Screening & Live Event
It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve: Masao Adachi and Palaces of Pity (Palácios de Pena)
New York premiere. With director Daniel Schmidt in person
It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve: Masao Adachi
France. Dir. Philippe Grandrieux. 2011, 73 mins. The controversial Japanese filmmaker and onetime Red Army member Masao Adachi has been an exemplar of revolutionary cinema since the 1960s, in his own work (Prisoner/Terrorist) and in his collaborations with Nagisa Oshima (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief) and Koji Wakamatsu (the recent Caterpillar). In this entrancing documentary portrait, Grandrieux, known for intense nocturnal dramas like A New Life, visits Adachi in Tokyo and captures the fleeting gestures and the undying beliefs that make up the man. Reflecting an intimate exchange between author and subject, the film lives up to its grand title: It is at once beautiful and resolute, living fully in what Adachi calls “the world of ideas” and “the world of sensations.”
Palaces of Pity (Palácios de Pena)
Portugal. Dirs. Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt. 2011, 59 mins. Genres and eras are scrambled in this perverse, stylized fable, an amalgam of coming-of-age melodrama, medieval pageant, and political allegory. Moving through mysterious, charged spaces, the film’s young heroines confront the complexities of desire and an inherited legacy of oppression via their ailing grandmother.
Free with Museum admission. A First Look series pass, allowing the holder admission to the Museum and all First Look screenings for the run of the series, is available for $40. Order online or call 718 777 6800.
