First Look: An Adventurous New Series at the Museum of the Moving Image![]() Since I’m not stinking rich just yet, my plan to go on a heavily medicated tour of international film festivals has been put on indefinite hold. Luckily, the Museum of the Moving Image has purloined 13 new features from all over the world, most without U.S. distribution, for their inaugural “First Look” series (Jan. 6-15), bringing the best of the fests to NYC. Since distributors continue to lose money on any film not in English (or, occasionally, French), it’s something of a miracle that any foreign titles reach our shores at all. This leaves a huge glut of films without any stateside release, left as rumors of masterpieces in the words of the few industrious critics and curators able to send word back to us in the sticks. “First Look” was programmed by some of these proud few: Dennis Lim, the editor of Moving Image Source, Assistant Curator of film Rachael Rakes and Chief Curator David Schwartz. It’s a small but impactful series, with invigorating entries from old masters like Chantal Akerman and enchanting young voices like Goncalo Tocha.
The opening night slot is given to Akerman, who will be in person to present Almayer’s Folly (2011), her impressionistic rendering of Joseph Conrad’s first novel. As with her adaptation of Proust’s The Captive (2000), Akerman eschews textual faithfulness in order to establish a specific atmosphere. In The Captive it is of airless enclosures, as Simon (Stanislas Merhar) creeps at the edge of the frame, seeking to imprison Ariane (Sylvie Testud) within his own paranoia, subtly shifting the narrative center of Proust’s story over to the woman. It owes as much The protagonists of Christoph Hochhausler’s The City Below (2010) live in a world without God and sin, but plenty of greed, as they sleepwalk their way through the global financial crisis. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, but was never released in the U.S.. A co-editor of the German film magazine Revolver, and associated with the loose cadre of “Berlin School” filmmakers, Hochhausler is a precise technician, as his follow-up, One Minute of Darkness (2011, part of the Dreileben trilogy) shows. The City Below follows two empty suits: bank president Roland Cordes (Robert Hunger-Buhler) and Svenja (Nicolette Krebitz), the bored wife of one of his employees. Svenja is exhausted from constant re-location Phillipe Garrel’s mindset is still set squarely in the ‘60s, no matter what year his films are set in. His newest work is That Summer (2011) an earnestly affecting relationship drama in which its characters discuss revolution as if the May ’68 riots where happening right outside their doors. But no, it is set in the present day, and Phillippe’s son Louis plays The standout title in the First Take series, though, is Goncalo Tocha’s It’s the Earth, Not the Moon (2011), an absorbingly inventive three-hour documentary about the smallest island in the Azores archipelago, Corvo, population 440. Tocha spent parts of two years on the island, and attempted to film everything he could: knitting, cheese curdling, lock-making, accordion-playing, sitting, standing and dancing. Tocha is a restless social historian, trying to capture every tradition First Look is an essential new series, bringing together a cross-section of styles and approaches impossible to see in your neighborhood arthouse. And I haven’t even mentioned (or seen) the other entries in the program, including Johnnie To’s financial crisis drama Life Without Principle and Raya Martin’s Super-8 road trip freakout, Buenos Noches, Espana. With the number of films exploding and distribution channels shrinking, I hope this First Look is one of many to come. 0 Response First Look: An Adventurous New Series at the Museum of the Moving Image
![]() I may have missed where you cited it, but where is the place in the top picture? It’s gorgeous. I want to go to there. ![]() Hey Duke, that’s the Portuguese island of Corvo, the northernmost island in the Azores archipelago. It’s the subject of IT’S THE EARTH, NOT THE MOON. ![]() Hey Duke, that’s the Portuguese island of Corvo, the northernmost island in the Azores archipelago. It’s the subject of IT’S THE EARTH, NOT THE MOON. ![]() Will the movie: “IT’S THE EARTH, NOT THE MOON” will be played again? I missed it today. Thanks ![]() Will the movie: “IT’S THE EARTH, NOT THE MOON” will be played again? I missed it today. Thanks ![]() Filipa, right now there are no more screenings. If more are booked I will update in the comments here. ![]() Filipa, right now there are no more screenings. If more are booked I will update in the comments here. ![]() [...] to read what I previously wrote about FCS selections Despair (1978) and Almayer’s Folly(2011). addthis_pub = 'tcmaddthis'; addthis_options = 'favorites, email, digg, delicious, [...] ![]() [...] to read what I previously wrote about FCS selections Despair (1978) and Almayer’s Folly(2011). addthis_pub = 'tcmaddthis'; addthis_options = 'favorites, email, digg, delicious, [...] Leave a Reply |
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I may have missed where you cited it, but where is the place in the top picture? It’s gorgeous. I want to go to there.