This Sunday afternoon series at the Chazen celebrates the history of adventurous film programming in Madison and beyond with films from the Amos Vogel Collection and the Wisconsin Film Festival Collection, both archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Our series kicks off with Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, which Amos Vogel introduced and distributed to American audiences through Cinema 16, the influential film society he ran in New York from 1947 to 1963. Two features included in previous editions of the Wisconsin Film Festival, Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple and Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing, will highlight examples of the independent and international films that the Festival has brought to Madison audiences since its founding in 1999. And in the spirit of Amos Vogel’s wide-ranging curation, the final program will bring together 16mm and 35mm prints of seven short films that he screened or distributed through Cinema 16. The Amos Vogel and Wisconsin Film Festival collections are part of WCFTR’s ongoing “Expanding Film Culture’s Field of Vision” project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. (MSJ)
SUN., 1/26, 2 p.m.
Chazen
PICKPOCKET
France | 1959 | 35mm | 76 min. | French with English subtitles
Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: Martin LaSalle, Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie
In this deceptively simple crime story, hyper-focused and stoic pickpocket Michel (LaSalle) presses his luck with increasing risks. With an eye for the details of his protagonist’s criminal craft, Bresson tracks Michel as he navigates Paris through his compulsive stealing, fulfilling his need for a thrill but endangering the personal relationships that he struggles to maintain. Amos Vogel introduced Pickpocket to American audiences at Cinema 16, and his personal 35mm print of the film, courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research will be screened. “Drawing the spectator into the hero’s obsessions, it reveals theft as an irresistible ritual of high art and erotic satisfaction, in sequences of breathtaking visual sweep” (Vogel). Preceded by Lafcadio (1948, 15 min.), a silent French psychodrama exploring queer desire and repression. Vogel screened this short film by cineaste Jean Béranger at Cinema 16 and distributed it to film societies across the United States in the 1950s. Believed to be lost, Lafcadio was recently digitized from a 16mm internegative in the WCFTR’s Vogel collection. (MSJ)
SUN., 2/9, 2 p.m.
Chazen
13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING
USA | 2001 | 35mm | 103 min.
Director: Jill Sprecher
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Alan Arkin
A group of New Yorkers, including a lawyer (McConaughey), an insurance manager (Arkin), a house cleaner (Clea Duvall), and a physics professor (Turturro), seemingly have little in common. From car accidents to marital infidelity, thirteen vignettes track the surprising connections between this set of strangers, as the intricate story highlights the unpredictable ways that small actions can affect us. In the 2002 Wisconsin Film Festival guide, Mary Carbine praised the film’s “dazzling narrative architecture, superb acting and emotionally literate sensibility.” The film was directed by Jill Sprecher and co-written with her sister Karen Sprecher, both Madison natives and UW-Madison alumni. Print courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. (MSJ)
SUN., 3/9, 2 p.m.
Chazen
THE APPLE
Iran | 1998 | 35mm | 86 min. | Farsi with English subtitles
Director: Samira Makhmalbaf
Cast: Massoumeh Naderi, Zahra Naderi, Ghorban Ali Naderi
Twelve-year-old twins Massoumeh and Zahra have been imprisoned by their parents in their home in Tehran for years, and a social worker pushes for their freedom after neighbors bring attention to the girls’ plight. Based on a true story and with the actual family playing themselves, The Apple is a sensitive yet probing reenactment of the events, boldly mixing documentary and drama. Samira Makhmalbaf, the daughter of renowned Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, directed the film when she was just 17. “Rarely have the lines between documentary and fiction film been blurred with such formal audacity or righteousness” (Manohla Dargis). Preceded by a selection of 35mm Wisconsin Film Festival trailers. Prints courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research. (MSJ)
SUN., 4/27, 2 p.m.
Chazen
A Cinema 16 Anthology
16mm + 35mm | 85 min.
Amos Vogel’s influential Cinema 16 film society is perhaps best known for introducing important avant-garde filmmakers such as Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, and Hy Hirsh to New York audiences, but Vogel also mixed experimental films with documentary, comedy, animation, medical films, and almost every other imaginable category in eclectic programs of 16mm and 35mm shorts. This program of seven shorts that Vogel screened and/or distributed through Cinema 16 pays tribute to the breadth and diversity of his programming, with abstract film experiments, a Laurel and Hardy comedy, a documentary about a medieval dance to cure tarantula bites, and more! The program includes A Movie (Bruce Conner, 1958, 12 min.), Bridges-Go-Round (Shirley Clarke, 1958, 8 min.), La Taranta (Gianfranco Mingozzi, 1961, 19 min.), Gyromorphosis (Hy Hirsh, 1956, 7 min.), Laughing Gravy (James Horne, 1931, 20 min.), Metrographic (Vittorio Speich, 1958, 3 min.), and Les Bains de Mer (Happy Days, Jean L’Hote and Charles Prost, 1959, 15 min.). (MSJ)