APRIL CALENDAR
COMING IN APRIL
CHARLES GRODIN X2
APRIL 1
With the death of Charles Grodin, we lost one of the most idiosyncratic, occasionally antic, and fearlessly irksome comic screen talents of our time, an unlikely star with more great performances to his name than many more obvious marquee idols. Whether he was playing the crooked half of a double act with straight arrow Robert De Niro in 1988’s Midnight Run, being slowly driven into madness by Martin Short in 1994’s Clifford, or pitching woo to Miss Piggy in 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper, Grodin made every movie he ever appeared in better—and stranger—than it otherwise might’ve hoped to have been, bringing to the table a skill set that included snarling slow-burn rage, artfully offbeat line readings, and the deflated, exasperated, hangdog air of one whom life has made a punching bag. Nobody played defeat better, but the tale Grodin’s films tell is one of artistic triumph.
ROBERT SIODMAK X 8
APRIL 1
While Robert Siodmak remains best known for his excellent suspense thrillers of the 1940s, such as his 1946 Burt Lancaster vehicle The Killers, the scope of Siodmak’s art is much bigger than noir, as this overdue series illustrates. German-born, his career began in Berlin with the landmark independent slice-of-life drama People on Sunday (1929)—a collaboration with Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, and other later luminaries. This preceded his immigration to the US, and a Hollywood tour that produced camp fantasias (1944’s Cobra Woman), high-flying swashbucklers (1952’s The Crimson Pirate), and of course those ultra-stylish thrillers—all of which can be seen alongside Siodmak’s 1957 The Devil Strikes at Night, his second film made on returning to West Germany, and a riveting reckoning with the legacy of the Third Reich.
In Theater
THE KILLERS
DIRECTED BY ROBERT SIODMAK
COMING SOON
POP PLAYS ITSELF
APRIL 1
Every pop star is a great actor—until they have to, you know, act. Perhaps that’s why, on the big screen, pop musicians are often at their most revealing, consciously or not, when playing a role that looks and sounds just like them. After all, it’s the thing they’re already best at. While today’s stars might be as readily accessible as a social media live feed, pop luminaries of the past turned to the cinema to extend, complicate or renovate their public personae: whether driven by a desire to sell records, burnish newly minted myths, or cheerfully send up their own iconography. This series surveys a disparate selection of cult figures, visionaries, punks and pop supernovas who took to the screen to play some kitty-corner, squint-and-it-could- be-the-real-thing version of themselves, where—with apologies to Ringo Starr—all they gotta do is act naturally.
Series curated and program notes written by critics Luke Goodsell and Anwen Crawford.
LEFT BANK CINEMA
APRIL 1
Cahiers du Cinéma did much to shape the narrative of the Nouvelle Vague—naturally enough, given their background in culture journalism—but there was another cluster of filmmakers, no less important to mid-century French cinema, whose work has less often been looked at for signs of artistic affinity, argument, and general rapport. This is the gang often designated as the “Left Bank” directors, its leading lights Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, Jacques Demy, and Alain Resnais, now receiving their largest US group retrospective in many moons at Metrograph. Some defining characteristics jump out: where the Cahiers filmmakers were aesthetes coming from disparate political backgrounds, the Left Bank filmmakers tended to be left-identified and politically engaged in their work; and where the Cahiers filmmakers gravitated towards 19th-century literature, the Left Bank filmmakers responded to the “New Novel” of their time, and collaborated with associated authors—hence the inclusion in the series of films by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras. The opportunity here is not to compare the Cahiers set to those of the Left Bank, but to see the currents of inspiration that carried between members of the group, and to reveal another side of the New Wave.
METROGRAPH A TO Z
APRIL 1
When Metrograph opened its doors in 2016, we did so with Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z, a way to introduce moviegoers to our particular take on cinema history. Now that our catalog is back, we are relaunching A to Z. Every four months, a new programmer will create their own idiosyncratic alphabet: one film per letter, neither canon nor anti-canon, but rather a selection of our favorite films that serve as life- changing revelations or enduring personal passions, and ultimately films of which Metrograph exists to spread the gospel. First up, Programmer-at-Large Nellie Killian takes us from A-M, starting with a double dose of pure cinema with Paul Sharits’s Apparent Motion and Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante and ending with Robert Mulligan’s pastoral swan song (and Reese Witherspoon’s debut!) The Man in the Moon.
In Theater
Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia
DIRECTED BY ULRIKE OTTINGER
COMING SOON
UNRAVELING PARADISE
APRIL 10
Curated by Dessane Lopez Cassell, Unraveling Paradise presents a selection of Caribbean films and artist’s moving image works that pry apart illusions of the region as a tropical “paradise.”
There’s a powerful myth that’s been reinforced in the Caribbean for centuries. From early tourism campaigns to contemporary media, visions of the region as a tropical ‘paradise’ abound—each peddling a fantasy carefully crafted for maximum consumption. Framing the notion of paradise as a case study in colonialmyth-making, this film series centers instability, mischief, and the mundane as counter gestures to the fantasies that bind the Caribbean in a predatory economic and cultural relationship with the Global North. Featuring work by Sofía Gallisá Muriente (with the New York premiere of Celaje), Joiri Minaya, Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada, Esther Figueroa, Johanné Gómez Terrero, and Dalissa Montez de Oca (with the US premiere of Pacaman). —Dessane Lopez Cassell
Co-presented with Abrons Arts Center.
In Theater
PROGRAM 4: MAINTENANcE WORK
COMING SOON
THE COMEDY: 10TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING
APRIL 15
METROGRAPH SELECTS: LAUREN WILLIAMS
APRIL 15
Select films, chosen specially by Metrograph Staff. For this iteration of Metrograph Selects, Director of Theater Operations & Membership Lauren Williams presents Toho Studio's The Bloodthirsty Trilogy.
“Even dead girls get the blues. The Bloodthirsty Trilogy has everything: fashion, feminism, and fiends. There is not a moment where I’m not transfixed, be it the beautiful set dressings or the subtle symbolism that Yamamoto somehow manages to sneak into every scene.”
—Lauren Williams
LIONEL ROGOSIN
APRIL 22
An innovator in nonfiction filmmaking, a tireless advocate for justice who traveled the world in its cause, and a champion of alternative cinema in his role as the founder of New York’s Bleecker Street Cinema, Lionel Rogosin was a dynamo of activity and against-the-grain enterprise who fought tirelessly for people and artworks that had little other support or attention. After making his feature debut with On the Bowery (1956), a docufiction portrait of Skid Row NYC that’s like the missing link between Italian neorealism and cinéma vérité, Rogosin reeled off a series of extraordinary films that took him from South Africa to the Deep South, looking and listening as he did to the faces of the unseen and the voices of the voiceless. Too often Rogosin’s filmography is reduced to his debut and his anti-apartheid follow-up Come Back, Africa (1959), but now it can be viewed nearly complete, in its variety, vitality, and moral courage.
GARY INDIANA SELECTS
APRIL 22
In celebration of the release of his new collection of essays, Fire Season, author Gary Indiana comes to 7 Ludlow to present a selection of films.
RUNS
In Theater
THE WOBBLIES
DIRECTED BY STEWART BIRD & DEBORAH SHAFFER
COMING SOON