Popcorn & Candy: Looking Glass
Agnès Varda is easily among the greatest of filmmakers, and a photographer talented enough that she'd have certainly been well known even had she not turned her eye to moving images. Yet she always seems to get second billing to many of her contemporaries, owing perhaps to her somewhat less prolific output, but more likely to her status as a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine club that is (still) the world of filmmaking. When she transitioned from photography to cinema, she had little in the way of formal training or even an extensive background as a movie-goer to inform her work. And it has always shown, for her films have never looked or played out quite like the work of anyone else, even if she was nominally classified with the New Wavers in her early career.
In her later career she concentrated more on documentaries, which seemed a natural transition: her fiction films had never seemed far from a gorgeously realized reality, after all. Her non-fiction films are as much essays as documentaries, and for her latest she has turned her camera on what is surely one of her most fascinating subjects: herself. Her filmed autobiography is less about telling the story of her life than it is about making images out of her memories, and revisiting the places and people and pictures that all poured themselves into her art. She came away from this year's César Awards with the documentary prize, proving that even a half century into her career, she is still more than capable of producing vital work.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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The sixth iteration of the DC Shorts Film Festival brings together a hundred shorts, all of which will be shown in competition over the weekend, in screenings of ten each. Alternate groupings of the films will screen through the early part of next week, ending with a showcase of the best films of the festival a week from tonight.
Opens today and runs through next Thursday with screenings at E Street and at the U.S. Navy Memorial's Burke Theater. See the DC Shorts website for a full schedule and to purchase tickets.
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We're happy to see that after a brief late-summer hiatus while The Warehouse was undergoing renovations, that Washington Psychotronic Film Society is back in action this week with yet another in its ongoing festival of schlock. Their return film is this 1961 King Kong rip-off, in which a British scientist discovers, in deepest darkest Africa, the secret to growing living things to extraordinary size. Does he use his newfound knowledge to increase crop production and address world hunger? Of course not! He turns a chimp into a 25-foot ape in order to exact revenge on all his enemies, just as any decent mad scientist would do.
Tuesday at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse. Free, $2 donation suggested.
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Flik: International Festival of Moving Images
Continuing to expand its borders in its third year, the Flik festival has gone from being a showcase of Flash animation from all over the world to a festival of motion pictures ranging from computer generated pieces to experimental filmmaking. The organizers have selected a diverse array of films for what they anticipate to be an even larger event this year, complete with interactive displays, gallery installations, traditional screenings, and live performances and DJs.
Tomorrow and Saturday at the Art Whino Gallery at National Harbor.
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Hot on the heels of the major acclaim he received as the writer of last year's The Wrestler, former Onion Editor-in-Chief Robert D. Siegel goes the auteur route with his second screenplay, directing it himself. He's still sticking with the darker side of the sporting life, this time with a darkly comic study of a man (Patton Oswalt) so obsessed with the New York Giants that when a member of the team beats him severely, he refuses to sue for fear that it will hinder the team's performance on the field. Kudos to Siegel for giving local-boy-made-good Oswalt, who was crucial to the success of Pixar's Ratatouille, a chance to play a non-animated lead role.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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This charming documentary, which had a brief theatrical run in town earlier this summer, returns for a special engagement at the Corcoran next week with director Megumi Sasaki in attendance to introduce the film and conduct a Q&A afterwards. The film tells the story of Herb & Dorothy Vogel, a middle-class New York couple who, on the salaries of a librarian and a postal working, and living in a tiny one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, managed to amass a staggering collection of minimalist and conceptual art &emdash; over 4000 pieces worth, much of which is now housed right here in D.C. at the National Gallery. The rest has been donated to galleries in all 50 states. Stay tuned on Monday for our interview with the director.
View the trailer.
Screens on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Corcoran. $15 ($12 for members).