FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER ANNOUNCES ARI ASTER SELECTS APRIL 14–20
A week of Aster’s hand picked selections to celebrate the release of Beau Is Afraid running from April 14th-20th
[New York, NY — March 30, 2023] — Film at Lincoln Center announces “Ari Aster Selects,” the acclaimed filmmaker’s curated series running from April 14 through 20, culminating in a free screening of the director’s highly anticipated new feature Beau Is Afraid for select ticket holders on April 21 with Aster in person.
With his breakout feature, the wickedly macabre supernatural chamber piece Hereditary (2018), and its equally acclaimed follow-up, Sweden-set folk horror pressure-cooker Midsommar (2019), director Ari Aster demonstrated a well-honed talent for isolating the corrosive tensions and sinister contradictions that lurk just beneath the alluring comforts of family and community, yielding sensitive, profoundly unsettling studies of interpersonal angst and long-repressed emotional realities. In the intervening years, his unflaggingly ambitious filmmaking has helped to spark a spirited industry-wide discourse around the contours and capacities of genre. Aster has simultaneously engaged in full-throated dialogue with the forms and traditions of horror and exploded the limits of that category in new and unpredictable ways, balancing twisted psychological drama against the blackest irony as a means of probing humanity’s darker corners with assurance and laser-sharp precision. This April, Film at Lincoln Center is excited to present a curated selection of films handpicked by Aster himself to complement the release of Beau Is Afraid. This eclectic and unexpected collection of masterworks drawn from seven decades of film history across a range of genres and production contexts sheds light on the inspirations and influences behind one of the most compelling directorial voices in Hollywood today.
Aster’s selections include Alfred Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece The Birds; Jiří Menzel’s feature debut Closely Watched Trains, the story of Miloš (Václav Neckář), a train dispatcher in occupied Czechoslovakia whose efforts to lose his virginity are egged on by an older fellow dispatcher with ties to the local resistance movement; Cowards Bend the Knee, the first installment of Guy Maddin’s quasi-autobiographical “Me Trilogy”; Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life, a deftly witty portrait of purgatory featuring memorable performances by Meryl Streep and Rip Torn; Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction, a fantastical mix of live action and animation which brings life to the work of Jules Verne; Johnny Guitar, Nicholas Ray’s radical repurposing of the Western genre; A Matter of Life and Death, the first collaboration between Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and their longtime cinematographer Jack Cardiff, which takes a turn from a Technicolor wartime melodrama into a monochrome meditation on the worth of a life and the righteousness of a death; Jacques Tati’s Playtime, a follow-up to the films featuring his beloved Monsieur Hulot character; Tsai Ming-liang’s third feature The River, a portrayal of individuals in crisis that builds patiently to a devastating emotional climax; and Wake in Fright, a brutal, visceral overlooked gem of the Australian New Wave directed by Ted Kotcheff ( First Blood) and starring Donald Pleasence.
Two noteworthy short films round out the curation: Stump the Guesser, a bizarrely humorous and modernist dystopian fable packed with incest, guessing milk, real crabs, and more; and The Bones, winner of the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Madeline Whittle. For more information, visit the Film at Lincoln Center website.
Originally published at https://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on March 30, 2023.
