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8/31/09 Elaine May’s ISHTAR @DCTV
Screening at 8:00pm with a post film discussion led by Miriam Bale (arrive anytime after 7:30)
**Bring snacks and a few extra dollars to purchase our special theme drink of the evening!**
The most underestimated commercial movie of 1987—treated as a debacle at the time, partially as payback for Warren Beatty’s highhanded treatment of the press—may not be quite as good as Elaine May’s previous features, but it’s still a very funny work by one of this country’s greatest comic talents. Dustin Hoffman and Beatty, both flagrantly cast against type, play inept songwriting friends who get a limited club date in North Africa and who accidentally get caught up in various international intrigues. Misleadingly typed as an imitation Road to Morocco, the film can be more profitably read as a light comic variation on May’s masterpiece Mikey and Nicky and an affectionate yet brutal send-up of American idiocy in the third world. Among the highlights: Charles Grodin’s impersonation of a CIA operative, a blind camel, Isabelle Adjani, Jack Weston, Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography, and a delightful series of deliberately awful songs from the songwriting duo, most of them by Paul Williams. 107 min. [Jonathan Rosenbaum]
8/10/09: Marguerite Duras’s NATHALIE GRANGER
830pm @ a Brooklyn backyard
RSVP to projectfilmschool@gmail.com for location - Backyard holds 13
A neglected early feature by Marguerite Duras (1972), produced by Luc Moullet, full of poker-faced, absurdist humor and deceptive sound cues. Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bose sit around in a country house doing very little apart from listening to radio reports about two teenage killers in the neighborhood. Occasionally they’re joined by their two little girls (one of them named Nathalie Granger); more often we’re reminded of them by the offscreen sound of their piano lessons. On two occasions, a very young Gerard Depardieu turns up, trying to sell a washing machine and getting more than he bargains for. It’s hard to describe this beautiful miniature, but somehow it reduces the whole modern world to audiovisual shorthand; Duras’ verbal and visual terseness has seldom been put to better use.
Introduction by Gina Telaroli
6/27/09 Douglas Sirk’s A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE
9:15 in a Brooklyn backyard.
RSVP to projectfilmschool@gmail.com for location - Backyard holds 15
A masterpiece of mise-en-scene (1958) by Douglas Sirk, transforming an Erich Maria Remarque melodrama into a haunting story of the search for beauty in a dead world. John Gavin and Lilo Pulver are lovers who meet among the ruins of a bombed-out German town during World War II. Despite their efforts to make contact, happiness hovers just beyond their reach in Sirk’s metaphysically charged CinemaScope images. A stunning triumph of form, of the sort possible only in Hollywood. 132 min. [Dave Kehr]
Introduction by Gina Telaroli
July 20th @ Rooftop Farms
David Lynch’s THE STRAIGHT STORY
As the least likely filmmaker on the planet to pull off a G-rated miracle, David Lynch rises to the challenge with exhilarating vigor. It may not sound like much, but this account of an old man making a long trip on a riding lawn mower turns out to be a slow-moving, folksy-looking, deeply spiritual film with the power to hold audiences in thrall. It would not have been possible without Richard Farnsworth’s terse, no-nonsense honesty at its heart. Mr. Lynch’s famously unwholesome imagination crosses a new frontier to explore simple virtues and natural beauty. The result: a supremely improbable triumph. (New York Times)
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Screening will start when the sun goes down - arrive anytime after 7:15pm
Before the movie we’ll be snacking on “farm film snacks” that are all locally sourced
Address = 44 Eagle St in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
More info on Rooftop Farms: http://rooftopfarms.org/
July 14th on a BROOKLYN ROOF
BBQ @ 7pm | Film @ 830pm
Annie Reichert introduces Steve Hanft’s KILL THE MOONLIGHT
A twisted mid-90s comedy disguised as a 1970s drive-in film, KILL THE MOONLIGHT is the story of Chance–fish hatchery worker, toxic waste cleaner and aspiring racecar driver, whose goal in life is to fix up his Camaro and follow his dreams of championship glory. Director Steven Hanft captures the West Coast slacker vibe with laconic pacing, bizarre humor and a stock-car-racing hero, who also happened to provide the inspiration behind Beck’s 1994 hit, “Loser.” Samples from the film appeared in the song, and clips from the film were part of the “Loser” video, also directed by Hanft.
email PROJECTFILMSCHOOL@GMAIL.COM for location information and to RSVP.
The roof can only fit about 15 -20 people so RSVP ASAP
July 6th @ Rooftop Farms
Terrence Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN
One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting movies of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy Days of Heaven, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In 1910, a Chicago steel worker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and little sister (Linda Manz) to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating at once a timeless American idyll and a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.
Screening will start when the sun goes down - arrive anytime after 8pm
Address = 44 Eagle St in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
More info on Rooftop Farms: http://rooftopfarms.org/
(subject to change)
July 13th @ TBD ROOF (830pm) : Annie Reichert introduces Steve Hanft’s KILL THE MOONLIGHT
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July 20th @ Rooftop Farms: A screening of David Lynch’s THE STRAIGHT STORY
Snacks @ 730pm - Film after the sun goes down
Rooftop Farms = 44 Eagle St. in Greenpoint Brooklyn
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July 27th @ DCTV : Gina Telaroli introduces Douglas Sirk’s A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE
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Week of August 2nd @ 60DEVOE ST. : Doriana introduces MAN BITES DOG
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August 9th @ 60DEVOE ST. : Gina Telaroli introduces NATHALIE GRANGER
Screening 03:
730pm, Thursday, June 25 @ UNIONDOCS
322 Union Ave - Brooklyn, NY 11211
BUY TICKETS HERE : https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/70414
LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG(1964) / Directed by Jacques Demy
introduced by Gina Telaroli
Jacques Demy’s 1964 masterpiece The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director’s own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Genevive Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother’s chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation.
M E N U / by Lila Dobbs of Brooklyn Sour
(subject to change without notice and all vegetarian!)
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Market Salad
spring greens, goat cheese ’scallops’ and cider reduction
Vichyssoise
green garlic, chive oil and creme fraiche
Sourdough Baguette
confitures en tous genres
(lots of jams!)
Strawberries and Rhubarb in Phyllo
almond creme anglaise, assorted meringues and petits gateaux
MOVIE-WATCHING SNACK
Ice Cream Sandwich
brioche, michel cluizel chocolate ice cream
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all baked goods and some dairy are prepared on premise, from scratch.
drinks: surprise – you’ll get 1-2 drinks but please feel free to bring something to share!
*seating limited to 15
Field Trip on May 25th to BAM
Olivier Assayas’ SUMMER HOURS
Join other Project Film School members at the movies!
How much or how little are we obliged to honor the wishes of our parents after they’re gone? This is the painful question posed by Olivier Assayas in his rueful and wise new film.
The marvelous Edith Scob, once the muse of director Georges Franju, is the troubled family matriarch with children scattered across the globe — one in Paris, one in New York, a third in Shanghai. She lives alone in the family’s country house and spends the bulk of her time worrying over the legacy of her uncle, a legendary artist. After her sudden death, the siblings (Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche and Jerémie Rénier) meet to discuss practical details, prompting some of the most moving passages in Assayas’s entire body of work.
Only the greatest filmmakers have found such a balance between the heaviness of loss and the lightness of time’s passage. Every moment of this wonderful film is imbued with sadness, and joy; despair, and illumination. [FSLC]
SCREENING IS AT 6:50
More Info Here = http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1309
RESOURCES
Profile of Olivier Assayas (Senses of Cinema)
Bringing Down the House, Part I: “Summer Hours” -Assayas, France (The Auteurs)
Bringing Down the House, Part II: a conversation with Olivier Assayas (The Auteurs)