Part of New Visions
Saturday, December 22, 2012, 12:30 p.m.

Dir. Miguel Gomes. Portugal/Germany/Brazil. 2012, 118 mins. 35mm. With Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira. “[Miguel Gomes’s Tabu] prompted something approaching a collective swoon at its world premiere. The strange magic of Mr. Gomes’s films stems in part from the way they utterly thwart classification. Tabu, which manages to be dryly absurd and deeply romantic, begins with a surreal vignette about a widowed hunter who throws himself to the crocodiles, and perhaps comes back as one. It moves on to recount a few days in the lives of a devout spinster, her tale-spinning elderly neighbor, and the neighbor’s stoic maid in modern-day Lisbon; and makes one more startling leap to the mountainside plains of an unnamed Portuguese colony in Africa decades earlier to chronicle an impossible love... "Tabu­—named for the final film by F.W. Murnau, one of cinema’s great romantics, and filmed in luminous black-and-white—is a living, breathing demonstration of cinephilia in action.” —Dennis Lim, The New York Times

Tickets are free, and available for Museum members only. Call 718 777 6800 or email the Museum to reserve tickets. For more information about becoming a member, please click here.

This screening is presented as part of the series New Visions, in association with Persol. The Museum is pleased to continue its partnership with Persol, which began in 2011 with the first installation of PERSOL MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film. The Museum hosted the second installation of the three-year exhibition in June, 2012.

Tabu opens at Film Forum on December 26.