Tag Archives: bamcinematek

FAB FLICKS: DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY (Michel Gondry, 2006)
BAMcinématek at Putnam Triangle Plaza
22 Putnam Ave. at Fulton St. & Grand Ave.
Tuesday, June 9, free, 8:00
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.chappellesblockparty.com

In September 2004, comedian Dave Chappelle put on a surprise block party in Bedford-Stuyvesant, sort of a mini-Brooklyn version of Wattstax, Mel Stuart’s seminal L.A. concert film in which Richard Pryor teamed up with a host of black musicians, including Isaac Hayes, Albert King, the Staples Singers and Carla and Rufus Thomas. Directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) and photographed by Ellen Kuras (Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Blow) Block Party is Chappelle’s Wattstax for the twenty-first century. Gondry and Chappelle take viewers on a very funny trip as the comedian wanders around his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, handing out golden tickets like a black Willy Wonka, offering everyone free transportation to Brooklyn, loading buses up with a fascinating mix of people of all races. When he bumps into a college marching band, he invites them to play at the party, joining such big names as Kanye West, the reunited Fugees, Big Daddy Kane, Common, John Legend, the Roots, and Dead Prez. Gondry cuts between the preparation for the block party and the actual festivities, an infectious blend of music and comedy that makes you feel like you’re right in the middle of it all. Musical highlights include West performing “Jesus Walks” with Legend and Common, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu backing the Roots on “You Got Me,” and Talib Kweli, Common, and Fred Hampton Jr. rapping with Mos Def on “Umi Says.”

Dave Chappelle invites everyone to his Bed-Stuy block party

Unfortunately, the songs are not seen in their entirety, one of the film’s only drawbacks. Behind the scenes, Chappelle tickles the ivories to “Misty” and “Round Midnight,” hangs out with the bizarre white couple who live in the Broken Angel house across the street, and jokes around with Mos Def. The film avoids any overt political messages, although some of the songs deal with controversial topics. One of the sweetest moments is when Wyclef Jean plays “President” for the marching band, letting the members know they can be anything they want to be. Block Party is a shining, defining moment for Chappelle, who shortly after walked away from a $50 million Comedy Central contract, succumbing to the pressure of fame and expectation. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is screening June 9 at 8:00 at Putnam Plaza Triangle as part of BAMcinématek’s free “FAB Flicks” series, which began June 2 with Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s Soul Power and concludes June 16 with D. A. Pennebaker’s Shake! Otis at Monterey and Chris Hegedus and Pennebaker’s Jimi Plays Monterey. Each evening also features a DJ and food from local restaurants.

BLACK & WHITE ’SCOPE — INTERNATIONAL CINEMA: BILLY LIAR

Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie get close in BILLY LIAR

BILLY LIAR (John Schlesinger, 1963)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, June 7, 4:00 & 8:45
Series runs May 29 – June 16
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse (which he also adapted into a play with Willis Hall and which later became a musical), John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar is a prime example of the British New Wave of the 1950s and 1960s, which features work by such directors as Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg, and Karel Reisz. Tom Courtenay stars as William Fisher, a ne’er-do-well ladies’ man who drudges away in a funeral home and dates (and lies to) multiple women, all the while daydreaming of being the president of the fictional country of Ambrosia. Billy lives in his own fantasy world where he can suddenly fire machine guns at people who bother him and be cheered by adoring crowds as he leads a marching band. Reminiscent of the 1947 American comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in which Danny Kaye dreams of other lives to lift him out of the doldrums, Billy Liar is also rooted in the reality of post-WWII England, represented by Billy’s father (Wilfred Pickles), who thinks his son is a no-good lazy bum. Shot in black-and-white by Denys Coop (This Sporting Life, Bunny Lake Is Missing), the film glows every time Julie Christie appears playing Liz, a modern woman who takes a rather fond liking to Billy. The film made Christie a star; Schlesinger next cast her in Darling, for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Billy Liar is screening on June 7 in the BAMcinématek series “Black & White ’Scope: International Cinema,” an eighteen-day, twenty-eight-film festival featuring 1950s and ’60s black-and-white films shot in CinemaScope. The series includes such other fab works as Andrzej Wajda’s Siberian Lady Macbeth, Frantisek Vlacil’s Valley of the Bees, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, and Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion.

BLACK & WHITE ’SCOPE — INTERNATIONAL CINEMA: THE 400 BLOWS

Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) can’t seem to stay away from trouble in François Truffaut’s autobiographical Nouvelle Vague classic THE 400 BLOWS

THE 400 BLOWS (LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS) (François Truffaut, 1959)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, May 29, 2:00, 4:30, 7:00 & 9:30
Series runs May 29 – June 16
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

“They won’t be happy you’re missing school like this,” a man tells fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud as he’s auditioning for the part of Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. “It doesn’t matter, as long as I’m happy,” Léaud responds. The French New Wave classic marked the first of five films, including one short, in which Léaud played the iconic character, as audiences around the world followed his search for happiness. In The 400 Blows, Doinel is a tough twelve-year-old kid who loves Balzac, has never seen the ocean, and is always getting into trouble with his parents, who treat him more like a problem than a son. He is clearly very smart, but he does poorly in school, where he is harassed by his teacher, whom they call Sourpuss (Guy Decomble). One day when he decides to play hooky, he catches his mother (Claire Maurier) kissing another man, and instead of telling his father (Albert Rémy), he runs away from home, moving in with his friend René (Patrick Auffay), setting off a series of events that lead to a whole lot more trouble and an unforgettable final shot. The 400 Blows is one of the most intelligent films ever made about adolescence, a tender, honest portrayal of a mischievous kid who just wants to be understood. Léaud gives a wonderfully nuanced performance that makes Antoine a uniquely believable and sympathetic character even when he is making some very bad choices. The bittersweet autobiographical paean to childhood rebellion is also about escape of all kinds, beginning and ending with Henri Decaë’s camera racing away alongside Jean Constantin’s glorious score. The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series continued with 1962’s Antoine and Colette, 1968’s Stolen Kisses, 1970’s Bed and Board, and 1979’s Love on the Run, as the world grew up with Antoine, and Truffaut alter-ego Léaud.

Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and earning Truffaut Best Director honors at Cannes, The 400 Blows is screening in Brooklyn on May 29, kicking off the BAMcinématek series “Black & White ’Scope: International Cinema,” an eighteen-day, twenty-eight-film festival featuring 1950s and ’60s black-and-white films shot in CinemaScope. The series includes such other Truffaut classics as Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim in addition to five films by Akira Kurosawa, Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Joseph Losey’s The Damned, and Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower, a veritable master’s level course in cinema studies.

3D IN THE 21st CENTURY: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

Werner Herzog goes spelunking in 3D for 2010 documentary, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (Werner Herzog, 2010)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, May 3, 4:00 & 8:30
Series runs May 1-17
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.wernerherzog.com

An adventurer as much as a filmmaker, German director Werner Herzog has headed into the Amazon in Fitzcarraldo (1982), burning Kuwaiti oil fields in Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World (2008). In his 2010 documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, he goes where few have ever gone before. In December 1994, speleologists Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel, and Christian Hillaire discovered the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France, a vast series of chambers filled with remarkable paintings and engravings as well as animal bones, including the skulls of the extinct cave bear. The works were painted onto and carved into the walls, not limited to flat surfaces but around formations that jut out into the cavern. Dating back more than thirty thousand years, they are the oldest cave paintings ever found, well preserved through crystallization over the centuries and now by the intense and careful protection of the French government. Only a handful of scientists have been given access to the cave, until last spring, when Herzog, who has been entranced by cave paintings since he was twelve years old, was allowed to bring in a shoestring crew using specially devised equipment to film the space over the course of six four-hour sessions. The four-person crew — including Herzog manning the lights and his longtime cinematographer, Peter Zeitlinger, behind the 3D camera — were not allowed to touch anything and had to stay on a narrow metal walkway that winds through the cave. They were accompanied by a team of specialists on the rare public journey: handprint expert Dominique Baffier, cave bear researcher Michel Philippe, the husband and wife team of Gilles Tosello and Carole Fritz, who map out the social connection between art and archaeology, Jean Clottes, the former director of the Chauvet Cave Research Project, and current director Jean-Michel Geneste.

In true Herzog style, he also speaks with a master perfumer and two prehistoric flute archaeologists. Herzog’s decision to use 3D — for what he says will be the only time in his career — was a stroke of genius, allowing viewers to feel like they’re walking through the cave with him, nearly able to reach out and touch the remarkable drawings, engravings, and skeletons. Herzog’s narration does get too dreamy at times, veering off on philosophical tangents before he adds a cool but silly coda, but, as always, he adds plenty of his trademark humor and charm too. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is screening May 3 at 4:00 & 8:30 with Ikuo Nakamura’s 2014 eleven-minute short, Aurora Borealis, as part of the BAMcinématek series “3D in the 21st Century,” consisting of nineteen programs of single films and double features, all shot in 3D. The festival also includes Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity with Trisha Baga’s Other Gravity, Jon M. Chu’s Justin Bieber: Never Say Never with Nadia Ranocchi and David Zamagni’s Joule, Jeff Tremaine’s Jackass 3D with Ben Coonley’s 3D Trick Pony, Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D with Yoshi Sodeoka’s Psychedelic Death Vomit (Slight Return), and Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language with Kerry Laitala’s Chromatic Frenzy.

OVERDUE: JAMES B. HARRIS

COP, starring James Woods, is part of overdue look at the career of James B. Harris

Who: James B. Harris
What: “Overdue,” critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold’s ongoing series that pays tribute to overlooked films and filmmakers
Where: BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St., 718-636-4100
When: April 1-6
Why: Writer, director, and producer James B. Harris is finally given his due in this six-day series at BAM featuring eight of his nine films, including Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Lolita, and Paths of Glory and Don Siegel’s Telefon (starring Charles Bronson) in addition to four of his five directorial efforts, The Bedford Incident with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark, the Sleeping Beauty update Some Call It Loving, and Fast-Walking and Cop, both starring James Woods. The only film left out is the 1993 crime drama Boiling Point. The eighty-six-year-old Harris will be at BAM for Q&As following the April 1 screening of Some Call It Loving and the 6:30 screening of Cop on April 4 in addition to introducing the 9:30 showing of Paths of Glory on April 4, a film in which he also makes a cameo.

BLACK & WHITE ’SCOPE: AMERICAN CINEMA

Tony Randall stars as a used car salesman in 1957 Martin Ritt black-and-white CinemaScope tale

Tony Randall plays a used car salesman in 1957 Martin Ritt black-and-white CinemaScope tale

Who: Directors Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Martin Ritt, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Wise, Samuel Fuller, and others
What: “Black & White ’Scope: American Cinema”
Where: BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St., 718-636-4100
When: February 27 – March 19
Why: BAMcinématek is presenting twenty-one CinemaScope films shot in glorious black-and-white by such master cinematographers as Gordon Willis, James Wong Howe, Eugen Schüfftan, and Conrad Hall, from such classics as The Apartment, Manhattan, The Hustler, In Cold Blood, The Elephant Man, The Longest Day, and The Three Faces of Eve to such lesser-known fare as The Victors, Forty Guns, China Gate, No Down Payment — featuring Tony Randall as a used car salesman — and the unforgettable (for all the wrong reasons) Rashomom remake The Outrage, starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, and William Shatner.

BALLET 422

Viewers are taken behind the scenes as Justin Peck creates a new work for New York City Ballet

BALLET 422 (Jody Lee Lipes, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5600
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St. between First & Second Aves., 212-330-8182
Opens Friday, February 6 (special advance screening February 3 at 7:00 at BAMcinématek)
www.magpictures.com

In Ballet 422, Jody Lee Lipes takes viewers behind the scenes as twenty-five-year-old New York City Ballet dancer Justin Peck choreographs the 422nd original piece for the prestigious company, Paz de la Jolla. One of fifty dancers in the Corps de Ballet, which the film calls “the lowest rank” of NYCB, Peck was named by company head Peter Martins to be the New York Choreographic Institute’s first active choreographer-in-residence for the 2011-12 season, and he is the only current NYCB dancer to choreograph for the company. Documentarian and cinematographer Lipes (NY Export: Opus Jazz, Tiny Furniture) focuses on the fascinating collaboration that goes into creating a ballet. “As a former soloist with New York City Ballet, I had long dreamed about pulling back the veil on the making of a new ballet,” producer Ellen Bar explains on the film’s Hatchfund page, which has raised more than $55,000 for the project. “Even as a dancer who was often part of the choreographic process, I never saw the other artistic and technical elements develop until the very end. Wouldn’t it be amazing to invite audiences into a world they can never visit in person and to let them watch it unfold in real time?” Lipes does just that, showing Peck and ballet master Albert Evans working out specific moves with principal dancers Sterling Hyltin, Amar Ramasar, and Tiler Peck; costumers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung discussing materials with the performers; Mark Stanley detailing the lighting design; and Peck meeting with conductor Andrews Sill, who reveals that the orchestra is not particularly fond of playing the ballet’s musical score, Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s “Sinfonietta la Jolla.”

Sterling Hytlin, Amar Ramasar, and Tiler Peck rehearse with Justin Peck on 422nd original piece for New York City Ballet

There are no talking heads in the film, no experts chiming in on the beauty and intricacy of ballet, no one pontificating on how unusual it is for such a young dancer to already be choreographing his fifth work for the company, following Year of the Rabbit, Tales of a Chinese Zodiac, In Creases, and Capricious Movements. No one stops and looks into the camera, sharing their fears, hopes, or dreams; Lipes doesn’t even identify who’s who, instead allowing the drama to play out sans editorial comment. A few times, the camera goes with Peck as he puts on his backpack and heads home to his unglamorous Queens apartment, and the surprise ending puts everything in fabulous perspective. You don’t have to love ballet or know anything about it to enjoy Ballet 422, an intimate, compelling inside look into the creative process, but don’t be surprised if you soon find yourself ordering tickets for an upcoming NYCB production — perhaps even Peck’s latest work for the company, a new interpretation of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, which is having its premiere February 4 at the David H. Koch Theater. Ballet 422 opens February 6 at the Landmark Sunshine and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where Lipes and Peck will participate in a Q&A following the 7:15 screening and will introduce the 9:35 show on February 6. In addition, the film is having a sneak peek February 3 at 7:00 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Two by Jody Lee Lipes,” followed by a Q&A with Lipes.