Goings On: Black Superheroes and More
New York. First, we look past the new few days with a few lineup announcements. EW’s Clark Collis reports on Pacino’s Way, a retrospective of over twenty-five films, “the majority screening on 35 mm prints,” that will run at the Quad Cinema from March 14 through 29.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has unveiled the lineup for the third annual Neighboring Scenes, “a seventeen-film showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema,” running from February 28 through March 4.
And Stranger Than Fiction, the weekly documentary series hosted by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen and presented by IFC Center, has announced that nine titles will roll out during its winter season from Tuesday through March 27.
To the New York Times, where Ben Kenigsberg spotlights Crimes of Passion: The Erotic Thriller, opening today at the Quad and running through February 17, and Documentarists for a Day, opening today and running through February 20 at Anthology Film Archives. Elisa Wouk Almino has more on Documentarists at Hyperallergic, focusing on Agnès Varda’s Black Panthers (1968) and Murs Murs (1980). And at Screen Slate, Caroline Golum writes about Shohei Imamura’s “post-modern docudrama” A Man Vanishes (1967).
“Filled with lovely natural landscapes that have been meticulously framed and photographed, Legend of the Mountain [1979] is often a visual ravishment,” writes Manohla Dargis in the NYT. “And while King Hu certainly likes to move the camera—it sweeps, swoops and sometime breaks into a near-run—he also likes to linger on images as if encouraging you to admire their compositional harmony.” Today through Wednesday at the Metrograph; more from Sean Gilman in the Notebook.
“Before Black Panther there was . . . an entire alternative cinematic history of black screen heroes who challenged establishment power structures through their sheer existence.” From today through February 18, BAMcinématek presents Fight the Power: Black Superheroes on Film. Have a look at Nathan Gelgud’s trading cards, and then another at Posteritati’s gallery of posters for films in the series.
Ongoing: 60s Verité at Film Forum, Martin Scorsese Presents Republic Rediscovered: New Restorations from Paramount Pictures at MoMA, and Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories at the Metrograph.
Los Angeles. Tomorrow night, Kino Slang presents Jacques Tourneur’s The Boss Didn’t Say Good Morning (1937) and Boris Barnet and Konstantin Yudin’s The Wrestler and the Clown (1957) at the Echo Park Film Center.
Working Girls: America’s Career Women on Screen opens today at the Billy Wilder Theater and runs through March 24. Stephen Saito’s interviewed programmer KJ Relth: “‘I don’t want to martyr myself, but there’s so much research and a lot of watching and digging and consideration,’ Relth said recently during a rare moment away from scouring the globe for 35 mm prints, writing program notes and securing the last-minute confirmation of guests such as Sigourney Weaver, who will be appearing in conversation with the Los Angeles Times’ Jen Yamato this Friday”—tonight!—“to discuss Working Girl to launch the series.”
And Nathaniel Bell rounds up more local goings on in the LA Weekly.
Chicago. The twenty-eighth annual Festival of Films from Iran opens tomorrow at the Gene Siskel Film Center and runs through March 1.
And tomorrow, Monday, and Wednesday, the Center will present a new restoration of Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995), a “bold, epic farce of the horrors of war through fifty years past the end of World War II in former Yugoslavia,” as Ray Pride writes for Newcity.
“Dodes'ka-den (1970), which screens from 35-millimeter this Sunday at 7pm at Doc Films, might be described as Akira Kurosawa’s most Italian film,” suggests Ben Sachs in the Reader. “The exuberant, if grimy, depiction of lower-class life sometimes recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini, while the episodic structure, broad humor, and sentimentality evoke the films of Federico Fellini. And for some of the exterior shots, Kurosawa and crew members painted their physical surroundings so that they would appear especially colorful, a technique that Michelangelo Antonioni had tried out in Red Desert (1964). Yet for all these commonalities, Dodes'ka-den remains intensely personal; its central theme of finding refuge in dreams reflects the joy Kurosawa experienced in making movies.”
Austin.Robert Sims gets Austin Film Society lead film programmer Lars Nilsen talking about the AFS’s February program (37’19”).
Seattle. The Children's Film Festival is running at Northwest Film Forum through February 10, and in the Stranger,Joule Zelman recommends finding a kid or two to take: “No disrespect to Pixar and friends, but if you limit young folks’ filmic diets to mainstream American fare, you’re neglecting an entire universe of diverse, exciting, and ingenious movie-making from around the world. Such is the philosophy of the thirteen-years-running festival, which, for this edition, is screening shorts and features from every inhabited continent.”
Portland. The lineup and schedule are now set for the forty-first Portland International Film Festival, running from February 15 through March 1.
San Rafael. Today through Sunday, as part of the global celebration of the 100th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman’s birth, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center will present a Tribute to Liv Ullmann, and she’ll be there. “Bergman was in his forties, twenty years older than her when they met,” notes Richard Von Busack in the Pacific Sun. “He was controlling and forbidding, and was as capable of locking himself up in his study as he was of locking the doors on his actresses. Ullmann’s account of their life in Liv and Ingmar [the 2012 documentary by Dheeraj Akolkar] describes how he almost froze her and burned her alive on the same shoot—it was for 1968’s Shame, probably a movie worth dying for.”
Toronto. The TIFF Cinematheque series Out of the Past: The Films of Robert Mitchum is on through March 4, and before writing up his appreciation, writer and director Simon Ennis passes along Michael Madsen’s Mitchum story.
Tomorrow, Colin Geddes’s KinoVortex presents a new 4K restoration of Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer (2001).
Also on at TIFF, but through February 25, is Safety Not Guaranteed: A Century of Harold Lloyd.Alicia Fletcher: “Where Chaplin made audiences weep as much as laugh with his fusion of comedy and tragedy, and Buster Keaton astonished as much as amused with his awe-inspiring stunt work and otherworldly, stone-faced stoicism, Lloyd was timid yet an indefatigable go-getter, a resourceful screw-up who was relatable and inspirational at the same time. And while those two other comic geniuses were the whole show in their films, Lloyd’s Glasses Character, in his unending quest for social acceptance, derived more of his humor from his interactions with other characters—particularly the women he ardently pursued.”
London. From today through Sunday, a new restoration of Franz Osten’s Shiraz: A Romance of India (1928) is screening at BFI Southbank.
Berlin. The Berlinale Talents program of twenty-five public talks and five screenings is now complete. Among the participants this year are Christian Petzold and Barbara Auer (Transit), Tom Tykwer, David and Nathan Zellner, Lucile Hadžihalilović, Lav Diaz, Josephine Decker, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Gus Van Sant, and João Pedro Rodrigues.
The Berlinale, whose sixty-eighth edition runs from February 15 through 25, has also announced its Generation,First Feature, and Glashütte Original – Documentary Award juries as well as the lineup for Berlinale Goes Kiez, a program that brings some of the festival’s films to the far flung neighborhoods of the city.
“Lost Films Found” is the theme of the Magical History Tour this month at the Arsenal, which is also presenting a Tribute to István Szabó through Thursday.
Paris. The Cinémathèque française’s Chantal Akerman retrospective is running through March 2.
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