DECEMBER IN THEATER

in water + the daughters of fire
opens December 1

A film crew assemble for a shoot on Jeju Island in wintery off-season-and professional and personal conflicts simmer-in Hong Sangsoo’s latest finely detailed, piquantly melancholic study of the interweaving of art and life, which finds the ever-innovative filmmaker experimenting with the pictorial (and metaphoric) possibilities of subtly out-of-focus photography.

With The Daughters of Fire, Pedro Costa’s unprecedented ethnographic musical triptych depicting three sisters (singers Elizabeth Pinard, Alice Costa, and Karyna Gomes) separated by the volcanic eruption of Fogo, Cape Verde’s highest peak.

Sub-Marine Mysteries (and wonders)
opens December 1

The Abyss, the film in which director James Cameron first explored his passion for open water and what lies beneath, is coming to Metrograph for an exclusive New York City run in its Director’s Cut. To keep it company, we’ve put together a fleet of films that explore the mysteries of that other final frontier with submersibles of all sizes. With Richard Fleischer doing Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Wes Anderson indulging his Jacques Cousteau fetish in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and plenty of other deep dives into the unknown.

Series Includes:

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – The Abyss: Special Edition – Invention For Destruction
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – Pacification

25y2k
opens December 1

As the 20th century drew to a close, the words “millennium bug”-a computer glitch that was supposed to drown the world in darkness-were on everyone’s lips, the air thick with the anticipation of apocalypse. Did that anxiety impress itself on some of the finest films being released at fin de siècle, by exemplary artists like David Cronenberg, Tsai Ming-liang, and Michaels Mann and Haneke? Maybe… but what’s certain is the moment brought a bumper crop of cinematic excellence to the screen, and after 25 years we’re bringing back some of our favorites, films whose end-of-days paranoia has no expiration date.

Series Includes:

American Beauty – American Psycho – Audition – Beau Travail
Bringing Out the Dead – Being John Malkovich – The Circle – eXistanZ
Fight Club – Funny Games – The Hole – The Insider – Magnolia
Millennium Mambo – Office Space – Pi – Pola X
Strange Days – Talk to Her – The Truman Show – Vanilla Sky

Elisabeth Subrin Presents: Maria Schneider, 1983 + Shulie
December 2 and December 3

Brooklyn-based filmmaker Elisabeth Subrin joins Metrograph to present two films that tantalizingly explore the limits of biography, through playful portraits of actress Maria Schneider and the feminist writer Shulamith Firestone.

“Our understanding of a person cannot be singular, but is produced through multiple, shifting interpretations and perceptions. I believe a biographical subject is not temporally or cohesively written, but a collective, cross-historical experience that moves through the bodies of both those who write it, and those who receive it. Maria is a multiplicity. My hope is audiences will travel with her across time, immersing themselves in her shifting inner life as she moves towards self-possession, witnessing her vulnerabilities and strength through different subjectivities and interpretations.”-Elisabeth Subrin 

Intro and Q&A with Elisabeth Subrin Saturday, December 2 at 6pm and Sunday, December 3 at 5:30pm

Series Includes:

Maria Schneider, 1983 – Shulie

playground: art cinema for tots
December 3

It’s never too early to get your kids started on quality cinema, and with that in mind Metrograph introduces “Playground: Art Cinema for Tots,” a new series that brings together the best of current and classic children’s films with colorful, exuberant experimental and educational shorts sure to delight everyone from tykes to grandparents.

Each ticket includes free admission for one child, if you’d like to bring more than one child per ticket, please email Boxoffice@metrograph.com to book a seat.

Ace Presents: The Cincinnati Kid
December 3

American Cinema Editors (ACE) is dedicated not only to advancing the art and science of the film editing profession, but also to helping the public understand the role of the editor and the impact their contributions have on a motion picture. With this series, ACE pairs a great film and a moderated conversation with that film’s editor, providing a glimpse into one of cinema’s most vital but least understood artistic practices.

A sharply drawn character study set against the backdrop of Depression Era New Orleans, The Cincinnati Kid stars Steve McQueen as an up-and-coming five-card stud specialist looking to prove his mettle by taking on established poker maestro “The Man” (Edward G. Robinson). Ashby’s deft editing helps to make the card table scenes masterpieces of tension, and the central dueling duo are surrounded by a superb supporting cast that boasts Tuesday Weld, Rip Torn, Joan Blondell, and Karl Malden in its number.

Post-screening discussion with author of Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel and Hal Ashby: Interviews Nick Dawson

Women Dressing Women: From Runway to Screen
Opens December 8

Inspired by The Costume Institute’s Women Dressing Women exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metrograph presents a series of films featuring costumes by women fashion designers, for women on screen. The designers-Gabrielle Chanel, Pauline Trigère, Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood, and Miuccia Prada-are brought on to provide costuming for their recognizable aesthetic, often for female roles, resulting in a synergy between the designer’s sensibility and the fictional characters they dress.

Women Dressing Women (December 7, 2023-March 3, 2024) explores the creativity and artistic legacy of women fashion designers from The Costume Institute’s permanent collection. The show traces a lineage of women makers from the turn of the 20th century to the present day by highlighting celebrated designers, new voices, and forgotten histories alike.

A film series celebrating The Costume Institute exhibition Women Dressing Women at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Series Includes:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Gregory Girl – The Great Gatsby
The Haunting – Leaving Las Vegas – The Rules of the Game

Friends and Strangers
James Vaughan In Person
December 10

Ray and Alice (Fergus Wilson and Emma Diaz), two Australian twentysomethings living cushioned, comfortable lives in affluent Sydney, don’t have any real problems, and that’s their problem. This non-dilemma becomes fodder for wry, incisive comedy of everyday social mortification in writer/director/editor Vaughan’s ennui-drenched Friends and Strangers, in which molehill difficulties-an impromptu camping trip that fails to lead to a desired communion, a series of misunderstandings revolving around a wedding video-take on mountainous significance. A startlingly original piece of work located somewhere at the intersection of screwball and cringe comedy, Antonioniesque alienation, and Rohmerian ravishment, and an exemplary work of art that calls into question the value of art in a modern world that has reduced it to nothing more than a marker of social status.

Introduction and Q&A with filmmaker James Vaughan, moderated by Director of Editorial Operations at Filmmaker Magazine Vadim Rizov, on Sunday, December 10th

Also Streaming on Metrograph At Home

About Golshifteh
Opens December 15

Since being cast at age 14 in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Pear Tree, Tehran-born musician/actress Golshifteh Farahani has put together an impressive run of multilingual performances in films made in Iran, the United States, and Europe-France having become her adopted home after the iconoclastic actress was banned in 2009 from working in the Islamic Republic. While Farahani is still very much in her prime, we look back at what has already been a remarkable career trajectory, encompassing work with masters of Iranian cinema, French, and American independent films, and even the occasional Hollywood blockbuster.

Series Includes:

About Elly – Chicken With Plums
Paterson – Shirin

Highlights, Favorites, and Deep Cuts from filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces
Opens December 15

“Since its debut in 1998, Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list has annually curated a cross-section of emerging independent film talent-directors, writers, actors and below-the-line artists who have both gone on to receive exciting broader recognition as well as made indelible works that speak vibrantly to the moment of their creation. With the magazine’s 27th edition of the list in its current edition, the editors have put together a program of short films from the ’23 crop as well as two blocks of favorites and deep cuts selected from the over 600 filmmakers who have appeared on the list since its inception.”-Filmmaker editors Scott Macaulay and Vadim Rizov

Also Streaming on Metrograph At Home

Series Includes:

Highlights from Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces
Favorites & Deep Cuts #1 from Filmmaker Magazine – Favorites & Deep Cuts #2 from Filmmaker Magazine

Holiday Classics at Metrograph: 2023
Opens December 22

‘Tis the season for traditions, and this year we’ve got plenty of cinematic goodies under the tree for the discerning moviegoer, as our established canon of seasonal classics (Carol, Eyes Wide Shut, Phantom Thread) return alongside festive chestnuts courtesy Ernst Lubitsch and the Muppets.

Series Includes:

Carol – Eyes Wide Shut – The Muppets Christmas Carol
Phantom Thread – The Shop Around the Corner 

Yuletide Sublime: Foreign Holiday Films
Opens December 22

Christmas comes but once a year, like the song says. And no matter where you live, what makes the holiday season different from the rest of the calendar year is what makes some of the finest films set during the season different: their heightened, hectic intensity; the opportunity their crucible-like setting provides for unusual and sometimes unexpected introspection. A series bringing together movies from around the world that vividly depict the ruptures and revelations created by the beautiful disturbance of Christmas, featuring films by Éric Rohmer, Ingmar Bergman, and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Series Includes:

A Tale of Winter – Cronos – The Double Life of Véronique
Fanny and Alexander – In Bruges – Three Wishes for Cinderella

Hong Kong 1997
Opens December 22

At midnight on July 1st, 1997, 156 years of British rule in Hong Kong came to an end, as the colonial city-state was reunited with Mainland China under the status of “special administrative region.” The uncertainty many Hong Kongers felt about this event and its implications would, subtly or quite directly, influence films made in the moviemaking capitol of Greater China in the years immediately after the Handover-works by Hong Kong legends like Wong Kar-wai, Johnnie To, Fruit Chan, Tsui Hark, and others which reflect the epochal shift in the destiny of the city in which they were made in an often anxious and frenetic cinematic language.

Series Includes:

2046 – Made in Hong Kong
Infernal Affairs – Spacked Out

Spacked Out
Opens December 29

Set in the massive, crumbling urban developments in Hong Kong’s New Territories with a combination of trained actors and nonprofessionals, Spacked Out depicts a few tumultuous days in the lives of four schoolgirls, filled with desultory mall outings, classroom phone sex, and the occasional box-cutter brawl. A study of the everyday hope and despair experienced by Hong Kong’s dead-end kids that stands alongside Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980) and Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong (1997), here focusing attention on young working-class women.

Also Premiering on Metrograph At Home