P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
MoMA's Affiliation with P.S.1
Visiting P.S.1
An Auteurist History of Film
September 9, 2009–Ongoing
Read curator Charles Silver's weekly An Auteurist History of Film posts at INSIDE/OUT, a MoMA/P.S.1 blog.
This two-year screening cycle is intended to serve as both an exploration of the richness of the Museum’s film collection and a basic introduction to the emergence of cinema as the predominant art form of the twentieth century. The auteurist approach to film—articulated by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s and brought to America by Andrew Sarris—contends that, despite the collaborative nature of the medium, the director is the primary force behind the creation of a film. This exhibition takes this theory as its point of departure, charting the careers of several key figures not in order to establish a formal canon, but to develop one picture of cinematic history.
Organized by Charles Silver, Curator, Department of Film.
Yamaha Modus H1 piano generously provided through Yamaha Artist Services, New York.
Related Film Screenings
Upcoming
Intolerance
1916. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith. With Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Miriam Cooper. Intolerance is a work of ambition bordering on madness, interweaving four disparate tales of “intolerance” through the ages: the fall of Babylon, the crucifixion, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in France, and a modern tale of injustice in America. The film remains a monument to directors who have tried to push the medium beyond “acceptable” limits. Silent. Approx. 130 min.
D. W. Griffith’s Competitors: Ince and DeMille
More Competition: Neilan and Vidor
And Yet More Competition: Walsh and Tourneur
Send in the Clowns
Anthology of Italian Cinema, Part I (1895–1926)
1954. Italy. Produced by Il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. This compilation of clips from silent Italian films is a priceless treasure chest spanning historical epics, diva films starring Lyda Borelli and Francesca Bertini, pre-Neorealist films, and comedies featuring Polidor and Cretinetti. Among the directors represented are such names as Giovanni Pastrone, Mario Caserini, Enrico Guazzoni, Gustavo Serena, and André Deed. English narration. 152 min.
Past
Pre-Cinema
Actualities and Glimmerings of More
A Portrait of Edwin S. Porter
Lesser-Known Pioneers of Cinema
Georges Méliès and His Rivals
D. W. Griffith at Biograph
The Scandinavian Connection
Two Danish Innovators
D. W. Griffith Leaves Biograph
Cabiria
1914. Italy. Giovanni Pastrone. Approx. 120 min.
The Birth of a Nation
1915. USA. D. W. Griffith. Approx. 130 min.
The Birth of a Nation. 1915. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Acquired from Progress Films. Restored with funding from The Lillian Gish Trust for Film Preservation and the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund