SPECIAL FILM EVENTS IN NOVEMBER AT MoMA
INCLUDE BOOK SIGNING WITH CRITIC EMMANUEL LEVY,
SCREENINGS OF EARLY JOHN FORD WESTERNS
AND SIGNING OF NEW FORD BIOGRAPHY BY AUTHOR SCOTT EYMAN,
AND MEMORIAL TRIBUTE TO FILMMAKER RUDY BURCKHARDT
In November, The Department of Film and Video at The Museum of Modern Art, presents the following special events:
On Tuesday, November 2, at 6:00 p.m., on the occasion of the publication of his newest book, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (NYU Press, 1999), film critic Emmanuel Levy will introduce a screening of Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire movie Near Dark (1987). Mr. Levy, a senior critic at Variety and twice the president of the Los Angeles Film Critic Association, has written the first comprehensive account of the American independent cinema and the ways in which, over the past twenty years, it has become the engine driving American film culture. In this study, he contextualizes American independent filmmaking and describes its major cycles. Mr. Levy will sign copies of his book before the November 2 screening. The film will have a special encore showing on Monday, November 29 at 6:00 p.m. Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Video.
On Friday, November 12, to commemorate the publication of the authorized biography of John Ford, Scott Eyman’s Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford (Simon & Schuster, 1999), the Museum screens the director’s earliest two surviving feature films, Straight Shooting (1917) at 6:00 p.m. and Hell Bent (1918) at 8:00 p.m. Both films star Harry Carey, who became an inspiration and model for John Wayne in a number of later Ford Westerns. Both features will be preceded by a newly rediscovered one-reel condensation of Ford’s By Indian Post (1919), a light comedy Western two-reeler that had been thought lost forever. Both screenings are introduced by Scott Eyman, who will sign copies of his new book at 5:30 p.m. Organized by Charles Silver, Associate Curator, Research and Collections, Department of Film and Video.
On November 30, at 6:00 p.m., the Department of Film and Video pays tribute to New York filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, who died in July, with the program In Memoriam: Rudy Burckhardt. Burckhardt, celebrated as a poet of the cinema, was born in Switzerland in 1914, moved to New York in 1935, and shot his first film in 1936. MoMA presented a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s films in 1987. That exhibition was co-organized by Philip Lopate, who introduces this 90-minute selection of Burckhardt’s films from the archives. Organized by Laurence Kardish.
