Shorts Program 2: International Auteurs

This program features new work by four of the most exciting directors working in international cinema today.  Programmed by Dennis Lim.

A Brief History of Princess X
Gabriel Abrantes, Portugal/France, 2016, 7m
U.S. Premiere
Abrantes’s pseudo-doc on Constantin Brancusi’s most infamous sculpture is a short, sweet, and appropriately inappropriate look at how eroticism and scandal played roles in the history of modern art.

Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera / Sarah Winchester, Opera Fantôme
Bertrand Bonello, France, 2016, 24m
North American Premiere
A film to stand in for an opera unmade: Bonello’s moody, baroque meditation on the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune plays like a ballet-cum-horror film, an ornate tapestry of enigmatic images, chilling synths, and traces of a tragic and eccentric life.

The Hedonists
Jia Zhangke, China, 2016, 25m
U.S. Premiere
Jia takes on an eclectic tone and tries out some bold new tricks in this comic short commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival, following three unemployed coal miners searching for work in the Shanxi region.

From the Diary of a Wedding Photographer / Myomano Shel Tzlam Hatonot
Nadav Lapid, Israel, 2016, 40m
North American Premiere
Lapid’s latest provocation delves headlong into the absurdities and neuroses of matrimonial rites as an Israeli wedding photographer repeatedly finds himself embroiled in psychodramas with the brides and grooms who hire him.