Now playing

Mr. Gaga
Tomer Heymann, Israel/Sweden/Germany/Netherlands, 2015, 100m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Enter the world of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company and creator of an innovative and exciting movement language known as Gaga. Eight years in the making, this high-energy documentary immerses the audience in the creative process behind Batsheva’s unique performances. Using intimate rehearsal footage, extensive archival materials, and stunning dance sequences, acclaimed director Tomer Heymann (Paper Dolls, The Queen Has No Crown, I Shot My Love) tells the fascinating story of an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance. A 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival selection. An Abramorama release.

I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck, USA/France/Belgium/Switzerland, 2016, 93m
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has taken the 30 completed pages of James Baldwin’s final, unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, in which the author went about the painful task of remembering his three fallen friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., and crafted an elegantly precise and bracing film essay. Peck’s Oscar-nominated film, about the unholy agglomeration of myths, institutionalized practices both legal and illegal, and displaced white terror that have long perpetuated the tragic state of race in America, is anchored by the presence of Baldwin himself in images and words, read beautifully by Samuel L. Jackson in hushed, burning tones. An NYFF54 selection. A Magnolia Pictures release.

Opening March 10

Who’s Crazy? Exclusive!
Thomas White, USA/Belgium, 1966, 73m
New Digital Restoration
Filmed in Belgium with actors from New York’s experimental Living Theater, Thomas White’s first (and only) feature fell into obscurity after its 1966 Cannes Film Festival debut. A group of insane asylum inmates flee a broken-down bus and occupy a nearby farmhouse. As they form a collective threaded by bizarre exercises and slapstick setups, the film spirals out into a freewheeling comedy of disorder, told with unusual verve and intensity, and featuring a dissonant, if deranged, soundtrack by free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman and his trio. Presented in a new digital restoration, Who’s Crazy? is at once a hidden avant-garde gem and a vibrant, immediate work. A Kino Lorber release.

Opening March 24

I Called Him Morgan
Kasper Collin, Sweden, 2016, 91m
On the night of February 19, 1972, Helen Morgan walked into the East Village bar Slug’s Saloon with a gun in her handbag. She came to see her common-law husband, the great jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan, whom she had nursed through heroin addiction. They fought, he literally threw her out; then she walked back in and shot him, handed over her gun and waited for the police to arrive. Many years later, Helen was interviewed about her life with the brilliant but erratic musician, and the tapes of that interview are the backbone of this beautifully crafted and deeply affecting film from Kasper Collin (My Name Is Albert Ayler). An NYFF54 selection. A Submarine Entertainment release.

Opening March 31

The Death of Louis XIV Exclusive!
Albert Serra, France/Portugal/Spain, 2016, 115m
French with English subtitles
The great Jean-Pierre Léaud, synonymous with French cinema for over half a century, delivers a majestic, career-capping performance as the longest-reigning French monarch during his final days. Albert Serra’s elegant, engrossing contemplation on death and its representation finds the extravagantly wigged Sun King slowly wasting away from gangrene in his bedchamber, surrounded by devoted servants, pets, and a retinue of hopeless doctors. Filled with ravishing candlelit images and painstaking details gleaned from Saint-Simon’s memoirs and other historical texts, The Death of Louis XIV is as darkly funny as it is moving, revealing the absurdity of the rule-bound royal court, but even more so of death itself. An NYFF54 selection. A Cinema Guild release. Runs concurrently with retrospective of Jean Pierre Léaud, March 29-April 6 at the Film Society.

Opening April 7

Alive & Kicking
Susan Glatzer, USA, 2016, 84m
For many, swing dance is an addiction and a joyful practice. This documentary is an insider’s look into the culture of the current swing dance world and an examination of the social and personal issues that affect the lives of the film’s subjects. What is remarkable is that no matter how tough things get, these men and women find their bliss doing what they love to do. On the dance floor they virtually explode with energy—leaping, twisting, revolving. There’s no way the viewer can keep still or not feel the joy. A 2017 Dance on Camera Festival selection. A Magnolia Pictures release.

Opening April 14

By the Time It Gets Dark / Dao Khanong
Anocha Suwichakornpong, France/Netherlands/Qatar/Thailand, 2016, 105m
Thai with English subtitles
In the beguiling, mysterious second feature by Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong, the story of a young film director researching a project about the 1976 massacre of Thai student activists at Thamassat University is just the beginning of a shape-shifting work of fictions within fictions, featuring characters with multiple identities. Drifting across a dizzyingly wide expanse of space and time, By the Time It Gets Dark offers a series of narratives concerning love, longing, the power of cinema, and the vestiges of the past within the present. Asking quietly profound questions about the nature of memory—personal, political, and cinematic—this self-reflexive yet deeply felt film keeps regenerating and unfolding in surprising ways. A 2017 ND/NF selection. A KimStim release.

Opening April 21

Slack Bay / Ma Loute
Bruno Dumont, France/Germany, 2016, 122m
English and French with English subtitles
In a postcard-perfect seaside village in 1910, an eccentric (to put it mildly) leisure-class family whiles away the summer. But something troubling is afoot: what’s behind the string of tourists gone mysteriously missing? Former enfant terrible Bruno Dumont continues his surprising foray into farce—which began with 2014’s acclaimed Li’l Quinquin—with this surreal, oddball mix of slapstick and detective story. The director and his cast (which includes Fabrice Luchini, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and a very game Juliette Binoche) stretch each joke to its breaking point, resulting in a winking, weirdly captivating comedy that’s in on its own absurdity. A 2017 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema selection. A Kino Lorber release.

Opening May 5

Stalker Exclusive!
Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR, 1979, 163m
Russian with English subtitles
New Digital Restoration
This May at the Film Society, experience the mysteries and revelations of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 science fiction masterpiece in a new digital restoration. Twenty years ago a falling object decimated a provincial Russian town, and those who later went near the crash site—now known as The Zone—disappeared. Access is strictly prohibited, but outsiders can still get in with the help of a “stalker.” Inside The Zone is The Room, within which secret wishes can be granted. Based on the novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, Stalker is a visually extraordinary and philosophically provocative fable about the limits of knowledge—personal, scientific, and spiritual. New digital restoration by Mosfilm. A Janus Films release.

Opening May 19

The Woman Who Left / Ang babaeng humayo Exclusive!
Lav Diaz, Philippines, 2016, 226m
Filipino with English subtitles
A woman discovers that, after 30 years in prison, her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder she was accused of, leading to her release and discovery of the man who framed her. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last year, Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s Tolstoy-inspired epic is a story of revenge deferred, “a meditation on the nature of Goodness in a world of deceit and corruption” (Olaf Moller, Film Comment) that functions as a slow-build tale of urban theater and class warfare, and a sensitive expression of family and forgiveness. A 2017 Film Comment Selects selection. A Kino Lorber release.

Opening May 24

Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan
Linda Saffire & Adam Schlesinger, USA, 2016, 90m
In 1984, Wendy Whelan joined the New York City Ballet as an apprentice; by 1991, she had been promoted to Principal Dancer. She quickly became a revered and beloved figure throughout the dance world. Wrote Roslyn Sulcas, “her sinewy physicality, her kinetic clarity, and her dramatic, otherworldly intensity have created a quite distinct and unusual identity.” Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger’s film follows this extraordinary artist throughout a passage of life that all dancers must face, when she must confront the limitations of her own body and adapt to a different relationship with the art form she loves so madly. An NYFF54 selection. An Abramorama release.

Opening June 16

Harmonium / Fuchi ni tatsu Exclusive!
KĂ´ji Fukada, Japan/France, 2016, 118m
Japanese with English subtitles
Winner of the Prix du Jury in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Harmonium observes a family as it’s dealt a tragic blow and then no less shaken by the process of recovery. Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) runs a garage workshop that opens right into the home he shares with his wife, Akié (Mariko Tsutsui), and their cute-as-a-button daughter, Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa). Trouble arrives when Toshio hires Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano), a friend with an unsavory past who’s in need of a break—though the complicated effects of his arrival on the close-knit family are best left unrevealed. A 2017 Film Comment Selects selection. A Film Movement release.

If you have any questions or concerns about the upcoming lineup, please contact
Lisa Thomas, [email protected], (212) 671-4709
Rachel Allen, [email protected], (212) 875-5423
Hannah Thomas, [email protected], (212) 875-5419