65th Street Construction On Sale Now Manny Farber Program Overview Christmas in July His Girl Friday I Walked... Zombie Children of Tokyo The Lineup Me and My Gal Mean Streets Mouchette Muriel Negative Space Not Reconciled On Dangerous Ground The Roaring Twenties Scarface Two or Three... Voyage to Italy Walkabout Wavelength SE: Sinatra... GS: Docks of NY MET Live: La Damnation FCS: Les idoles Problem Child SE: Secret...Grain SE: Joseph Stiglitz YFF: Short Cuts CO: The Magic Flute SE: Making The Wrestler SE: The Sky Crawlers Spanish Cinema Now Cámara Spanish Experimental Roosevelt Ongoing Programs Film Comment Selects Young Friends of Film Green Screens MET Live Season Cinematic Opera Browse Calendar Past Programs Furman Gallery Theater Rental Theater Information Press Office Sign up for FSLC ReelNews

Manny Farber, 1917-2008 by Kent Jones Born in Arizona on the Mexican border into a “fiercely competitive” trio of brothers. Saxophone player, fifth-string quarterback, carpenter. And pursuer of perceptions to filigreed end points in painting and criticism and teaching. “The brutal fact is that they’re exactly the same thing,” he once told an interviewer. Manny Farber’s career is an adventure story, set in motion by the quest to get it right: to convey in words the precise nature of Preston Sturges’s all-American cacophony or the peculiar landscape around Del Mar, Calif., to convey in painting the exact sense of a cherry pit or a length of rebar, and on a different level the frustratingly yet thrillingly inconclusive nature of living perception itself. “I try to get myself out of it as much as possible,” he once said to me, “so that the object takes on a kind of religious awe.” In this case, the word “religious” is strictly evocative, coming as it does from a man who titled one of his paintings, “Thank God I’m Still an Atheist.” Those of us who were lucky enough to know and love him are now broken-hearted, because it seemed like he would go on forever. There was always more to see and hear, to think through and puzzle out. He thought a lot about Nick Ray in the last few months, about the beauty of his early films; about the men he used to work with on construction sites around New York; and about Barack Obama, who excited him to no end. The last time I saw him, a couple weeks before he died, he was sitting before the TV with his beloved wife and essential collaborator Patricia, completely absorbed by Obama. When the subject of conversation shifted to J.M.W. Turner, he thought about him for a while and said, “He had about eight arms.” Take a fresh look at “The Battle of Trafalgar” and you’ll know exactly what he meant. Fresh looks will always yield more and more, take you down different pathways and reveal new openings. Contrary to the insistence of popular culture and its never–ending hailstorm of clichés and final judgments – the “culture of winners,” as he once called it – there is no such thing as a last word. That’s what we learned from Manny Farber. Click here for a listing of films in the series. Click here to view the daily schedule and purchase tickets online. Series Pass ($40 public/$30 Film Society member) admits one person to five titles in a series. Available only at the Walter Reade Theater box office (cash only transactions); may not be combined with any other ticket offer. Individual screening tickets subject to availability. For their help and suggestions with this show, I would like to thank several people: Patricia Patterson, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Walsh, Robert Polito, Greg Ford and Jim Hoberman.

On Screen Nov 14 – 26 Read an interview with PAUL SCHRADER about Farber. Schrader will introduce the screening of his film Untitled: New Blue on Sun Nov 16 at 3:40pm ~ BUY TICKETS. Leonard Lopate talks to two of Farber’s friends and colleagues: Kent Jones of the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and writer and critic Phillip Lopate. Download the mp3. Read Farber Figure Walter Reade pays tribute to a termite critic by David Fear in Time Out. Listen to (Negative) Space is the Place an interview with Kent Jones by Nathan Lee, WNYC ART.CULT.