A nationwide retrospective tour of new prints will celebrate famed French New Wave director Alain Resnais from September 2009 to March 2010. Featuring thirteen of his best-known movies, including such timeless classics as L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) and Mon Oncle d'Amérique (My American Uncle), the retrospective will delight film buffs eager to rediscover one of cinema's most iconic filmmakers. This will be a unique opportunity to do so: many of these films are not distributed in the U.S., and the prints have been fully restored-courtesy of CulturesFrance, the French agency in charge of international cultural exchanges.

The retrospective, which was produced by CulturesFrance under the guidance of Michel Ciment, editor-in-chief of the prestigious film magazine Positif, is supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and will tour the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago; the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA; the University of Wisconsin Madison; the Wexner Arts Center in Columbus, OH; the Harvard Film Archive and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Cultural institutions interested in screening the retrospective should contact the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. On the occasion of the retrospective, Moving Image Source, the Museum of the Moving Image's magazine, has commissioned several articles about Resnais's work from leading film critics and experts.

Featured Works:

Guernica (with Robert Hessens, 1950); Statues Also Die (Les Statues meurent aussi, with Chris Marker, 1953); Night and Fog (Nuit et Bouillard, 1955); All of the World's Memory (Toute la mémoire du monde, 1956); The Song of the Styrene (Le Chant du Styrène, 1958); Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, 1961); Muriel, or The Time of Return (Muriel, ou le temps d'un retour, 1963); Je t'aime Je t'aime (1968); Stavisky... (1974); My American Uncle (Mon Oncle d'Amérique, 1980); Mélo (1986); Same Old Song (On connaît la chanson, 1997); Private Fears in Public Places (Cœurs, 2006, pictured)

Program information:
 

National Gallery of Art

September 5-20, 2009

LACMA

October 2-17, 2009

Gene Siskel Film Center

November 7-December 2, 2009

Pacific Film Archive

November 6- December 15, 2009

University of Wisconsin

December 5-19, 2009

Wexner Arts Center

January 1-February 28, 2010

Harvard Film Archive

January 15-25, 2010

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

March 1-31, 2010

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The Unknown Statue by Jonathan Rosenbaum posted Nov. 06, 2009

The 1960s saw two of the most popular stars of Japanese post-WWII cinema grace movie screens.

Like a strange but wonderful hybrid of Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mitchum, Wallace Beery, and Clint Eastwood, Shintaro Katsu started out at Daiei Studios in the mid-1950s and labored pretty much unrecognized in period action movies and the occasional more serious "arthouse" film until 1962. That was the year he starred as a wandering blind masseur tired of being picked on who learns to wield a sword in Tale of Zatoichi (Zatoichi Monogatari) directed by unsung master Kenji Misumi. It was popular enough to warrant a sequel, and Katsu's real-life brother Tomisaburo Wakayama played Zatoichi's estranged brother and nemesis in the action-packed follow-up, The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (Zoku Zatoichi Monogatari). After that, with the box office breaking records, Daiei developed the character into a series of films. Katsu continued to portray the beloved blind swordsman in 26 movies as well as over 100 episodes on television. His last appearance as the humble, wisecracking anti-hero was in 1989 in Zatoichi (a film Katsu also directed). Katsu also starred in several of nouvelle vague director Yasuzo Masumura's most memorable pictures, including Hoodlum Soldier (Heitai Yakuza) and Yakuza Masterpiece (Yakuza Zessho). In the late 1960s, Katsu formed his own production company, going on to produce most of the later Zatoichi films as well as all six of the Lone Wolf and Cub series (once again starring his brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama).

Now imagine Montgomery Clift as an action star, and you get a faint idea of the image of Katsu's Daiei Studios' colleague, Raizo Ichikawa. Descended from a long line of kabuki performers, he started his movie career around the same time as Katsu in the mid-1950s, making period drama and action films as well as more "serious" pictures for directors like Kenji Mizoguchi (New Tales of the Taira Clan) and Kon Ichikawa (Enjo). But his most famous role remains Kyoshiro Nemuri, a misanthropic, half-breed samurai with God and women issues whose lady-in-waiting mother had been raped by a Portuguese missionary during a Black Mass, thus resulting in his birth. The film series featuring the Nemuri character-known in English-speaking countries as Sleepy Eyes of Death/Son of the Black Mass-grew gradually more existential and macabre as the series progressed, and the Nemuri character had his coldblooded side, conflicted within by both benevolent and misanthropic impulses. Ichikawa also appeared in the loosely linked Sword (Ken) trilogy directed by Kenji Misumi-all of them masterpieces: Destiny's Son (Kiru), Sword (Ken), and Sword Devil (Ken Ki). The second-to-last picture starring Ichikawa, Castle Menagerie (Nemuri Kyoshiro Akujo Gari) was his last appearance as Nemuri. Ichikawa died of cancer in July of 1969 at the age of 37, mere days before the completion of his final movie, Gambler's Life (Bakuto Ichidai). Because of his tragic death at a young age as well as his astounding charisma onscreen, Ichikawa continues to enjoy a burgeoning cult status and has often been described as the Japanese James Dean.

Both actors shared a sublime ability to transcend genre stereotypes, creating action heroes who were wounded, soul-searching individuals. Join us for this retrospective tribute honoring two legends of Japanese cinema!

Featured Works:

Samurai Vendetta: A Chronicle of Pale Cherry Blossoms (Hakuoki, Kazuo Mori, 1959); Scar Yosaburo (Kirare Yosaburo, Daisuke Ito, 1960); Destiny's Son (Kiru, Kenji Misumi, 1962, pictured); New Tale of Zatoichi (Shin Zatoichi monogatari, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963); Zatoichi On the Road: Fighting Journey (Zatoichi kenka-tabi, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1963); Zatoichi, the Fugitive (Zatoichi kyojo-tabi, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1963); Nemuri Kyoshiro at Bay: The Sword of Seduction (Nemuri Kyoshiro Joyo Ken, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964); The Lone Stalker (Hitori Okami, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1968); The Devil's Temple (Oni no Sumu Yakata, Kenji Misumi, 1969)

Program information:

The Double-Edged Sword: The Films of Shintaro Katsu & Raizo Ichikawa

For more than four decades, Wiseman has used a lightweight 16mm camera and portable sound equipment to study human behavior in all its contradictory and unpredictable manifestations, particularly in institutional or regimented situations where authority creates an imbalance of power, or where democracy is at work. Like the great novelists of the 19th century, Wiseman combines epic narrative with intimate portraiture. His films comprise a grand panorama of American life (and more recently, the cultural life of Paris)-a kind of modern-day comédie humaine that, quite astonishingly, never loses its vitality or its currency. And though Wiseman approaches his subjects-doctors, ballet dancers, soldiers, students, welfare recipients, factory workers, fashion models, zookeepers, victims of domestic violence, Benedictine monks, the terminally ill-with a minimum of intrusion or influence, he brings a sensitive but trustworthy eye, a lawyer's penetrating skepticism, and the dramatic impulses of a storyteller to arrive at what Eugène Ionesco, one of his favorite playwrights, called an "imaginative truth." All films are directed, edited, and produced by Wiseman and from the U.S.

Featured Works:

To celebrate the recent acquisition of newly struck prints of 36 films by Frederick Wiseman (b. 1930, Boston), the Museum of Modern Art presents a comprehensive retrospective of the director's work. Featuring three to four films each month, this yearlong survey opens with Basic Training (1971, pictured), followed by a conversation with Wiseman and curator Josh Siegel, and spans his entire career, from Titicut Follies (1967) to his two most recent projects, La Danse-The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) and Boxing Gym (2010).  

Program information:

Frederick Wiseman

Gene Siskel Film Center offer a series of 14 programs entitled Inside Hollywood, with weekly lecture/discussions by Virginia Wright Wexman, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of numerous writings on cinema including A History of Film. This film/lecture series will look at the history of the Hollywood studio system from all angles, uncovering the forces that shape movies from behind the scenes, including cutthroat business practices, financial desperation, technological upheaval, labor strife, sex and censorship, political pressure, and more recent factors such as digital technology, marketing blitzes, and globalization.

Featured Works:

Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim, 1929); American Madness (Frank Capra, 1932); 42^nd St. (Lloyd Bacon, 1933); Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933); A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937); Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950); Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952); On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954); River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954); Nickelodeon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1976, pictured); The Player (Robert Altman, 1992); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000); Timecode (Mike Figgis, 2000) 

Program information: 

Inside Hollywood

The towering figure of John Ford (1894-1973) casts a long and irrefutable shadow across the history of the American cinema. Yet the breadth and measure of Ford's major contributions to the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema, and to film language in general, remains somewhat difficult to discern-obscured both by the sheer magnitude of his incredibly prolific 60-year career and by the persistent image of Ford, fixed late in his career, as an anachronous and often cantankerous artist clinging stubbornly to the Western genre. Rarely recognized in full are Ford's great achievements as a consummate visual stylist and master storyteller. Crafted in close collaboration with many of the greatest cinematographers of the studio era-William Clothier, Bert Glennon, and Gregg Toland among them-and channeling European and especially American painterly traditions, Ford's cinema is aesthetically sophisticated and varied. Beginning with the moody Expressionism of his late silent and '30s films, Ford's oeuvre underwent a series of rich stylistic transformations, giving way to the expressive realism of his '40s work that, in turn, gradually shifted to the stark classicism of his late films in the 1950s and 1960s. Echoing the notable stylistic diversity of Ford's cinema is the equally impressive range of genres in which he successfully worked, over and beyond the Westerns for which he is still best known. Between the extraordinarily prolific years of 1926 to 1945, it must be noted, Ford actually directed only one Western, Stagecoach (1939). Ford's career is, in fact, distinguished by his singular, often quite idiosyncratic, approaches to popular genres-the brisk adventure narratives of The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), the leisurely paced small-town comedies Steamboat Round the Bend (1933) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953), the erotically charged safari-romance Mogambo (1953), the deeply melancholy films of war, like The Long Voyage Home (1940) and Rio Grande (1950)-more concerned with the ritualized quotidian spaces between the battles than the fighting itself. Ford's interpretative approach to genre filmmaking informs his eventual return to his earliest roots as a director of Westerns and the series of ruminative and increasingly mournful Westerns that began with My Darling Clementine (1946) and led to his dark masterpiece, The Searchers (1956).

Ford's incredibly unflagging talents and rare ability to harness the complex studio apparatus to make genuine works of art eventually drew the attention of critics, historians and critics-turned-filmmakers Lindsay Anderson and Peter Bogdanovich. Ford was, in fact, among the very first Hollywood directors to be recognized as an auteur whose films shared a vivid personal signature and concern for certain dominant themes. One of the most important overriding themes of Ford's cinema is American history and, more specifically, the shaping forces and strong-willed individuals who have defined the U.S. as a nation and an idea. Ford's lifelong fascination with such legendary figures from American history as Wyatt Earp and Abraham Lincoln drew his films frequently back into the distant past to explore the myths and legends firmly rooted in both the popular imagination and official history. Intermingled with Ford's concern for the myths of history-or perhaps, one could say, the history of myths-is his deep and abiding love of the West as the cradle of American civilization and as a potent quintessence of the American psyche. Ford's cinema offers one of the most important and sustained mediations on the West in American popular culture. In such works as My Darling Clementine, Wagon Master, Fort Apache and The Searchers, the distinct landscapes and culture of the late 19th century West-including the Native Americans who figure increasingly prominently in Ford's late work-are given such vivid shape that they remain among the most influential and lasting representations of this absolutely formative period in our nation's history.

This multi-part retrospective begins with an expanded selection of Ford's most enduring works, including a number of lesser known major films-Mogambo, Prisoner of Shark Island, Wagon Master-and featuring visits from distinguished experts on Ford's cinema Tom Doherty and Tom Conley.

Featured Works:

The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924); Air Mail (John Ford, 1932); Steamboat Round the Bend (John Ford, 1935); The Informer (John Ford, 1935);  The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford, 1936); Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford, 1939); Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939, pictured); Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford; 1939); The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940); The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940); How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941); My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946); The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947); Fort Apache (John ford, 1948); 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1949); She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949); Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950); Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950);  The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952); Mogambo (John Ford, 1953); The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford, 1953);  The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

Program information:

Classic Ford: A John Ford Retrospective, Part I

Born in Tehran, Bahman Farmanara is one of the founding figures of the Iranian New Wave of the 1970s. As well as being an acclaimed director, he is an influential screenwriter, producer, and distributor who is responsible for bringing many key international films to our shores. During his stay as the JBFC International Filmmaker-in-Residence, he will present six of his own works and a selection of documentaries about his homeland.

Featured Works:

Prince Ehtejab (Bahman Farmanara, 1974); Tall Shadows of the Wind (Bahman Farmanara, 1979); Saffron (Ebrahim Mokhtari, 1992); Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine (Bahman Farmanara, 2000); Zinat, One Special Day (Ebrahim Mokhtari, 2000); A House Built on Water (Bahman Farmanara, 2002); The River Still Has Fish (Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, 2002); A Little Kiss (Bahman Farmanara, 2005, pictured); Earthbound (Bahman Farmanara, 2008); Statues of Tehran (Bahman Kiarostami, 2008); We Are Half a Nation (Rakhshan Bani-E'temad, 2009)  

Program information:

Bahman Farmanara and Iran

Jia Zhangke (b. 1970, Fenyang, Shanxi, China) has emerged as the leading figure of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers and one of international cinema's most celebrated artists. Merging gritty realism with elegance and originality, he tackles contemporary subject matter in both documentary and fiction projects-and often fuses the two approaches to great effect. In little more than a decade he has created a body of work that reflects the enormous changes of the past fifty years of Chinese society. Much admired by critics and an inspiration to fellow filmmakers, Jia has developed an original, ever-evolving style marked by fluid camera movement and a porous, symbiotic relationship between the real and the imagined. His films-characterized by their plainspoken directness and postmodern aesthetic and peopled with amateurs as well as professional actors-illuminate the transformations taking place in China's environment, architecture, and society by placing everyday people in the midst of a landscape in turmoil. Aiming to restore the concrete memory of place and to evoke individual history in a rapidly modernizing society, the filmmaker recovers the immediate past in order to imagine the future. His films reflect reality truthfully, while simultaneously using fantasy and a distinct aesthetic to pose existential questions about life and status in a society in flux. Through rigorous specificity, his art attains universal scope and appeal.

Featured Works:

Spring in a Small Town (Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun, Fei Mu, 1948); Xiao Shan Going Home (Xiao Shan Hui Jia, Jia Zhangke, 1995); Pickpocket (Xiao Wu, Jia Zhangke, 1997); Platform (Zhan Tai, Jia Zhangke, 2000); In Public (Gong Gong Chang Suo, Jia Zhangke, 2001); The Condition of Dogs (Gou De Zhuang Kuang, Jia Zhangke, 2001); Unknown Pleasures (Ren Xiao Yao, Jia Zhangke, 2002); The World (Shi Jie, Jia Zhangke, 2004, pictured); East (Dong, Jia Zhangke, 2006); Still Life (San Xia Hao Ren, Jia Zhangke, 2006); Useless (Wu Yong, Jia Zhangke, 2007); 24 City (Er Shi Si Cheng Ji, Jia Zhangke, 2008); Black Breakfast (Jia Zhangke, 2008); Cry Me a River (He Shang De Ai Qing, Jia Zhangke, 2008)  

Program information:

Jia Zhangke: A Retrospective

An immensely important development in the history of the documentary film took place here in New York between the years 1931 and 1942. During that period, through the work of a large group of radical filmmakers, the modern documentary was born. In the hands of the members of the Workers Film and Photo League, then Nykino, and later, Frontier Films, the social documentary grew to its first maturity. Among the members of that group of filmmakers, Leo Hurwitz stands out, both for his films and his leadership. His film Native Land, photographed by Paul Strand, is finally being recognized as the crowning work in the early period of the American documentary. Along with other important documentary makers, such as Strand, Willard Van Dyke, Ralph Steiner, Sidney Meyers, and even Elia Kazan, Hurwitz pioneered the creation of a new documentary narrative form. These filmmakers-along with those they trained-prepared the way first for the television documentary and then for the rebirth of American non-fiction filmmaking in the 1960s and 70s. Ironically, due to their left-wing politics and the Red-Scare persecutions of the 1950s, the work of these artists and their important place in film has been virtually written out of most academic histories of the documentary. Centering on the films of Leo Hurwitz, whose work was perhaps the most influential of this group of filmmakers, our retrospective will trace the production of the New York Documentary School from its beginnings in the early 1930s, through the flourishing of the political documentary in the early 1940s. It will continue with Hurwitz's films during the drought of the repressive 1950s, his influence on the beginnings of cinéma vérité, and his profound, masterful, and always original later work.

Featured Works:

A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda, 1931); The National Hunger March (Leo Hurwitz, 1931); Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special (Leo Hurwitz, 1931); America Today and the World in Review (Leo Hurwitz, 1932-34); Bonus March (Leo Hurwitz, 1932); Detroit Workers News Special (Leo Hurwitz, 1932); Hunger: The National Hunger March to Washington (Leo Hurwitz, 1932); Pie in the Sky (Ralph Steiner, 1935); The Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936); The Wave (Paul Strand & Fred Zinnemann, 1936); China Strikes Back (Harry Dunham, 1937); Heart of Spain (Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand, 1937); People of the Cumberland (Sidney Meyers & Jay Leyda, 1938); The City (Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke, 1939); Valley Town (Willard Van Dyke, 1940); Native Land (Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand, 1942, pictured); The Bridge (Willard Van Dyke & Ben Maddow, 1944); Strange Victory (Leo Hurwitz, 1948); Emergency Ward (Leo Hurwitz & Fons Iannelli, 1952); The Young Fighter (Leo Hurwitz, 1953); Toby and the Tall Corn (Ricky Leacock, 1953); Jazz Dance (Roger Tilton, 1954); The Museum and the Fury (Leo Hurwitz, 1956); Here at the Water's Edge (Leo Hurwitz & Charles Pratt, 1962); An Essay on Death: A Memorial to John F. Kennedy (Leo Hurwitz, 1964); In Search of Hart Crane (Leo Hurwitz, 1966); The Sun and Richard Lippold (Leo Hurwitz, 1966); Journey into a Painting (Leo Hurwitz & Peggy Lawson, 1970); Light and the City (Leo Hurwitz & Peggy Lawson, 1970); The Island (Leo Hurwitz & Peggy Lawson, 1970); Dialogue with a Woman Departed (Leo Hurwitz, 1980)

Program information:

Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film

The prototype for the handsome, brooding leading man later embodied by James Dean and Marlon Brando. Montgomery Clift's sensitive and soulful screen persona redefined masculinity in the 1950s and brought method acting into vogue. Though his tragic career-marked by a disfiguring car accident, struggle with alcoholism, and untimely death at age 45-has become the stuff of Hollywood legend, Clift's stunningly modern, emotionally layered performances only resonate more with time.

Featured Works:

Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948); The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949); The Big Lift (George Seaton, 1950); A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951); From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953); I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953); Lonelyhearts (Vincent J. Donehue, 1958); The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk, 1958); Suddenly, Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959); Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960); The Misfits (John Huston, 1961, pictured); Freud (John Huston, 1962)

Program information: 

That's Montgomery Clift, Honey!

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The Exploding Boy by Brynn White posted Mar. 12, 2010

Melancholy is not an emotion that we usually associate with comedies, at least not in the laugh-a-minute, chortle-every-10-seconds type of movies that most audiences have come to expect from the genre. It takes a rare type of film artist to discover the almost inexpressible wistful sadness and small sense of loss behind the laughter and triumphs of comedic characters. Such an artist is the Scottish writer and director Bill Forsyth, whose sublime brand of filmmaking will be on display in the Dryden during March and April, when we present the first complete North American retrospective of his features. Forsyth will join us in person for screenings of his lovely movies, Local Hero and Housekeeping.

Beginning his career in documentaries, Forsyth made his feature debut in 1980 with a low-budget comedy about a group of Glaswegian teenagers (played by members of Glasgow Youth Theatre) who relieve their boredom by stealing sinks and plumbing supplies. The four main actors in That Sinking Feeling (which wasn't released in the U.S. until 1984) were all cast in Forsyth's sophomore effort, Gregory's Girl, the story of a teenage boy's fixation on the first female member of his school's soccer team. These decidedly quirky first two features are youth comedies populated by unusually wise, even philosophical, youngsters, who make the bittersweet discovery that you can't always get what you want.

The international success of Gregory's Girl paved the way for Forsyth's next-and best-loved-movie, Local Hero. Though produced with support from Warner Bros. and starring two American actors (Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster), Local Hero is remembered today for its unique Scottish-ness and a subtle but ahead-of-its-time message on protecting our natural environment (it's Al Gore's favorite movie). Like Mac, the humbled oil executive hero of Local Hero, radio d.j. Dicky Bird in Comfort and Joy is another foiled romantic who finds himself embroiled in a misadventure; specifically, a war between Glasgow ice cream vendors.

When the producer of Local Hero, David Putnam, was briefly named head of Columbia Pictures, he provided Forsyth the opportunity to make his first American movie. The result was the haunting and criminally neglected masterpiece Housekeeping, starring Christine Lahti as the eccentric guardian of two orphaned girls. Forsyth completed two more wonderful and underseen comedies in the U.S., Breaking In, starring Burt Reynolds and Casey Siemaszko as a professional burglar and his inexperienced protégé, and Being Human, featuring Robin Williams as five characters (or is it just one?) who learn through 10,000 years of history and heartbreak what it means to be alive.

It's been more than a decade since Forsyth completed his last feature, Gregory's 2Girls, a sequel to one of his earlier successes that returned him to filming in Scotland. His body of work reminds us that there's a lot of comfort and joy and beautiful melancholy to be derived from life's ordinariness. Some might say there's no room for his subtle, quiet style of storytelling in a world dominated by increasingly bombastic popular culture, but seeing these films just might remind you that we need Bill Forsyth now more than ever.

Featured Works:

That Sinking Feeling (Bill Forsyth, 1979); Gregory's Girl (Bill Forsyth, 1981); Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983, pictured); Comfort and Joy (Bill Forsyth, 1984); Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987); Breaking In (Bill Forsyth, 1989); Being Human (Bill Forsyth, 1994); Gregory's 2Girls (Bill Forsyth, 1999)

Program information:

Comfort and Joy: The Bittersweet Comedies of Bill Forsyth

Son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir was born in Paris in 1894 and died a naturalized U.S. citizen in Beverly Hills in 1979. During a career stretching from 1924 to 1970, Renoir directed over 40 films encompassing a wide variety of subjects, a rich body of work that has had an enduring influence on cinema universally and on French directors in particular.  Embraced as the spiritual father of the New Wave by the young Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers, his voice can be heard in many of that period's most important films, among them Jules and Jim, Stolen Kisses, Pierrot le fou, and Celine and Julie Go Boating.

As a young man in 1920s Paris, Renoir was exposed to the avant-garde films made by artists and inspired by their experiments with the medium. With the coming of sound, a time when most films were dialogue-driven and directors relied on cuts and close-ups to create drama, Renoir was composing long takes that allowed him to reveal his characters through their physical interaction in real time, and to connect them visually to the larger world. A consummate technician, Renoir peppered his work with bravura passages of pure filmmaking, and his films still vibrate with the intensity of the moment.

By the late '30s Renoir had two popular hits, Grand Illusion and La bête humaine, both starring Jean Gabin, and one legendary flop: The Rules of the Game, a film ridiculed by the audience at its Paris opening, cut and recut by the producers, and finally withdrawn from exhibition to remain unseen for 20 years. Despondent over the failure of his most ambitious film and concerned for his safety in Nazi-occupied France, Renoir and his wife, armed with a US visa courtesy of documentarian Robert Flaherty, sailed from Marseille to New York City bound for Hollywood. Under contract to Fox, Renoir overcame the objections of Daryl F. Zanuck and shot Swamp Water on location in Georgia; but despite the film's success, his first studio job made him wary of "the industry." Four more films followed, the most notable being the independently produced The Southerner, which earned Renoir an Oscar nomination for Best Director, but his final endeavor, RKO's The Woman on the Beach, was released in a cut version and failed miserably. Acknowledging that neither his sensibility nor his talent was compatible with the studio system, Renoir opened a third chapter in his career when he travelled to India in 1949 to direct The River. Shot in breathtaking color by his nephew Claude Renoir, this film set the stage for French Cancan, The Golden Coach, and Elena et les hommes, three films that explore the relationship between life and art while demonstrating Renoir's effortless command of cinematic artifice.

An empathy with loners and social misfits, the use of documentary in a fictional film, a preference for naturalism over melodrama, an openness to improvisation by the actors, and a love for the theatrical tradition: are all hallmarks of a Renoir film. Flowing through and uniting all Renoir's films are two branches of one magisterial theme: the struggle for freedom, and the struggle to find one's place in the group. It has been remarked that there are no villains in Renoir, that in the words of Octave/Renoir in The Rules of the Game, "everyone has their reasons." Renoir's genius as a filmmaker and his measure as a man is that he can communicate the joy of living while depicting the forces that threaten it.

Featured Works:

Nana (1926); La Chienne (1931); Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932); Toni (1935); A Day in the Country (1936); Grand Illusion (1937); La Bête humaine (1938); La Marseillaise (1938); The Rules of the Game (1939, pictured); Swamp Water (1941); The Southerner (1945); Diary of a Chambermaid (1946); The Woman on the Beach (1947); The River (1951); The Golden Coach (1952); French Cancan (1954); Elena et les homes (1956); The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959); The Elusive Corporal (1962)

Program information:

The Films of Jean Renoir

Cinefest and Syracuse Cinephile are dedicated to the history, preservation, and enjoyment of vintage motion pictures and related subjects. Cinefest features films from the vaults of the world's greatest libraries and obscure specialties from private collections.

Featured Works:

The Doll House Mystery (Sidney Franklin, 1915); Pearl Of The Army Chapter 9 (Pearl White, 1916); The Grasp Of Greed (Louise Lovely and Lon Chaney, 1916); Girl Without A Soul (Viola Dana, 1917); Life's Harmony (Frank Borzage, 1917); The Wild Girl (Eva Tanguay, 1917); Conrad In Quest Of His Youth (Thomas Meighan, 1920); A Tale Of Two Worlds (Leatrice Joy, 1921); Human Hearts (House Peters, 1922); Little Church Around The Corner (Claire Windsor, 1923); The Miracle Of The Wolves (Raymond Bernard, 1923); Roaring Rails (Harry Carey, 1924); Are Parents People (Betty Bronson, 1925); The Iron Mule (Al St. John and Buster Keaton, 1925); East Side West Side (George O'Brien, 1927); Fly Low Jack And The Game (Marion Gleason, 1927); Orchids And Ermine (Colleen Moore, 1927); Pleasure Before Business (Max Davidson, 1927); The Sting Of Stings (Charley Chase, 1927); Peacock Alley (Mae Murray, 1929); The Lady Lies (Walter Huston, 1929); The Valiant (Paul Muni, 1929); A Holy Terror (George O'Brien, 1931); Thanks Again (Edgar Kennedy, 1931); Gentlemen Of Polish (Shaw and Lee, 1933); Life Returns (Onslow Stevens, 1934); The Lost Patrol (Victor McLaglen, 1934); Cheer Up (Stanley Lupino, 1935); Freckles (Virginia Weidler, 1935); College Holiday (Jack Benny, 1936); Hats Off (Mae Clarke, 1936); Information Please (Clifton Fadiman, 1940); Tight Shoes (Broderick Crawford, 1941); Winged Victory (Edmond O'Brien, 1944); Rhumba Seat (Tom Ewell, 1950); Captain Celluloid Vs. The Film Pirates (William K. Everson, 1965); The Motion Picture Camera (Karl Malkames, 1979)  

Program information:

Cinefest 2010

The Orphan Film Symposium will bring together a culturally diverse array of films and artists, professionals, as well as movie lovers of all varieties, from across the globe for its 7th biennial gathering, fittingly titled "Moving Images Around the World." Hosted by New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and its Department of Cinema Studies, the symposium convenes at the newly renovated SVA Theatre at 333 West 23rd Street.

Since its inception at the University of South Carolina in 1999, the Orphan Film Symposium, under the direction of Dan Streible, has become an international summit for those interested in the study, preservation, and exhibition of "orphan films." Narrowly defined, an orphan film is a motion picture abandoned by its owner. More generally, the term refers to all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream: silent and sponsored films, independent, industrial and avant garde work, home movies, advertisements, and other ephemeral moving images. The films on display are rediscovered gems, orphans that have been adopted and saved from neglect and deterioration.

More than 70 presenters from 16 countries will converge to exhibit 80 works (film, video, and digital) dating from 1894 to 2010. and to address this year's theme of "Moving Images Around the World." Topics to be discussed include: film repatriation; mobility, distribution, and travel; national, regional, local, and transnational cinemas; and neglected archival material that sheds light on international aspects of history and archiving.

Featured Works:

Highlights of "Orphans 7" include:

-Gustav Deutsch's Film ist. a Girl and a Gun (2009), a narrative collage constructed using fragments from several European film archives, as well as the Kinsey Institute

-The premiere of Anthology Film Archives' restoration of the landmark independent documentary The Cry of Jazz (1959), with filmmaker Edward O. Bland

-With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain (1938), the first film by noted photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, presumed lost until recently rediscovered in NYU's Tamiment Library

-From Argentina, film archivist-curators Paula Félix-Didier and Fernando Peña (discoverers of the complete 1927 version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis) unveil previously unseen cinema from the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires

-The premiere of Andy Warhol's Uptight #3-David Susskind (1966), newly preserved by the Museum of Modern Art and the Warhol Museum

-The premiere of a never-released film, The Velvet Underground Rehearses (1965), shot by Danny Williams, a member of Warhol's Factory, shortly before his mysterious disappearance at age 27

-Orson Welles' Sketch Book (1955), a rare program made for British television and housed at the Munich Film Museum

-This year's Helen Hill Award-named in honor of the late animator and Orphan Film Symposium supporter-goes to two independent filmmakers, Danielle Ash and Jodie Mack. Both will present recent works, selected because they uphold the spirit and tradition of Hill's own hand-made films.  

Program information:

Orphan Film Symposium