In late 2006 The Museum of Modern Art published Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the first-ever survey of MoMA’s world-renowned holdings in the art of the moving image. In conjunction with this book the Museum presents a regular series derived exclusively from its film and media collections, featuring works that have been acquired and preserved by MoMA over the last seven decades.
Election. 1999. USA. Directed by Alexander Payne. Screenplay by Payne, Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta. With Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Chris Klein. Tracy Flick (Witherspoon) is all ambition and drive, neatly packaged in a turtleneck and sensible shoes. Her immediate goal is to be elected student body president, a stepping stone to complete dominion over those born rich and good-looking, who are undeserving of their inevitable popularity. Broderick plays Jim McAllister, the ethics teacher assigned to monitor student government, who is equally hell-bent on his mission to thwart Little Miss Machiavelli. This achingly funny film is the perfect parable for the election year ahead. 104 min.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008, 3:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, January 6, 2008, 2:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Wedding Present. 1936. UDA. Directed by Richard Wallace. Screenplay by Joseph Anthony. With Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, Conrad Nagel, George Bancroft. Grant, in his last Paramount contract film, portrays Charlie Mason, a Chicago tabloid reporter who is romantically involved with fellow reporter Rusty Fleming (Bennett). When Rusty resigns and moves to New York, Charlie follows her and tries to prevent her marriage to a stuffy writer. It was in this rarely seen gem that Grant first revealed his comedic range and elegant persona. Preserved with funds from the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund. 82 min.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Never Fear (The Young Lovers). 1950. USA. Directed by Ida Lupino. Screenplay by Lupino, Collier Young. With Sally Forrest, Keefe Brasselle. Lupino’s feature directorial debut is a medical drama focusing on the disintegration of a young couple. Carol and Guy have a promising career ahead as professional dancers√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùuntil Carol contracts polio and is confined to a hospital for rehabilitation. This 35mm preserved print includes the original trailer. 82 min.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 6:15 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
The Innocents. 1961. USA. Directed by Jack Clayton. Screenplay by William Archibald, Truman Capote, based on the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. With Deborah Kerr, Michael Redgrave, Megs Jenkins. With its vertiginous images and hallucinatory sounds, The Innocents is a highly stylized rendering of The Turn of the Screw. A governess at a secluded country manor becomes convinced that the two children in her care have become possessed by the spirits of a pair of lovers who once met with a violent end on the estate grounds. Kerr gives a wonderfully shaded performance as Miss Giddens, whose prim restraint gives way to her morbid fantasy of saving little Miles and Flora from (imagined?) destruction. A master of psychological horror, James conjured a world where innocence and na√ɬØvet√ɬ© are often indistinguishable from sophistication and evil; Clayton, together with screenwriters Archibald and Capote, remains faithful to James’s admonition that “the evil must not be reduced to the narrowness of the definable.” 98 min.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, January 6, 2008, 2:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Painters Painting. 1972. USA. Directed by Emile de Antonio. With appearances by Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol. De Antonio’s exuberant documentary about some of the artists who made New York the center of the art world is “an intelligent film about how artists think and work. I don’t see how it would be possible ever again to teach a course in modern painting without Painters Painting” (Henry Geldzahler, former curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art). 116 min.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 8:15 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, January 4, 2008, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
My Architect. 2003. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Kahn
My Architect. 2003. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Kahn. The filmmaker investigates the life, death, and many secrets of his architect father, Louis I. Kahn. His discoveries are at once heartfelt and heartbreaking. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. 116 min.
Thursday, January 3, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, January 7, 2008, 8:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Three Shorts by Nathaniel Dorsky
In these intimate and deeply affecting works by veteran avant-garde artist Dorsky, the subtle, rhythmic shift of light, shadow, and color, the discerning “polyvalent” montage, and the delicate framing of exquisite images create a meditative sanctuary. Progressing from an expression of inner landscapes toward a somewhat lighter representation of the external world, these “silent songs” refine the everyday into luminous images.
Song and Solitude. 2006. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. 21 min.
Threnody. 2003–04. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. 20 min.
The Visitation. 2002. USA. Directed by Nathaniel Dorsky. 18 min.
Thursday, January 3, 2008, 8:15 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 5:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Shakespeare in Love. 1998. Great Britain/USA. Directed by John Madden. Screenplay by Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes. This surprise Best Picture Academy Award winner (which beat out apparent front-runner Saving Private Ryan) is a romantic comedy about the young William Shakespeare and his inspiration for Romeo and Juliet—an aspiring actress who conspires to act in drag in order to subvert the rules of Elizabethan theater that banned women from the stage. 113 min.
Thursday, January 3, 2008, 8:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Sunday, January 6, 2008, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Bird. 1988. USA. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Screenplay by Joel Oliansky. With Forest Whitaker, Diane Venora, Sam Robards. A romantic yet unsparingly raw biographical drama about jazz saxophone legend Charlie “Bird” Parker. 160 min.
Friday, January 4, 2008, 7:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Necrology. 1970. USA. Directed by Standish Lawder. A single shot reveals people “ascending” the lower depths. 12 min.
Stereo. 1969. Canada. Written, directed, photographed, and edited by David Cronenberg. With Cronenberg, Ron Mlodzik, Iain Ewing. Sensing the promise in Stereo, the strikingly original and edgy debut feature of twenty-six-year-old Canadian filmmaker Cronenberg, MoMA presented its American premiere and acquired the black-and-white, virtually dialogue-free film in 1969. Set, perhaps, in the future, the film chronicles an experiment at the Canadian Center for Erotic Enquiry in which young adults volunteer to sacrifice speech in favor of telepathic enhancement. 65 min.
Friday, January 4, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 3:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Fahrenheit 451. 1966. Great Britain. Directed by Fran√ɬßois Truffaut. Screenplay by Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, David Rudkin, Helen Scott, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. With Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack. Truffaut’s only film in English is an exquisitely wrought evocation of a future in which the values of the past are trampled and burned. The film is loaded with poignant, revelatory moments, culminating in one of the most deeply moving and visually elegant endings in cinema history. 111 min.
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, January 7, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
The Hire. 2001√¢‚Ǩ‚Äú02. USA. Eight films produced by BMW of North America: Ambush (John Frankenheimer), Chosen (Ang Lee), The Follow (Wong Kar-Wai), Star (Guy Ritchie), and Powder Keg (Alejandro Gonz√ɬ°lez I√ɬ±√ɬ°rritu) (all 2001); and Hostage (John Woo), Ticker (Joe Carnahan), and Beat the Devil (Tony Scott) (all 2002). With Clive Owen as “the driver.” Approx. 60 min.
Saturday, January 5, 2008, 7:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Monday, January 7, 2008, 8:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Daughters of the Dust. 1991. USA. Written and directed by Julie Dash. With Cora Lee Day, Alva Rodgers, Adisa Anderson. Director Dash and cinematographer A. Jafa Fielder evoke a lost world of mystery and ancestral bonds in this hauntingly beautiful tale set in the Georgia Sea Islands at the turn of the twentieth century. The film portrays traditional Gullah society coming into direct conflict with a modern world of African American social advancement and cultural aspirations. 112 min.
Sunday, January 6, 2008, 4:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Monday, January 7, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
