“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” Film Forum, opens September 2Stanley Nelson’s essential documentary — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, later opening the annual Doc Fortnight festival at the Museum of Modern Art — combines talking-head testimony with a deep reservoir of archival footage to retell the scattered history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. A film of this nature can never capture everything, and some people will feel that, even at just under two hours, there are obvious blind spots. But the film “has on its mind something more simple and effective — a process of demystification,” I wrote back in February. “For the Black Panthers, that means displaying the allure the group held through its style and swagger and projected violence, but also, through the experiences of those involved, documenting the undocumented — the community organizing and social programs, including massively successful food drives and neighborhood support centers that offered health services and catered to other needs.”“Notorious,” Museum of Modern Art, September 1, 5Alfred Hitchcock’s 1947 film is screening at MoMA as part of its “Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration” series, marking the 100th anniversary of the actress’s birth. There is a lot of great stuff in the series, and some of it will be mentioned in later columns, but this week you have one of Bergman’s best performances, a collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant, both equally in top form. In his book of interviews with Hitchcock, French filmmaker and critic Francois Truffaut says “Notorious” is his favorite of the director’s films — “at any rate, it’s the one I prefer in the black-and-white group,” he adds — going on to claim that it’s a “model of scenario construction.” While I don’t necessarily agree — I lean toward the later, color Hitchcock films as my personal favorites — it is interesting, as the two discuss in the book, to witness what is for all intents and purposes one of the first Hitchcock films, as we know the definition today.“Army of Shadows,” Film Forum, September 1This is the final day to catch the limited run of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville’s massive “Army of Shadows.” Originally released in 1969, the film only found a larger audience in America in 2006 during its last rerelease, when it attracted a significant amount of attention. When I think of Melville I always think of Hitchcock, and I believe the two are aiming at similar targets — Truffaut describes Hitchcock’s films as “at once a maximum of stylization and a maximum of simplicity,” which is a pretty good description of Melville as well. This one concerns the French Resistance, a notably bold move, considering it was made during the height of the events of May 1968 and was seen as backwards and anti-radical by the young film critics who had all moved decidedly left. But as the opening of the film states, “Army of Shadows” is a deeply personal and upsetting work for Melville. The epigram reads: “Unhappy memories! Yet I welcome you. You are my long-lost youth.”“Queen of Earth,” IFC Center/Film Society Lincoln Center, ongoingAlex Ross Perry’s “Queen of Earth” was one of the best films to screen at BAMCinemaFest at the beginning of the summer, and now it’s finally in theaters. Don’t let this one slip past you. Elisabeth Moss gives what is maybe her best performance to date, 180 degrees from her role as Peggy Olson in “Mad Men” or the stoic detective in Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake.” If you’re curious for more, read the interview I conducted with Ross Perry for the September issue of Modern Painters.“Medea,” Film Society of Lincoln Center, August 31Looking for something to see tonight? Head uptown to Lincoln Center and catch Mountain Goats singer John Darnielle, who will be on hand to celebrate the paperback release of his first novel, the National Book Award-nominated “Wolf in White Van” (which everyone should go read, immediately), and screen a print of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Medea,” a strange film and an unusual choice. But as he explained in an interview last week, Greek tragedy is “about truths that can’t be understood until they’ve done the harm they came to do, until they’ve sort of acted their truth out. About things that must be lived rather than grasped. A lot of what I write about touches on this idea, of understanding through experience.”
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