New York’s Film Forum theater is screening films photographed by the legendary Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. The show runs from June 5-18, and is a complement to an ongoing exhibit on Figueroa at El Museo del Barrio in New York. In this video, a mother and son visit El Museo del Barrio to view the exhibit. Mom is an obsessive cinephile, so when she enters the museum to find ethereal wall-to-wall projections of films by such masters as Emilio Fernandez, John Huston and Luis Buñuel, she’s found movie heaven. For the little boy, heaven is a simpler matter: a place to roam free amidst light and shadows. But some of these adult images manage to stop him in his tracks. Here enchantment transcends age, and mother and son bond in an unusual, almost spiritual way.
Steven Boone has written film criticism for over 20 publications in print and online, including The Village Voice, The Star-Ledger, Time Out NY and Salon.com. Boone is a writer at large for the website Capital New York and a contributor to three popular blogs: Fandor’s Keyframe, Indiewire’s Press Play and Slant Magazine’s The House Next Door. His experimental video essays blend film commentary, memoir and documentary in a provocative DIY style.
