We begin in New York, where Japan Society has announced the dates for this year’s Japan Cuts—July 9 through 19—as well as the Centerpiece Presentation, the North American premieres of Shingo Wakagi’s Asleep and Masaharu Take’s 100 Yen Love. The star of both films, Sakura Ando, is also this year’s honored recipient of the CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Performance in Film.
With Acteurism: Joel McCrea on at MoMA through May 29, Zach Lewis considers McCrea’s performance in Howard Hawks’s Barbary Coast (1935) in the Notebook.
Also at MoMA, a big Bruce LaBruce retrospective opens tomorrow and runs through May 2. “He’s become known for drawing out the gay subtext in movies from Robert Altman and Billy Wilder, and bringing it to the forefront in his features Super 8½ (1994), No Skin Off My Ass (1991) and Hustler White (1996),” writes Mekado Murphy, who gets LaBruce talking about five of the films he’s found most inspiring for the New York Times. “‘Talent borrows, genius steals,’ Mr. LaBruce joked.”
Los Angeles. The UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema begins on Saturday and runs through May 16.
Melbourne. Last night, Dave Kehr presented Allan Dwan‘s The Iron Mask (1929) and Raoul Walsh‘s Wild Girl (1932) at the Melbourne Cinémathèque and tomorrow (tonight already, if you’re in Melbourne), he’ll introduce another screening of The Iron Mask at the Australian Film Television and Radio School’s (AFTRS) theater. The new restoration “brings the film back to pretty much what people saw and heard when they went to the film in 1929,” Kehr tells Philippa Hawker in the Age, where she notes that, as a curator at MoMA, when Kehr “gives talks at universities, there are often students who don’t know who Howard Hawks is, or even Humphrey Bogart. But he’s also clear about the archivist’s mission. ‘We have to hold on, protect, and wait for it to be discovered again.'”
Opening tomorrow at the Northwest Film Center in Portland: Essential Gus Van Sant (& His Influences); through June 5
London. With Martin Scorsese presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema on through the end of the month at BFI Southbank, the Guardian‘s posted a video showing us what a difference restoration makes. Early work by Polanski, Kieslowski and Wajda has never looked so good. Also in the Guardian, Scorsese himself: “With Polish cinema, what I especially respond to is the mixture of passion, meticulous craftsmanship, dynamic deep focal-length compositions, moral dilemmas and religious conflicts, often done with a very sharp sense of humor. Humor and tragedy are very close in Polish cinema.”
UK. “Laurel and Hardy will return to the big screen this summer in celebrations to mark the 125th anniversary of Stan Laurel’s birth,” reports the Telegraph‘s Martin Chilton. “Cinemas across the UK will be showing a double bill of their classic 1933 feature length film Sons of the Desert and the short movie County Hospital. The events, organized by The Laurel and Hardy Roadshow and Showcase Cinemas, will begin with a screening in Liverpool on Monday June 1.”
Lisbon. The IndieLisboa International Film Festival opens tomorrow and runs through May 3.
Berlin. An Agnieszka Holland retrospective opens at the Zeughaus Kino tomorrow and runs through May 3.
Saturday through June 6 at Portland‘s Northwest Film Center: Bigger Than Life: The Films of Nicholas Ray
Basel. Tomorrow and Friday at the Stadtkino: Film as Film: Theory and Practice in the Work of Gregory J. Markopoulos, a series of screenings and a symposium.
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