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Home , Bruno Nuytten, Christopher Lambert, Isabelle Adjani, Klaus Kinski, Yves Montand

BAMcinématek presents Adjani, a 12-film retrospective of French icon and fierce leading lady , Mar 8—21

New DCP restorations of André Téchiné’s The Brontë Sisters and the director’s cut of ’s Ishtar, plus a newly restored 35mm print of ’s

Presented in partnership with uniFrance Films and French Cultural Services

The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor of BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek.

Brooklyn, NY/Feb 8, 2013—From Thursday, March 8, through Thursday, March 21, BAMcinématek presents Adjani, a 12-film retrospective of “the French Garbo,” including underseen rarities as well as the actress’ best-known work, several shown in new 35mm prints and DCP restorations. Isabelle Adjani’s fierce, powerful screen presence and raven-haired beauty have made her an icon of French cinema. Bursting onto the international scene in Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., she has gone on to win a record five Césars, work with such auteurs as , , Walter Hill, and Andrzej Zulawski, and become an outspoken champion of immigrant rights. In her best roles, Adjani projects a smoldering intensity that is at once alluring and excitingly unpredictable.

“I am what they call a pretty intense actress,” Adjani, a specialist in tragic heroines and madwomen, has admitted. She became a star in in the comedy The Slap (1974) and around the world a year later when François Truffaut, mesmerized by that performance, cast Adjani as the lovesick daughter of Victor Hugo in The Story of Adele H. (1975—Screening Sunday, March 10). In this “musical, lilting film with a tidal pull to it” (), Truffaut scrupulously recreates the everyday details of transit, entertainment, and communication in Hugo’s era. Against that backdrop of mundane reality Adjani etches one of the cinema’s most ardent studies of frustrated passion, a real-life stalker avant la lettre who followed a disinterested lover around the world.

Adele H. earned Adjani Best Actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics, as well as an Academy Award nomination, commencing a career as one of the most decorated actresses in film history; she went on to earn citations from the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals, a second Oscar nod, and a record-breaking five César Awards. Though she was something of an outsider in France—the child of a German mother and an Algerian garage worker who grew up in a working-class suburb—the rest of the world greeted Adjani, with her pouty lips and rounded vowels, as the emblematic jeune fille. Journalists often compared her to Bardot (for her sensuality) and Garbo (for her mystery). “Indignant, amused, aloof, proud, possessed—the most cherishable actress alive,” rhapsodized James Wolcott.

Adjani was shrewd about her career, choosing projects less for the quality of the role than for the director at the helm. Roman Polanski was a must for Adjani. He cast her as the kooky girlfriend in (1976—Mar 17), the claustrophobic, Kafkaesque cult favorite in which a nobody (played by Polanski himself) purloins an apartment following its occupant’s suicide and begins to take on the dead girl’s identity. For Werner Herzog, Adjani played Lucy in the Vampyre (1979—Mar 16), a remake of the canonical silent that, much like Adele H., emphasized the grimy minutiae of 19th-century life as much as its supernatural horrors: those hordes of plague-bearing rats induce as many squirms as the bloodsucking freak (Klaus Kinski). Polish master Andrzej

Zulawski pursued Adjani for years before she agreed to star in his masterpiece, Possession (1981—Mar 15), as the terrorized wife in a bitter divorce drama that morphs into a Freudian science fiction opus (complete with a Carlo Rambaldi monster!). Adjani’s infamous five-minute food-flinging freak-out became the centerpiece of one of the cinema’s most uninhibited performances, winning her a Best Actress Award at Cannes and her first César.

Adjani also had a good eye for recognizing promising new directors, notably the young André Téchiné, for whom she starred in (1976) and The Brontë Sisters (1979—Mar 8; new DCP restoration). Hauntingly atmospheric and almost Bressonian in its restraint, Téchiné’s literary biography assembles an all-star cast as the repressed (and oppressed) soeurs: Marie-France Pisier, , and Adjani, who plays defiant tomboy Emily, wearing pants and roaming the windy moors with her brother (her Queen Margot costar Pascal Greggory) and her blind father (A Clockwork Orange’s Patrick Magee) en route to writing Wuthering Heights.

By the mid-80s, Adjani had become France’s biggest box office draw, starring in popular hits like Jean- Paul Rappeneau’s All Fired Up (1982—Mar 20), ’s One Deadly Summer (1983—Mar 14), and ’s Subway (1985—Mar 9). Rappeneau’s family comedy, which starred as uptight Adjani’s long-lost père, did not receive a commercial release abroad, and makes a rare appearance in this series. Becker’s steamy, sunlit noir about a seductress who blows into a provincial town on a mission of revenge, scandalized French audiences for its extended full-frontal scenes featuring Adjani, known until then as a “good girl.” Clothed again, and in the highest of fashion, Adjani decorated Besson’s Subway as a gangster’s wife who falls for peroxided, tuxedo-clad pickpocket Christopher Lambert in this key entry in the short-lived ultra-pop cinéma du look movement.

A tabloid fixture in her native country, Adjani endured a series of scandals, including the revelation of her North African heritage (initially, she had lied, claiming her father was Turkish) as she spoke out against racism, and a bizarre rumor that she was dying of AIDS. Undaunted, Adjani used her bankability to get a passion project off the ground, handpicking (the cinematographer on The Brontë Sisters and the father of her first child) to direct (1988—Mar 13), a biopic about a promising sculptress who becomes ruinously obsessed with her teacher and lover Rodin (Gérard Depardieu). “Her most overwhelming and characteristic performance, as a woman in love with art, exhilaration, and danger” (David Thomson).

Best known in the US for her romances with and Daniel Day Lewis, Adjani flirted with a Hollywood career that was never wholly consummated. Dropping out of ’s Bobby Deerfield, and turning down Fatal Attraction and Dick Tracy, Adjani—fluent in English via a crash course of Happy Days reruns—made her US debut in The Driver (1978—Mar 9; in a newly restored 35mm print) as a professional gambler drawn to Ryan O’Neal’s inscrutable wheel-man. Walter Hill’s lean, moody criminal-versus-cop chase—“perhaps the most abstract movie ever made in Hollywood” (Michael Sragow)—was a blueprint for the recent hit thriller Drive. Adjani’s second American film, shot on location in Morocco, was Elaine May’s Ishtar (1987—Mar 20), a political satire that cast megastars Beatty and as nitwit lounge singers caught up in a CIA plot to overthrow a Middle Eastern government. A humungous flop upon its initial release and an enduring punchline for late-night comedians, Ishtar has over time become a cause célèbre, having been championed by prominent film critics including J. Hoberman (“extremely droll… worthy of Samuel Beckett”), Jonathan Rosenbaum (“very prescient… a surprisingly sweet-tempered farce”), and Richard Brody (“among the most original, audacious, and inventive movies… of modern times”). BAMcinématek presents a new DCP restoration of the director’s cut.

At the height of her stardom, Adjani went into semi-retirement, interrupting a nearly 15-year absence from the screen in the mid-90s to make three films, among them Patrice Chéreau’s Queen Margot (1994— Mar 21), an energetic bodice ripper that compiles more sex and blood than all of her earlier period pieces combined. As Marguerite de Valois, the radiant Adjani was nearly 40 but somehow passed for half that. “Filmographies are like necrologies,” she wrote in the film’s Cannes program. “I do not like dates. The present is always the start.”

For press information, please contact Gabriele Caroti at 718.724.8024 / [email protected] Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected]

Adjani Film Schedule

Fri, Mar 8 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: The Brontë Sisters

Sat, Mar 9 2, 7pm: The Driver 4:30, 9:30pm: Subway

Sun, Mar 10 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: The Story of Adele H.

Wed, Mar 13 4:30, 7:45pm: Camille Claudel

Thu, Mar 14 4:30, 7:30pm: One Deadly Summer

Fri, Mar 15 1:30, 4, 6:45, 9:30pm: Possession

Sat, Mar 16 7, 9:30pm:

Sun, Mar 17 1:30, 4, 6:45, 9:30pm: The Tenant

Wed, Mar 20 4:30, 9:30pm: All Fired Up 7pm: Ishtar

Thu, Mar 21 7pm: Queen Margot

Film Descriptions

All Fired Up (1982) 108min Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. With Yves Montand. Adjani’s comedic chops get a rare showcase in this farcical thriller about a young woman whose long- absent father (French acting legend Yves Montand) reappears suddenly to scrounge money for… well, what does he need that money for, really? Soon enough, father and daughter are fending off mobsters in scenic Swiss locales, culminating in an alpine chase. 35mm. Wed, Mar 20 at 4:30, 9:30pm

The Brontë Sisters (1979) 120min New DCP restoration! Directed by André Téchiné. With Isabelle Huppert, Marie-France Pisier. Emily (Adjani), Charlotte (Pisier), and Anne (Huppert) eke out a drab existence in Victorian England while caring for their troubled, opium-addicted brother. Téchiné’s sensitive biopic, starring three of French

cinema’s finest actresses, poignantly contrasts the sisters’ humdrum lives with the wildly romantic fantasies that they conjured in their extraordinary novels. DCP. Fri, Mar 8 at 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm

Camille Claudel (1988) 158min Directed by Bruno Nuytten. With Gérard Depardieu. Adjani found one of her greatest successes, including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, in this biopic about the tormented artist Camille Claudel and her stormy relationship with sculptor Auguste Rodin (Depardieu). Cinematographer Nuytten—who lensed Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession and was Adjani’s onetime romantic partner—helmed this study of the link between madness and genius, which also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. 35mm. Wed, Mar 13 at 4:30, 7:45pm

The Driver (1978) 91min Newly restored 35mm print! Directed by Walter Hill. With Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern. Hill’s lean and taut existential thriller is pure 70s—and a deft, clever throwback to the noir era. The brilliant setup of cross and doublecross pits an obsessive detective (Dern) against a master getaway driver (O’Neal) in a series of fantastic, unsurpassed car chases which Pauline Kael praised as “hav[ing] a near abstract visual power.” 35mm. Sat, Mar 9 at 2, 7pm

Ishtar (1987) 105min New DCP restoration of the director’s cut! Directed by Elaine May. With Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman. Elaine May’s (Mikey and Nicky) notorious box office flop has been on a steady path to critical respectability since its disastrous premiere. Viewed today, this satire about a pair of bumbling songwriters (Beatty and Hoffman) swept up in Middle Eastern political intrigue and ensnared by a local rebel leader (Adjani) is a “very funny work by one of this country's greatest comic talents… Among the highlights: Charles Grodin's impersonation of a CIA operative, a blind camel, 's cinematography, and a delightful series of deliberately awful songs” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). DCP. Wed, Mar 20 at 7pm

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) 107min Directed by Werner Herzog. With Klaus Kinski, . Ignoring decades of cinematic mythology ingrained by directors Tod Browning and Terence Fisher, Herzog harks back to the pre-Nazi apex of German cinema and culture with this moody homage to F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece, Nosferatu. Seemingly born to play Count Dracula, Kinski crafts a lived-in performance of a brooding and world-weary figure cursed with the loneliness of eternal life and drawn to the ethereal beauty of Lucy (Adjani). With an army of 11,000 plague-ridden rats and slow-motion shots of vampire bats in flight, Herzog’s masterpiece is one of the most unforgettable entries in the genre. 35mm archival print courtesy of Bleeding Light Film Group. Sat, Mar 16 at 7, 9:30pm English language version.

One Deadly Summer (1983) 133min Directed by Jean Becker. With Alain Souchon. Pretty young Elle (Adjani, who collected César number two for this role) arrives in a small village with one purpose: to avenge the rape of her mother 19 years earlier. But what looks to be a straightforward revenge tale on the surface develops into something more complex, subversive, and disturbing, “as beneath the glossy visuals there lie murky and enigmatic themes of exploitation, treachery and falsehood…played with an increasing intensity by a fine cast, none more so than Adjani herself” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out London). 35mm. Thu, Mar 14 at 4:30, 7:30pm

Possession (1981) 127min Directed by Andrzej Zulawski. With Sam Neill. Adjani gives a ferociously feral performance (from which it reputedly took her years to recover) as Anna in Zulawski’s supreme head-trip—a terrifying, delirious exercise in exploitation, the avant-garde, and camp hysteria. A chronicle of the ultimate dysfunctional relationship between Anna and Mark (Neill), Possession netted Adjani the Best Actress Award at Cannes and her first César. 35mm print courtesy of Bleeding Light Film Group. Fri, Mar 15 at 1:30, 4, 6:45, 9:30pm

Queen Margot (1994) 162min Directed by Patrice Chéreau. With . This sumptuously operatic historical epic charts the political machinations leading up to the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, with Adjani (whom called “the French Garbo”) as the Catholic Marguerite de Valois, stuck in a loveless arranged marriage to Huguenot Henri de Navarre (Auteuil). Queen Margot is costume drama of the highest order, “visceral, with a high gore-factor, a pervasive whiff of filth, and a compelling percussive score” (Time Out London). 35mm. Thu, Mar 21 at 7pm

The Story of Adele H. (1975) 96min Directed by François Truffaut. With Bruce Robinson. At the mere age of 19, Adjani came to international prominence for her unforgettable portrayal of Victor Hugo’s daughter—a young woman driven to extremes by her unrequited love for a lieutenant (Robinson)—in one of Truffaut’s darkest and most emotionally charged films. The actress garnered both César and Academy Award nominations for this role, while a smitten Pauline Kael gushed, “you can't take your eyes off her… We keep staring at Adele to see what the face means.” 35mm. Sun, Mar 10 at 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm

Subway (1985) 104min Directed by Luc Besson. With Christopher Lambert. With both the cops and a gang of thugs on his tail, a tuxedoed thief (Lambert) goes into hiding in the tunnels of the Paris Métro. There, he encounters a host of eccentric societal cast-offs, forms a pop band with them, and falls in with gangster’s moll Adjani (who sports an impressive mohawk). Complete with a grimy subway tunnel chase on roller skates, action auteur Besson’s slick, sleazy, punk-rock joyride— which Dave Kehr called “Miami Vice with subtitles”—is 80s-chic at its finest. 35mm. Sat, Mar 9 at 4:30, 9:30pm

The Tenant (1976) 126min Directed by Roman Polanski. With Melvyn Douglas, Shelly Winters, Jo Van Fleet. This chilling psychodrama is one of the most unforgettable treatments of urban isolation ever captured on film. Polanski cast himself as Trelkovsky, a well-mannered Polish filing clerk who moves into a gloomy Paris flat after its previous occupant flung herself from the window. Increasingly unnerved by the woman’s leftover possessions (some nail polish here, a stray human tooth there), eerie apparitions, and relentless ridicule from the decidedly inhospitable neighbors, Trelkovsky begins to fear that his sinister building- mates led the previous tenant to her self-destruction—and are sending him on the same downward spiral. Lensed by the great , and co-starring Adjani as the bohemian vixen who tries to seduce Trelkovsky, this final film in Polanski’s apartment trilogy “may be the director’s quintessential movie. It's an exercise in urban paranoia and mental disintegration that echoes or anticipates everything from Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby to Bitter Moon and The Pianist” (J. Hoberman). 35mm. Sun, Mar 17 at 1:30, 4, 6:45, 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 , 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, (winning a National Film Critics’ Circle Award prize for the retrospective), Kaneto Shindo, , , 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 will run from June 19—30, 2013.

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.

Series supported in part by Bleeding Light Film Group.

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 Marty Markowitz, 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.

BAMcinematek is programmed by Florence Almozini with the assistance of Nellie Killian and David Reilly.

Special thanks to Brian Block/Bleeding Light Film Group. Additional thanks to Chris Chouinard/Park Circus; Eric Di Bernardo/Rialto Pictures; Tim Lanza/Cohen Film Collection; Caitlin Roberston & Joe Reid/20th Century Fox; Jake Perlin/The Film Desk; Delphine Selles & Muriel Guidoni/Cultural Services of the French Embassy, NY; Institut Francais; Laura Coffi/Gaumont; Paul Ginsburg/Universal; Judy Nicaud/Paramount; Christopher Lane & Michael Horne/Sony Pictures Repertory; Saadia Karim/MK2, Florence Charmasson/uniFrance films, Paris

General Information

Tickets: General Admission: $13 BAM Cinema Club Members: $8, BAM Cinema Club Movie Moguls: Free Seniors & Students (25 and under with a valid ID, Mon—Thu): $9 Bargain matinees (Mon—Thu before 5pm & Fri—Sun before 3pm no holidays): $9

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, is open for dining 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 select Friday and Saturday nights with a special BAMcafé Live menu available starting at 8pm.

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 and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.