A FEAST OF FILM
EPIC FILMMAKING AT ITS FINEST

A stunning visualization of melancholy & nostalgia
felt at the passing of an era

This weekend the Museum of the Moving Image will be holding screenings of the classic grande epic, The Leopard, as part of its See It Big! series. Long hailed as thee film to see by Luchino Visconti, The Leopard, chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s and the dissolution of 19th century Sicilian nobility.

Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement superbly illustrating a refined way of life; elaborate and luxurious, but internally cramped, dour, and confined by rigid restraints. Visconti translates di Lampedusa's book seamlessly with brilliant pictures, almost like paintings, illustrating the autumnal mood of change and decay that the onrush of social revolution brought to one family and to the spirits of one strong man. A more than 40 year old evocation of an era now some 150 years in the past, we can still feel the ache, sentiment, and sadness deeply felt by the Prince of Salina.

Screenings Saturday & Sunday 2pm

TIMELESS
CURIOSITIES

Park Avenue Armory presents Trisha Brown Dance Company’s reconstruction of Astral Converted, a groundbreaking work by acclaimed choreographer Trisha Brown. This highly anticipated revival marks the first time in 18 years the piece will be presented in its entirety in the soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall.

The re-staging of Astral Converted brings back collaborators, Robert Rauschenberg, visual and costume design, with original music by John Cage.  Astral's dark and cosmos like set  is anchored by Rauschenberg's motion sensored towers which activated by the dancers’ movements initiate the performance’s light and sound. The movement combines sudden bursts of gravity-defying plunges and crashes with fluid leaps and falls creating an unpredictable, understated, and powerful choreographic work. With moving bodies appearing as stars amid an illimitable darkness Astral Converted is the perfect performance piece for contemporary art fans with a bent for architecture or geometry.

This Sunday a reconstructed bit of animation rarely seen, tremendously entertaining, and historically significant will screen at BAM. The Adventures of Prince Achmed, by pioneering, avant-garde, and often overlooked German filmmaker and female artist Lotte Reiniger, employs silhouetted black cardboard cutouts on illuminated glass to craft this dreamlike homage to The Arabian Nights.

Developed using stop animation and originally released in 1926, this special closing day event, hosted by BAMcinemaFest,  has enlisted two founding members of the Irish ambient rock band 3epkano's and avant-garde cellist Erik Friedlander to arrange and perform a new score as they find their muse in the oldest surviving animated feature film to date.



More than eighty years later, what's most surprising about The Adventures of Prince Achmed is still how extraordinarily beautiful it is. Just as it must have been for viewers back in 1926. Film director, Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter Pierre Auguste Renoir, is said to have been an early admirer of the film and instrumental in facilitating its general European release as a work of rare artistry and fluid beauty.

ARTISTS/WANTED

Tonight more than a dozen of the most iconic digital signs in Times Square will be made into an immense display of art, while a street party erupts below to mark the occasion. The scale of this exhibition is extraordinary, with signs that reach as high as 23 stories. The works will be on display for several weeks to the half-­million people who cross through Times Square daily.

In collaboration with the Times Square Alliance and the non-­profit group Chashama, Artists Wanted has produced Art Takes Times Square, a worldwide call for entries searching for inspired works by artists, designers, photographers and all creative talents from across the globe to curate one creative vision and an opportunity of a lifetime -­ as chosen artists receive a radiant presentation on Times Square’s digital billboards before millions of observers this summer.

"It’s been a fantasy of ours, and of many artists, to turn Times Square into an awe-­inspiring art experience," said William Etundi Jr., Founder and Director of Artists Wanted. "It’s an honor to work with the Times Square Alliance and Chashama to turn that fantasy into reality."

Join host QuestLove, of the Roots, and the thousands of expected art enthusiasts tonight on 43rd Street from 7pm to 11pm to kick off this huge and historic exhibition.

Acclaimed photographer Christer Strömholm (1918-2002), though little known outside of Europe and his native Sweden, is considered one of the great photographers of the 20th century. His most renowned series of photographs are now on display at the International Center of Photography, marking the first presentation of Strömholm's work in an American museum.

The exhibit Les Amies de Place Blanche, originally published in 1983, is a journey deep into the red light district of Paris in the late 1950's - 1960's and focuses on young transgendered "ladies of night" who worked the streets of the Place Blanche district in hope of raising money to complete their gender transformation. The portraits both glamourous and gritty capture a sleazy yet stylish Paris long gone and recall the photography of Brassai with subjects in lush night scenes; lounging in hotel rooms, bars, and working the streets of Paris.

As Strömholm wrote in 1983: “These are images of people whose lives I shared and whom I think I understood. These are images of women—biologically born as men—that we call ‘transsexuals.’ As for me, I call them ‘my friends of Place Blanche.’ It was then—and still is—about obtaining the freedom to choose one’s own life and identity.”

Les Amies de Place Blanche is on view till September 2nd at ICP
The Book, now a cult classic, has also been reissued in English and French.

LIKE A WALK IN
THE SKY

This past weekend the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened it's rooftop to visitors with a curious sculpture of sixteen stainless steel framed… "bubbles"? Standing at 54 feet wide and almost 30 feet high, Cloud City, is part of the Met's rooftop sculpture program, currently in its 15th year.

The cutting edge brainchild of Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno, Cloud City is a constellation of large, interconnected modules constructed with transparent and reflective materials which visitors may enter to experience panoramic views of central park and a high rise vision of manhattan's cityscape; all from within the various interiors of the modular structures. The alternately reflective, shined and transparent glass components create dizzying spatial illusions and a stunning aerial perspective of our picturesque city.

"What inspired me was the geometry of the soap bubbles or the foam, of how they connect one sphere to the other," says Saraceno. When asked about her experience inside Cloud City a visitor stated "It's pretty disconcerting. I keep losing my center of gravity and feeling like I am going to fall. It's very cool, but I wouldn't recommend having a drink before you get in here."

The exhibit is open, weather permitting, during regular museum hours till
November 4th 2012