February In Theater 2024
FEBRUARY IN THEATER
Artificial Love
opens February 2
Almost 40 years after Zapp released their immortal classic “Computer Love” the concept of post-human amour is eerily immanent—so just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’re booting up a series of films about Artificial Intelligence in love. A vision of a world in which human fallibility has been purged from romance, or utopian dreams that silicon chips can share the same electric connection as humans? We’ll let you make the call.
Series Includes:
Electric Dreams - Her
Making Mr. Right - Wall-E
Beach Bodied
opens February 2
The cold of winter often brings a longing for warmer climes; the sting of want, a desire for easy money. In this series, we’ve brought together films that address both of these truths and offer a little vicarious sunshine—as well as vivid depictions of the lengths that some will go to avoid an honest living. A sampler of exemplary crime films where the capers are planned with the beach in easy reach, the getaways are run in flip-flops, and .38 holsters rest on top of Hawaiian print shirts, including films by Harmony Korine and Paul Thomas Anderson, and the North American premiere of Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic Point Break, newly restored in 4K.
Series Includes:
The Beach Bum - Inherent Vice - La Piscine
Little Odessa - Point Break - Spring Breakers - Thunderball
Dream-like Visions: The Multi-sensorial cinema of alain gomis
OPENS february 9
“One of today’s most original cinematic voices, the French Senegalese director Gomis brings to Metrograph a curated selection of his most personal films, along with two recent works from France and Lesotho that have left a profound impact upon him. A cosmopolitan at heart with roots in Senegal, Gomis’s cinema is a multi-sensorial space that reflects on notions of home, identity, and mortality. His films poetically weave between intimate perspectives of his drifting characters and raw, verité scenes depicting chaotic cities in which they live—sometimes joyful, sometimes violent. From the poignant narrative of a Senegalese man living his final day in Tey (Today) to Félicité‘s desperate journey seeking aid from friends, family, and strangers to save her son, and the immersive, behind-the-scenes documentary Rewind & Play exploring the life of jazz legend Thelonious Monk, Gomis’s films daringly explore the tensions and contradictions within the multiracial, multi-tribal local communities that are reshaping cities, both past and present.”—series curator, Adeline Monzier
Series supported by Unifrance and Villa Albertine
With Alain Gomis In Person on Friday, February 9 and Saturday, February 10
Series Includes:
Tey (Today) - Rewind & Play - Félicité
This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection - Saint Omer
year of the dragon
opens february 9
As we roar into the Lunar New Year and mark the fifth symbol of the Chinese zodiac’s return after a dozen years, we’ll be honoring the occasion with two films boasting Big Dragon Energy: a modern wuxia classic by Ang Lee, as well as a screen-scorching visit from Raya and the Last Dragon. A gift in a bright red envelope, from Metrograph to you.
Series Includes:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Hero - Raya and the Last Dragon
ED ZWICK’S HITS, FLOPS, AND OTHER ILLUSIONS
FEBRUARY 13
Beginning his career in television, where he scored a popular and critical success as a writer and executive producer on the 1987-91 prime time drama thirtysomething, Edward Zwick began a parallel career as a feature film director with 1986’s About Last Night… This sharply written romantic comedy, however, was a far cry from Zwick’s sophomore film, 1989’s Glory, the first of several passionate and politically astute historical dramas that he would go on to helm, such as 2003’s The Last Samurai and 2006’s Blood Diamond. To celebrate the publication of Zwick’s career memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, join Zwick in person for a special Metrograph screening of his American epic, recounting the true story of the African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and their valorous service in the Civil War. At a separate event before the screening, Zwick will share insights into his filmmaking career and memorable moments from throughout his filmography in an hour-long conversation.
Filmmaker Ed Zwick in person.
Series Includes:
Glory - Members Event: Ed Zwick in Conversation
the four film loves
Opens February 14
The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis’s eloquent treatise on the nature of love, shapes and informs this year’s quartet of Valentine’s Day films at Metrograph. You can see one of cinema’s most famous star-crossed love affairs in Casablanca (representing Lewis’s concept of Philia, or the “friend bond”), the ’70s SoCal amour fou of Licorice Pizza (representing Lewis’s Eros, or “romantic love”), the triptych of sweetly ironic almost-love stories in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Agape, or unconditional “God” love), and the noir-tinged study of sensual obsession of Suzhou River (Storge, or empathetic love). A perfect date for a special someone, or just your own very special self—and once the movie is over, the intimate, flatteringly lit confines of the Commissary and cozy canoodling over cocktails lie just a few steps away.
Series Includes:
Casablanca - Licorice Pizza - Suzhou River - Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
baldwin: from page to screen
Opens february 14
Of the eminent figures of 20th-century American letters, few had so intense an engagement with the movies as James Baldwin, as evidenced by his book-length essay on Hollywood cinema and racial politics, The Devil Finds Work. And filmmakers have been just as taken with Baldwin, as you can see in our program of movies about and featuring the author and his work, including Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro; new restorations of Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris, Baldwin’s N****r, and James Baldwin: From Another Place; and If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins’s sublimely sensitive adaptation of Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name
Series Includes:
If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin Abroad - I Am Not Your Negro
onlookers
Opens february 16
In her third feature, Takesue turns her camera on tourists and travellers in Laos, observing how they react and respond to the local populations while also providing the opportunity for viewers to reflect on our own roles as observers in everyday life. A rich, meditative film about looking at people who have come to look, made up of painterly, precisely composed tableaux that both reveal the picturesque beauty of the local landscape and question the concept of the “picturesque,” all while revealing the persistence of colonial assumptions in contemporary package tourism.
Filmmaker Kimi Takesue in person.
filmcraft: ace
working girl
february 17
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.
Mike Nichols—working with his most frequent editor Sam O'Steen—gives a 1980s update to the ’30s workplace comedy, with working-class Staten Island striver Tess (Melanie Griffith) making a regular ferry commute between her provincial life with neighborhood guy fiancé Alec Baldwin and the world of cosmopolitan high finance, where she works under exec Sigourney Weaver. Their professional relationship is threatened when Tess starts to fall for her boss’s old flame: Harrison Ford at the height of his rugged charm.
Q&A with Bobbie O’Steen, author of Cut to the Chase: Forty-Five Years of Editing America's Favorite Movies, and Molly O’Steen on Saturday, Febraury 17th
sha sha movies presents: meriem bennani’s life on the caps
february 17 and 18
For their return to Metrograph, South-West Asian and North African cinema-focused independent streaming service Shasha Movies presents Life on the CAPS comprising three interconnected short works by Meriem Bennani. Bennani, a Morocco-born, Paris-educated, New York-based video and installation artist whose work ebulliently combines aspects of animation, music video, cinema verité, and reality television tropes, spent five years on this trio of shorts set in “the CAPS,” an offshore prison camp for migrants who have been caught teleporting illegally in a world where teleportation has become the preferred form of travel.
minding the gaps: films by antoine bourges
Opens february 23
Working in the shadowy no man’s land between documentary and fiction filmmaking, Vancouver-based, Paris-born Bourges’s unclassifiable body of work—including his midlength breakout, 2012’s East Hastings Pharmacy, a scripted account of daily goings-on in a methadone clinic made with the participation of real-life addicts—has garnered him attention at festivals and galleries the world over as a sensitive chronicler of life in the lower strata of society. Screening Bourges’s short works as well as his feature-length debut, 2017’s Fail to Appear and his latest, 2022’s Concrete Valley, this program shines a spotlight on one of the most consistently surprising, beguilingly restrained, and admirably restless talents to appear in cinema’s last 15 years.
Series Includes:
Concrete Valley - Fail to Appear - East Hastings Pharmacy