Kobayashi's "The Human Condition" @ Film Forum; Oshima series @ BAMcinematek; Mike Nichols survey @ NYC MOMA

Film Forum
"The Human Condition" (1959-1961)
April 8 -16

image c/o Reverseshot.com
"The Human Condition" will be presented in three parts, with a separate admission for each part (marathon screenings on Saturday, Sunday, and the final Thursday).

A.O. Scott, The New York Times:

"In keeping with the grandeur of its title, “The Human Condition,” adapted by Masaki Kobayashi from Jumpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, is anything but modest in scope and ambition. First released in Japan, in three parts, between 1959 and 1961, the film is a sprawling, crowded 10-hour epic of love, war, heroism and cruelty. Shot in a wide-screen format called Grandscope and set mainly in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation, it seems intent on leaving nothing out. Mountains, forest, marshlands; marriage, combat, hard labor; the call of duty and the obligations of conscience — that over-reaching title turns out to be a pretty fair description of what’s on screen.

But “The Human Condition” is also, and most memorably, an intimately scaled chronicle of individual experience. Tatsuya Nakadai, who plays its hero, an idealistic technocrat named Kaji, appears in nearly every frame, and it is his deeply personal anguish that provides an emotional anchor for this episodic, theme-heavy story. Mr. Nakadai, one of Japan’s great movie stars of the 1960s (and the subject of a fantastic retrospective at Film Forum that concludes with a three-week run of an immaculate new print of “The Human Condition”), looks a bit like a young Gregory Peck. And in this film he plays, as Peck often did, a liberal man of principle trying to uphold his ideals in difficult circumstances."

Click HERE for a synopsis of the film.

PART I: NO GREATER LOVE
(3 hours, 28 min., plus intermission)

PART II: ROAD TO ETERNITY
(3 hours, 3 min., plus intermission)

PART III: A SOLDIER’S PRAYER
(3 hours, 16 min., plus intermission)

Get tickets and showtimes HERE.

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BAMcinematek
The Cruel Stories of Nagisa Oshima
April 6 - 14

Violence at Noon (Hakuchu No Torima)
Sat, April 11 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
BAM Rose Cinemas

Double Suicide: Japanese Summer (Muri-Shinju: Nihon No Natsu)
Sun, April 12 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
BAM Rose Cinemas

The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Tokyo-Sense Sengo Hiwa)
Mon, April 13 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
BAM Rose Cinemas

Gohatto (Taboo)
Tue, April 14 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
BAM Rose Cinemas

Tickets and showtimes HERE.

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New York Museum of Modern Art: Film Screenings
Mike Nichols retrospective
April 14 – May 1

To view a complete program and buy tickets, click HERE.

Carnal Knowledge
1971. USA. Mike Nichols. 98 min.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Sold out

The Graduate
1967. USA. Mike Nichols. 105 min.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 4:30 p.m.

Carnal Knowledge
1971. USA. Mike Nichols. 98 min.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Primary Colors
1998. USA. Mike Nichols. 143 min.
Thursday, April 16, 2009, 4:30 p.m.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1966. USA. Mike Nichols. 131 min.
Saturday, April 18, 2009, 2:00 p.m.

Mike Nichols in Conversation
Saturday, April 18, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

"Join Mike Nichols and a select group of his closest writing and acting collaborators for an intimate and informal conversation in celebration of his MoMA exhibition."

Working Girl
1988. USA. Mike Nichols. 113 min.
Saturday, April 25, 2009, 2:00 p.m.

Catch-22
1970. USA. Mike Nichols. 122 min.
Monday, April 27, 2009, 8:00 p.m.

Last Night: "We Live in Public" @ NY MOMA

Last night, I attended the closing night presentation of The Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual "New Directors, New Films" series. The two-week showcase of fresh voices in cinema concluded with the New York premiere of Ondi Timoner's documentary, "We Live in Public," in the city which the director called the film's "home."

"We Live in Public" is an entertaining and revelatory film about Josh Harris, an internet pioneer who founded the first market research company to mine the wealth of consumer data in internet traffic, and Pseudo.com, the first online entertainment network. With his earnings from various internet ventures (the net worth of Pseudo.com amounted to $80M when it went public) he conducted a social experiment with ("on," to be more precise) 110 artists of variegated stripes called "Quiet" in an underground bunker beneath Manhattan in 1999. It was either an extreme environment constructed to investigate technology's impact on the formulation of the Self or the craziest party ever. Perhaps both. The 110 volunteers were thoroughly vetted through a registration process that included a 320-question personality test. The food and amenities in the "Capsule Hotel" (including a fully serviced cereal bar, a church and the use of a firing range!) were free of charge, but Harris retained the right to their images, documenting them in every conceivable light and during their most intimate moments. Sure, it was fun but, as the saying goes, it's all fun and games until the cops crash the party. Weeks into the experiment, the atmosphere of complete freedom devolves into an exercise in sado-masochism. The cameras have imperceptibly changed the relations between people. Of course, the mandatory psychological interrogations do not help matters, but the mere presence of a camera registering every waking moment of the pod dwellers' lives--including the interrogation process--produces an environment of shameless exhibitionism, which Timoner believes is symptomatic of where the "global village" is heading.

The film's subject is ostensibly Josh Harris and the delusions that fuel his visionary genius. After the police raid the underground bunker on Y2K, Harris, along with then-girlfriend and Pseudo.com host, Tanya Corrin install 32 motion-controlled cameras and 60 microphones in their home, broadcasting their lives to 1,000 online users (Did we learn nothing from the bunker experiment?). Almost simultaneously, he watches his finances, love-life and the number of Pseudo.com viewers dissipate. He then travels to San Francisco, becomes a farmer, and ends up coaching youth basketball in Africa. But the scope of the film moves beyond documenting the driving force behind one man's search for fame and acceptance by tapping into the artificial reality of television. "We Live in Public" is a harbinger of the changes that will continue to occur to our concepts of privacy and human interaction as they are being accelerated by technology. In the film, Harris updates Andy Warhol's prophetic words on fame for the digital age of blogging, microblogging, and texting, with an emphasis on the way our obsession for exposing ourselves has accelerated with the times: "Everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame everyday." In interviews, Timoner has stated that this film was intended as something of a "cautionary tale." "We Live in Public" asserts that as we stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into us.

Click here to read a CNN article about Josh Harris and "We Live in Public."

The New York Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with The Film Society of Lincoln Center's "New Directors, New Films" series held its first live webcast last night. Watch the footage below.

"We Live In Public" @ NY MOMA

image taken from weliveinpublicthemovie.com
Ondi Timoner's film, "We Live In Public" will be screened at the NY MOMA on Sunday, April 5 at 7 & 7:30 p.m. This presentation is part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors, New Films '09 series.



From the Film Society of Lincoln Center site:

"Irreverent, insightful, and authentic, Ondi Timoner’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner is a boundlessly resourceful insider’s view of the rise and fall of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, the “Warhol of the Web,” and a totally entertaining view of heady times in the art and technology vortex of 1990s Downtown Manhattan.

Mirroring the excitement, innovation, and imaginative creativity that made the technology we live with today, the documentary captures the performance live-in “QUIET, We Live In Public,” Josh Harris’s millennium bunker that brought more than a hundred of the art and technology world’s well-knowns together to live out their fantasies and fears under 24-hour surveillance. It then takes the viewer on a true rollercoaster ride oscillating between repulsion and fascination, from the birth of the web to how it today turns on itself and becomes a cautionary tale about the way we employ and embrace technology."

[Update] "Tickets are currently sold out, but may become available again online or to the standby line at THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART immediately prior to the screening. For information about ticket availability at MoMA please call the Film Desk at 212 408 6663 (from 4pm weekdays and from 1pm weekends, closed Tuesday) or the Information Desk at 212-708-9500 (9:30-5:30, 7 days/week)."

Ramin Bahrani's Films "In Focus" at NY MOMA

The New York Museum of Modern Art will be screening all three of American independent filmmaker, Ramin Bahrani's films to date, including his newest one, "Goodbye Solo" (2008).

Read my post about "Chop Shop" (2007) here.

Man Push Cart. 2005. USA. Directed by Ramin Bahrani. Screenplay by Bahrani. First-time actor Ahmad Razvi plays a man fleeing his past among the urban multitudes. Man Push Cart captures the siren beauty of midtown Manhattan and the complexity of life in a multicultural, multiethnic city that suddenly reneges on its comforting promise of anonymity. Print courtesy Films Philos, New York. 87 min.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 6:15 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 7, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1



Chop Shop. 2007. USA. Directed by Ramin Bahrani. Screenplay by Bahrani, Bahareh Azimi. With Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales, Rob Sowulski, Carlos Zapata. A streetwise kid and his slightly older sister, played by a pair of nonprofessional actors, cope with adolescence amid the junkyards and auto-repair shops of Willets Point, Queens. "A giant billboard from Shea Stadium looms and reads, ‘Make dreams happen.' I was curious to know what dreams can happen in this place, and who these dreamers were. The more time I spent there, the more I was drawn to the lives of the young kids who work and live in the auto-body shops" (Bahrani). Print courtesy Koch Lorber. 85 min.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 8:15 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, March 6, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2



Goodbye Solo. 2008. USA. Directed by Ramin Bahrani. Screenplay by Bahrani, Bahareh Azimi. With Soulemane Sy Savane, Red West, Diana Franco Galindo. Combining his extraordinary ability to coax memorable performances from nonprofessional actors, his interest in location shooting, and his understanding of how so much of human drama is internalized, Bahrani relocates (to some extent) Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry from Tehran to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The film tells the story of a Senegalese cab driver and his passenger, a seventy-year-old man who wants to be driven to a distant and lonely location. Print courtesy Roadside Attractions. 91 min.
Thursday, March 5, 2009, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Introduced by Bahrani)