April 2013 Special Events at Bamcinématek
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April 2013 Special Events at BAMcinématek The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor for BAMcinématek and BAM Rose Cinemas. APR 4 at 7:30pm Sneak Preview: Antonio Campos’ SIMON KILLER Campos and Brady Corbet in person With Brady Corbet, Mati Diop. The line between heartbreak and derangement proves porous in Antonio Campos’ (Afterschool) wildly polarizing second feature. After a painful breakup with his longtime girlfriend, a recent college grad (Brady Corbet in a breakthrough performance) moves to Paris to lick his wounds. In an attempt to blunt his debilitating loneliness, he worms his way into the life of a prostitute. Campos’ bold layering of sound and image in the City of Lights burrows deep into the psyche of this inscrutable protagonist, who elicits empathy and revulsion in equal measure—often in the same instant. “A brilliantly orchestrated work of cinema in a grimy, 1970s vein” (Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com). Director Campos and lead actor Corbet will appear in person for a Q&A following the screening. Sneak preview courtesy of IFC Films. APR 8 at 7, 9:30pm Pristine 35mm print! 25th Anniversary Julien Temple’s EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988) With Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum. A trio of multicolored hirsute aliens (Goldblum, Jim Carrey, and Damon Wayans) crash land in a day-glo Los Angeles, are promptly shaved and hunk-ified, and set out to prowl the city’s glitzy and ditzy social scene with a lovesick manicurist (Davis) as their guide. This gleefully goofy musical send-up of 1980s Los Angeles vacuousness is directed by punk-rock auteur Temple, who has a field day with the cotton-candy-colored mise-en-scène and chock-full-o-schlock story. The cult hit turns 25 this year. APR 16 & 17 TWO BEATS BY KITANO 20th Anniversary of Sonatine Actor-director Takeshi “Beat” Kitano is one of Japan’s most distinctive voices; his idiosyncratic style combines eye-popping violence, deadpan humor, and disarming wellsprings of emotion. Dave Kehr has called him “the one-man embodiment of the great contemporary period the Japanese cinema never had.” This series highlights two films that contributed to Kitano’s breakthrough as a director in the West: the 20th anniversary of Sonatine (1993—Apr 17), a witty, off-kilter portrait of an aging yakuza mobster with one last assignment (called a “haunting elegy to the gangster way of life” by Stephen Holden in The New York Times), which redefined the genre; and his Venice prize-winning masterpiece Fireworks (1997—Apr 16), an eccentric Leone-meets- Kaurismäki existential action thriller in which a former detective gets mixed up with the yakuza while caring for his dying wife. APR 19—21 MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: DOUGLAS SIRK & ROCK HUDSON Douglas Sirk’s captivating melodramas ripped to shreds the bourgeois values of 1950s America while simultaneously elevating middle-class crises to Wagnerian heights. He found the perfect vessel in broad-shouldered beefcake Rock Hudson, of whom the director said: “His dream was to become a good actor, and I can say, not without pride, that I helped him become one.” BAMcinématek presents this quartet of Sirk-Hudson collaborations, including The Tarnished Angels (1957—Apr 19), an expressionist film about the sordid lives of a band of stunt fliers; All That Heaven Allows (1955—Apr 20), a subversive melodrama about a rugged gardener (Hudson) who has an affair with an older widow; Written on the Wind (1956—Apr 21), Sirk’s most formally radical film, a critique of middle-class values ablaze in almost avant-garde Technicolor; and Magnificent Obsession (1954—Apr 19), which stars Hudson as a reckless playboy who causes a woman to go blind and atones for it by becoming a doctor. APR 21 & 22 EARTH DAY Jeremy Irons in person Two vital new documentaries explore the major dilemmas facing our environment. On Sunday, April 21, Jeremy Irons presents Candida Brady’s Trashed (2012), an illuminating look at our planet’s ever-growing garbage problem. Depicting overflowing landfills, polluted beaches, and toxic rivers in the Middle East, Scandinavia, and everywhere in between, this official selection at last year’s Cannes Film Festival is “crucial viewing for realists and alarmists both” (Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News). Irons appears in the film as the narrator and guide and will be at BAM for a Q&A following the screening. A special Earth Day presentation of Don Argott’s The Atomic States of America (2012)—an official selection at last year’s Sundance Film Festival—screens on Monday, April 22. Inspired by Kelly McMaster’s book Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, about growing up in the shadow of a Long Island nuclear research lab, this disquieting examination of the consequences of our country’s increased reliance on nuclear power is a frightening and urgent environmental wake-up call. APR 28 A DAY OF HEAVEN Three films by Terrence Malick, all in 35mm In celebration of his new film, To the Wonder, we present a marathon of Terrence Malick masterpieces, all in sublime 35mm. Kicking off the afternoon is Days of Heaven (1978—2pm), Malick’s sumptuous, golden-toned pastoral about a doomed love triangle that plays out against the flaxen wheat fields of Texas farmland, which Dave Kehr called “mysterious, beautiful, and very possibly, a masterpiece.” Screening at 4:15pm is The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick’s harrowing adaptation of James Jones’ World War II novel that turns battle into an abstracted stream of hallucinatory images and earned an Oscar nomination. The marathon concludes at 8pm with The New World (2005), an elliptical, rapturously beautiful telling of the Pocahontas legend and America’s discovery—a must-see on the big screen. APR 29 at 4:30, 7, 9:30pm Brooklyn Close-Up John Badham’s SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977) With John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney. Saturday Night Fever defined an entire genre of music, as well as the career of star John Travolta. The slick Tony Manero escorts the audience into his world with an iconic swagger-cum-sashay down the sidewalks of Bay Ridge, aspiring to break out of the borough (long before Brooklyn became an international tourist destination). Freedom to him was represented on the dance floor and embodied in Stephanie (Gorney), a sexy Manhattanite. Brooklyn may have changed and music may have evolved, but 36 years after its initial release, Saturday Night Fever is, ahem, “stayin’ alive.” Free tastings of Brooklyn BAMboozle Ale courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery. APR 30 at 4:30, 7, 9:30pm New 35mm print! 35th Anniversary Steve Rash’s THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1978) With Gary Busey, Don Stroud, Charles Martin Smith. Buddy Holly goes from Texas teen to horn-rimmed superstar in this immensely appealing biopic, which turns 35 this year. Busey was nominated for an Oscar for this remarkably lived-in performance highlighting the likeable gawkiness of the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer whose career was cut tragically short. “Conveys a real, raw feeling for the music… Streets ahead of most rock celluloid” (Time Out London). For press information, please contact Gabriele Caroti at 718.724.8024 / [email protected] Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected] .