At Home With… February Picks
Friends of Metrograph Eric Allen Hatch, Brynn Wallner, and Christian Vazquez each share a film they love, streaming on demand on the Metrograph At Home platform.
Distant Constellation, dir. Shevaun Mizrahi, 2017
Mizrahi’s intimate, poetic, and disarmingly funny portrait of a Turkish retirement home located in the shadow of a massive high-rise construction site offers one of the most compelling debut features of the last 10 years. Rarely do we see seniors rendered with such vibrant real-life dimensionality. If death and a rapidly changing world hang over this inventive documentary, so do aliens, sexuality, fourth-wall ruptures, and more than one mischievous elevator ride. Richly cinematic despite a skeleton crew, Distant Constellation also stands as a triumph of DIY film craft.
Eric Allen Hatch is the director of programming for New/Next Film Festival and co-owner/co-founder of Baltimore’s non-profit video-rental library Beyond Video.
The Seduction of Mimi, dir. Lina Wertmüller, 1972
In just under four minutes, using zero dialogue, Wertmüller portrays the most natural romantic courtship I’ve ever seen onscreen. Starting with the breathtaking “street flirting” scene, Mimì makes eyes, rolllllling with devastation, at his crush Fiore, who resists his puppy-dog face with playful, very Italian fuck off hand gestures. This exchange drifts into an unhurried montage of walking, set to Piero Piccioni’s poignant score, in which the couple’s relationship evolves (without us hearing a word of their conversations) under the white winter sun. Anyone who’s ever fallen in love in a city knows the sweet spell cast by long, aimless walks. Theirs is a simple, unceremonious affair, resulting in teary-eyed declarations of patiently earned mutual love. This film is not sappy—it made me laugh more than it made me cry—but it’s those four minutes that will linger in mio cuore <3
Brynn Wallner is a journalist and the founder of Dimepiece, a platform dedicated to women and watches. She is based in the East Village.
Rocco and His Brothers, dir. Luchino Visconti, 1961
Four brothers and their mother travel by train from Italy’s agrarian south to the industrial north in search of a better life and to reunite with the eldest son. They arrive to muted hostility—derided as hicks from “the land of the deadbeats,” who’ve come to Milan for cheap jobs and a welfare state to support their livelihood. Visconti’s greatest film revels in masculine beauty. Tender moments are photographed between brothers who share everything: food, clothing, jobs, showers, and women. The film dazzles in its directness, as the boxing Parondis parry, counterpunch, and thrash about in defiance of the social structures that constrain the family and ensure its tragic fate.
Christian Vazquez is an LA-based documentary film producer, best known for his work on Lance Oppenheim’s Some Kind Of Heaven (2020). His collaboration with Oppenheim continues on Spermworld (2024) with FX and the New York Times, and Ren Faire (2024) with HBO and Elara Pictures.
