Christopher Nolan and the Quay Brothers will join forces at Film Forum for a special week-long presentation (Quay Brothers photo © Robin Holland)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
August 19-25
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
In such films as Memento, Inception, and Interstellar, British-American writer-director Christopher Nolan has shown a flair for unusual storytelling devices and complex narratives. “I decided to structure my story in such a way as to emphasize the audience’s incomplete understanding of each new scene as it is first presented,” he said about his debut feature, 1998’s Following, and a similar aesthetic can be applied to the works of the Quay Brothers. Pennsylvania-born, England-based twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have been making complex narratives for three dozen years, short films and feature-length tales that push the boundaries of storytelling conventions. In hypnotic films such as In Absentia, The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep), and their universally acclaimed masterpiece, Street of Crocodiles, they use fragile dolls and puppets, psychologically tantalizing Expressionistic imagery, and experimental music to draw viewers into their Gothic, industrial, dreamlike fantasy world. In fall 2009, their mind-blowing sets were on display in the exhibit “Dormitorium: Film Décors by the Quay Brothers” at Parsons the New School for Design, and the brothers were justly celebrated in the wide-ranging 2012-13 MoMA retrospective “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets.” Now they have joined forces with Nolan for a special traveling program that debuts August 19-25 at Film Forum, consisting of the abovementioned three shorts, all restored in 35MM, and the world premiere of Nolan’s documentary about the brothers, simply titled Quay.
The meditative, mesmerizing In Absentia, dedicated to a woman “who lived and wrote to her husband from an asylum,” boasts a gorgeous minimalist score by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) is a fabulously layered film that switches back and forth between color and black and white, live action and stop-motion animation, as a woman has a remarkable dream. And Street of Crocodiles is an award-winning adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s story told the Quay way, with eerie dolls and puppets, ominous screws, and various machine parts come to life. In the three works, light, shadow, and repetitive movement create a dark but compelling mood while providing no easy answers for what is actually occurring onscreen. “That’s the question nobody’s ever asked us: ‘What are you doing?!’ or ‘What are you doing to us?’” Stephen and Timothy told Senses of Cinema in a 2001 interview. Thus, it is no surprise that some of the their major influences are Franz Kafka, Jan Švankmajer, and Leoš Janáček. Nolan and the brothers, who look rather amazing at the age of sixty-eight, will be at Film Forum on August 19 for Q&As after the 7:00 & 9:30 screenings, and the Quays will be back August 20-22 to talk about their work at the 7:00 show each night. In addition to making astonishing, hallucinatory films, they are fun to listen to, so don’t miss this opportunity that we cannot recommend highly enough.