BAMcinématek presents Ellen Burstyn, a nine-film retrospective tribute to the Oscar-winning actress, Apr 30—May 6
Burstyn in person for a Q&A after Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor for BAMcinématek and BAM Rose Cinemas.
Brooklyn, NY/Apr 4, 2014—From Wednesday, April 30 through Tuesday, May 6, BAMcinématek presents Ellen Burstyn, a retrospective of the legendary actress. In a remarkable six-decade (and counting) career, Burstyn has gone from leading light of New American Cinema to one of the grandes dames of Hollywood, scooping up every major award (Oscar, Tony, and Emmy) along the way. Her complex, fully lived-in characters are models of superbly judged, wholly committed screen acting. After appearing in Matthew Barney’s River of Fundament at BAM this spring, Burstyn returns to Brooklyn for this nine-film tribute.
Opening the series on Wednesday, April 30 is William Friedkin’s groundbreaking horror classic The Exorcist (1973), which earned 10 Oscar nominations and became one of the highest- grossing films of all time. Burstyn beat out Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, and Anne Bancroft for the role of Chris, a Hollywood actress who discovers her daughter is possessed by a demon. Burstyn got her breakout role just two years prior in Peter Bogdanovich’s New American Cinema masterwork The Last Picture Show (1971—May 2), and following the overwhelming success of The Exorcist, was given creative control of her next project.
Impressed with his work on Mean Streets, Burstyn hired Martin Scorsese to helm Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974—May 3). Playing a New Mexico housewife who goes on the road to chase her dream of becoming a singer, Burstyn was praised as ―appealing, tough, intelligent, funny, and bereft, all at the same moment‖ (Vincent Canby, The New York Times), and won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance. Burstyn will appear in person for a Q&A following the 7:30pm screening. Burstyn has earned a staggering six Academy Award nominations in her remarkable career (all represented in this series), most recently for Darren Aronofsky’s harrowing portrait of drug addiction Requiem for a Dream (2000—May 5), featuring Burstyn as a Coney Island widow with an amphetamine dependency.
Also screening are the late Alain Resnais’ debut English film Providence (1977—May 4), a hallucinatory glimpse into the consciousness of writing and a major influence on David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive; Jules Dassin’s rarely-screened contemporary reconstruction of Euripides’ Medea, A Dream of Passion (1978—May 5), featuring a powerful turn by Burstyn as a woman incarcerated for infanticide; Daniel Petrie’s Resurrection (1980—May 1), in which a near-death experience helps a woman discover her supernatural powers; Bob Rafelson’s moody character study The King of Marvin Gardens (1971—May 4), with Burstyn as an aging beauty queen; and Robert Mulligan’s Broadway adaptation Same Time, Next Year (1978—May 6), a quick-witted throwback to classic Hollywood romances starring Burstyn and Alan Alda.
The Ellen Burstyn retrospective is made possible by The Corinthian Foundation, David Berley, and friends. The retrospective is dedicated to the memory of Charles Greenman—a true friend of BAM and the arts.
For press information, please contact: Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected] Hannah Thomas at 718.724.8002 / [email protected]
Ellen Burstyn Schedule
Wed, Apr 30 4:30, 7:30pm: The Exorcist
Thu, May 1 4:30, 7, 9:15pm: Resurrection
Fri, May 2 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: The Last Picture Show
Sat, May 3 2, 4:30, 7:30pm*: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Sun, May 4 2, 7pm: Providence 4:30, 9:15pm: The King of Marvin Gardens
Mon, May 5 4:30, 9:30pm: Requiem for a Dream 7pm: A Dream of Passion
Tue, May 6 7, 9:30pm: Same Time, Next Year
*This screening will feature a Q&A with Ellen Burstyn.
Film Descriptions
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) 113min Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Mia Bendixsen. After her husband’s sudden death, New Mexico housewife Alice (Burstyn) chucks it all and hits the road to pursue her dream of a singing career. Burstyn won a richly deserved Best Actress Oscar for her remarkably open, relaxed performance in Scorsese’s seriocomic Southwestern road movie, which shifts poignantly between silver-screen fantasy and hard-bitten reality. Sat, May 3 at 2, 4:30, 7:30pm
A Dream of Passion (1978) 106min Directed by Jules Dassin. With Melina Mercouri, Ellen Burstyn, Andreas Voutsinas. Off- and onstage tragedy collide and combust in this expressionistic Greek production from Rififi director Jules Dassin. An actress (Mercouri) tackling the role of Medea prepares for her performance with an ultra- intense visit to a real-life murderess (Burstyn), in jail for triple infanticide. Mercouri and Burstyn are electric, pushing the baroque psychodrama into screeching art-house overdrive. Mon, May 5 at 7pm
The Exorcist (1973) 132min Directed by William Friedkin. With Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair. Little Regan’s (Blair) head-swiveling, bile-spewing tantrums go way beyond normal pre-teen angst, causing her mother (Burstyn) to enlist the services of Father Merrin (von Sydow) who sets about exorcising the spirit he believe has possessed her daughter—but that demon won’t go quietly. One of the most controversial movies of the 70s, Friedkin’s groundbreaking mix of graphic body horror and religious iconography still shocks. 2000 Extended Director's Cut—―The Version You’ve Never Seen.‖
Wed, Apr 30 at 4:30, 7:30pm
The King of Marvin Gardens (1971) 104min Directed by Bob Rafelson. With Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson, Ellen Burstyn. Bob Rafelson’s follow-up to Five Easy Pieces is another moody character study and one of the most uncompromising films of the 70s. Wheeling and dealing hustler Jason (Bruce Dern) convinces his introspective, downer radio-host brother David (Jack Nicholson) to join him in Atlantic City, where he’s engaged in some shady dealings with the mob to buy a Hawaiian island. Their doomed adventure is set against the bleakly beautiful ruins of the decaying resort town, captured by László Kovács’ luminous cinematography. Sun, May 4 at 4:30, 9:15pm
The Last Picture Show (1971) 118min Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. With Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shephard, Ellen Burstyn. Three teenagers (Bridges, Bottoms, and Shepherd) come of age in a dusty dying Texas town in this 1950s-set American New Wave landmark. Burstyn got her breakthrough (and an Oscar nomination) playing a past-her-prime housewife staving off boredom with an extramarital affair, while Bogdanovich conjures a vanished era of pool halls, jukeboxes, and revival houses in luminescent monochrome. Fri, May 2 at 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm
Providence (1977) 104min Directed by Alain Resnais. With Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn, John Gielgud. Arthouse titan Resnais’ first film in English was this mesmerizing inquiry into memory and reality. A dying writer (Gielgud) hallucinates scenes from a poison-pen last novel, its characters based on his family (including Burstyn). On the surface a sparkling comedy, Providence is transformed by Resnais into a haunting journey into the unconscious, with surreal slips into dream logic, characters whose identities morph and merge, and a swooning Miklós Rózsa score. Sun, May 4 at 2, 7pm
Requiem for a Dream (2000) 102min Directed by Darren Aronofsky. With Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans. Burstyn netted yet another Oscar nomination for her bravura freak-out performance as Sara Goldfarb, a game-show obsessed Coney Island widow who spirals into a crippling amphetamine dependence. Aronofsky’s harrowing multi-narrative tale of drug addiction (based on the novel by Hubert Selby, Jr.) is a hallucinatory stream of jagged, jittery nightmare visuals so visceral that you can feel the cold sweats. Mon, May 5 at 4:30, 9:30pm
Resurrection (1980) 103min Directed by Daniel Petrie. With Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard, Richard Farnsworth. Burstyn received her fifth Oscar nomination for this provocative exploration of faith with a feminist edge. A woman’s near-death experience leaves her with the power to heal, leading to speculation that she has been touched by the divine. The New York Times called Burstyn’s performance ―radiant, and so steadying it lets the movie exert a tremendous emotional pull.‖ Thu, May 1 at 4:30, 7, 9:15pm
Same Time, Next Year (1978) 117min Directed by Robert Mulligan. With Alan Alda, Ellen Burstyn, Ivan Bonar. A one-night stand in 1951 blossoms into a 25-year relationship, wherein a married accountant (Alda) and a California housewife (Burstyn) reconnect every year for one weekend, while the tides of culture and fashion swirl about them. Based on the hit Broadway stage play, Same Time, Next Year is a wittily scripted, unabashedly heartstring-tugging, old-Hollywood style romantic comedy with winning performances from Burstyn (garnering yet another Academy Award nomination) and Alda. Tue, May 6 at 7, 9:30pm
About BAMcinématek
The four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences alternative and independent films that might not play in the borough otherwise, making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn’s only daily, year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents new and rarely seen contemporary films, classics, work by local artists, and festivals of films from around the world, often with special appearances by directors, actors, and other guests. BAMcinématek has not only presented major retrospectives by major filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Manoel de Oliveira, Shohei Imamura, Vincente Minnelli (winning a National Film Critics’ Circle Award prize for the retrospective), Kaneto Shindo, Luchino Visconti, and William Friedkin, but it has also introduced New York audiences to contemporary artists such as Pedro Costa and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In addition, BAMcinématek programmed the first US retrospectives of directors Arnaud Desplechin, Nicolas Winding Refn, Hong Sang-soo, and, most recently, Andrzej Zulawski. From 2006 to 2008, BAMcinématek partnered with the Sundance Institute and in June 2009 launched BAMcinemaFest, a 16-day festival of new independent films and repertory favorites with 15 NY feature film premieres; the fifth annual BAMcinemaFest runs from June 18—29, 2014.
Credits
The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor of BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek.
Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater is made possible by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust.
Pepsi is the official beverage of BAM.
Brooklyn Brewery is the preferred beer of BAMcinématek.
BAM Rose Cinemas are named in recognition of a major gift in honor of Jonathan F.P. and Diana Calthorpe Rose. BAM Rose Cinemas would also like to acknowledge the generous support of The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Bloomberg, and Time Warner Inc. Additional support for BAMcinématek is provided by the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, The Grodzins Fund, The Liman Foundation and Summit Rock Advisors.
BAMcinématek is programmed by Nellie Killian and David Reilly with assistance from Jesse Trussell. Additional programming by Ryan Werner.
Special thanks to Larry Miller and Courtney Kivowitz Additional thanks to Kristie Nakamura/Warner Bros. Classics; Paul Ginsburg/Universal; Christopher Lane & Michael Horne/Sony Pictures Repertory; Raphael Pollart/Jupiter Films; Matt Jones/UNC School of the Arts; Kent Hu/Lionsgate.
General Information
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). Both locations house Greenlight Bookstore at BAM kiosks. BAM Fisher, located at 321 Ashland Place, is the newest addition to the BAM campus and houses the Judith and Alan Fishman Space and Rita K. Hillman Studio. BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn’s only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, offers a bar menu and dinner entrées prior to BAM Howard Gilman Opera House evening performances. BAMcafé also features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music for BAMcafé Live on Friday and Saturday nights with a bar menu available starting at 6pm.
Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5, Q, B to Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center (2, 3, 4, 5 to Nevins St for Harvey Theater) D, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street; C to Lafayette Avenue Train: Long Island Railroad to Atlantic Terminal – Barclays Center Bus: B25, B26, B41, B45, B52, B63, B67 all stop within three blocks of BAM Car: Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM
For ticket information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.