Lineup Announced for New York, 1962–1964: Underground and Experimental Cinema, July 29-August 4
Film at Lincoln Center announces New York, 1962–1964: Underground and Experimental Cinema spotlighting the rise of the New American Cinema, running from July 29–August 4.
1962 to 1964 was a pivotal moment in the evolution of American arts and culture, especially in New York City. These years, crucial to the development of Pop, Minimalism, and performance, saw the emergence of a new generation of radical artists, as well as venues that gave their iconoclastic work a home and a context. Movies, meanwhile, were undergoing a transformation of their own: the rise of a truly independent cinema, of works unencumbered by the medium’s aesthetic conventions and commercial imperatives.
“Cinema,” wrote Jonas Mekas in a 1962 Village Voice column, “is beginning to move. Cinema is becoming conscious of its steps. Cinema is no longer embarrassed by its own stammerings, hesitations, side steps. Until now cinema could move only in a robotlike step, on preplanned tracks, indicated lines. Now it is beginning to move freely, by itself, according to its own wishes and whims, tracing its own steps. Cinema is doing away with theatrics, cinema is searching for its own truth, cinema is mumbling, like Marlon Brando, like James Dean. That’s what this is all about: new times, new content, new language.”
FLC’s highly focused series, which coincides with the Jewish Museum’s upcoming exhibition New York: 1962–1964 (on view from July 22, 2022 to January 8, 2023), will feature key efforts by Kenneth Anger, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers, Marie Menken, Jonas Mekas, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol, to name a handful. Join us as we look back on this richly varied—and still underappreciated—period of experimental cinema.
Film Forum’s “1962…1963…1964,” a related series of the fertile three-year period in cinematic history, will run from July 22–August 11.
Organized by Thomas Beard and Dan Sullivan. Co-presented with the Jewish Museum.
Special thanks to Ed Halter and Anthology Film Archives.
Tickets go on sale Monday, July 11 at noon with a FLC Member pre-sale beginning on Friday, July 8 at noon and are $15; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC Members. Become a member today! See more and save with a 3+ Film Package or All-Access Pass ($75 for general public and $35 for students). Learn more at www.filmlinc.org.
Film at Lincoln Center, the Jewish Museum, and Film Forum will offer reciprocal admission discounts to each other’s programs (with proof of purchase). Enjoy $11 tickets at Film Forum’s series with ticket stub from FLC’s series, available only at box office. Enjoy half-price admission to the Jewish Museum with ticket stub from related series, offer good from July 22, 2022 through August 14, 2022. To redeem discounted tickets, email info@thejm.org or call 212-423-3200.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films will take place at the Francesca Beale Theater in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 W. 65th Street)
Program 10: Meet the Kuchar Brothers
Sunday, July 31 @ 8:45pm
A Town Called Tempest; © Kuchar Brothers Trust
Tootsies in Autumn
George and Mike Kuchar, 1963, 16mm, 12m
A Town Called Tempest
George and Mike Kuchar, 1963, 16mm, 33m
Lovers of Eternity
George and Mike Kuchar, 1964, 36m
George and Mike Kuchar entered the underground as Bronx teenagers who were making visionary 8mm approximations of Hollywood spectaculars, providing, in the process, a kind of roadmap for the camp-punk stylings of later auteurs like John Waters. This program, comprised of three early efforts by the duo, includes: Tootsies in Autumn, wherein a group of past-their-prime stage actors descend into madness as they fight and bicker amongst themselves; A Town Called Tempest, a typically torrid melodrama concerning extreme weather conditions; and the tragicomic Lovers of Eternity, in which a lonesome hipster poet makes friends with a succession of bizarre characters atop a squalid New York rooftop in a latter-day Garden of Eden, complete with a cast featuring Jack Smith, filmmaker Dov Lederberg, and an enormous cockroach. A Town Called Tempest is preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Tootsies in Autumn and Lovers of Eternity are preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.