The Museum of Modern Art
Film Listings - October 2008
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019
www.moma.org

MoMA Presents: S. Pierre Yameogo’s Delwende

October 8–14

The New York theatrical premiere of S. Pierre Yameogo’s Delwende is accompanied by the exhibition Some African Films from the Collection—a selection of works about Africa by filmmakers from Africa.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.

Delwende. 2005. Burkina Faso/France/Switzerland. Written and directed by S. Pierre Yameogo. With Blandine Yameogo, Claire Ilboudo, Celestin Zongo. Yameogo’s sixth feature challenges patriarchal traditions. A young woman is raped and married off, while her mother, accused of being a “soul eater”—a malignant force within the community—is expelled from the village. The daughter, feisty and determined, sets off to find her mother. Courtesy New Yorker Films. In More, French; English subtitles. 89 min. New York premiere. Wednesday, October 8, 6:15; Thursday, October 9, 8:15; Friday, October 10, 6:00; Saturday, October 11, 2:00 & 6:00; Sunday, October 12, 2:00; Monday, October 13, 4:30. T2

MoMA Presents: Ken Jacobs’s Return to the Scene of the Crime

October 16–22

This weeklong premiere screening of Return to the Scene of the Crime is presented in conjunction with a program of other recent works by Ken Jacobs.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film.

Return to the Scene of the Crime. 2008. USA. Ken Jacobs. Jacobs’s return to a single scene from the 1905 short Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son—which he first disassembled in his 1969 masterpiece of the same name—could easily be titled “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Scene.” An avant-gardist’s comedy, Return roguishly riffs on thirteen distinct styles, revealing, distorting, interpreting, and even misinterpreting the hundreds of actions in a single scene—as painting, abstraction, allegory, and, ultimately, as ballet. It’s a wry, roving, and joyous ode to movies. 92 min. New York premiere. Thursday, October 16, 6:15 (T2); Friday, October 17, 6:00 (T2); Saturday, October 18, 1:00 (T2); Sunday, October 19, 2:00 (T2); Monday, October 20, 2:00 (T3); Wednesday, October 22, 8:00 (T2)

MoMA Presents: Amos Gitai’s News from Home/News from House

October 24–30

In conjunction with the exhibition Amos Gitai: Non-Fiction, the Department of Film presents the New York theatrical premiere of the director’s most recent documentary.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.

News from Home/News from House. 2006. Israel. Directed by Amos Gitai. With News from Home/News from House, Gitai completes a trilogy that began with House (1980) and continued with A House in Jerusalem (1998). This film explores the relationships among a West Jerusalem house’s past and present inhabitants, and between Israelis and Palestinians in a society where displacement is the norm. Abandoned in 1948 by its original owner, a Palestinian doctor, the house was later requisitioned by the Israeli government and has been home to Jewish-Algerian immigrants and a university professor, among others. In Hebrew, Arabic; English subtitles. 97 min. New York premiere. Friday, October 24, 7:00 (introduced by Gitai) (T2); Saturday, October 25, 3:15 (T2); Sunday, October 26, 2:30 (T3); Monday, October 27, 4:15 (T1); Wednesday, October 29, 8:00 (T1); Thursday, October 30, 8:30 (T2)

MoMA Presents: ContemporAsian

October 23–29

Asian cinema is fast becoming a cinema without borders. Digital filmmaking and international coproductions are rapidly transforming an industry in which the transnational flow of talent and resources—even between the U.S. and Asia—has become the norm. In the monthly exhibition ContemporAsian, MoMA showcases films that get little exposure, but which engage the various styles, histories, and changes in Asian

cinema. Films are presented in special weeklong engagements, allowing audiences the rare chance to enjoy undistributed gems on the big screen—and to experience the diversity and richness of Asian cinema in all its many forms.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, and William Phuan, independent curator, with additional support from Asian CineVision.

Tirador (Slingshot). 2007. Philippines. Directed by Brillante Mendoza. With Jiro Manio, Kristoffer King, Coco Martin. One of the most prolific and acclaimed directors of the Philippine New Wave, Mendoza has created another virtuoso exploration of the volatile Manila slums. The camerawork in this verité portrait of petty thieves and hustlers is fluid, sweeping, and seemingly untethered, as frantic as the overcrowded shacks and ditches it captures. Mendoza uses this hybrid fiction-essay not to judge the questionable acts of his fringe-dwelling characters, but to subtly implicate political and religious institutions as a source of their problems. In Tagalog; English subtitles. 86 min. Thursday, October 23, 6:00 (introduced by Mendoza) (T2); Friday, October 24, 9:00 (introduced by Mendoza) (T2); Saturday, October 25, 8:30 (T2); Sunday, October 26, 6:45 (T3); Monday, October 27, 4:30 (T2); Wednesday, October 29, 6:00 (T1)

Delwende and Some African Films from the Collection

October 5–13

The weeklong run of S. Pierre Yameogo’s Delwende is accompanied by a selection from MoMA’s collection of works about Africa by African filmmakers.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.

Rachida. 2002. Algeria. Directed by Yamina Bachir-Chouikh. With Ibtissem Djouadi, Bahia Rachedi, Rachida Messaouien. Rachida, a young Algerian schoolteacher, flees from the city to a remote village after having been a victim of terrorism—only to find that terrorism is something she cannot escape. In Arabic; English subtitles. 100 min. Sunday, October 5, 2:00; Thursday, October 9, 6:15. T2

Delwende. Wednesday, October 8, 6:15; Thursday, October 9, 8:15; Friday, October 10, 6:00; Saturday, October 11, 2:00 & 6:00; Sunday, October 12, 2:00; Monday, October 14, 4:30. T2

Bent Keltoum (Daughter of Keltoum). 2001. Algeria. Written and directed by Mehdi Charef. With Cylia Malki, Brahim Ben Salah, Baya Belal. Young Rallia, raised in Switzerland, travels to an isolated and barren Berber settlement in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria to find her biological mother. Her desperate search leads her on a journey of discovery—during which she learns about both her extended family and traditional Berber culture. In Arabic, French; English subtitles. 101 min. Wednesday, October 8, 8:00. T2

Njangaan. 1974. Senegal. Directed by Mahama Johnson Traoré. Written by Traoré and Cherif Adrame Seck. With Fatim Diagne, Mame N’Diaye, Mody Gueye. “Njangaan is the name given to children attending the Dara or the Koteb, the schools of Islamic teaching…. The Marabout (teachers) exploit the families in the name of religion, the children are not educated but become professional beggars, and are in fact a form of unpaid labor. In the film, my purpose is not to attack Islam but to reveal that religious ascendancy is so strong that even the present institutions do not dare to rise against it” (Traoré). In Wolof, French; English subtitles. 86 min. Friday, October 10, 8:00; Saturday, October 11, 8:00. T2

La Petite Vendeuse de soleil (The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun). 1999. Senegal/France/Switzerland/Germany. Written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. With Lissa Balera, Tayerou M’Baye. A hymn to the courage and ingenuity of street children, Mambéty’s last film follows a twelve-year-old paraplegic girl who successfully muscles in on a boy’s world—the selling of newspapers. In French, Wolof; English subtitles. 45 min.

Borom Sarret. 1963. Senegal/France. Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène. With Ly Abdoulaye and his horse Abouarah. Borom Sarret is widely recognized as Africa’s first fiction film by a black African director. After Senegal achieved independence, Dakar's central quarter was closed to horse-drawn carts for sanitary reasons and for fear of traffic congestion. Some drivers, however, were not aware of this new regulation. In French; English voice-over. 20 min. Saturday, October 11, 4:00; Monday, October 13, 8:15. T2

The Ball. 2001. Mozambique. Directed by Orlando Mesquita. Developed at a Sundance-cosponsored workshop in South Africa. A soccer match, improvised. 6 min.

Camera d’Afrique: Twenty Years of African Cinema. 1983. France/Tunisia. Written, directed, and produced by Férid Boughedir. Soon after many African countries gained independence from colonial rule in the 1960s, African filmmakers took hold of the camera that had been denied them for so long. With scarce financial means and no technical infrastructure, these pioneers created an indigenous cinema that transformed their societies. Boughedir, a Tunisian filmmaker, journalist, and university professor, enriches this documentary with film clips and illuminating interviews with such important directors as Ousmane Sembène (Senegal), Med Hondo (Mauritania), and Ola Balogun (Nigeria). In French; English subtitles. 95 min. Sunday, October 12, 4:00. T2

Mossane. 1996. Germany/Senegal. Directed by Safi Faye. With Abou Camara, Moussa Cissé, Mbaye Diagne, Alpha Diouf. Faye, perhaps the first woman to make films in West Africa (she completed her debut feature in 1975), trained as an ethnographer in France, but her films focus on rural life in Senegal. In Mossane, a beautiful young woman, betrothed at birth, defies tradition. In Wolof; English subtitles. 105 min. Monday, October 13, 6:30. T2

Canyon Cinema

October 6

The Department of Film presents a book signing and film screening to mark the recent publication of Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (University of California Press, 2008). The evening is dedicated to the memory of Canyon Cinema cofounder and seminal artist Bruce Conner, who died in July.

MacDonald’s lively, often first-person account uses interviews, poetry, experimental writing, drawings, and cartoons to capture a remarkable moment in American cultural history. In the 1960s, in the San Francisco Bay area, a small, backyard film exhibition and distribution collective emerged, eventually establishing itself as a major force in the development of independent cinema. MacDonald catches the spirit and changing times at Canyon Cinema, which was as influential and idiosyncratic as the filmmakers who ran it. The author signs copies of his book and introduces a selection of films by some of the founders and early driving forces of Canyon Cinema. All films are from the U.S.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film, with grateful thanks to Dominic Angerame, Director, Canyon Cinema.

Tung. 1966. Directed by Bruce Baillie. 5 min.

Waterfall. 1967. Directed by Chick Strand. 3 min.

Kirsa Nicholina. 1969. Directed by Gunvor Nelson. 16 min.

Oh Dem Watermelons. 1965. Directed by Robert Nelson. 11 min.

Valentine de las Sierras. 1968. Directed by Bruce Baillie. 10 min.

Antonia. 1967. Directed by Bruce Conner. 13 min.

Take Off. 1972. Directed by Gunvor Nelson. 10 min.

Kristallnacht. 1979. Directed by Chick Strand. 7 min.

Cosmic Ray. 1965. Directed by Bruce Conner. 4 min.

Program 79 min. Monday, October 6, 7:30 (introduced by Scott MacDonald). T2

Ken Jacobs: Filmmaker Extraordinaire

October 16–22

For more than fifty years, Ken Jacobs’s work has inspired the sense of awe and mystery that nineteenth-century audiences must have felt when confronting motion pictures for the first time. Jacobs’s lifelong project has been the aesthetic, social, and physical critique of projected images. Though he was the subject of a MoMA retrospective in 1996—along with several smaller exhibitions before and since—it is never quite possible to catch up with his prodigious output of ever-inventive visual and aural investigations into the world of images.

In this new century Jacobs has wholeheartedly embraced digital techniques, and his recent works—only some of which are presented here—explore the grain and frames of early films through his mastery of a full range of digital pyrotechnics. The exhibition features some of the freshest short films around, along with a daylong screening of the filmmaker’s no-budget magnum opus Star Spangled to Death, which, with its fierce political punch and Beat whimsy, is as relevant today as it was when it was commenced in 1956. Audiences will also have a full week to catch a screening of Jacobs’s most recent chef d’oeuvre, Return to the Scene of the Crime. All films are directed by Ken Jacobs and from the U.S.

Organized by Jytte Jensen, Curator, Department of Film.

Return to the Scene of the Crime. Thursday, October 16, 6:15 (T2); Friday, October 17, 6:00 (T2); Saturday, October 18, 1:00 (T2); Sunday, October 19, 2:00 (T2); Monday, October 20, 2:00 (T3); Wednesday, October 22, 8:00 (T2)

Nymph. 2007. A still-life-turned-action-comedy in which a group of men, themselves trapped in place, attempt to trap a woman. 2 min.

Let There Be Whistleblowers. 2005. Music by Steve Reich. Entrancing and trancelike; a train in light and darkness, increasingly abstracted. 18 min.

Krypton Is Doomed. 2005. Jacobs sci-fi: El Greco–like distortions accompanied by an evangelical Superman radio program. 34 min.

Capitalism: Child Labor. 2006. Jolting in every sense of the word, this short masterwork flickers between stereographic cards depicting Victorian-era child laborers, creating a portrait of standardized horrors, endlessly reproduced. 14 min.

Program 68 min. Thursday, October 16, 8:00; Wednesday, October 22, 6:00. T2

Razzle Dazzle, The Lost World. 2006–07. Jacobs remixes a one-minute-long 1903 Edison film of children on a merry-go-round, wrapping it in digital plasma both to attack a spectacle-consumed society heading toward apocalypse, and to recover an irrecoverable world of innocence. Razzle Dazzle is Jacobs’s visually and politically corrosive vision of paradise gone to hell—and a stunning testament to the myriad ways in which digital technology allows him to tear into images. 91 min. Friday, October 17, 8:00; Sunday, October 19, 4:00. T2

Star Spangled to Death. 1956–60/2003–04. A magnificent artifact of artistic and political living in 1950s New York, Star Spangled combines found-footage collage with Jacobs’s more-or-less staged filming, featuring Jack Smith as The Spirit Not of Life but of Living and Jerry Sims as Suffering. This social critique of a dumbed-down America, which took a half-century to complete, is constructed with incomparable style and whimsy. Program 440 min. (shown in two parts with a half-hour intermission). Saturday, October 18, 3:00. T2

Batiste Madalena and the Cinema of the 1920s

October 20, 2008–March 14, 2009

Presented in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Batiste Madalena: Hand-Painted Film Posters for the Eastman Theatre, 1924–1928, this series features a selection of films for which the artist designed posters. In advance of seeing the films themselves, and influenced by his passion for particular performers, Madalena would work from still photographs and press materials to create one-of-a-kind posters promoting his larger-than-life subjects—all on a scale that could be clearly seen from streetcars passing the theater’s poster vitrines. His work brings unexpected color and a new perspective to the iconic stars and films of silent cinema’s mature period.

Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, and Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film.

Sally of the Sawdust. 1925. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith. With W. C. Fields, Carol Dempster. Fields made his film debut in this sentimental adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Poppy, playing a con man who raises a sensitive orphan girl (Griffith protégé Dempster) to be a sideshow performer. Madalena’s posters present the film’s stars as naïve carnival entertainers in a series of juggling and dancing poses. Silent, with organ accompaniment by Ben Model. Approx. 117 min. Monday, October 20, 6:00. T1

Hotel Imperial. 1927. USA. Directed by Mauritz Stiller. With Pola Negri, James Hall. Swedish director Stiller brings a European sensibility and atmosphere to the setting of this Hollywood studio vehicle, written by Jules Furthman for Polish actress Negri, about a housemaid who hides a fugitive Hungarian officer from Russian soldiers during World War I. Although Negri gives one of her least glamorous performances in the film, Madalena’s poster features a flamboyant caricature that he had originally created to promote her 1923 feature The Spanish Dancer. Silent, with organ accompaniment by Ben Model. 80 min. Monday, October 20, 8:30; Wednesday, October 22, 7:00. T1

To Save and Project:

The Sixth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation

October 24–November 16

The sixth edition of To Save and Project, MoMA’s annual film preservation festival featuring preserved films from archives and studios around the world, opens with filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles introducing the Museum’s new restoration of his 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. This landmark of American independent cinema has been preserved with the generous financial support of The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Other October highlights include Marco Ferreri’s Dillinger Is Dead (1969), shown in a newly struck 35mm print from Janus Films. We celebrate our ongoing relationship with New York Women in Film and Television with two films preserved through its Women’s Film Preservation Fund: Leonard Anderson’s 1947 musical That Man of Mine, featuring a young Ruby Dee, who will appear after the screening in a discussion with historian Pearl Bowser; and Jacki Ochs’s The Secret Agent (1983), a documentary about Agent Orange. From the Swedish Film Institute comes Vilgot Sjöman’s controversial look at 1960s counterculture, I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), and from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia we present Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat’s Millions Like Us (1943), a wry, poignant depiction of life on the home front in wartime Britain. In addition, MoMA’s recent restoration of Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) will be screened, along with Michael Curtiz’s Jimmy the Gent (1934), starring James Cagney and Bette Davis, in a new 35mm print from The Library of Congress. Finally, we offer Frank Borzage’s late silent The River (1929) in a digital reconstruction completed by the Cinémathèque Suisse, the Cinémathèque Française, and the Svenska Filminstitutet.

Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator; Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator; and Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. 1971. USA. Produced, directed, written, edited, and music by Melvin Van Peebles. With Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert Scales, Rhetta Hughes, Mario Van Peebles. A picaresque tale of a black man on the run from the law, Sweetback was made on a shoestring budget with a technical virtuosity and narrative audacity that would influence independent and mainstream cinema, both here and in Europe, for years to come. Restored by MoMA from the original camera negative, with funding from The Film Foundation and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. 98 min. Friday, October 24, 6:00 (introduced by Melvin Van Peebles); Saturday, October 25, 12:30. T1

Millions Like Us. 1943. Great Britain. Written and directed by Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat. With Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson. The first directorial effort by Launder and Gilliat, the celebrated screenwriting team responsible for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich. Begun as a wartime documentary, Millions Like Us evolved into a humorous and poignant story of life on the home front, and a progressive look at British class differences and women in the workforce. Preserved by the National Film and Sound Archive (Canberra, Australia) from the original camera negative. 101 min. Friday, October 24, 8:30; Thursday, October 30, 7:30. T1

Jimmy the Gent. 1934. USA. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Screenplay by Bertram Millhauser. With James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alice White. In one of the great Warner Bros. pre-code pictures, Cagney—all machine-gun wit and jittery ambition—stars as a street-tough swindler who must clean up his act to win the affections of his secretary (Davis). Along the way, he exposes his rival as a fraud. Preserved by The Library of Congress from the original camera negative. 67 min. Saturday, October 25, 2:30; Thursday, October 30, 6:00. T1

The River. 1929. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Dwight Cummins, Philip Klein, from a novel by Tristram Tupper. With Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, Ivan Linow, Margaret Mann. Borzage’s sensual late-silent film of love and seduction is presented in a digital reconstruction that combines a forty-three-minute fragment (of the original eighty-four-minute film), a short clip originally cut by Swedish censors, and still photos from a variety of film archives—among them, Borzage’s private collection at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles—as well as explanatory texts inspired by the original scenario found at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A true archival collaboration, overseen by Hervé Dumont of the Cinémathèque Suisse. 55 min. Saturday, October 25, 4:00; Friday, October 31, 6:00. T1

Lady Windermere’s Fan. 1925. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Screenplay by Julian Josephson, from the play by Oscar Wilde. With Ronald Colman, Irene Rich, May McAvoy, Bert Lytell. Lubitsch translated Oscar Wilde’s witty society comedy to the silent screen with equal wit and style. Restored by MoMA with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Ben Model and John Spurney. 86 min. Saturday, October 25, 6:00 (Model) (T1); Sunday, October 26, 12:30 (Spurney) (T3)

Dillinger è morto (Dillinger Is Dead). 1969. Italy. Directed by Marco Ferreri. Screenplay by Ferreri, Sergio Bazzini. With Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg, Annie Girardot. Combining surreal imagery and absurdist black humor, Ferreri’s masterwork stars Piccoli as a restless and alienated industrial designer who returns home one night to a cold dinner and decides to make himself a gourmet meal. Over the course of the evening, his discovers an old pistol wrapped in a newspaper, and his bourgeois life is turned upside down. This major rediscovery is presented, thanks to Janus Films, in a newly struck 35mm print, in advance of its theatrical run at BAMcinématek in early 2009. In Italian; English subtitles. 95 min. Saturday, October 25, 8:00; Monday, October 27, 6:15. T1

Jag är nyfiken – gul (I Am Curious [Yellow]). 1967. Sweden. Written and directed by Vilgot Sjöman. With Lena Nyman, Sjöman, Börje Ahlstedt. After a precedent-setting censorship battle in the U.S. courts, Sjöman’s film was released with an X rating to more-than-curious American audiences, including a rhapsodic Norman Mailer. Today, the controversial and sensational film can be regarded less as a bit of Swedish titillation and more as a revealing, vérité-style exposé of tensions and hypocrisies within the counterculture movement—between free love and sexist egoism, Marxist politics and posturing, and nonviolent resistance and the will to power. Preserved by the Archival Film Collections of the Svenska Filminstitutet. In Swedish; English subtitles. 121 min. Monday, October 27, 8:15; Friday, October 31, 7:30. T1

Women’s Film Preservation Fund, Program 1

The Secret Agent. 1983. USA. Directed by Jacki Ochs. Using archival footage, The Secret Agent examines the legacy of exposure to dioxin spray—better known as Agent Orange. Ochs’s documentary, which premiered at the 1983 New York Film Festival, remains relevant today. An invaluable meditation on the Vietnam War, the treatment of veterans, and sustained abuse of the environment, the film includes footage of a young Al Gore and the music of renowned protest singer Country Joe McDonald. Preserved with funding by The Women’s Film Preservation Fund. 58 min. Wednesday, October 29, 6:00. T2

Women’s Film Preservation Fund, Program 2

That Man of Mine. 1947. USA. Directed by Leonard Anderson. With Ruby Dee. This charming musical stars a very young Ruby Dee, together with The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an exuberant all-female jazz band. Produced by William Alexander for African American audiences, That Man of Mine was one of the first films to successfully counter its era’s negative stereotypes of African Americans. Preserved with funding by The Women’s Film Preservation Fund. 45 min. Wednesday, October 29, 7:30 (followed by a discussion between Dee and historian Pearl Bowser). T2

Amos Gitai: Non-Fiction

October 24–November 3

Amos Gitai is the leading Israeli filmmaker of his generation. Born in Haifa in 1950, Gitai began making short experimental works with a super-8mm camera while studying architecture. Gitai brought his camera along while serving as a soldier during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and from his experiences filming on and off the battlefield arose a commitment to making films and videos about the deep complexities of contemporary Israel, anti-Semitism, and the fluid nature of borders. Celebrated in Europe and North America for such reality-inspired fiction films as Kadosh (1998), Kippur (1999), and Free Zone (2004), Gitai has also expanded the frontiers of nonfiction filmmaking with

a series of documentaries that are as mutable as the shifting realities the artist records. Amos Gitai: Non-Fiction celebrates the filmmaker’s documentary work with the New York premiere of Gitai’s News from Home/News from House, along with the two earlier films in the trilogy, House and A House in Jerusalem, and six other feature-length documentaries. All films are directed by Amos Gitai.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.

House. 1980. Israel. Gitai tells the story of a house in West Jerusalem that goes through a transition after being purchased by a new owner. The building site itself becomes a theater in which the former inhabitants, the neighbors, the workers, the builder, and the new owner all appear. In Hebrew, Arabic; English subtitles. 51 min.

A House in Jerusalem. 1998. Israel/France/Italy. Eighteen years after House, Gitai returns to observe the changes in the occupants and in the neighborhood, revealing a complex labyrinth of destinies. In Hebrew, Arabic; English subtitles. 87 min. Friday, October 24, 4:30; Saturday, October 25, 12:15. T2.

News from Home/News from House. Friday, October 24, 7:00 (introduced by Gitai) (T2); Saturday, October 25, 3:15 (T2); Sunday, October 26, 2:30 (T3); Monday, October 27, 4:15 (T1); Wednesday, October 29, 8:00 (T1); Thursday, October 30, 8:30 (T2)

Amos Gitai: A Roundtable Discussion

Annette Michelson, a founding editor of the journal October and former professor of cinema studies at New York University, leads a roundtable discussion on Gitai’s documentaries. Participants include Edward Dimenberg, associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California at Irvine; Jean-Michel Frodon, editor of the journal Cahiers du cinéma and author of a new book on Gitai; and Michael Sorkin, principal, Michael Sorkin Studios and director of the graduate program in urban design at The City College of New York. Saturday, October 25, 5:30. T2

Zion, Auto-Emancipation. 1998. Israel. When Theodor Herzl brought up the issue of the creation of a Jewish state during the first Zionist Congress, in 1897 in Basel, Gitai’s maternal grandfather was in attendance. In 1933, Gitai’s father also passed through Basel as he fled Nazi Germany. This film traces two journeys over a century: from Basel to Jerusalem, and from Vienna to Haifa. In Hebrew; English subtitles. 110 min. Sunday, October 26, 4:30. T3

Kippur, War Memories. 1997. Israel/France. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, an Israeli helicopter carrying a first-aid crew was shot down over the Golan Heights. There were seven men aboard, including Gitai. Twenty years later, Gitai and many of the original crew return to the crash site in a journey of remembrance. In Hebrew; English subtitles. 120 min. Thursday, October 30, 4:00. T2

Pineapple. 1983. France/Israel/Sweden/The Netherlands/ Finland. “One day, when I opened my refrigerator, I looked closely at a can of pineapple. It had been ‘made in the Philippines,’ ‘packaged in Honolulu,’ ‘distributed in San Francisco,’ and the label ‘printed in Japan.’ This was a concrete illustration of the multinational economy.... Pineapple is a little like House: a microcosm that allows me to tell a story and deal with the issue of the Third World” (Amos Gitai). In Hebrew; English subtitles. 78 min. Friday, October 31, 4:30. T2

The Arena of Murder. 1996. Israel. Three weeks after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, Gitai investigated the traces of the event. Traveling through the country for three months, Gitai encounters Israelis and records their memories of war and peace. Appearing in the film are Aviv Geffen, Lea Rabin, Efratia Gitai, and Uri Simchoni. In Hebrew; English subtitles. 90 min. Thursday, October 31, 6:30. T2

In the Valley of the Wupper. 1993. France/Great Britain/Italy. In 1992 in Wuppertal, Germany, two skinheads killed a man who claimed to be Jewish. Gitai questions the witnesses, the residents, and many involved in the trial—without questioning the skinheads themselves or revealing anything about the victim except his name. In German; English subtitles. 90 min. Friday, October 31, 8:15. T2

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Ongoing Film Exhibitions

Hollywood on the Hudson: Filmmaking in New York, 1920–39

Through October 19

This exhibition surveys filmmaking in New York during the hegemony of Hollywood, from D. W. Griffith’s return from the West Coast in 1919 to the World’s Fair of 1939. Screenings include pioneering sound films shot at the Paramount Studios in Astoria, Queens, and starring Broadway luminaries; films featuring such stars as Louise Brooks, Marion Davies, the Marx Brothers, Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino; and noteworthy African American and Yiddish films. All films are from the U.S.

Co-organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, and Richard Koszarski, on whose book, Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff, the exhibition is based.

So’s Your Old Man. 1926. Directed by Gregory La Cava. From a story by Julian Street. With W. C. Fields, Alice Joyce, Charles “Buddy” Rogers. A visiting princess saves a New Jersey suburbanite from suicide, and maybe even something worse. A cunning fantasy in the 1920s tradition of Sinclair Lewis or George Kelly’s The Show-Off. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 80 min. Wednesday, October 1, 6:15; Thursday, October 2, 8:30. T2

Zaza. 1923. Directed by Allan Dwan. From the play by Pierre Berton and Charles Simon. With Gloria Swanson, H. B. Warner. The most lavish of Swanson’s six Paramount Astoria productions, this gaudy period romance celebrates the theatrical world of nineteenth-century Paris through an adaptation of Gabrielle Rejane’s signature stage performance. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 90 min. Wednesday, October 1, 8:15 (T2); Saturday, October 4, 4:15 (T1)

Cuore d’emigrante (Santa Lucia Luntana). 1932. Directed by Harold Godsoe. With Carlo Renard, Yolanda Carluccio. Buffeted by the effects of gangsterism and jazz, a family confronts the consequences of their immigration to America. Produced in Fort Lee, New Jersey, for Italian-American audiences. Print courtesy George Eastman House. 59 min. Thursday, October 2, 5:00; Saturday, October 4, 8:15. T1

Applause. 1929. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. From the novel by Beth Brown. With Helen Morgan, Joan Peers. A fading burlesque star hopes for better things for her daughter, but life gets in the way. Rouben Mamoulian energizes a familiar backstage melodrama through his innovative use of the nascent sound-recording technology at Paramount’s Astoria studio. 80 min. Thursday, October 2, 8:00; Saturday, October 11, 6:30. T1

Humoresque. 1920. Directed by Frank Borzage. From a story by Fannie Hurst. With Gaston Glass, Vera Gordon. In Borzage’s first great family melodrama, everyone suffers when success on the concert stage catapults an immigrant violinist into the alien world of Park Avenue. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 70 min. Friday, October 3, 4:30 (T2); Saturday, October 4, 2:00 (T1)

Paradise in Harlem (Othello in Harlem). 1939. Directed by Joseph Seiden. Screenplay by Frank Wilson. With Wilson. A black vaudevillian dreams of bringing Shakespeare to the Harlem stage. Predating Paul Robeson’s Broadway Othello, this remarkable movie was clearly influenced by the Orson Welles “voodoo” Macbeth of 1936. 70 min. Friday, October 3, 6:30 (T1); Monday, October 6, 5:00 (T2)

Murder in Harlem (Lem Hawkins’ Confession). 1935. Directed by Oscar Micheaux. With Clarence Brooks, Alec Lovejoy. In a dramatic and controversial reimagining of the notorious Leo Frank case, an African American night watchman is unfairly accused of the murder of a young white woman. 98 min. Friday, October 3, 8:00; Sunday, October 5, 1:00. T1

The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair. 1939. Directed by Robert Snody. With Marjorie Lord, James Lydon. The average American family visits the world of the future, or at least that part of it designed by Westinghouse, in the Gone with the Wind of industrial films. In Technicolor. 50 min. Saturday, October 4, 6:30. T1

Tevye. 1939. Directed by Maurice Schwartz. From Tevye der Milkhiker by Sholom Aleichem. With Schwartz. In production just as German tanks rolled into Poland, this bittersweet Yiddish fable is no Fiddler on the Roof. Projecting the lessons of the past into an uncertain present, Schwartz’s adaptation of Aleichem’s story offered little comfort for audiences of the time. 93 min. Sunday, October 5, 3:00. T1

Green Fields. 1937. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. From the play by Peretz Hirschbein. With Michael Goldstein, Helen Beverley. Rejecting the already familiar immigrant saga, this groundbreaking Yiddish pastoral turns instead to the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl (stunningly recreated in New Jersey by Edgar G. Ulmer’s newsreel crews). 105 min. Sunday, October 5, 5:00. T1

The Talk of Hollywood. 1929. Directed by Mark Sandrich. With Nat Carr, Fay Marbe. The first filmed satire of talking pictures, this attack on Vitaphone’s disc-sound process was made at the Gramercy Studio on Twenty-fourth Street, showcasing RCA’s rival sound-on-film Photophone system. 70 min. Wednesday, October 8, 6:00; Wednesday, October 15, 6:00. T1

Laughter. 1930. Directed by Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast. With Nancy Carroll, Fredric March, Frank Morgan. A trophy wife is torn between her stockbroker husband and a struggling musician. A sophisticated glimpse of New York high (and low) society at the cusp of the market crash, with more than a touch of Phillip Barry. 85 min. Wednesday, October 8, 7:30; Saturday, October 11, 4:15. T1

The Emperor Jones. 1933. Directed by Dudley Murphy. From the play by Eugene O’Neill. With Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges. This controversial adaptation of O’Neill’s great play was one of the first modern independent features, but it suffered heavy cuts from the censors within weeks of its release. The bulk of those dialogue cuts have now been restored by The Library of Congress. 80 min. Thursday, October 9, 6:00; Monday, October 13, 6:30. T1

One Third of a Nation. 1939. Directed by Dudley Murphy. From the play by Arthur Arent. With Sylvia Sidney, Leif Erickson, Sidney Lumet. Adapted from the Federal Theatre Project’s long-running “Living Newspaper” production, this courageous independent film struggles with a solution to the urban housing mess. Could the New Deal provide the answer? 75 min. Thursday, October 9, 8:00; Saturday, October 18, 4:00. T1

East Coast Animation

Where Hollywood animators studied the work of illustrators, New York studios preferred the freewheeling vision of newspaper cartoonists like the Fleischer brothers. Felix the Cat, Popeye the Sailor, Betty Boop, and the other stars of East Coast animation reflected the cosmopolitan style of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. This program includes all of these characters, along with a few surprises ranging from experimental cinema to industrial films. Program approx. 75 min. Friday, October 10, 4:30; Sunday, October 19, 5:30. T1

Animal Crackers. 1930. Directed by Victor Heerman. From the play by George S. Kaufman, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Morrie Ryskind. With the four Marx Brothers. A bogus African explorer and his zany entourage descend on Long Island’s outrageously vulgar Rittenhouse home. Paramount’s highly theatrical film version offers the Marx Brothers as Broadway celebrities, not Hollywood stars. 97 min. Friday, October 10, 6:15; Saturday, October 11, 2:00. T1

Dudley Murphy on American Music

Avant-garde filmmaker Dudley Murphy, who collaborated with Fernand Léger on Ballet mecanique, felt that the new sound cinema was a perfect vehicle for illustrating the roots of American blues, jazz, and folk music. His trilogy of short musicals, made in New York for RKO and Paramount, are screened together on the same program for what may be the first time.

St. Louis Blues. 1929. With Bessie Smith. 15 min.

Black and Tan. 1929. With Duke Ellington. 19 min.

He Was Her Man. 1931. With Gilda Gray. 15 min.

Program 49 min. Friday, October 10, 8:15; Saturday, October 18, 2:00. T1

The Smiling Lieutenant. 1931. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. With Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert. An Oscar nominee for Best Picture, this Viennese romantic triangle was the most successful example of Paramount’s effort to create a “Hollywood on the Hudson” in Astoria. 88 min. Saturday, October 11, 8:30; Monday, October 13, 4:30. T1

El Tango en Broadway (Tango in Broadway). 1934. Directed by Louis Gasnier. Music by Carlos Gardel. Screenplay by Alfredo Le Pera. With Gardel, Mona Maris, Vincente Padula, Anita Campillo. Gardel, around whom the genre of tango vocal movies was created, made four Spanish-language musicals in Astoria for Paramount. In this film, he overcomes obstacles to open a tango palace in Manhattan. In Spanish; English subtitles. 83 min. Sunday, October 12, 1:30; Friday, October 17, 4:15. T1

Back Door to Heaven. 1939. Directed by William K. Howard. With Wallace Ford, Patricia Ellis, Aline MacMahon, Jimmy Lydon. Part film noir, part French poetic realism, this fatalistic account of a delinquent’s criminal career was renegade director Howard’s bitter response to the strictures and conventions of the Hollywood studio system. 85 min. Sunday, October 12, 3:15; Saturday, October 18, 7:30. T1

Intolerance of 1933 (Victims of Persecution). 1933. Directed by Bud Pollard. From a play by David Leonard. With Mitchell Harris, Betty Hamilton. A Jewish jurist insists on justice for an accused African American, with dangerous consequences. Mixing styles, genres, and whatever film footage was handy, Pollard attempted to expand the Yiddish film market by shooting the entire picture in English. 60 min. Sunday, October 12, 4:45; Saturday, October 18, 6:00. T1

Moonlight and Pretzels. 1933. Directed by Karl Freund. With Leo Carillo, Mary Brian. A modest, tuneful, and fabulously successful Depression-era musical, made by Universal at Paramount’s abandoned studio in Astoria. One of the few films directed by Karl Freund, better known as the great cinematographer of Metropolis and The Last Laugh. 84 min. Monday, October 13, 8:15; Friday, October 17, 6:30. T1

Into the Net. 1924. Directed by George Seitz. With Jack Mulhall, Constance Bennett. The NYPD races to the rescue of twenty kidnapped heiresses. The feature version of one of the last, and best, East Coast serials, with fabulous location footage. Print courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française, Paris. French intertitles; simultaneous English translation. Approx. 95 min. Wednesday, October 15, 8:30 (T2); Sunday, October 19, 3:30 (T1)

Crime without Passion. 1934. Written and directed by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur. With Claude Rains, Margo. A corrupt New York defense lawyer is entangled in his own bizarre machinations. The first, and best, of Hecht and MacArthur’s notorious series of runaway Astoria productions, with montage sequences by Slavko Vorkapich. 72 min. Friday, October 17, 8:15; Sunday, October 19, 1:30. T1

Still Moving

Ongoing

The Museum continues its regular series derived exclusively from its film collections, featuring works that have been acquired and preserved by MoMA over the last seven decades. In October, we mark the recent passing of experimental film artist Bruce Conner with a program of his films. In addition, we present films by four directors recently honored by MoMA in its A Work in Progress series: David O. Russell, Sofia Coppola, Alexander Payne, and James Mangold.

Organized by Steven Higgins, Curator, Department of Film.

Flirting with Disaster. 1996. USA. Written and directed by David O. Russell. Cinematography by Eric Edwards. With Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Téa Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin. Gift of Miramax Films. 92 min. Wednesday, October 1, 1:30; Thursday, October 2, 1:30; Friday, October 3, 1:30. T3

The Virgin Suicides. 1999. USA. Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Cinematography by Edward Lachman. With James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett. Gift of Paramount Pictures. 97 min. Wednesday, October 8, 1:30; Thursday, October 9, 1:30; Friday, October 10, 1:30. T3

Bruce Conner Program

All films directed by Bruce Conner and from the U.S.

Looking for Mushrooms. 1965. Cinematography by Conner and Robert Branaman. Stretch-printed by the artist in 1988 to run at 25 frames per second. 14 min.

Antonia. 1967. Cinematography by Conner. With Antonia Christina Basilotta (Toni Basil). Silent version of Conner’s Breakaway (1967), stretch-printed by the artist in 1988 to run at twenty-four frames per second. 13 min.

Crossroads. 1976. Cinematography by M. T. Soo Hoo. 36 min.

Program 63 min. Wednesday, October 15, 1:30; Thursday, October 16, 1:30. T3

Walk the Line. 2005. USA. Directed by James Mangold. Screenplay by Mangold and Gill Dennis. Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael. With Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Dallas Roberts. Gift of Twentieth Century-Fox. 136 min. Wednesday, October 22, 1:30; Thursday, October 23, 1:30; Friday, October 24, 1:30. T3

Citizen Ruth. 1996. USA. Directed by Alexander Payne. Screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor. Cinematography by James Glennon. With Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kelly Preston. Gift of Miramax Films. 105 min. Wednesday, October 29, 1:30; Thursday, October 30, 1:30; Friday, October 31, 1:30. T3

Looking at Music

Through December

Music was at the forefront of interdisciplinary experimentation in the 1960s, when the mixing of media really took off, and musicians led the way in developing new working methods. This screening series, presented in conjunction with an installation of early media art and related drawings, prints, and photographs in the Media Gallery, examines the radical role of music in the early development of media art, and includes documentaries, experimental films, and music videos. All films are from the U.S.

Organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator, and Hanne Mugaas, intern, Department of Media.

9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering, Program 1

Visit www.moma.org for full program details.

Variations VII. 2008. Featuring John Cage. 41 min.

Vehicle. 2008. Featuring Lucinda Childs. 10 min. Thursday, October 2, 7:00 (followed by a conversation with Robert Whitman, Julie Martin, and Barbro Schultz Lundestam). T2

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College Experience. 2007. Directed by Cathryn Zommer, Neeley House. A look at the college’s uniquely holistic educational approach, which balanced academics, art, manual labor, and communal living. The directors draw from archival photographs and interviews with students, teachers, historians, and artists. 60 min. Friday, October 3, 6:30; Saturday, October 4, 2:00. T2

9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering, Program 2

Kisses Sweeter than Wine. 1996. Featuring Öyvind Fahlström. 71 min.

Open Score. 1997. Featuring Robert Rauschenberg. 31 min. Friday, October 3, 8:30. T2

9 Evenings: Theater & Engineering, Program 3

Vehicle. 2008. Featuring Lucinda Childs. 10 min.

Two Holes of Water–3. 1966. Featuring Robert Whitman. 10 min.

Carriage Discreteness. 2008. Featuring Yvonne Rainer. 10 min.

Physical Things. 2008. Featuring Steve Paxton. 10 min.

Solo. 2008. Featuring Deborah Hay. 10 min.

Grass Field. 2008. Featuring Alex Hay. 10 min.

Program 60 min. Saturday, October 4, 4:30. T2

9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering, Program 4

Variations VII. 2008. Featuring John Cage. 41 min.

Bandoneon! 2008. Featuring David Tudor. 41 min. Saturday, October 4, 7:00. T2

Modern Mondays

Ongoing

Where is the cutting edge of the motion picture? Discover it first at MoMA. Building upon the Museum’s long tradition of exploring cinematic experimentation, Modern Mondays is a weekly showcase for innovation on screen. Engage with contemporary filmmakers and moving image artists, and rediscover landmark works that changed the way we experience film and media.

Organized by the Department of Film and the Department of Media.

Modern Mondays is made possible by Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro. Additional support is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Media sponsorship is provided by Artforum.

An Evening with Olga Chernysheva

Moscow-based Russian artist Olga Chernysheva, a graduate of the Moscow Cinema Academy and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, captures quotidian life in contemporary, post-Communist Russia using video, photography, drawing, and painting. For this presentation, Chernysheva discusses her artistic practice in the context of Russia today, and shows several of her video works. In The Train (2003), the director’s camera traverses the cars of an intercity Moscow train; Anonymous (2004) portrays a middle-aged woman and a drunken man each having a private moment in a public park; and March (2007) captures the dynamics between young male cadets, scantily clad teenage cheerleaders, and band members performing before a corporate event. The program also includes her newest video, Untitled. After Sengai (2008). Special thanks to Foxy Production, New York. Program 90 min. Monday, October 22, 7:00. T2

An Evening with Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce, whose lively, gay-themed feature narratives like No Skin Off My Ass (1992), Hustler White (1996), and The Raspberry Reich (2004) helped establish and affirm the punk Homocore movement, makes films with an aggressively light touch. Based in Toronto and a co-creator of the queer zine J.D.s, LaBruce brings an energetically cartoonish vision to his films, transforming their radicalism into provocative entertainment.

Otto, or Up with Dead People. 2007. Germany/Canada. Directed by Bruce LaBruce. With Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Gio Black Peter, Susanne Sachsse. MoMA welcomes Halloween with the advance premiere of LaBruce’s latest foray into exuberant gender- and genre-bending. Otto, suddenly undead, finds himself on the “highway of life” to Berlin, where he is discovered by an independent filmmaker who enlists her brother and her girlfriend to make an “epic political-porno-zombie” movie. Courtesy Strand Releasing. 95 min. Monday, October 27, 7:00. T2

The Museum’s film programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

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MoMA FILM ADMISSION

Tickets for film programs in Theaters 1 and 2 are available at the Museum lobby information desk and at the Film desk.

Tickets for film programs in Theater 3 are available at the Museum lobby information desk and at the lobby desk of The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building.

(T1): Theater 1 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1)

(T2): Theater 2 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2)

(T3): Theater 3 (The Celeste Bartos Theater)

For admittance to film program only:

$10 adults

$8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.

$6 full-time students with current I.D.