***MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9***
LOSING GROUND, Kathleen Collins
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Finally receiving a long overdue theatrical run, Losing Ground is one of the first feature films written and directed by a black woman, and a groundbreaking romance exploring women’s sexuality, modern marriage, and the life of artists and scholars. But most of all, it is a great film, one that firmly belongs in the canon of American independent cinema in the 1980s. Sara (Seret Scott) is a philosophy professor and her husband Victor (Bill Gunn) is a painter, and with their personal and professional lives at a crossroads, they leave the city for the country, experiencing a reawakening, both together and separately. Also featuring Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead), the film is honest, funny, and wise, and a testament to the remarkable playwright, professor, and filmmaker Kathleen Collins, as well as the immense talent that was lost when she passed away in 1988 at age 46. A Milestone Films release.
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THAT MAN OF MINE, Leonard Anderson
MoMA
A charming musical about an African American music-production company trying to put together a show, featuring The International Sweethearts of Rhythm and a young and alluring Ruby Dee. Among the film’s treasures is its depiction of African American women as beautiful, intelligent, and resourceful—so far from the usual Hollywood studio portrayals.
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AN EVENING WITH BARBARA MOSS
MoMA
In conjunction with Carte Blanche: Women’s Film Preservation Fund, WFPF cofounder Barbara Moss discusses the unique characteristics of the WFPF, and her own work as a filmmaker. A Crime to Fit the Punishment (1982), which Moss codirected with Stephen Mack, investigates the 1954 labor film Salt of the Earth(which is in the MoMA collection) and the attempts by Hollywood and the U.S. government to shut down its production. Salt of the Earth was made during the controversial days of Cold War paranoia, the McCarthy witch hunt, and the dreadful Hollywood blacklist. Following a screening of A Crime to Fit the Punishment, Barbara Moss, Stephen Mack and Lee Grant join Anne Morra, Associate Curator in the Department of Film, for a discussion.
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IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, John Carpenter
BAM
Investigating the disappearance of popular horror novelist Sutter Cane, insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) follows Cane’s trail into a remote town that uncannily resembles the setting of his books. The capstone of John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness) finds the director hewing close to his inspiration, the work of H.P. Lovecraft, peeling back the everyday to reveal the darkly fantastic beneath.
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MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, Frank Lloyd
Film Forum
“Missster Christiiiian!!!” Laughton’s bellow as Captain Bligh launched a thousand imitations, while Clark Gable set bare-chested he-man records as Fletcher Christian, in this adaptation of Nordhoff and Hall’s novelization of the 1789 South Seas uprising. Best Picture Oscar, with Laughton taking the NY Film Critics’ Circle prize, his stentorian kiss-off on a bobbing boat a memorable highlight.
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REMBRANDT, Alexander Korda
Film Forum
Moody character portrait of the great painter and “one of the very few filmed recreations of an artist that actually convince” (Simon Callow), with Laughton at his simplest and most naturalistic, reading the Bible aloud, bowling at night with candles on the pins, and finding brief happiness with Lanchester’s Hendrickje, amid Vincent Korda’s sets and Georges Périnal’s Rembrandtian photography.
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***TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10***
TROUBLE IN PARADISE, Ernst Lubitsch
MoMA
Lily and Gaston are a couple of thieves—but charming ones—who team up to fleece Marianne, a perfume factory owner. Gaston begins to fall for Marianne, but soon realizes he would not be happy in her world.
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PERSONAL PROBLEMS, Bill Gunn
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
“What happens when a group of unbankable individuals tell their stories? Actors who have final say over their speaking parts? A director who was found ‘too difficult’ for Hollywood? A composer who would not submit the hack soundtracks required by the industry? A black male lead who was not black enough? A black actress who was not light enough? An actor who had been retired because he belonged to another era? A cinematographer who chose art over expediency? An unmarketable co-actor who didn’t look like Clark Gable or a male version of Vanessa Williams? Two producers, having no experience, had the audacity to organize a production with the amount of money that Hollywood spends on catering? Maybe less.
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THIS LAND IS MINE, Jean Renoir
Film Forum
Nerd teacher Charles Laughton blubbers during an air raid, yearns for Maureen O’Hara, truckles to nerve- ridden collaborator George Sanders, shrinks from Nazi Walter Slezak, but finds a kind of heroism at last, in Renoir’s study of Occupation guilts.
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MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN, John Carpenter
BAM
When a lab accident renders him invisible, a stock-analyst (Chase) must go on the run from the CIA, intent on using him as an espionage tool, in this sci-fi comedy. Carpenter makes spectacular use of a $40 million dollar budget to unleash a torrent of breathtaking special effects: the invisible man chews bubble gum; his disembodied pants skitter down the street; and, in one particularly dazzling scene, his figure is outlined in shimmering raindrops.
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FOREVER AND A DAY, René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Robert Stevenson, et al
Film Forum
140 years in the life of a London house, a Brits in the U.S. propaganda piece featuring 78 stars and 7 directors, with highlight 1850s butler Laughton directing two bumbling plumbers, Cedric Hardwicke and Buster Keaton.
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GROWING UP FEMALE, Julia Reichert
MoMA
In this examination of the socialization of American women, girls and women ages five to 34 were interviewed about their concepts of love, marriage, motherhood, and advertising in popular culture. The answers are surprising—and even shocking. In 1971 Julia Reichert toured the film from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C., by bus.
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TRIAL ON THE ROAD, Aleksei Guerman
Anthology Film Archives
“Banned for fifteen years, Guerman’s solo directorial debut, set during WWII, marries the muscular dynamics of the war film with a more searing, philosophical approach to the thin line between official ‘heroes’ and ‘traitors.’ A former Nazi collaborator rejoins his Russian brethren to fight against the Germans; for some partisans, he is and always will be a traitor, but others allow him to prove himself – and his commitment – on the battlefield. For Guerman, basic human concepts like loyalty, decency, and trust underline the film’s train-like narrative force and breathtaking black-and-white images; government censors, however, angered over the ‘immorality’ of portraying a former traitor as a hero, accused him of de-heroicizing Soviet history. […] Filmed in 1971, the film was finally released in 1986, during a political thaw.” –Jason Sanders, Pacific Film Archive
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***WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11***
PRINCE OF DARKNESS, John Carpenter
BAM
Carpenter returned to his indie horror roots with this atmospheric chiller in which a Catholic priest uncovers the long-dormant spawn of Satan deep within the bowels of a Los Angeles church. “Carpenter’s most underrated, possibly best feature” (Slant) deploys dramatic camerawork, one of the director’s finest scores, and head-spinningly surreal imagery worthy of Buñuel to generate a relentless mood of creeping terror.
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BLACK JOURNAL PROGRAM,
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
The first nationally broadcast black newsmagazine, produced by William Greaves and Lou Potter and hosted by Wali Saddiq and Greaves, was home to a who’s who of producers, directors, editors and cinematographers—Madeline Anderson, Kent Garrett, St. Clair Bourne, Charles Hobson, to name only a few—working in a diversity of styles: interviews, skits, commentary, investigative reporting, all with a degree of creativity and experimentation still unrivaled for TV.
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THE TOE TACTIC, Emily Hubley
MoMA
Mona Peek’s father has just passed away and her life is seemingly in shambles. In this unique live-action/animated feature, Mona and her friends are being manipulated by a card game that is happening in the animated world—among a group of dogs!
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ROMEO + JULIET, Baz Luhrmann
Nitehawk Cinema
Switching out swords for guns and Elizabethan garb for jeans and Hawaiian shirts, Baz Luhrmann’s modernization of Shakespeare’s play put the director on the worldwide map. Wildly stylized with some remarkable set pieces, Romeo + Juliet is Shakespeare for the MTV set, making for an interesting slice of 90’s culture. The film attempts to elevate its aesthetic by retaining Shakespeare’s dialogue while keeping its audience pleased with a fresh cast (Leonardo Di Caprio, Claire Danes, Brian Dennehy) and a contemporary soundtrack from The Cardigans, Radiohead and Garbage.
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ST. MARTIN’S LANE, Tim Whelan
Film Forum
Busker Laughton, befriending runaway orphan and sometime pickpocket Vivien Leigh, makes her part of his street-performing quartet, but when they meet posh songwriter Rex Harrison, who gets the Big Break? Pioneering location shooting on the streets of pre-war London, with pre-GWTW Leigh. Aka Sidewalks of London.
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THE CRUZ BROTHERS AND MISS MALLOY, Kathleen Collins
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Kathleen Collins’s first film is an adaptation of a series of short stories by Henry H. Roth about three young Puerto Rican men whose lives are watched over by their father’s ghost. New York’s Rockland County serves as the setting for the magic that the urban-born trio encounters when they meet Miss Malloy, an elderly widow who owns a house in need of some tender loving care. Never released theatrically, airing only once on PBS, and then disappearing from view, the film has been rescued and remastered by the filmmaker’s daughter, Nina. Screening with a 30-minute video interview with Kathleen Collins. A Milestone Film Release.
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THE BEACHCOMBER, Erich Pommer
Film Forum
“Here we go gathering nuts in May,” trills prim missionary Elsa Lanchester to the natives, but what’s she gonna do with drunken, sponging, womanizing bum Charles Laughton? A Somerset Maugham African Queen in the Indies — with stage directing great Tyrone Guthrie as Lanchester’s brother. Aka Vessel of Wrath.
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AN EVENING WITH MADELINE ANDERSON
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
Madeline Anderson’s classic documentary I Am Somebodydepicts the strength of, and the hardships endured by, a striking group of African-American women in Charleston, South Carolina. The program also features Anderson’s first documentary, as well as work from Black Journal. “I was determined to do what I was going to do at any cost. I kept plugging away. Whatever I had to do, I did it,” she said of her career.
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***THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12***
DARK STAR, John Carpenter
BAM
A group of astronauts is assigned the tedious task of exploding planets to make way for the human colonization of space. Their job gets exciting when an overly self-aware bomb refuses to drop from the bomb bay, threatening to self destruct and blow them all to kingdom come. This very funny sci-fi flick, co-written, starring, and edited by O’Bannon (who went on to write Alien and other horror/sci-fi clasics), features a mischievous alien that looks like a beach ball, a sexy computer, and a bomb with a God complex.
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I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE, Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
James Baldwin retraces his time in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, reflecting with his trademark brilliance and insight on the passage of 20 years. From Selma and Birmingham, to the battleground beaches of St. Augustine, Florida, with Chinua Achebe, and back north for a visit to Newark with Amiri Baraka.
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BEYOND THE VEIL, Eve Arnold
MoMA
A rare and eye-opening look into the workings of an actual Dubai harem, this is the only film made by Magnum photographer Eve Arnold. Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
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THE STUDENT NURSES, Stephanie Rothman
MoMA
Rothman is the first woman to direct a Roger Corman production. This 1970 release was the first in a popular Nurses cycle of exploitation films that others directed following Rothman’s lead. Despite working within the confines of the exploitation genre, Rothman introduced feminist ideas and subjects into her work.
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HELL IN THE PACIFIC, John Boorman
Film Forum
Stranded on a deserted Pacific island, WWII soldiers Marvin and Mifune face off – often in stark, wordless confrontations — in this metaphysical tale, gorgeously photographed in widescreen by DP Conrad Hall.
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REASSEMBLAGE, Trinh T. Minh-ha
MoMA
The first film made by Vietnamese émigré Trinh T. Minh-ha focuses on farming in rural Senegal. Preserved with support from NYWIFT’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund.
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THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP, Marion Gering
Film Forum
At a North African submarine base, captain Charles Laughton is so insanely jealous of wife Tallulah Bankead’s supposed affair with Cary Grant that he drives her right in to the arms of Grant’s replacement… Gary Cooper. A flop then as a new Garbo, Bankhead’s tense, frustrated performance looks modern today; with wild disaster film climax.
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THE LONG NIGHT, Woodie King, Jr.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
One night in the life of a young boy on the street, encountering the denizens of mid-1970s Harlem, while commenting on Vietnam, marital discord, paternal relationships, substance abuse, schooling, and unemployment—in short, the life of an American family.
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THE OLD DARK HOUSE, James Whale
Film Forum
In the rainy Welsh countryside, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, and Melvyn Douglas seek refuge in a creepy mansion, to be greeted by hulking mute butler Boris Karloff and broadly-accented Laughton, and with household head Ernest Thesiger presiding over “the most awful dinner party in the history of the movies” (Simon Callow). “Nothing better in this vein has been done before or since.” – William K. Everson
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EC: WARHOL / WATSON & WEBBER / WHITNEY
Anthology Film Archives
Andy Warhol
EAT (1963, 35 min, 16mm, b&w, silent)
James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928, 13 min, 16mm, b&w, silent)
John & James Whitney
FILM EXERCISES 1-5 (1943-45, 18 min, 16mm)
James Whitney
LAPIS (1963-66, 10 min.
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