Tag Archives: MoMA

THE CONTENDERS: LA LA LAND

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling sing and dance up a CinemaScope storm in Damien Chazelle’s LA LA LAND

LA LA LAND (Damien Chazelle, 2016)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, January 4, $15, 7:30
Series runs through January 12
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.lalaland.movie
www.moma.org

Call it Blah Blah Bland. La La Land, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Whiplash, is an overwrought tribute to the old-fashioned romance musical, a genre homage that lacks the energy and chemistry of the films that it directly evokes, including the Hollywood classics Singin’ in the Rain, Funny Face, and An American in Paris, Jacques Demy’s French favorites The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and Chazelle’s own 2009 black-and-white indie musical, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. (Look for a billboard of Chazelle’s debut that passes by quickly.) In La La Land, Emma Stone stars as Mia Dolan, a studio barista with dreams of becoming a successful actress; Ryan Gosling is Sebastian Wilder, a down-on-his-luck jazz pianist with dreams of opening his own club. The film opens with a fabulous number on a Hollywood freeway, as hundreds of men and women in a traffic jam get out of their cars and sing and dance, announcing that it’s “Another Day of Sun.” It’s also the first of several awkward, accidental meet-cute scenes between Mia and Sebastian before they get involved with each other. Chazelle, a drummer, knows the source material well, as do composer (and Chazelle’s Harvard classmate) Justin Hurwitz, lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, A Christmas Story, the Musical), and So You Think You Can Dance choreographer Mandy Moore. Mary Zophres’s costumes are thoroughly delightful, as is David Wasco’s production design, bathing the film in bright, eye-catching primary colors. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren (American Hustle, The Hundred-Foot Journey) shoots the film in throwback CinemaScope, with the musical numbers done in a single take.

La La Land also features Rosemarie DeWitt as Sebastian’s kind but pushy sister, J. K. Simmons as a restaurant manager who hires Sebastian to play Christmas songs on piano, Finn Wittrock as Mia’s handsome but boring boyfriend, and John Legend as a jazzman who offers Sebastian the chance to play in a real band. Chazelle overmanipulates some alternate-universe twists, a fantasy scene in the Griffith Observatory from Rebel without a Cause makes no sense, and Stone and Gosling are not exactly Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Of the two — who’ve previously costarred in Crazy, Stupid Love and Gangster Squad — Stone avails herself significantly better; it’s impossible to stop gazing at her big, puppy-dog eyes, which continually dominate the screen. La La Land has its share of lovely, clever moments, but it never quite comes together, like a jazz song filled with great improvised solos but just doesn’t know how to end. La La Land is screening January 4 at 7:30 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time; the festival continues through January 12 with such other 2016 works as J. Clay Tweel’s Gleason, Amir Naderi’s Monte, and James Schamus’s Indignation, followed by a discussion with Schamus. (La La Land is also currently playing at AMC Empire 25, Regal Union Square Stadium 14, Cinépolis Chelsea, and AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13.)

PopRally / THE CONTENDERS: DON’T BLINK — ROBERT FRANK

Robert Frank takes a unique look at his life and career in documentary made by his longtime editor

DON’T BLINK — ROBERT FRANK (Laura Israel, 2015)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, January 7, $15, 7:30
Series runs through January 12
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.dontblinkrobertfrank.com
www.moma.org

“I hate these fucking interviews,” innovative, influential, ornery, and iconoclastic photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank says while preparing to be interviewed in 1984; the scene is shown in Laura Israel’s new documentary, Don’t Blink — Robert Frank. “I’d like to walk out of the fucking frame,” he adds, then does just that. But in Don’t Blink, Frank finds himself walking once more into the frame as Israel, his longtime film editor, attempts to get him to open up about his life and career. Born in Zurich in 1924, Frank immigrated to the United States in 1947, became a fashion photographer, and had his artistic breakthrough in 1958 with the publication of the controversial photo book The Americans, which captured people unawares from all over the country, using no captions, just image, to get his point across. (In 2009, “The Americans”) was installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in addition to a gallery show of related photographs at Pace/McGill.) In the film, Frank does talk about his past and present, discussing his time with such Beats as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Peter Orlovsky, which he displayed in the 1959 film Pull My Daisy, narrated by an improvising Kerouac and codirected by Alfred Leslie; touching on the tragic early deaths of his son and daughter; sharing details about his parents, including his father, whose hobby was photography; hanging out with his wife, fellow artist June Leaf; and delving into such influences as Walker Evans and his creative process, which is not exactly complex. “Usually the first picture is the best one. Make sure they’re smiling, say cheese,” Frank says with a laugh, then adds, “The main thing is get it over, quick.” Israel takes that advice to heart, trying to get what she can out of Frank before he changes his mind; at first he didn’t want to participate in the film at all, but once he went with it, he also made sure to playfully battle with Israel over who was really in control.

Robert Frank has fun with some of his old films in DON’T BLINK

Israel (Windfall) does not tell Frank’s story chronologically but instead relies on a kind of thematic wandering through his life, intercutting old lectures, interviews, home movies, and photographs with clips from such Frank films as Conversations in Vermont, About Me: A Musical, Energy and How to Get It, Candy Mountain, One Hour, and Paper Route. Israel spends the most time on Cocksucker Blues, an unreleased work about the Rolling Stones on tour in 1972 (and about which Mick Jagger told Frank, “It’s a fucking good film, Robert, but if it shows in America we’ll never be allowed in the country again”), and Me and My Brother, which focuses on Julius Orlovsky, Peter Orlovsky’s brother, who suddenly awakened from a catatonic state and had some fascinating things to say. Just as Frank’s films went back and forth between color and black-and-white and avoided conventional storytelling methods, Israel does the same with Don’t Blink, using offbeat angles, also switching between color and black-and-white, and incorporating other deft touches that lend insight to Frank, who is now ninety-one and still has disheveled hair, and his work, especially when he’s taking Polaroids and scratching and painting on the back of the pictures. (Alex Bingham served as both editor and art director, while the cinematography is by Lisa Rinzler.) The film’s fierce soundtrack meshes well with Frank’s independent streak, with songs by the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, the Mekons, New Order, the Kills, Yo La Tengo, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders, the White Stripes, and Tom Waits, many of whom Israel has made music videos for. Perhaps at the heart of Frank’s methodology is what he calls “spontaneous intuition,” something that works for both life and art and helps propel Israel’s warmhearted but never worshipful documentary; their camaraderie is evident in nearly every frame. Don’t Blink — Robert Frank is screening January 7 at 7:30, presented by MoMA’s PopRally programming for ages twenty-one and older, and will be followed by a conversation with MoMA curator Josh Siegel, producer Melinda Shopsin, editor Alex Bingham, and Israel, as well as a reception with wine, beer and music; it is also part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time; the festival continues through January 12 with such other favorites as Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, Yeon Sang-ho’s Train Busan, and Johnnie To’s Three.

CROSSING THE LINE — ARTIST’S CHOICE: JÉRÔME BEL / MoMA DANCE COMPANY

(© 2012 Museum of Modern Art, New York. photo by Julieta Cervantes)

MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, Marron Atrium
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, October 27, through Monday, October 31, free with museum admission, 12:30 & 3:00
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.moma.org

In the fall of 2012, French conceptual choreographer Jérôme Bel presented The Show Must Go On as part of the three-week MoMA series “Some sweet day.” The piece was performed by professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers. Bel is now returning to MoMA for “Artist’s Choice: Jérôme Bel / MoMA Dance Company,” a new, site-specific work that will feature an unusual troupe composed of MoMA staff members, who had to audition in order to be chosen. Bel is a main focus of this year’s Crossing the Line festival, FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary lineup of dance, art, theater, film, and discussion. Bel restaged The Show Must Go On last week at the Joyce, and he is bringing back 1995’s eponymously titled Jérôme Bel for its New York premiere October 27-29 at the Kitchen. At MoMA every afternoon at 12:30 and 3:00 from October 27 to 31, staffers will dance in the Marron Atrium, moving around and among the crowd, many of which are, of course, rather dance savvy. (Maria Hassabi just won a Bessie Award for PLASTIC, her 2016 dance that also took place in the atrium and other locations around the museum.) Others won’t know quite what’s going on, which is all part of the fun.

CROSSING THE LINE 2016

Jérôme Bel’s THE SHOW MUST GO ON will go on at the Joyce as part of FIAF’s tenth annual Crossing the Line festival

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 22 – November 3, free – $55
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.fiaf.org

We can’t help but get excited for FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary fall festival, Crossing the Line, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. Every summer, we eagerly await the advance announcement of what they’ll be presenting, then scour the lineup for the most unusual events to make sure we see them. This year is another stellar collection of cutting-edge international dance and theater, beginning September 22 and 24 with screenings of concluding episodes seven, eight, and nine of Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s epic Life and Times at Anthology Film Archives ($11), along with a Thursday night party in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall ($10) that begins with a screening of the eighth chapter of Kristin Worrall’s rather ordinary life, with the artists themselves serving up PB&Js. The festival features a special focus on French choreographer Jérôme Bel, who will be involved in four programs, beginning October 17 (free with RSVP) with a screening of his short biographical film on Paris Opera dancer Véronique Doisneau, followed by a discussion with Bel and Ana Janevski. Bel’s award-winning The Show Must Go On will go on at the Joyce October 20-22 ($36-$46), with Bel hanging around for a Curtain Chat after the 2:00 show on October 22. Bel will present the New York premiere of his controversial eponymous 1995 signature work at the Kitchen October 27-29 ($20) while also moving over to the Museum of Modern Art October 27-31 (free with museum admission) for Artist’s Choice: MoMA Dance Company, a site-specific piece for MoMA’s Marron Atrium that will be performed by members of the MoMA staff.

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including U.S. premiere of AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen is making her U.S. debut with a pair of works: the free Graphic Cyphers will take place September 23 at Roberto Clemente Plaza in the Bronx at 2:00 and in Times Square September 25 at 2:30 and 4:30, while Autarcie (….): a search for self-sufficiency has its American debut September 29 to October 1 ($20) at Gibney Dance. “I seek to reconcile the peculiarities of hip-hop with demanding theatrical performance to question the place of human beings in the modern-day world,” Nguyen says; you can hear more from her at the October 1 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Artist’s Perspective” (free with RSVP) with fellow panelists David Thomson, Mohamed El Khatib, and Rokafella, moderated by George Emilio Sanchez. The UK’s Forced Entertainment, which is “interested in confusion as well as laughter,” will likely dish out a healthy portion of both at the New York premiere of Tomorrow’s Parties in Florence Gould Hall September 28 and 30 and October 1 ($20). From September 30 to October 2 ($35-$55), Venice Biennale lifetime achievement award winner Romeo Castellucci will deliver the one-man show Julius Caesar. Spared Parts, making the most of Federal Hall’s marble columns. This past June, dancer-choreographer Maria Hassabi gave an informal preview of her latest work, Staged, on the High Line; she will now bring the final piece down to the Kitchen, below the High Line, where it will be performed by Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, and Oisín Monaghan October 4-8 ($20).

Romeo Castellucci will make his New York City debut channeling Julius Caesar at Federal Hall

On October 6-8 and 13-15 ($35), drag fabulist Dickie Beau will conjure up Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Richard Meryman at Abrons Arts Center for Blackouts. [Ed. note: All performances of Blackouts have been canceled because of unexpected travel circumstances.] Also on October 13-15 ($20), Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanaeur will perform the U.S. premiere of Rachid Ouramdane’s Tordre (Wrought) at Baryshnikov Arts Center; CTL veteran Ouramdane will take part in the October 15 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Institutional Perspective” (free with RSVP) with keynote speaker Patrick Weil, panelists Firoz Ladak and Zeyba Rahman, and moderator Thomas Lax. On October 25 (free with RSVP), Aaron Landsman will host Perfect City, in which a group of young people from the Lower East Side will gather at Abrons Arts Center and discuss what the future holds in store for them, particularly in their neighborhood. The festival ends on November 3 with My Barbarian’s Post-Party Dream State Caucus at the New Museum (free with RSVP), held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Audience Is Always Right.” Throughout the festival, you can check out Mathieu Bernard-Reymond’s “Transform” art exhibit in the FIAF Gallery, and Tim Etchells’s multichannel video installation “Eyes Looking” will be projected at 11:59 each night in Times Square as October’s Midnight Moment.

EDGAR DEGAS: A STRANGE NEW BEAUTY

Edgar Degas, Frieze of Dancers, oil on fabric, ca. 1895, (the Cleveland Museum of Art, gift of the Hanna Fund)

Edgar Degas, “Frieze of Dancers,” oil on canvas, ca. 1895, (the Cleveland Museum of Art, gift of the Hanna Fund)

Museum of Modern Art
Floor 6, Special Exhibitions Gallery North
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Daily through Sunday, July 24, $25
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

The splendidly curated MoMA exhibit “Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty” reveals the French artist’s dazzling, experimental work with monotypes, manipulating their tools and processes as if he were using a predigital, hands-on version of Photoshop. Born in Paris in 1834, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas discovered the monotype technique in the mid-1870s, allowing him to expand his creativity and do things that no one else had done before. He “is no longer a friend, a man, an artist! He’s a zinc or copper plate blackened with printer’s ink, and plate and man are flattened together by his printing press whose mechanism has swallowed him completely!” etcher Marcellin Desboutin wrote in an 1876 letter, recounted in curator Jodi Hauptman’s introduction in the exhibition catalog. “The man’s crazes are out of this world. He now is in the metallurgic phase of reproducing his drawings with a roller and is running all over Paris, in the heat wave — trying to find the legion of specialists who will realize his obsession. He is a real poem! He talks only of metallurgists, lead casters, lithographers, planishers!” Degas indeed got his hands dirty, smudging ink, scratching plates, and painting over prints in a whirlwind of artistic fervor. Degas covered many of the same topics he had in his oil paintings and drawings, but employing etching, drypoint, and aquatint gave him a virtual freedom that he took full advantage of. In “Actresses in Their Dressing Rooms,” state 1 of 5 is gray and shady, the characters and interior harder to define than in the fifth state. One of two printings of “An Admirer in the Corridor” is like a ghostly version of the other. The monotype-on-paper “Ironing Women” is cleverly paired with the larger oil on canvas “A Woman Ironing,” capturing Degas’s differing takes on a domestic scene. But it’s not only the multiples that highlight Degas’s process. More abstract works such as “The River” and “Factory Smoke” are filled with a lovely mystery. Other subjects that Degas investigates include women in baths and brothels, putting on stockings, and reclining in bed.

Edgar Degas, “Autumn Landscape,” monotype oil on paper, 1890 (private collection)

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the series of landscapes from the 1890s, stunning monotypes of roads, mountains, and the moonrise that range from figurative to abstract. Of course, it is Degas’s love of performance, particularly of singers and dancers, that stands out. The same trio of dancers is the focus of “Ballet Scene” and “Three Ballet Dancers,” but in the latter Degas has drawn in pastel over the monotype, adding sparkling pinks. The black-and-white “Café Singer” is almost like a negative image of the colorful “Singers on the Stage”; in the pair, one can also see Degas’s passion for light as gas lamps became electric bulbs. Be sure to grab one of the available magnifying glasses to marvel in every little detail. Degas’s obsession with multiple images also found its way into his oil paintings and pastels, as seen in “Frieze of Dancers” and two versions of “Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper.” It’s all a tour de force that delights in this lesser-known aspect of Degas’s oeuvre. “He who is such an anarchist! In art, of course, and without knowing it!” Camille Pissarro wrote in an 1891 letter to his son referenced in Richard Kendall’s catalog essay, “An Anarchist in Art: Degas and the Monotype.” Anarchy may never have looked so good. The exhibition, named after a quote about Degas’s work from poet Stéphane Mallarmé, is supplemented with several of Degas’s sketchbooks in addition to etchings by his friend and fellow artist Ludovic Napoléon Lepic; the show continues through July 24, with the participatory program “Endless Repetition” led by Elisabeth Bardt-Pellerin on July 19 and 21 at 11:30.

LUMINOSITY — THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHER MARK LEE PING-BING: NORWEGIAN WOOD

Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and Watanabe (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) search for love in NORWEGIAN WOOD

NORWEGIAN WOOD (NORUWEI NO MORI) (Tran Anh Hung, 2010)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, June 21, 7:30
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
4 West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves
Friday, June 24, 4:30
Series runs June 16-30
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.norwegianwoodmovie.com

First it took a long time for French-Vietnamese writer-director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) to convince Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami to let him adapt his 1987 novel, Norwegian Wood — Tran had been interested in turning the book into a movie ever since he first read it in 1994, but Murakami notoriously does not allow his novels to become films — and then, once the film was made and played at prestigious festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Dubai, still took more than a year to find a U.S. distributor. Norwegian Wood is a moving, faithful adaptation of Murakami’s elegiac novel about unrequited love, romantic communication, and death. After his best friend, Kizuki (Kengo Kora), commits suicide, Watanabe (Death Note’s Ken’ichi Matsuyama) and Kizuki’s girlfriend, Naoko (Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi), who previously were part of an inseparable trio with Kizuki, go their separate ways. After a short time, they meet up accidentally in Tokyo, where Watanabe is attending university and Naoko is trying to get over her loss. But an event on her twentieth birthday causes Naoko to take off again, this time seeking professional help at a sanitarium. Watanabe can’t stop thinking about Naoko, jeopardizing a possible relationship with the aggressive, sexually open Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), who already has a boyfriend but is extremely interested in Watanabe. Meanwhile, Watanabe disapproves of how his friend Nagasawa (Tetsuji Tamayama) continually cheats on his girlfriend, Hatsumi (Eriko Hatsune), who is devoted to him. With the student riots of the late 1960s swirling around them, Watanabe, Naoko, Midori, Nagasawa, Hatsumi, and Naoko’s roommate, Reiko (Reika Kirishima), take long, hard looks at what they want out of life and love, and they don’t always like what they find. Beautifully shot by Mark Lee Ping-Bing and featuring a subtle score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood), Norwegian Wood is a slow-paced, psychologically intense drama. Watanabe and Naoko are often shown walking amid vast natural landscapes of green forests and snow-covered mountains, but they are tied up tight within themselves, trapped in their own memories. The carefully composed sex scenes give depth and intelligence to the main characters without overplaying their emotions. The story itself might be relatively slight — it lacks the range of Murakami’s later books — but Tran has done a fine job bringing it to the screen. Norwegian Wood is screening at MoMA on June 17 and 29 at 7:30 in the series “Luminosity: The Art of Cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing,” which runs June 16-30 and includes such other Lee-lensed treasures as Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent, Wang Tung’s Strawman, Tran’s The Vertical Ray of the Sun, and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai, Dust in the Wind, The Assassin, and The Puppetmaster. In addition, Lee will sit down with Department of Film associate curator La Frances Hui for “A Conversation with Cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing” on June 18 at 5:00.

MODERN MONDAYS: AN EVENING WITH CAO FEI

Cao Fei’s HAZE AND FOG is part of Modern Mondays presentation at MoMA on April 4

Who: Cao Fei, Klaus Biesenbach
What: Modern Mondays presentation of films and conversation
Where: MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-708-9400
When: Monday, April 4, $8-$12, 7:00
Why: As an appetizer to her first U.S. solo museum show, opening April 20 at MoMA PS1, Beijing-based Chinese artist Cao Fei will be at MoMA in Midtown on April 4 for the Modern Mondays presentation “An Evening with Cao Fei.” The program features excerpts from several of her films, including 2004’s Cosplayers, 2006’s Whose Utopia?, 2007-11’s RMB City, 2013’s Haze and Fog, and 2014’s La Town. In addition, Fei will sit down with MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach, who organized the exhibition, for a conversation about her work, which is part of a young generation of Chinese artists concerned with contemporary sociocultural and economic challenges in a rapidly changing China. “I try to find different ways to connect and interact with society,” the thirty-seven-year-old multimedia artist has said. “At the same time, I am trying to construct a new model of society.” The Modern Mondays series continues April 11 with Rosa Barba, April 18 with Tony Conrad, and April 25 with Lynette Wallworth.