Harrowing Romanian film will screen at series celebrating indie distributor IFC Films
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMÂNI SI 2 ZILE) (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, June 17, 8:00, and Saturday, June 18, 2:00
Series runs through June 24
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a harrowing look at personal freedom at the end of the Ceausescu regime in late-’80s Romania. Anamaria Marinca gives a powerful performance as Otilia, a young woman risking her own safety to help her best friend, Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), out of a difficult, dangerous situation. Their lives get even more complicated when they turn to Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) to take care of things. Cinematographer Oleg Mutu, who shot Cristi Puiu’s brilliant The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, keeps the camera relatively steady for long scenes, without cuts, pans, dollies, or zooms, as the actors walk in and out of view, giving the film a heightened level of believability without looking like a documentary. Set in a restrictive era with a burgeoning black market, 4 Months goes from mystery to psychological drama to thriller with remarkable ease — and the less you know about the plot, the better. Four Months is screening at MoMA on June 17 & 18 as part of the series “In Focus: IFC Films,” which continues with such films as Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (2008), Lukas Moodysson’s Together (2001), Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows (2004), and a sneak peek at Errol Morris’s Tabloid (2010).
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance “for originality of vision,” performance artist Miranda July’s feature-film directorial debut is a success from start to finish, an original, engaging, and utterly charming romantic comedy that is as unique as it is familiar. July, who also wrote the screenplay, stars as a quirky young performance artist who is looking for a relationship in her rather mundane life. She immediately falls for a shoe salesman (John Hawkes) who is separating from his wife and trying to understand his kids (Brandon Ratcliff and Miles Thompson), who are having a strange online dalliance with a mystery e-mailer. Meanwhile, two high school girls (Najarra Townsend and Natasha Slayton) are sexually tormenting a bizarre loner (Brad Henke) who is sexually tormenting them right back, both humorously and dangerously. It’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off of July, whose innovative audio and visual installations and short films have been shown at the Andy Warhol Museum, the Whitney Biennial, the Kitchen, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Union Square Park, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival, among many other prestigious places. Me and You and Everyone We Know is screening at MoMA on June 16 as part of the series “In Focus: IFC Films,” which continues with such films as Kevin McDonald’s Touching the Void (2003), Alfonso Cuaron’s Y tu mamá también (2001), Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop (2009), and Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour epic, Che (2008). MoMA will also present a sneak peek at July’s latest feature, The Future, on July 13 prior to its New York opening on July 29.
Following more than a dozen documentaries, Zero Chou, Taiwan’s only openly lesbian filmmaker, made her feature-length debut with Splendid Float in 2004. The poignant work tells the bittersweet tale of Roy/Rose (James Chen), one of a group of drag queens who perform on a colorful float that plays waterside concerts as it makes its way across Taipei. By day he is a Taoist priest conducting funeral rites, while at night he transforms into a beautiful woman and sings heartbreaking and celebratory songs to a devoted crowd of men who revel in being able to unleash a side of themselves that is usually shunned in public. Roy falls instantly in love with Sunny, a young man who works in a fishing village with his mother but who decides to go on the road with Roy. But their burgeoning love comes to an abrupt halt when tragedy strikes and Roy is forced to reevaluate their relationship. Splendid Float begins with a steamy sex scene between Roy and Sunny that instantly challenges viewers’ expectations as it slowly becomes apparent that it is not a man and a woman making love, nor is it two women, but it is in fact two men. Unfortunately, Chou moves too fast through the rest of the film, which at seventy-one minutes is actually too short, awkwardly jumping from scene to scene without much-needed transition. Once again Chou reveals her tendency toward melodrama, as evident in such other works as Wave Breaker and Spider Lilies. Still, Chou offers a rare look at a part of Taiwanese culture rarely depicted on-screen. Splendid Float also began Chou’s use of one of the colors of the gay pride rainbow flag in each of her films; in this case, she features yellow. Splendid Float will be shown at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on June 16 at 6:30 as part of the series “Breaking the Waves: The Films of Zero Chou,” which continues June 23 with 2008’s Drifting Flowers and June 30 with 2001’s Corner’s.
In a November 1923 lecture, Austian anthroposopher Rudolf Steiner said, “Perhaps you noticed something about the entire nature of beekeeping, something, I would say, of the nature of an enigma. The beekeeper is understandably interested above all in what must be done. Actually, every human being should show the greatest interest in this subject, because, much more than you can imagine, our lives depend upon beekeeping.” Steiner also predicted that bees would disappear from the face of the earth in eighty to one hundred years. Sadly, Taggart Siegel’s compelling documentary about colony collapse disorder, Queen of the Sun, reveals that Steiner just might be right. Siegel (The Real Dirt on Farmer John) meets with experts around the world, including author Michael Pollan, biodynamic beekeeper Gunther Hauk, philosopher Horst Kornberger, Indian activist and physicist Vandana Shiva, Slow Food International president Carlo Petrini, molecular biologist Johannes Wirz, entomologist May Berenbaum, and such serious, oddball, and quirky beekeepers as Yvon Archard, Michael Thiele, David Heaf, Gunther Friedmann, Massimo Carpinteri, Ron Breland, and Warren Thompson, who talk about how integral bees are not only to the natural environment but to the very future of humanity. They also proudly show off their rather close personal relationships with their queens and hardworking drones as they discuss the hazards of monoculture, corporate migratory beekeeping, pesticide usage, and other factors that have led to the frightening disappearance of millions of colonies. “We could call it colony collapse of the human being too,” Hauk says. The film, which also includes a look at the legal battle over beekeeping in New York City, begins and ends with artist, energy healer, and beekeeper Sara Mapelli performing a ritual dance covered with some twelve thousand bees. Queen of the Sun has built quite a buzz, having won awards at festivals around the world, including the Planet in Focus Film Festival; it opens at Cinema Village today for a one-week run, the perfect prelude to National Pollinator Week, which takes place June 20–26. You’ll never look at honey the same way again.