“Los Sures” (1984), directed by Diego Echeverria, Metrograph, April 15-21The documentary of the once vibrant South Williamsburg neighborhood — dubbed Los Sures by its residents — had, after a short burst of activity when it was originally made, virtually disappeared. The folks at UnionDocs, who I wrote about just over a year ago and are based in South Williamsburg, were passed a VHS copy of the film in 2007. Since then, the group has worked tirelessly to bring the film back into existence. Finally seeing the theatrical release it deserves, the film, at once a celebration and a eulogy of what once was, follows five different people from the neighborhood: Tito, who strips cars for parts in order to support his family; Marta, a single mother of five children whose eloquent descriptions of the difficulty of escaping the neighborhood color the entire film; Ana Maria, an older resident of the neighborhood who has found solace in spirituality; Cuso, a local celebrity who walks the streets throwing daps and attempts to help unemployed people in the neighborhood by giving them work on his construction jobs; and Evelyn, an employee of a community-based agency who, after a fire displaces a local family, commandeers the fire department’s public-address system to chide the neighborhood for not offering enough support.Echeverria, who will participate in Q&As after select screenings on April 15 and 16, captured a moment in time that is now gone, despite many of the same families still living in the neighborhood. Some of the best moments are incidental — old ladies dropping supplies from one apartment to the next by a rope out their window, the Arabian Knights biker club vests and Disco Duck T-shirts, the Furious D.C. Rockers breakdancing on a sheet of cardboard to “Planet Rock” and “Apache” — and stream in and out of the frame. But they capture the flavor of a community, not without its problems but bonded and engaged despite of it.“Measure of a Man,” directed by Stéphane Brizé, Metrograph, April 15-21Brizé’s latest film gets a week-long run at Metrograph accompanied by a four-film series dedicated to the film’s star, Vincent Lindon. The actor won the prize for Best Actor at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival for “Measure,” in which he plays Thierry, a husband and father who has recently lost his job in a factory. Through a series of intimate scenes at the beginning of the film, we watch as he struggles to follow a system that is in place to find employment. But nothing works. He has a job interview on Skype and takes classes that are supposed to make him more suitable for the current job market. Brizé lets the camera linger on Lindon’s face during these scenes and many others, allowing us to watch as he painfully, but stoically, weathers various humiliations. Eventually he finds a job as a security officer at a large retail store, where he is thrown into a modern working environment that is no less degrading.Lindon doesn’t have to say much in the film; his face speaks volumes, absorbing the various pains of his daily life. His character never blows up, never screams. But more and more he looks defeated, his eyes drooping. He’s tired but has no choice. He must continue in order to provide for his family. It’s rare that an actor can physically inhabit the screen in such a way, telling us everything we need to know through movement (and sometimes lack of movement). Brizé’s film renders the debasement of contemporary economic misfortune as a moving portrait of survival.“Golden Eighties” (1986), directed by Chantal Akerman, Brooklyn Academy of Music, April 17A rare treat for Akerman fans, who have had plenty of opportunities this month to see her work all around New York. “Golden Eighties” is somewhat of an oddity in her filmography, a musical about the romantic entanglements of a group of women who work in a hair salon located in a colorful shopping mall. One of the filmmaker’s most appealing experiments with commercial cinema, it is filled with many small delights, from songs written by Akerman herself (hopefully we will one day get a soundtrack) to the performance of Delphine Seyrig, star of Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman” (1976), here playing the owner of a clothing store who reunites with a former lover.“Academy of the Muses,” directed by José Luis Guerín, Film Society of Lincoln Center, April 16“Academy of the Muses” is a documentary about a group of women in a lecture class with Professor Raffaele Pinto at the University of Barcelona, concerning the role of the muse in the history of art and literature. Or is it? Guerín’s film changes subtly from one moment to the next. We go from watching the lecture to conversations outside the classroom among the students, who discuss the subject in greater depth. Then the conversations begin to change, including more details about the students’ personal lives, and how each is entangled with that of the professor. It’s a film that remains a mystery and is better for it.“A German Youth,” directed by Jean-Gabriel Périot, Film Society of Lincoln Center, April 19Périot’s retelling of the early moments of the Red Army Faction, a militant group that was active in Germany in the 1970s, is composed (almost) completely of found footage. News reports, chat shows, and films by the group’s members are used to recreate the atmosphere of unrest that existed in Germany over the feeling that much of the government was a holdover from the Nazi era, and as a society that had not properly dealt with its past.
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