Jay Rosenblatt’s new THE D TRAIN is part of specially curated program at IFC Center
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, October 25, $16, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.jayrosenblattfilms.com
Last October, former therapist Jay Rosenblatt presented the New York premiere of yet another masterpiece, The Darkness of Day (2009), at MoMA, along with other “long shorts,” “diary films,” and “short shorts” composed primarily of found and archival footage and home movies. For more than thirty years, the San Francisco-based Rosenblatt, who was born in New York, has been making films that examine the human psyche in unique, unusual ways. On October 25, he will host a specially curated selection of his work as part of the IFC Center’s “Stranger than Fiction” series, including The Darkness of Day, Afraid So (2006), Human Remains (1998), King of the Jews (2000), and his latest, The D Train (2011). The Darkness of Day is a twenty-six-minute examination of suicide inspired by the self-inflicted deaths of two people Rosenblatt knew. Using footage rescued from school Dumpsters, he incorporates industrial and educational films about suicide, touching on such well-known cases as the Hemingway family and the first man to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge as well as that of a Japanese woman who leaped into a volcano, setting off a rash of copycats. Beverly Berning and Richard J. Silberg narrate the film, which includes readings from a suicide victim’s journal, in a steady monotone that is a trademark of Rosenblatt’s work. The Darkness of Day is both fascinating and frightening, perhaps the most honest look at suicide we’ve ever seen. In the three-minute Afraid So, Garrison Keillor reads from a poem by Jeanne Marie Beaumont that asks questions that all can be answered by the title while Rosenblatt shows related images; among the questions are “Is this going to hurt?,” “Will it leave a scar?,” “Are you contagious?,” and “Will I have to put him to sleep?” Human Remains, “a film about the banality of evil,” looks at Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, and Mao Tse Tung; King of the Jews, “a film about fear and transcendence,” deals with Rosenblatt’s own childhood fear of Jesus; and The D Train chronicles an old man’s life in five minutes. Despite their often very serious subject matter, Rosenblatt’s films are absolutely thrilling to watch, intellectually stimulating, visually vibrant, and emotionally powerful.