Office of Press and Public Information Fourth Street and Constitution Av enue NW Washington, DC Phone: 202-842-6353 Fax: 202-789-3044 www.nga.gov/press Release Date: June 28, 2011 Summer Films at the National Gallery of Art Celebrate Recently Preserved Cinematic Treasures, International Classics, 50th Year of the Film-Makers' Co-op, and More Film still f rom Release (Bill Morrison, 2010) to be shown at the National Gallery of Art on Saturday , July 30, 4:00 p.m., as part of the f ilm series Film-Makers' Co-op at Fifty. Image courtesy of Bill Morrison, Release, New American Cinema Group/ Filmmakers' Co-op The summer film program at the National Gallery of Art opens in July with a cinematic portrait of late artist Louise Bourgeois, the inspirational French-American sculptor, in Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach's Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine. This is one of several film series this season to highlight international cinema. Beginning on July 9, the Gallery's annual preservation series, From Vault to Screen: New Preservation from France, salutes the national film archive of France with several ciné-concerts that feature live musical accompaniment to a variety of silent French films. In July the Gallery also honors the 50th anniversary of the Film-Makers' Cooperative, the nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to independent, avant-garde cinema, by presenting the series Film-Makers' Co-op at Fifty. Other film series this season include This Other Eden: Ireland and Film, featuring more than a dozen titles from the early days of Irish cinema to the present; A Polish Quartet: Jerzy Skolimowski in the 1960s, presenting early works by this highly original postwar director and graduate of the prestigious Łódź Film School; and Recovered Treasure: UCLA's Annual Festival of Preservation, a selection of newly preserved American television programs, documentary, and narrative features. Washington premieres include two documentary films: How to Make a Book with Steidl, about Gerhard Steidl's seminal printing house in Göttingen, Germany, and A Boatload of Wild Irishmen, an exploration of the work of American filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Films are screened in the East Building Auditorium, located at 4th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Works are presented in original formats and seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis. Doors open 30 minutes before each show, and programs are subject to change. For more information, visit www.nga.gov/film (http://www.nga.gov/film) , e-mail [email protected], or call (202) 842-6799. Film Events Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine Filmmaker Amei Wallach in person Sunday, July 3, 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. A famously magnetic and mercurial character, Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) was at the forefront of American art for decades while she exposed and explored, in particular, the emotional consciousness of women. A potent inspiration for younger artists, Bourgeois created until the end of her long life, always experimenting in a wide variety of media. The filmmakers of Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine enjoyed access to the artist from 1993 to 2007 and, as a result, compiled an intense and dramatic cinematic journey into her life and imagination. (Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach, 2008, HD-Cam, 99 minutes) Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" preceded by The Boy Who Saw Through Introduction by Ann Horton-Line and Michael Kerbel Saturday, July 16, 2:00 p.m. Saturday, July 30, 12:30 p.m. Long out of circulation, Mary Ellen Bute's extraordinary film adaptation of James Joyce's novel has just been restored by the Yale University Film Study Center in association with ColorLab and with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. A groundbreaking American experimental filmmaker, Bute (1906–1983) was best known for her celebrated musical films of the 1930s and 1940s, animated shorts widely screened in prominent theaters before features. Passages was the first- ever Joycean film adaptation and arguably remains the most successful. (Mary Ellen Bute, 1965, 35 mm, 90 minutes) Ann Horton-Line and Michael Kerbel are from the Film Study Center at Yale. In 1958 Bute and her cinematographer husband, Ted Nemeth, collaborated on producing their first narrative short, The Boy Who Saw Through, based on a short story about a Victorian boy who possesses the power to look through walls, starring a twelve- year-old Christopher Walken. (George C. Stoney, 1958, 35 mm, 25 minutes) How to Make a Book with Steidl Washington premiere Saturday, July 23, 1:00 p.m. The creative energies and commitment of one of Europe's most gifted printers and publishers is brilliantly documented in the Washington premiere of this engaging film. Since the 1960s Steidl Verlag of Göttingen, Germany, has been operated by Gerhard Steidl, who still oversees production. Robert Frank's The Americans, Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum, and works by Joseph Beuys, Ed Ruscha, Karl Lagerfeld, Lewis Baltz, and Bill Brandt—to name but a few—are among Steidl's many well-known accomplishments. (Gereon Wetzel and Joerg Adolph, 2010, 35 mm, 88 minutes) A Boatload of Wild Irishmen Washington premiere Saturday, September 24, 2:00 p.m. American Robert Flaherty (1884–1951) is hailed as father of the feature documentary on the basis of several iconic works, including Man of Aran, shot in 1934 off Ireland's coast and featuring a famously staged sequence with a small fishing boat struggling to make shore. Now a controversial figure, Flaherty broke new ground in the 1920s, filming everyday lives and then using that material to create entertaining narratives. Director Mac Dara Ó Curraidhin visits Flaherty's far-flung locations, interviews people who knew him (including the late Richard Leacock and Joseph Boudreaux, who played the boy in Louisiana Story), and draws a few interesting conclusions. (Mac Dara Ó Curraidhin, 2011, HD-Cam, 84 minutes) From Vault to Screen: New Preservation from France July 9–August 7 The National Gallery's summer preservation festival this year salutes the Archives Françaises du Film / Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), the national film archive of France, which since 1969 has been conserving the country's incomparable cinematic heritage. Approximately 2,000 new titles are added each year to its collections, now preserved at two facilities in Bois d'Arcy and Saint-Cyr. Organized in association with curator Eric Le Roy and film conservator Caroline Patte, who requested "carte blanche" in making their selections, this program includes unique silent French farce and boulevard comedy, a mystery film, and early "wonders of science" shorts, tinted and toned as they were when originally released. Very few of the films made by these production houses survive. Indeed, Studios Éclair, one of the oldest, estimates that 80 percent of its production has disappeared. With thanks to the Embassy of France and to the staff of CNC for their collaboration. Ciné-Concert: Poetry in Motion—The Scientific Short Andrew Simpson, piano Conservator Caroline Patte in person Saturday, July 9, 2:30 p.m. The poetry to be found in fleeting "science" footage has been a constant since the early days of cinema. These 15 delicate tinted shorts, made for the series Scientia by the production house Éclair between 1910 and 1920, are much more than odd curiosities; they are elegant precursors of the nature film, surveying the dusky domains of insects, snails, caterpillars, man-eating plants, and sea critters. L'Écrevisse (Crawfish, 1912), Le Scorpion Languedocien (1912), Les Orchidees (The Orchids, 1913), La Puce (The Flea, 1914), Le Chrysantheme (The Chrysanthemum, 1914), Les Plantes Carnivores (The Carnivorous Plants, 1914), Les Libellules (The Dragonflies, 1917), and more. (Silent with live piano, total running time approximately 70 minutes) Ciné-Concert: Son Premier Film Stephen Horne, piano Conservator Caroline Patte in person Sunday, July 10, 4:30 p.m. In Paris to get an inheritance, provincial actor Céleste Noménoé (phonetically, "[his] name is Noah") becomes famous overnight after his surprise film debut, but now he is known only as "Grock." Son Premier Film (His First Movie), a comedy in the popular tradition of théâtre de boulevard, was made for the production company Établissements Jacques Haïk. (Jean Kemm, 1926, 35 mm, silent with live piano, 99 minutes) Ciné-Concert: Mots Croisés followed by Bonheur Conjugal! Phil Carli, piano Sunday, July 17, 4:30 p.m. New York bank employee Percy Johnson, off to France with fiancée Mary Brown after winning a crossword-puzzle championship (hence the film's title, Mots Croisés, or "Crosswords"), encounters en route the Snowdens, who have ménage à quatre on their minds; then those train tickets to Nice get switched, and hilarious complications ensue. The production house Cinédor produced this engaging farce. (Michel Linsky and Pierre Colombier, 1926, 35 mm, silent with live piano, 61 minutes) In Bonheur Conjugal! (Marital Bliss), debt-ridden playboy Jack de la Mainmise, bored with his time-to-settle-down marriage to the wealthy bourgeoise Comtesse de la Roche Hapique, runs off to follow his first love, actress Monette, on tour in the south of France, but only after mortal consequences. (Robert Saidreau, 1922, 35 mm, silent with live piano, 64 minutes) Ciné-Concert: L'Arpète preceded by Le Chapeau de Madame Andrew Simpson, piano Saturday, August 6, 2:00 p.m. To save her boss (the couturier Pommier of La Maison Pommier), Jacqueline dupes a rich patron (the visiting American art lover Rochedufer) into placing a huge order. Rochedufer trumps her by asking for a rendezvous, which leads to surprising revelations. A stylish comedy with hand-painted deco sets, L'Arpète (The Dressmaker's Apprentice) anticipates the work of Sacha Guitry and others.