DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting, deluded, and rockin’ movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Courtesy of Jeff KrulikLed Zeppelin Played Here
In 2009, filmmaker Jeff Krulik invited area music fans to an event marking the fortieth anniversary of a concert that Led Zeppelin played at the Wheaton Youth Center on Georgia Avenue. Dozens of people showed up. But did the concert ever happen? There is no documentation of the 1969 performance, which allegedly occurred the same day President Richard Nixon was inagurated. No ticket stubs or advertising or photos have surfaced, and the band’s official website will not confirm the date. Does a collective delusion surround local aficionados of the classic power trio? The potent combination of local interest and passionate obsession makes this a perfect subject for Krulik (Heavy Metal Parking Lot), who will appear at the AFI Silver Theatre this weekend to preview his documentary about this fabled and possibly apocryphal milestone in headbanger legend. “The Wheaton Youth Center (now called Wheaton Community Recreation Center),” Krulik told DCist, “is just as much a character in my documentary as any person; to me the building speaks volumes since it’s still basically intact, with its modernist curvy 1963 architecture and a gymnasium that looks the same as when Led Zeppelin did, or did not, play their first local concert on January 20, 1969.”
View a clip of Wheaton at its shreddingest.
Sunday, January 20 at 9 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre. $5.
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Lumière d’été (DisCina/Photofest)The National Gallery of Art pays tribute to a Grémillon, a long-forgotten French filmmaker who brough a poetic realism to cinema. The director’s experimental side can be seen in the 1927 silent Maldone, “one of the more sophisticated films of the late silent era. ” Also screening this weekend is the 1937 Gueule d’amour, starring Jean Gabin as an army her o known as “lover lips”; and a digital restoration of the 1943 Lumière d’été, a romantic tale of mountain life and a masked ball whose class consciousness got it into trouble with Vichy censors.
View a clip from Maldone.
Gueule d’amour screens Saturday, January 19 at 2 p.m.. Maldone screens Saturday, January 19 at 2:00 pm, with live piano accompaniment by Andrew Simpson. Lumière d’été screens Sunday, January 20 at 4:00. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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In conjunction with the Goethe-Institut, the Freer Gallery screens two nights of short films from the Arab world. Thursday’s program, “To Know the Arab Terrain: Movements to, from, and within,” includes a short film about Syrian villagers, excerpts from Kuwaiti home movies, as well as films from from Morocco, Lebanon, and Iraq. Friday’s set “Everything is Alright, Officer,” includes “2026,” Egyptian film maker Maha Maamoun’s riff on Chris Marker’s legendary “La Jetee”; “Children of Fire,” a Palestinian short about the myth and danger of a dark Gaza night; and short films from Lebanon, Jordan and Algeria. The Amman-based artist Ala Younis curated Arab Shorts, and will introduce and discuss the programs.
Thursday and Friday, January 17 and 18 at 7 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Chris Marker’s “Kino”Five shorts from Sixpack
The National Gallery’s survey of the Danish film distributor Sixpack winds down on Sunday with some of the most intriguing —and shortest— titles in the series. The program includes “Kino,” the late Chris Marker’s sixty-second trailer for the 2012 Vienna International Film Festival; “Funny Games Ghost,” a ten-minute look at Michael “Amour” Haneke’s 1997 feature Funny Games and its American remake; and “Arcana,” a half-hour of random footage synched to the composer John Zorn’s Mickey Spillane tribute The Bribe.
Sunday, January 20 at noon at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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An evil tycoon plots to clone replicas of African-American leaders, only to be foiled by an all girl motorcycle gang. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society says this sci-fi musical—that’s right, musical—has production numbers that recall H.R. Puffenstuff. Director William Witney may be the only film maker whose career encompasses B-movie westerns and Blaxplotation. Starring Bond girl Trina Parks (Diamonds Are Forever) and with a musical appearance by The Dramatics, whose theme song gives the tagline its kicker: “They’re fast as a jet, sharp as Gillette! And what you see is what you get.”
View the trailer.
Monday, January 21 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s. Free, suggested donation $5.
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Also opening this week, Baltimore native Sheldon Candis’s feature debut LUV; and the Governator returns to the big screen with the help of Korean genre director Jee-woon Kim in The Last Stand. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
