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05/20/15 11:34am
05/20/2015 11:34 AM |
The Whitney Museum of American Art

With so many wonderful museums in New York City, and with so many of them planning particularly intriguing exhibitions and events for summer 2015, we’ve decided to break up our Summer Museum Preview into two parts—not to attempt to be exhaustive, which is all but impossible here, but to at least be able to lay some sort of claim to relative thoroughness. Maybe? Anyway, here is Part I, featuring some of our favorite Manhattan institutions. Keep an eye out for Part II sometime in June.

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02/13/15 10:27am
02/13/2015 10:27 AM |

The Connection

Documentary Fortnight
February 13-27 at MoMA

There are more strong films screening in Documentary Fortnight 2015 than can be done justice here, so I’ll plug my favorites first: on February 15th and 21st, the distributor Milestone Films will present three programs’ worth of recently restored films by the late American director Shirley Clarke. The programs include Clarke’s remarkable feature-length The Connection (1962) and several of her lesser-known lovely shorts, throughout which she and her human subjects developed a style of direct address in which they would open up their lives to her as well as to future viewers.

The bulk of the Museum of Modern Art’s annual festival of nonfiction filmmaking will offer new films, many of which are also excellent. Its diverse selection traverses several genres, from politicized portraiture (Of Men and War and The Domino Effect) to self-reflective ethnography (Episode of the Sea and Cochihza) to novelistic, ensemble-based storytelling in which individuals’ actions impact their communities’ futures (Coffee: Chants of Smoke and Storm Children, Book One). These films and other series highlights share a great sensitivity to character, with emotional riches resulting from simple records of peoples’ struggles.

Several of the directors represented in Documentary Fortnight spoke with me about their works in the series.  Save for Jean-François Caissy, these filmmakers will also all appear at MoMA for post-screening public discussions.

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