“Jane B. par Agnes V” and “Kung-Fu Master!,” directed by Agnes Varda, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, opens October 16Two old films from Agnes Varda are making their U.S. debut in an under-the-radar screening at Lincoln Plaza Cinema. “Jane B.” and “Kung-Fu Master!” (both originally released in 1988) are deliberately linked, one film flowing out of the other. The first is a portrait of the actress/singer/model Jane Birkin, best known as the former wife and muse of Serge Gainsbourg who sang the seductive vocals alongside him on his most famous song, “Je t’aime moi non plus.” Varda herself appears in the film, along with Birkin’s children (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lou Doillon) and Varda’s son (Mathieu Demy). At one point in “Jane B.,” in between autobiographical tangents and explorations of dreams and desires, Birkin mentions an idea she has for a film about an older woman who falls in love with a much younger boy. We see rough scenes of the film in Birkin’s head, with the young boy played by Demy.“Kung-Fu Master!” is that idea fleshed out, with the initial scenes that appeared in “Jane B.” making up the beginning of the film. Controversial at the time of its release for obvious reasons, it’s a film that’s more interesting on screen than it is on paper, and not quite as scandalous as critics made it out to be. It’s still more of an experiment, like its predecessor, and makes more sense in the context of “Jane B.” than watching it as a standalone film.“The Bus,” directed by Haskell Wexler, UnionDocs, October 14This work is a seminal documentary and the first made by Haskell Wexler, a cinematographer who has been behind the camera on films such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (he would go on to make many other films). “The Bus” follows a group of people traveling from San Francisco to the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to 250,000 people from a podium in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The film will screen at UnionDocs along with “Whose Streets?” by Sabaah Jordan, and will be followed by a discussion with Pamela Yates (whose documentary about Wexler, “Rebel Citizen,” was one of the highlights of the recent New York Film Festival), Jordan, and Wexler (via Skype).“The Forbidden Room,” directed by Guy Maddin, Film Forum, ongoingA film that defies explanation, Guy Maddin’s latest, which recently screened at the New York Film Festival, is filled with what he called, in a recent interview with ARTINFO, “paranormal revisualizations.” The project was born out of the creative energy of another film, “Séances,” concocted at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2012 and at the Phi Centre in Montreal in 2013. “The Forbidden Room” roams around in the murky bottom of the cinematic sewer, pulling forgotten film debris from the dirt and bringing it back to the surface.“For the Plasma,” directed by Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, Anthology Film Archives, October 13This strange and exciting no-budget film, which screened at BAMCinemaFest in 2014 and was (and still is) in danger of disappearing into a cinematic black hole, has popped up once again, thankfully, with a single screening at Anthology Film Archives. “I may forever be trying to piece together this puzzle of film,” I wrote when first seeing the film over a year ago, “which is just one of its many positive attributes.”“A Ballerina’s Tale, Film Society of Lincoln Center, opens October 14Directed by journalist Nelson George, “A Ballerina’s Tale” looks at Misty Copeland, the first African-American female principal dancer in the 75-year history of New York’s American Ballet Theatre. “As we watch Copeland at such a close perspective, it truly does feel as if every movement, its finesse almost unbearable, is more beautiful than the last,” wrote ARTINFO’s Regina Mogilevskaya after the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. “Copeland’s dancing is eternal, its radiance forever committed to your memory once you’ve encountered it.”Other films to check out:“Rocco and his Brothers,” Film Forum, through October 29“Local Color: The Short Films of Dustin Guy Defa,” FSLC, through October 19“The Feature,” Brooklyn Academy of Music, October 14“Ballet Down the Highway,” Spectacle Theater, October 14“New York Portrait, Part I & Part II,” Peter Hutton, MoMA P.S.1, through October 17
↧