A wallet lost and found opens the door—slightly—to Georges and Marguerite’s romantic adventure. After examining the ID of its owner, it is not a simple matter for Georges to turn in to the police the red wallet he has found. Nor can Marguerite retrieve her wallet without being piqued with curiosity about the person who found it. As Georges and Marguerite navigate the social protocols of giving and acknowledging thanks, turbulence enters their everyday lives.

In French with English subtitles.

“Wild Grass is carefree and anarchic, takes bold risks, spins in unexpected directions.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Directed by Alain Resnais, 2010
RT: 104 min.
Official Site

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader, and many of the world’s most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls, and in interviews. As Banksy describes it, “It’s basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed.”

The film is being co-presented by SPACE Gallery and the Museum and will be screened at the Museum’s theater.

“A genuinely hip, thought-provoking work of art disguised as a doomed documentary resurrected.” Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

“A raucously entertaining postmodern survey of guerrilla street art that appears to be one thing, only to fold back on itself and examine would-be filmmaker Thierry Guetta instead.” Peter Debruge, Variety

Starring Banksy, Rhys Ifans, Thierry Guetta, and Shepard Fairey
Directed by Bansky and Shepard Fairey, 2010
RT: 87 min.
Official Site

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos, as all at once, a tidal wave of humanity attempts to return home by train. It is the Chinese New Year. The wave is made up of millions of migrant factory workers. The homes they seek are the rural villages and families they left behind to seek work in the booming coastal cities. It is an epic spectacle that tells us much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance.

Last Train Home, an emotionally engaging and visually beautiful debut film from Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan, draws us into the fractured lives of a single migrant family caught up in this desperate annual migration. Sixteen years ago, the Zhangs abandoned their young children to find work in the city, consoled by the hope that their wages would lift their children into a better life. But in a bitter irony, the Zhangs’ hopes for the future are undone by their very absence. Qin, the child they left behind, has grown into adolescence crippled by a sense of abandonment. In an act of teenage rebellion, she drops out of school. She too will become a migrant worker. The decision is a heartbreaking blow for the parents. In classic cinema verité style, Last Train Home follows the Zhangs’ attempts to change their daughter’s course and repair their ruptured family. Intimate and candid, the film paints a human portrait of the dramatic changes sweeping China. We identify with the Zhangs as they navigate through the stark and difficult choices of a society caught between old ways and new realities. Can they get ahead and still undo some of the damage that has been done to their family?

In Mandarin and Sichuan dialect with English subtitles.

“A fascinating family documentary that follows the amazing Chinese New Year migration. Epic in scale, but intimate in focus and unforgettable overall!” Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“Following Workers’ Trails of Tears in China”
New York Times, August 27, 2010

Directed by Lixin Fan, 2010
RT: 87 min.
Official Site

From director Stéphane Brizé (I Am Not Here To Be Loved, Among Adults), an elegant, moving tale of an unexpected romance between a married man (Vincent Lindon) and his son’s homeroom teacher (Sandrine Kiberlain, Lindon’s real-life ex-wife)—and their attempt to keep their desires from turning into a full-blown affair.

Jean leads a pretty ordinary life: he spends his days happily between his construction sites and his house, with his loving wife and son. He feels confortable in his routine. One day, as he’s picking up Kevin from school, he stumbles upon Mademoiselle Chambon, his son’s teacher. She’s discreet, elegant, mesmerizing, unlike any woman he has ever met before. This chance encounter will be a turning point in his well-organized life. An opportunity to change or a folly to regret?

In French with English subtitles.

“An exquisite chamber piece made with the kind of sensitivity and nuance that’s become almost a lost art.” Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

New York Times Critics’ Pick - 5/28/2010

Starring Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain
Directed by Stéphane Brizé, 2009
RT: 101 min.
Official Site

A new film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of Delicatessen and Amélie.

First it was a mine that exploded in the middle of the Moroccan desert. Years later it was a stray bullet that lodged in his brain…Bazil doesn’t have much luck with weapons. The first made him an orphan, the second holds him on the brink of sudden and instant death.

Released from the hospital, Bazil is homeless. Luckily, our inspired and gentle-natured dreamer is adopted by a motley crew of secondhand dealers living in a veritable Ali Baba’s cave, whose talents and aspirations are as surprising as they are diverse: Remington, Calculator, Buster, Slammer, Elastic Girl, Tiny Pete, and Mama Chow.

One day, walking by two huge buildings, Bazil recognizes the logos of the weapons manufacturers that caused his hardship. With the help of his faithful gang of wacky friends he sets out to get revenge. A gang of underdogs battling heartless industrial giants, they relive the battle of David and Goliath, with all the imagination and fantasy of Buster Keaton.

In French with English subtitles.

”Micmacs is the equivalent of a circus troupe setting up a tent in a war zone: You’re entertained, even delighted, but after a while you suspect there are more serious matters at hand.” Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2010
RT: 105 min.
Official Site

Screening followed by Q & A with the filmmakers

What do you get when seven Maine filmmakers set out to make seven horrifying short films? A one-way ticket to “Damnationland.” Join the filmmakers for the screening and stick around for the Q & A. These films are not yet rated…and not for the faint of heart (or weak of stomach.) It’s Halloween after all.

Hollywood has made more than 4,000 films about Native people; there is more than 100 years of movies defining how Indians are seen by the world. Reel Injun takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through the history of cinema. Traveling through the heartland of America, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond looks at how the myth of “the Injun” has influenced the world’s understanding—and misunderstanding—of Natives.

With candid interviews with directors, writers, actors, and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell, and Russell Means, clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, including Stagecoach, Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Atanarjuat the Fast Runner, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema’s depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today.

Directed by Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah Hayes, 2010
RT: 85 min.
Official Site

The Cremaster Cycle, written and directed by Matthew Barney, is an epic masterwork with near cult status in the art world. This much-discussed work of art is not now, nor will it ever be, available to own on DVD. It can only be seen in theaters and has not toured nationally since 2003 following the completion of Cremaster 3. This program is co-presented with SPACE Gallery. Tickets for these screenings are $10 per screening or $20 for a weekend pass. 

11/18: Cremaster 1 and Cremaster 2 (119 min.)
11/19: Cremaster 3 (182 min.)
11/20: Cremaster 4 and Cremaster 5 (97 min.)
11/21: Cremaster 1 through 5 (398 min.)

Cremaster 1
Cremaster 1 is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho—director Matthew Barney’s hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via television broadcast. Four air hostesses tend to each blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table, its top decorated with an abstract centerpiece sculpted from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes are green, in the other they are purple. Under both of these otherwise identical tables resides Goodyear. Inhabiting both blimps simultaneously, this doubled creature sets the narrative in motion. After prying an opening in the tablecloth(s) above her head, she plucks grapes from their stems and pulls them down into her cell. With these grapes, Goodyear produces diagrams that direct the choreographic patterns created by a troupe of dancing girls on the field below. The camera switches back and forth between Goodyear’s drawings and aerial views of the chorus girls moving into formation: their designs shift from parallel lines to the figure of a barbell, from a large circle to an outline of splitting and multiplying cells, and from a horizontally divided field emblem to a rendering of an undifferentiated reproductive system (which marks the first six weeks of fetal development). Gliding in time to the musical score, the chorus girls delineate the contours of a still-androgynous gonadal structure, which echoes the shapes of the two blimps overhead, and symbolizes a state of pure potential.

Directed by Matthew Barney, 1995
RT: 40 min.
Official Site

Cremaster 2
Cremaster 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney’s abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1. Cremaster 2 embodies this regressive impulse through its looping narrative, moving from 1977, the year of Gary Gilmore’s execution, to 1893, when Harry Houdini, who may have been Gilmore’s grandfather, performed at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The film is structured around three interrelated themes—the landscape as witness, the story of Gilmore, and the life of bees—that metaphorically describe the potential of moving backward in order to escape one’s destiny.

Directed by Matthew Barney, 1999
RT: 79 min.
Official Site

The Cremaster Cycle, written and directed by Matthew Barney, is an epic masterwork with near cult status in the art world. This much-discussed work of art is not now, nor will it ever be, available to own on DVD. It can only be seen in theaters and has not toured nationally since 2003 following the completion of Cremaster 3. This program is co-presented with SPACE Gallery. Tickets for these screenings are $10 per screening or $20 for a weekend pass. 

11/18: Cremaster 1 and Cremaster 2 (119 min.)
11/19: Cremaster 3 (182 min.)
11/20: Cremaster 4 and Cremaster 5 (97 min.)
11/21: Cremaster 1 through 5 (398 min.)

Cremaster 3
Cremaster 3 is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building (which is in itself a character)—host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect (played by Richard Serra), and the Entered Apprentice, who are both working on the building. They are reenacting the Masonic myth of Hiram Abiff, purported architect of Solomon’s Temple, who possessed knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The murder and resurrection of Abiff are reenacted during Masonic initiation rites as the culmination of a three-part process through which a candidate progresses from the first degree of Entered Apprenticeship to the third of Master Mason.

Directed by Matthew Barney, 2002
RT: 182 min.
Official Site

The Cremaster Cycle, written and directed by Matthew Barney, is an epic masterwork with near cult status in the art world. This much-discussed work of art is not now, nor will it ever be, available to own on DVD. It can only be seen in theaters and has not toured nationally since 2003 following the completion of Cremaster 3. This program is co-presented with SPACE Gallery. Tickets for these screenings are $10 per screening or $20 for a weekend pass. 

11/18: Cremaster 1 and Cremaster 2 (119 min.)
11/19: Cremaster 3 (182 min.)
11/20: Cremaster 4 and Cremaster 5 (97 min.)
11/21: Cremaster 1 through 5 (398 min.)

Cremaster 4
Cremaster 4 adheres most closely to the project’s biological model. This penultimate episode describes the system’s onward rush toward descension despite its resistance to division. The logo for this chapter is the Manx triskelion—three identical armored legs revolving around a central axis. Set on the Isle of Man, the film absorbs the island’s folklore as well as its more recent incarnation as host to the Tourist Trophy motorcycle race. Myth and machine combine to narrate a story of candidacy, which involves a trial of the will articulated by a series of passages and transformations. The film comprises three main character zones. The Loughton Candidate is a satyr with two sets of impacted sockets in his head—four nascent horns, which will eventually grow into those of the mature, Loughton Ram, an ancient breed native to the island. Its horns—two arcing upward, two down—form a diagram that proposes a condition of undifferentiation, with ascension and descension coexisting in equilibrium. The second and third character zones comprise a pair of motorcycle sidecar teams: the Ascending and Descending Hacks. These primary characters are attended to by a trio of fairies who mirror the three narrative fields occupied by the Candidate and the two racing teams. Having no volition of their own, these creatures metamorphose in accordance with whatever field they occupy at any given time.

Directed by Matthew Barney, 1995
RT: 42 min.
Official Site

Cremaster 5
When total descension is finally attained in Cremaster 5, it is envisioned as a tragic love story set in the romantic dreamscape of late-19-century Budapest. The film is cast in the shape of a lyric opera. Biological metaphors have shifted form to inhabit emotional states—longing and despair—that become musical leitmotivs in the orchestral score. The opera’s primary characters—the Queen of Chain and her Diva, Magician, and Giant (all played by Barney)—enact collectively the final release promised by the project as a whole.

Directed by Matthew Barney, 1997
RT: 55 min.
Official Site

The Cremaster Cycle, written and directed by Matthew Barney, is an epic masterwork with near cult status in the art world. This much-discussed work of art is not now, nor will it ever be, available to own on DVD. It can only be seen in theaters and has not toured nationally since 2003 following the completion of Cremaster 3. This program is co-presented with SPACE Gallery. Tickets for these screenings are $10 per screening or $20 for a weekend pass. 

11/18: Cremaster 1 and Cremaster 2 (119 min.)
11/19: Cremaster 3 (182 min.)
11/20: Cremaster 4 and Cremaster 5 (97 min.)
11/21: Cremaster 1 through 5 (398 min.)