The Rep Report (November 27 - December 4)

Peter Smith — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: The Senegalese writer-director Ousmane Sembene, who died last summer, gets his first major posthumous respective at Film Forum from November 30 to December 12. The series kicks off with Xala, the 1974 satire that climaxes with a memorably ghastly, well, spitting scene, and includes the early works that put Sembene on the map (Black Girl, Emitai) as well as the more recent films (Faat-Kine and his last movie, Moolaade) that showed that he was still in strapping form. This is a rare chance not just to pay tribute to a fallen master but to catch up with the work of a major filmmaker who remains sorely underrepresented on DVD.

Pier Paolo Pasolini has been dead for a good long time now, but doesn't seem to have become much less controversial, an accomplishment that might have put a smile on his face. The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Heretical Epiphanies: The Cinematic Pilgrimages of Pier Paolo Pasolini (November 28 – December 4) covers his career from the neo-realist debut film Accattone to the hyper-scandalous, posthumously released Salo. On December 4, Lincoln Center also presents the U.S. premiere of Accattone in Jazz, a live presentation in which "Pasolini's celebrated screenplay for Accattone is revisited by Italian movie star Valerio Mastandrea, as he weaves a unique interplay of words and music together with Italian jazz legends and longtime collaborators Roberto Gatto and Danilo Rea."

The Brooklyn Academy of Music's twelve-film Max Ophuls retrospective begins on November 28 with a week-long run of a new print of the 1948 Letter from an Unknown Woman, the best work done in Hollywood by an artist who got too few opportunities to work at anything like his full capacities. It ain't The Earrings of Madame de. . . , but boy, will it do. . .

SAN FRANCISCO: From November 27-30, the Castro salutes director Hal Ashby, with three nights of double features, starting with the 1979 Being There, paired with the cult classic Harold and Maude. The real keeper may be on the 30th, when the theater shows the masterful, Robert Towne-scripted Shampoo and Ashby's amazing, unavailable-on-DVD debut film, The Landlord (1970).

— Phil Nugent

The Rep Report (November 2 - 20)

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: From November 2 through the 20th, Film Forum brings back Jean-Jacques Beinex's 1981 romantic comedy-thriller Diva, in a new 35 mm. print. As visually graceful as it is inventive, playfully witty, with actual if improbable characters pushing the plot forward, it remains an especially flavorful example of what used to be called "an exercise in pure style" from back before easy access to computer imagery and MTV syntax resulted in an explosion of would-be prodigies turning out movies that really are exercises in pure style. The new print is reported to also boast some new, improved subtitles. (The first time I saw the movie, on cable TV on my fifteenth birthday — I rode my brontosaurus to the house of my friend who had HBO — a single half-assed glitch in the subtitles served to completely screw up the plot.) If you haven't seen it before, nothing else you have seen can fully prepare you for it; Beinex himself has spent the last quarter century failing to follow it up.

October 30 would have been Louis Malle's seventy-fifth birthday, which makes this a good time to check out what may be his happiest masterpiece, the autobiographical 1971 comedy Murmur of the Heart. (I do not mean to suggest that there might ever be a bad time to check it out.) The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be showing it on November 1 as part of their "Young Friends of Film" program. Andre Gregory, who worked with Malle on two of his finest American films, My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street, will be on hand to introduce the film.

BERKELEY: Romanian cinema, believe it or not, is hot right now and getting hotter, so Pacific Film Archives is offering a handy primer in the form of Revolutions in Romanian Cinema (November 3 - December 9). The country produces fewer feature films than any other European country — half a dozen a year — but as Spencer Tracy used to say, what's there is choice. The schedule includes The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the Cannes festival winner that really got the West paying attention, as well as the sardonic 12:08 East of Bucharest and the powerful recent New York Film Festival entry 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days. Plus five other feature films and a program of shorts.

The Pacific Film Archive also hosts The Passion of Pasolini (November 1 - December 7), dedicated to the work of the still-controversial Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. The series, which includes his adaptations of The Decameron, Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales and The Gospel According to St. Matthew opens with his 1961 debut feature Accattone; it closes with his scandalous last film, the 1975 Salo. Just keep telling yourself: it's only chocolate, it's only chocolate. . .

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The twentieth annual 2007 European Union Film Showcase opens November 1 and runs through November 20th at the AFI Silver Theater, showcasing a wide selection of new and recent films from across the continent. The opening night selection is Christopher Columbus: The Enigma, the latest by the startlingly prolific Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. The director, who will be in attendance, turns ninety-nine on December 12. I just thought I'd put that out there in case you want to show up and give him his birthday card a little early.

— Phil Nugent

The Screengrab : accattone

The Rep Report (November 27 - December 4)

The Rep Report (November 2 - 20)