And we begin in New York, where on Thursday, the New Inquiry and the Spectacle Theater will be presenting January’s edition of its monthly program, Film as a Subversive Art.
The inspiration, of course, is Amos Vogel and his classic book of the same name: “Each monthly screening will focus on one section of the book. On Thursday, we’ll be looking at films from the section Straining Towards the Limits. We will watch films that, according to Vogel, ‘Eliminate the screen, the camera, subvert illusionism and eliminate the artist.'”
Last week, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the lineup for the 13th edition of Film Comment Selects, a series running from February 18 through 28: “Highlights include 104-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira‘s Gebo and the Shadow, Antonio Campos’s engrossing portrait of a serial killer-in-the-making Simon Killer, Marco Bellocchio’s compelling drama with interrelated storylines Dormant Beauty starring Isabelle Huppert, Sergei Loznitsa’s gritty World War II drama In the Fog, and James Benning’s Stemple Pass, which contemplates the life of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Exciting new discoveries include Ashim Ahluwalia’s delirious look at the sleazy underside of Bollywood with Miss Lovely and Sébastien Betbeder’s beguiling story of a couple’s nocturnal exploration of a unique Paris park Nights with Theodore.”
The FSLC series The Last New Wave: Celebrating the Australian Film Revival is on through Thursday. The focus is on “the late-1970s resurgence of the Australian movie industry,” as Mike Hale puts it in the Times, and Time Out New York‘s Keith Uhlich calls it “a stellar survey.”
Tonight at Light Industry: Richard Kern’s The Bitches (1992) and Abram Room’s Bed and Sofa (1926).
You can watch Francis Alÿs’s new 20-minute film REEL-UNREEL, shot in 2011 in Kabul, online or in the company of new paintings at David Zwirner. Tyler Green talks with Alÿs and notes that Alÿs’s 2005 film Guards “is at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through March 31, and his long-running Fabiola project-cum-exhibition is now Museu do Homem do Nordeste in Brazil.”
Minneapolis. At the Walker Art Center: “Amid laments about the end of celluloid, this year’s Expanding the Frame series celebrates its materiality and temporal nature—how it lives and decays. Two artists, Bill Morrison and Luther Price, embrace the overall beauty of the medium by exploring film’s organic properties. While Morrison breathes life into existing films, Price stimulates its degeneration by burying and chemically altering the material. In both cases, the results are breathtaking.” Through February 1. Related reading: Eric Henderson‘s interview with Morrison and Allison Meier‘s with Price.
Atlanta. In conjunction with Extraordinary Cinematic Visions: Mexico’s Past and Present Through the Eyes of Gabriel Figueroa and Carlos Reygadas at the High Museum of Art, Gabriel Figueroa Flores will be on hand for a Q&A on February 23, and Reygadas will follow on April 27.
Toronto. Tokyo Drifters: 100 Years of Nikkatsu is on at the TIFF Bell Lightbox through April 6. Jason Gorber has an overview at Twitch.
Berlin. With the festival just over a week away now, the Berlinale‘s been making rapid-fire announcements in the past few days. For one thing, the schedule‘s now live. And the International Jury is set. With Wong Kar-wai presiding, the members are Susanne Bier, Andreas Dresen, Ellen Kuras, Shirin Neshat, Tim Robbins, and Athina Rachel Tsangari. Isabella Rossellini and Rosa von Praunheim are to be presented with Berlinale Cameras. Jane Campion, Anita Ekberg, Bence Fliegauf, Nina Hoss, Ken Loach, Lucrecia Martel, John Cameron Mitchell, Walter Murch, Hengameh Panahi, Ulrich Seidl (whose exhibition Paradies: Liebe Glaube Hoffnung is on view at C/O Berlin through March 17, by the way), and Paul Verhoeven will all be on hand at the Talent Campus, talking and teaching. And the lineups for the Generation sections and the Culinary Cinema series are now complete as well.
Maia Gianakos for Art Agenda: “When entering into the cinematic contract, we often abandon ourselves to fiction, falling into a suspension of disbelief that prioritizes one reality over another. This tacit agreement is the very substance of 5,000 Feet Is the Best (2011) and Continuity (2012), two films by Omer Fast on view at Arratia Beer that focus on the topic of war—a reality that transcends cultural divisions and dominates the collective global conscience—to expose structures of representation and the dissemination of information.” Through February 9.
Göteborg. The International Film Festival‘s on through February 4.
Vienna. The Austrian Film Museum’s Konrad Wolf series is on through February 6. Tomorrow, a series of documentaries by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann opens and runs through February 6.
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