COMING SOON: winter 2020 MOVIES & EVENTS CALENDAR
The Garden Left Behind
Directed By Flavio Alves
(dRamatic feature)
Panel Discussion to Follow with Flavio Alves, screenwriter John Rotondo, and producers Kristen Parker & Roy Wol
Playing Friday, Feb. 21 at 7 pm
Beginning with an enthusiastic reception at SXSW Film Festival, The Garden Left Behind, has become one of the most ubiquitous and celebrated films of the 2019 film festival circuit in the US and abroad. Driving a cab through the lonely streets of New York, Tina (Carlie Guevara) struggles to provide for herself and her grandmother. Being undocumented makes work difficult to come by, and to add more stress, Tina has begun the transition process. While her doting grandmother endeavors to understand, Tina finds warm support in a group of trans activists that take her under their wing. Tina waits impatiently for her doctor (Ed Asner) to sign off on her transition so she can begin taking hormones, eager to join her trans sisters. But mounting medical costs, her rocky relationship with the man she’s been seeing, and her legal immigration status all become daunting obstacles in Tina’s pursuit of happiness.
S X SW Audience Award Winner
Tickets: $12 in advance, $14 at the door.
Cunningham
Directed By AlLa KOVGEN
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Panel Discussion to Follow with
Nancy Turano and Erin Dowd
Playing February 28 at 7 pm
CUNNINGHAM traces Merce Cunningham's artistic evolution over three decades of risk and discovery (1944-1972), from his early years as a struggling dancer in postwar New York to his emergence as one of the world's most visionary choreographers. The 3D technology weaves together Merce's philosophies and stories, creating a visceral journey into his innovative work. A breathtaking explosion of dance, music, and never-before-seen archival material, CUNNINGHAM is a timely tribute to one of the world's greatest modern dance artists.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Fantastic Fungi
Directed By Louis Schwartzberg
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Panel Discussion to Follow
Friday, March 6 at 7 pm
Fantastic Fungi is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet. Through the eyes of renowned scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we become aware of the beauty, intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom offers us in response to some of our most pressing medical, therapeutic, and environmental challenges.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
March 6 at 7 pm at MONDO
Event Sponsor:
Farm and Fork Society
The Farewell
Directed By Lulu Wang
(dramatic feature)
Discussion to Follow w/Yvette Viera, Manager Palliative Care & Bioethics, Atlantic Health System and Nina Tiger of
Sage Eldercare
Playing Friday, March 13 at 10:30 am at
The Oakes Center, 1200 Morris Ave, Summit
After learning their beloved matriarch has terminal lung cancer, a family opts not to tell her about the diagnosis, instead scheduling an impromptu wedding-reunion back in China. Headstrong and emotional writer Billi rebels against her parents’ directive to stay in New York and joins the family as they awkwardly attempt to rekindle old bonds, throw together a wedding that only grandma is actually looking forward to, and surreptitiously say their goodbyes.
A heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it,
The Farewell masterfully interweaves a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a thoughtful exploration of how our cultural heritage does and does not travel with us when we leave our homes. Writer/director Lulu Wang imbues The Farewell with warmth and knowing wit, while the uniformly excellent ensemble cast (anchored by a breakout performance by Awkwafina) invites us to share this extended clan’s joy and sorrow—and to feel, for the length of this remarkable film, like a part of their family.
Admission is complimentary. This event is sponsored by Your Decisions Matter, a new program from SAGE Eldercare funded by Atlantic Health System’s Overlook Medical Center Community Advisory Board. The program is a community-based initiative to help people have conversations with their loved ones about end-of-life care and decision making. Find us on Facebook @yourdecisionsmatter or on the SAGE website: sageeldercare.org.
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The New Bauhaus
Directed By Alysa Nahmias
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, March 13 at 7 pm
An odyssey through the life and legacy of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the innovative artist and educator whose pioneering approach to integrating technology into design continues to influence and inspire.
In Chicago, The New Bauhaus evolved from its origins at the German Bauhaus into an extraordinary flowering of interdisciplinary design pedagogy premised on the notion that “the whole field of contemporary architecture and design must be based upon an indivisible unification of formerly separated and independent fields.”
Following recent retrospectives of Moholy’s work at major museums, this film offers a more accessible and intimate, emotional journey through Moholy’s life and his work as an artist, designer, visionary, and teacher.
Tickets: $12 in advance, $14 at the door.
Event Sponsor:
Studio 1200
511 Millburn Avenue, Short Hills, NJ
CITIZEN K
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow w/
Director Alex Gibney
Playing Friday, March 27 at 7 pm
Oscar-winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory CITIZEN K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident. Benefitting from the chaos that ensued after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. But when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets were seized and following a series of show trials, he was sentenced to more than ten years in prison. Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin’s two-decade stranglehold on power. Expertly researched and photographed, Gibney uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to explore the complex interplay between oligarchy and government and its destructive effect on democracy, in Russia and beyond.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Beanpole
Directed By Kantemir Balagov
(dOCUMENTARy feature)
Discussion to Follow
IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Playing Friday, April 3 at 8 pm
“Critic’s Pick… dazzling… Most war movies are about battle; BEANPOLE is about what happens afterward… only the second film from the sensationally talented Russian director Kantemir Balagov… It’s a gut-punch. It’s also a brilliantly told, deeply moving story about love - in all its manifestations, perversity and obstinacy… (With) flashes of beauty and dark comedy.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
It's 1945, and Leningrad lies in ruins, wartorn and paralyzed. Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a nurse, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), a soldier, are traumatized from the siege and its aftermath, and struggling to rebuild their lives.
Critics hailing the second film by 27-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov describe it as “intense,” “intimate,” and “rewarding” (The Hollywood Reporter) and as “ferocious and extraordinary,” during which “you quite often have to remind yourself to breathe” (Variety). Two young women (one so tall and slender she’s referred to as Beanpole) are nurses in a Leningrad hospital, immediately following the end of World War II.
A film about relationships between broken people, living in a ravaged nation after a catastrophic war – BEANPOLE exudes deep empathy for its characters in the face of many obstacles fate has thrown in their path. This is a film about Russian history and the Russian soul, about overcoming loss and inventing new ways to get through each day. Balagov is a major talent who has only just begun to make his mark.Drawing loosely from Nobel Prize–winning author and historian Svetlana Alexievich's 1985 book The Unwomanly Face of War, Balagov creates a world where women's suffering and resilience becomes elliptic — with proactivity and punishment at either side of an ever-swinging pendulum. Their hardships in the face of unspeakable tragedy are palpable through their sunken eyes and shallow gazes, but we are simultaneously pulled along in their perseverance. Survival of the fittest takes on a new meaning, as gains seem tiny and incremental yet everything is at stake. Spiritually bleak, yet rich in colour and remarkably precise in its style, the cinematic language of Balagov speaks to a new generation of Russian filmmakers telling stories of a homeland that has yet to reconcile with its historical cataclysms.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
Beanpole trailer
Portrait of a Lady On Fire
Directed BY Celine sciamma
(Dramatic feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, April 10 at 8 pm
In French w/ English subtitles
A ravishing masterpiece. France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse’s first moments of freedom. Héloïse's portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and testament to their love.
Winner of a coveted Cannes prize and one of the best reviewed films of the year, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE solidifies Céline Sciamma as one of the most exciting filmmakers working in the world today. Noémie and Adèle Haenel turn the subtle act of looking into a dangerous, engrossing thrill, crafting the most breathtaking and elegant performances of the year. With contemporary themes in period dress, PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE is one of the greatest love stories ever told.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.
63 Up
Directed BY Michael Apted
(Documentary feature)
Discussion to Follow
Playing Friday, May 8 at 7 pm
"Visionary. The noblest project in cinema history." -- Roger Ebert
63 Up continues a groundbreaking documentary series with another gently eye-opening look at the human experience.
The latest installment of the groundbreaking, award-winning documentary series from director Michael Apted (Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist) returns to visit the people whose lives have been followed since they were seven. Featuring more of the original line-up than ever before, we discover what has happened to the group over the last seven years and what life has thrown at them in their sixties. The 'Up' series stands as one of cinema's greatest achievements, a use of the medium that's at once blatantly logical and profoundly affecting.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $17 at the door.