francis Ford. Screenplay by William
Clifford. With Ford, Jack Conway, Ethel Grandin, Charles Edler. Between 1912 and
1915, Francis Ford, brother and mentor of the quintessentially American
filmmaker John Ford, played Abraham Lincoln no fewer than seven times. Sadly,
this is the only example known to survive. Preserved by George Eastman House,
Rochester, with support from the National Film Preservation Fund, When Lincoln
Paid re-enacts Lincoln’s famous encounter with the mother of a dead Confederate
soldier who pleaded for her son’s presidential pardon. “There is nothing I like
better than to play Lincoln,” Ford would fondly recall. “I have a big library devoted
to this great man, and I have studied every phase of his remarkable character,
and when I am acting the part, I can feel the man as I judge him.” Evincing his
own fascination with the Great Emancipator, John Ford would direct Henry Fonda
in Young Abe Lincoln in 1939. Approx. 25 min.
Abraham Lincoln. 1930. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Adaptation by Stephen
Vincent Benet. With Walter Huston, Kay Hammond, Una Merkel, Henry B. Walthall.
“Griffith’s career was all-too-briefly resuscitated by this, his penultimate film and
first talkie. Returning to the Civil War fifteen years after The Birth of a Nation,
Griffith’s loving portrait of Lincoln, as embodied by Huston, reveals all kinds of
poignant resonances between the lives of the director and his subject. After one
more film, and Griffith's enforced retirement, they both would ‘belong to the
Ages.’ There is an awkwardness about [the film], and not just due to Griffith’s
struggles with unfamiliar and primitive sound equipment. (This is not helped by
the fact that Abraham Lincoln came to be restored after some of the original
soundtrack was irretrievably lost.) Much of Lincoln looks like vintage Griffith: its
historical tableaux; its recreation of such highlights from The Birth of a Nation as
the departure of the Confederate soldiers and Lincoln’s assassination; Henry B.
Walthall doing a cameo reprise of his ‘Little Colonel.’….However, there are some
fine battle scenes in Abraham Lincoln. The post–Bull Run montage and the ‘Battle
Cry of Freedom’ sequence are rousing, and they suggest Griffith’s command of the
new medium” (Charles Silver). Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with
support from the Lillian Gish Trust for Film Preservation and The Film Foundation.
93 min.
3:45
Rufus Jones for President. 1933. USA. Directed by Roy Mack. Screenplay by A.
Dorian Otvos, Cyrus Wood. With Ethel Waters, Sammy Davis, Jr. Americans had
the presidency much on their mind in 1933. Early in the New Deal, Vitaphone put
out this jovially offensive fantasy in which Ethel Waters dreams that her very
talented son (seven-year-old Sammy Davis, Jr.) is elected president of the United
States. 21 min.
Gabriel over the White House [British release version]. 1933. USA/Great
Britain. Directed by Gregory La Cava. Screenplay by Carey Wilson, Bertram Bloch,
based on the novel by T. F. Tweed. With Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot
Tone. Intended for release on the eve of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration, this
product of William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan studio is—as Andrew Bergman
would write in his classic history of Depression-era movies—one of the period’s
“real shockers.” A political hack (Walter Huston, reelected to screen presidency
after starring in D.W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln, shown in To Save and Project on
October 28) undergoes a supernatural transformation to become the dictator
America needed—and Hearst craved. The movie was highly controversial in its
day; it has since been discovered that a special, reedited version—more shocking
in some ways, more conciliatory in others—was made for British distribution.
Digitally preserved by the Cinémathèque Royale, Brussels. 86 min.
6:30
The White House Home Movies: Richard Nixon on Super-8
Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas were not the only “amateur” filmmakers who
embarked on open-ended home-movie epics during the 1960s. As President
Richard Nixon tape-recorded his conversations for posterity, so his devoted
aides—H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dwight Chapin—shot hundreds of
rolls of Super-8 film documenting the historic moments and everyday occurrences
of the Nixon presidency. Official banquets, parades, ceremonial balls, campaign
rallies, and world-historic state visits “become mere episodes in one man’s life,
rather than political events.” This special—dare we say, historic?—program
includes a selection of raw camera rolls, several restored sequences (among them
Nixon’s 1972 trip to China), and excerpts from Brian Frye and Penny Lane’s workin-progress Our Nixon, and features a conversation with the filmmakers and
Nixon’s chronicler, Dwight Chapin, moderated by J. Hoberman. Program approx.
90 min. Presented by Dwight Chapin, Brian Frye, Penny Lane, moderated
by J. Hoberman.
Monday, October 29
4:00
Sally Cruikshank: Underground Maestra of the Animated Musical Comedy
Extravaganza. Program 90 min. (See Friday, October 26, 7:15.)
6:00
Sparrers Can’t Sing (aka Sparrows Can’t Sing). 1963. Great Britain. Directed
by Joan Littlewood. 94 min. (See Wednesday, October 17, 4:00.)
7:00
Modern Mondays: An Evening with Saul Levine.
For nearly 50 years, Saul Levine has made experimental films that are
distinguished by their machine-gun rhythms, political urgencies, and cloistered,
even blissful, family moments. Levine’s is a cinema of violent juxtaposition—
Charlie Chaplin hotly pursued and Walter Cronkite intoning the grim news of the
day; Vietnam War paratroopers and B.B. King playing the blues; street protests,
police roundups, and workers on the dole. Tracing a vital aspect of Levine’s work
across four decades—what P. Adams Sitney has identified as “his incessant,
chaotic outpouring of political energy”—this special co-presentation of Modern
Mondays and To Save and Project features the New York premiere of Light Licks:
By the Waters of Babylon: This May Be the Last Time (2011), Levine’s meditation
on the play of winter light on Boston’s Charles River; and luminous 8mm, Super-8,
and 16mm prints of The Big Stick/An Old Reel (1967-73), Notes of an Early Fall
(1976), Unemployment Portrayal Note (1980), and Notes after Long Silence
(1984-89) that have been preserved by Bill Brand/BB Optics, with partial funding
from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Program 100 min. Introduced
by Saul Levine.
8:30
Ganga Bruta. 1933. Brazil. Written and directed by Humberto Mauro. With Durval
Bellini, Déa Selva, Lu Marival, Décio Murillo, Andréa Duarte. Called the “father of
Brazilian film” by Glauber Rocha (a master in his own right, whose Der Leone Have
Sept Cabeças screens on November 2 and 5), Humberto Mauro rose to
prominence as a prolific director-for-hire in the silent and early-talkie eras,
working for Cinedia Studios. Later, as Brazilian cinema’s golden period entered a
lull during the 1940s and 1950s, Mauro turned to making inventive and highly
personal educational and industrial films. Ganga Bruta, from 1933, is arguably his
masterpiece, flaunting his ability to transform ordinary studio material into visual
dynamism and intense narrative drama. Sparking controversy upon release,
Ganga Bruta centers on a husband who, on the night of his wedding, discovers his
wife is not a virgin, and murders her in a fit of rage. Absolved of his crime—a notinfrequent outcome for such cases in Brazil at the time—he attempts to forget his
demons by beginning a new life in the countryside. Preserved by Cinemateca
Brasileira, São Paulo. English synopsis provided for the film’s few Portuguese
titles. 82 min.
Wednesday, October 31
4:30
A CINEMA OF INDUSTRIAL NOISE
Symphonie mécanique. 1955. France. Directed by Jean Mitry. 13 min.
Punking Out. 1978, USA. Directed by Maggi Carson, Juliusz Kossakowski, Fredric
A. Shore. 25 min. (See Sunday, October 21, 6:45.)
7:00
The Spanish Dancer. 1923. USA. Directed by Herbert Brenon. Screenplay by
June Mathis, Beulah Marie Dix. With Pola Negri, Antonio Moreno, Wallace Beery,
Adolphe Menjou. Long believed lost, this comical costume drama set in
seventeenth-century Spain stars Pola Negri as a gypsy singer (a role originally
intended for Rudolph Valentino!) who marries the penniless nobleman and bon
vivant Don César de Bazin, and who through her seductive charms and guile
thwarts an attempt to bring down the House of Hapsburg. Director Brenon and his
brilliant cinematographer James Wong Howe create chiaroscuro effects that evoke
the paintings of Velásquez, a moodily atmospheric look they would soon perfect in
adaptations of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1924) and A Kiss for Cinderella (1925).
Restored by the EYE Film Institute, The Netherlands, to celebrate the opening of
their new cinema museum, exhibition space, and theaters in Amsterdam, The
Spanish Dancer is based on the same Victor Hugo novella and Massenet opera
that Ernst Lubitsch was adapting for Mary Pickford at Paramount at the time,
released in 1923 as Rosita. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin.
Approx. 105 min.
Thursday, November 1
4:00
THE LOWER EAST SIDE AND CONEY ISLAND: LOST AND FOUND
Orchard Street. 1955. USA. Directed by Ken Jacobs. 12 min.
The Seward Park Branch and the Neighborhood It Serves. 1934-59. USA.
36 min.
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People. 1980. USA. Written and directed by
Paula Gladstone. 67 min. (See Sunday, October 21, 1:15.)
4:00
Ganga Bruta. 1933. Brazil. Written and directed by Humberto Mauro. English
synopsis provided for the film’s few Portuguese titles. 82 min. (See Monday,
October 29, 8:30.)
6:30
Tricia’s Wedding. 1971. USA. Directed by Sebastian (Milton Miron). With Bobby
Cameron, Pristine Condition, Dusty Dawn. The televised and much-gossiped
wedding of Richard and Pat Nixon’s daughter Tricia to lawyer Edward Cox—
described in Life magazine as “akin to American royalty”—proved too irresistible
for the Cockettes not to lampoon. The now-legendary psychedelic drag queen
troupe from San Francisco’s North Beach re-staged the wedding as a psychedelic
bacchanalia, all hell breaking loose when “Eartha Kitt” (Anton Dunnigan) spikes
the punch with LSD. Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman—the cameraman behind
some of the presidential home movies presented on October 28—is said to have
arranged a secret screening of Tricia’s Wedding at the White House in order to
discuss what action to take; as David Greenburg reports in Nixon’s Shadow: The
History of an Image, “John Dean noted [that no action] was necessary, since the
film ‘died a natural death.’” Preserved by Frameline, San Francisco 33 min.
Richard. 1972. USA. Written and directed by Harry Hurwitz, Loreen Yerby. With
Richard M. Dixon, Mickey Rooney, John Caradine, Vivian Blane, Imogen Bliss,
Marvin Braverman. One of rarest and most demented American indies of the
1970s, and surely one of the most prescient, Hurwitz and Yerby’s not entirely
unsympathetic satire of Nixon, made pre-Watergate, ricochets from movie cliché
to movie cliché—sentimental log cabin biopic, histrionic war epic, 1930s horror,
and parodies of Myra Breckinridge and Clockwork Orange—and surprisingly, much
of it works. Hurwitz and Yerby incorporate television and newsreel footage,
including Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, to clever effect, blurring the lines between
lies and truth, and the film offers a compelling counterpoint to the “official” Nixon
home movies presented in To Save and Project on October 28. The cast rivals
Tricia’s Wedding in its absurdity, featuring look-and-sound alike Richard M. Dixon
as Tricky Dick; Mickey Rooney as the guardian angel/shrink who must rally him
after every political defeat; Kevin McCarthy, who leads a team of brainwashers
and political operatives; and John Carradine as the insane plastic surgeon who
gives him the face that launched a thousand caricatures. Rare (unrestored)
archival print courtesy the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy
Film Archive. 83 min.
Friday, November 2
4:30
Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças. 1970. Italy/France/Congo-Brazzaville. Directed
by Glauber Rocha. Screenplay by Gianni Amico, Rocha. With Rada Rassimov, JeanPierre Léaud, Giulio Brogi, Hugo Carvana, Gabriele Tinti. Invoking Africa’s brutally
violent and complex colonial histories in the film’s polyglot, hydra-headed title,
Rocha transposes his radical allegory of oppression from the Brazilian backlands of
his Cinema Novo classic Antonio das Mortes (1968) to the Congolese savanna. A
white-robed preacher wanders and sermonizes across African lands (in a streamof-consciousness performance by Léaud); European communists and CIA spies
conspire out of mutual self interest to engineer the appointment of an African
bourgeois to a puppet government presidency; and a revolutionary group marches
in exile. Rocha’s second feature film after fleeing Brazil’s military dictatorship, Der
Leone Have Sept Cabeças introduces intentionally disorienting new situations in
virtually every scene, the result of a largely improvised production that cast
European actors, local villagers, and real guerilleros side-by-side. Newly restored
by Tempo Glauber and Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. In Portuguese and other
languages; English subtitles. 95 min.
7:00
I giorni contati. Directed by Elio Petri. 1962. Italy. Directed by Elio Petri.
Screenplay by Petri, Tonino Guerra, Carlo Romano. With Salvo Randone, Franco
Sportelli, Regina Bianchi, Lando Buzzanca, Paolo Ferrari. Never released in the
United States, I giorni contati is nonetheless considered Elio Petri’s first
masterpiece, anticipating The 10th Victim and Investigation of a Citizen Above
Suspicion. A remarkable fusion of neo-realism and symbolic, dream-like imagery,
the film (whose title is roughly translated as Numbered Days) begins when a
solitary plumber witnesses a man his own age die on a tram. Driven to make most
of his life, he abandons his job and wanders throughout the city—whose streets
are shot with an Antonioni-like existentialism—encountering old friends, a former
love, a young girl, and a street artist, but seemingly unable to shake off his sense
of anxiety and disillusionment. Preserved by the National Museum of Cinema,
Turin. Introduced by Alberto Barbera, Director of the National Museum of Cinema.
Turin, and Artistic Director of the Venice Film Festival. In Italian; English subtitles.
99 min. Introduced by Alberto Barbera.
Saturday, November 3
2:00
Anni difficili (Difficult Years). 1948. Italy. Directed by Luigi Zampa. Screenplay
by Vitaliano Brancati, Sergio Amidei, Franco Evangelisti, Enrico Fulchignoni. With
Umberto Spadaro, Massimo Girotti, Delia Scala. The postwar Italian writer-director
Luigi Zampa, who deserves a retrospective all his own, earned a reputation for
tough and uncompromising critiques of Italian society, exposing political
corruption, clerical abuses, wartime complicity, and class exploitation in the
Neorealist dramas Vivere in Pace (To Live in Peace) (1946), Anni difficili, and
Campagne a martello (The Bells Toll) (1949). Anni difficili opens in 1934 as a lowlevel government clerk is blackmailed by the local mayor into joining the Fascist
party, reluctantly casting his fate with the countless “ordinary” Italians who, out of
fear, complacency, ambition, and nostalgia, embraced Mussolini’s vainglorious
promises while choosing to ignore his crimes. Anni difficili was viciously attacked
by the right-wing press and caused a national scandal, but enjoyed a successful
U.S. release in 1950, with prominent progressives Arthur Miller and John Garfield
providing voiceover narration for the English-language version. Preserved by the
National Museum of Cinema, Turin. In Italian; English subtitles. 113 min.
5:00
GIOVANNI PASTRONE AND PINA MENICHELLI: THE ITALIAN FEMME
FATALE
Le Spectre rouge (The Red Spectre). 1907. France. Directed by Segundo de
Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca. A mad scientist with a skeletal face, horns, and a cape
performs demonic experiments on young women in an underground lair. One of
the first horror films and still one of the creepiest, Le Spectre rouge is a triumph of
early special effects by Segundo de Chomón, hired by Pathé Frères to compete
with the highly innovative films being made by Georges Méliès at Star Film.
Preserved by the National Museum of Cinema, Turin. Approx. 9 min.
Tigre Reale (Royal Tigress). 1916. Italy. Directed by Giovanni Pastrone (under
the pseudonym Piero Fosco). Screenplay by Giovanni Verga, based on his novel.
Cinematography by Segundo de Chomón, Giovanni Tomatis. With Pina Menichelli,
Alberto Nepoti, Febo Mari. A diva in the Art Nouveau mode of Sarah Bernhardt,
Pina Menichelli was to Italy what Musidora was to France in Feuillade’s Les
Vampires: a ferocious seductress capable of bringing headstrong men to their
knees. Menichelli achieved instant fame in the two features directed by her soonto-be husband Pastrone following his wildly popular Cabiria (1914)—Il Fuoco
(1915, screening later this evening) and Tigre Reale, adapted by the great Sicilian
realist Giovanni Verga from his 1875 novel, in which a sly Russian countess
cuckolds her husband by carrying on a torrid affair with an Italian diplomat.
Preserved by the National Museum of Cinema, Turin. Italian intertitles;
simultaneous English accompaniment. Approx. 79 min. Silent, with piano
accompaniment by Philip Carli.
7:30
En avant la musique (Music, Forward!). 1907. France. Directed by Segundo de
Chomón. With Julienne Mathieu. A master of magical effects, Segundo de Chomón
animates music notes using people’s tiny heads and dancing bodies. Approx. 3
min.
La belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty). 1908. France. Directed by Albert
Capellani, Lucien Nonguet. Cinematography by Segundo de Chomón. A delicately
stencil-colored rendition of the Charles Perrault fairy tale, ambitious in its lavish
sets and effects. Approx. 15 min.
Il Fuoco (The Fire). 1915. Italy. Written and directed by Giovanni Pastrone
(under the pseudonym Piero Fosco). Cinematography by Segundo de Chomón.
With Pina Menichelli, Febo Mari. Forming a diptych with Tigre Reale (screening on
Saturday, November 3, 5:00), Il Fuoco stars pioneering Turin-based filmmaker
Giovanni Pastrone’s wife, the electrifying Pina Menichelli, as a sensuous femme
fatale. “When writing a poem inspired by the sunset, [Menichelli] spies a young
painter who seems to come close to capturing (with her help) the right tinge of
red, and proceeds to seduce him. She is a practiced predator. Her owl headgear,
clenched teeth, and parted lips reveal an animal instinct to hunt but not to devour
her prey. Rather, her pleasure is to pounce on her little field mouse of a painter,
toy with him, and then toss him away. After she orchestrates his creation of a
masterpiece with her as its subject—a daring and kitsch nude portrait modeled on
Cabanel's The Birth of Venus—she will have no further use for him" (Linda
Williams, Pordenone Silent Film Festival catalogue, 2010). All films preserved by
the National Museum of Cinema, Turin. Italian intertitles; simultaneous English
translation. Approx. 51 min. Program approx. 69 min. Silent, with piano
accompaniment by Philip Carli.
Sunday, November 4
1:00
Sekretar’ Rajkoma (The District Secretary). 1942. USSR. Directed by Ivan
Pyr’ev. Screenplay by Iosif Pruit. With Vasilij Vanin, Michail Astangov, Marina
Ladynina. Soviet genre director Ivan Pyr’ev’s first war movie, made while the
German army continued its advance into the Russian heartland, is a grim and
resolute partisan drama, if not without its lighter moments. The dramatic opening
concerns the destruction of a power plant to keep it from enemy hands;
thereafter, the sturdy partisans, who include Pyr’ev’s wife and leading lady Marina
Ladynina, contend with spies and wreckers, as well as the German occupying
army. It is with this movie that Pyr’ev showed himself to be a master of
choreographed mass action as well as patriotic agitprop. As noted by Denise J.
Youngblood in her history of Soviet war films, The District Secretary is “a rousing
and entertaining movie from a director who could easily have made a Hollywood
career for himself.” Preserved by Cinémathéque de Toulouse. In Russian; English
subtitles. 91 min.
3:30
V Šest’ Časov Večera Posle Vojny (At Six O’Clock in the Evening After The
War). 1944. USSR. Directed by Ivan Pyr’ev. Screenplay by Viktor Gusev. With
Marina Ladynina, Evgenij Samojlov, Ivan Ljubeznov, Anastasija Lysak. Ivan Pyr’ev
mixed his two genres—war films and socialist realist operettas—to delirious effect
in his 1944 masterpiece At Six O’Clock in the Evening After the War, made after
the turning of the tide at Stalingrad. While Hollywood produced the spectacular
This Is The Army (1943), the Soviets had this more modest and heartfelt moralebooster that, in detailing the off-and-on romance between a soldier and a
kindergarten teacher, includes scenes of the victory to come. The popular star
Marina Ladynina suggests a robust Jeanette Macdonald, even as Pyr’ev contrives
some Lubitsch-like transitions between dialogue and song. The result is a movie of
large emotions, formal delicacy, and heartbreaking sense of loss, with a romantic
ending worthy of Frank Borzage. Preserved by La Biennale di Venezia ASAC, and
Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan. In Russian; English subtitles. 97 min.
6:00
The Spanish Dancer. 1923. USA. Directed by Herbert Brenon. Silent, with piano
accompaniment by Donald Sosin. Approx. 105 min. (See Wednesday, October 31,
7:00.)
Monday, November 5
4:30
A opção ou As Rosas da estrada (The Option). 1981. Brazil. Written and
directed by Ozualdo Candeias. With Carmem Angélica, Nere di Passi, Julia Veloso.
Combining documentary and staged action, The Option centers on a group of rural
women who cut sugar cane and live in ramshackle highway neighborhoods. For
many, their only escape to a potentially better life is through prostitution.
Candeias, a former truck driver, offers a deeply felt vision of these communities
based on firsthand experience. Shot in stark black and white at a time when most
Brazilian productions were in color, The Option powerfully unfolds in a few nearly
wordless movements and poetic abstractions. A culmination of Candeias’
preoccupation with marginality and his craft as a filmmaker (in addition to
directing, he also shot, edited, wrote, and acted in the film), The Option received
an unexpected plaudit in the form of a Bronze Leopard from the Locarno Film
Festival. Preserved by Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo. In Portuguese; English
subtitles. 88 min.
6:45
Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças. 1970. Italy/France/Congo-Brazzaville. Directed
by Glauber Rocha. In Portuguese and other languages; English subtitles. 95 min.
(See Friday, November 2, 4:30.)
Wednesday, November 7
4:30
Anni difficili (Difficult Years). 1948. Italy. Directed by Luigi Zampa. In Italian;
English subtitles. 113 min. (See Saturday, November 3, 2:00.)
Thursday, November 8
4:00
Johnny Cool. 1963. USA. Directed by William Asher. Screenplay by Joseph
Landon. With Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, Richard Anderson. This key,
largely-forgotten gangster film, co-produced by then presidential brother-in-law
Peter Lawford, featuring pre-Bewitched Elizabeth Montgomery, and enlivened with
a number of Rat Pack cameos (Joey Bishop, Mort Sahl, and Sammy Davis, Jr., who
also provides the title song) looks forward to both Point Blank and The Godfather.
Johnny Cool traces its antihero’s career from child partisan, to Sicilian social
bandit, to suavely robotic Mafia hit man, stalking through New York skyscrapers
and Las Vegas casinos to eliminate his don’s rivals. “America is defined by
Johnny’s cool acts of violence,” Lawrence Alloway wrote on the occasion of the
movie’s 1969 screening at MoMA. “Johnny Cool is a harsh movie that anticipates
later so-called exploitation movies, both in its unrelenting violence and in its sub-
theme of the sexuality of violence.” Preserved print courtesy MGM/UA and Park
Circus. 103 min.
20 Years of Viennale Trailers: From Godard to Weerasethakul. 1995-2012.
Austria. Directed by Martin Arnold, Bruce Baillie, James Benning, Stan Brakhage,
Lèos Carax, Jem Cohen, Gustav Deutsch, Ernie Gehr, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken
Jacobs, David Lynch, Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas, Matthias Müller, Peter
Tscherkassky, Agnès Varda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Celebrating its fiftieth
anniversary, the Viennale remains one of the world’s most innovative and
discriminating film festivals. Since 1992, the festival has commissioned
contemporary cinema’s greatest artists—a pantheon that almost literally runs from
A to Z—to make one-minute trailers. The result has been a series of exquisite
miniatures—some of them delicate, some subversive, but all of them inimitably
true to the filmmakers who made them. The program ends with one of Chris
Marker’s last films, an ironic encomium of cinema’s “perfect viewer,”
demonstrating that even at the approach of death, Marker never lost his sting.
Preserved by Viennale. 20 min.
7:00
Right On! 1970. USA. Produced by Woodie King, Jr. Directed by Herbert Danska.
With Gylan Kain, David Nelson, Felipe Luciano. Described as “a conspiracy of
ritual, street theater, soul music and cinema," Right On! is a pioneering concert
film, a compelling record of radical Black sentiment in 1960s America, and a
precursor of the Hip Hop revolution in musical culture. Shot guerilla-style on the
streets and rooftops of lower Manhattan, it features the original Last Poets
performing twenty-eight numbers adapted from their legendary Concept-East
Poetry appearance at New York’s Paperback Theater in 1969. Opening almost
simultaneously with Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,
Right On! was described by its producer as “the first ‘totally black film’” making
“no concession in language and symbolism to white audiences.” Rarely screened
for over thirty years, To Save and Project presents the world premiere of the
Museum's new restoration, made from the recently recovered 35mm negative.
Restored by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund
for Film Preservation and Paul Newman (San Francisco). Introduced by Danska,
King, Jr., and others
Friday, November 9
4:30
Mirage. 1965. USA. Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Screenplay by Peter Stone.
With Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau. One of the original Hollywood
Ten, Edward Dmytryk returned to his roots (as it were), with this leftish noir,
based on a 1951 “anti-fascist mystery” novel by Howard Fast—who had also been
imprisoned for his political convictions—an amnesia tale steeped in nuclear
paranoia and fear of the corporate state. One of the last movies that Universal
would make in black and white, Mirage has been unfairly neglected—although it
was a harbinger of Hollywood’s mid ‘60s New Wave. The movie’s premise evokes
the Hitchcock of North By Northwest while the montage shows the influence of
Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Given the sense of druggy disassociation,
it’s like an episode of Mad Men written by Philip K. Dick. Preserved by NBC
Universal Distribution. 108 min.
7:15
Breathdeath. 1963. USA. Directed by Stan Vanderbeek. Working in the aftermath
of the Cuban Missile Crisis, pioneering collage animator Stan Vanderbeek
imagined the end of the world in this comic assemblage—one of the most
popular underground movies of the mid 1960s. 14 min.
Twilight’s Last Gleaming. 1977. USA. Directed by Robert Aldrich. Screenplay by
Ronald M. Cohen, Edward Huebsch. With Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Roscoe
Lee Browne. Twilight’s Last Gleaming is a post-Watergate film with intimations of
early 1960s Cold War crisis. Burt Lancaster, starring in his fourth movie with
director Robert Aldrich, reprises his Seven Days in May role, this time from the
left, playing a crazily idealistic Air Force general who occupies an American missile
silo and threatens to launch nine nuclear-equipped ICBMs unless the president
(Charles Durning) comes clean on the subterfuge that got the country involved in
Vietnam. Aldrich stokes the suspense with elaborate use of split-screen
simultaneous action but Twilight’s Last Gleaming is even more effective in
subverting generic conventions and audience expectations. Released a few weeks
into Jimmy Carter’s presidency, this alarmingly pessimistic and at times darkly
humorous movie found scant support at the box office. Preserved by
Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg. 146 min.
Saturday, November 10
2:00
A opção ou As Rosas da estrada (The Option). 1981. Brazil. Written and
directed by Ozualdo Candeias. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 88 min. (See
Monday, November 5, 4:30.)
5:00
Sekretar’ Rajkoma (The District Secretary). 1942. USSR. Directed by Ivan
Pyr’ev. In Russian; English subtitles, 91 min. (See Sunday, November 4, 1:00.)
7:30
V Šest’ Časov Večera Posle Vojny (At Six O’Clock in the Evening After The
War). 1944. USSR. Directed by Ivan Pyr’ev. In Russian; English subtitles. 97 min.
(See Sunday, November 4, 3:30.)
Sunday, November 11
12:45
Mirage. 1965. USA. Directed by Edward Dmytryk.108 min. (See Friday,
November 9, 4:30.)
3:15
Johnny Cool. 1963. USA. Directed by William Asher. 103 min.
20 Years of Viennale Trailers: From Godard to Weerasethakul. 1995-2012.
Austria. Directed by Martin Arnold, Bruce Baillie, James Benning, Stan Brakhage,
Lèos Carax, Jem Cohen, Gustav Deutsch, Ernie Gehr, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken
Jacobs, David Lynch, Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas, Matthias Müller, Peter
Tscherkassky, Agnès Varda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 20 min. (See Thursday,
November 8, 4:00.)
6:15
I giorni contati. Directed by Elio Petri. In Italian; English subtitles. 99 min. (See
Friday, November 2, 7:00.)
Monday, November 12
4:00
Breathdeath. 1963. USA. Directed by Stan Vanderbeek. 14 min.
Twilight’s Last Gleaming. 1977. USA. Directed by Robert Aldrich. 146 min. (See
Friday, November 9, 7:15.)