Film at Lincoln Center Announces THE OTHER AMERICA: A COSMOLOGY OF JORDAN PEELE’S US — JUNE 20–26
Opening Night double feature includes a never-before-seen 35mm presentation of Us, preceded by live grand piano accompaniment by acclaimed composer Makia Matsumura of Oscar Micheaux’s silent masterpiece Body and Soul on 35mm
Series will include screenings of a 4K remaster of Katsuhiro Otomo’s genre-redefining Akira
Select screenings will include in-person appearances with writers and special guests who contributed to Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay
[May 21, 2025 — New York, NY] Film at Lincoln Center announces “The Other America: A Cosmology of Jordan Peele’s Us,” running from June 20–26.
Hailed as “a colossal achievement” and “blissfully ambitious” upon its 2019 release, Jordan Peele’s sophomore feature Us plumbed everything from American isolationist fears and labyrinthine power structures to the rich lineage of the doppelgänger motif and home-invasion thrillers. It also left just as many audiences enthralled and mystified as it prompted those to obsessively pore over its coincidences, paradoxes, and symbology in the years that followed.
Now with the recent publication Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Inventory Press, in-depth footnotes, commentaries, marginalia, and a constellation of images, definitions, and inspirations have untethered entirely new references orbiting the film-everything and everyone from W. E. B. Du Bois, C.H.U.D., Sylvia Plath, and Oscar Micheaux, to Donnie Darko, Lewis Carroll, The Beach Boys, and more. This June, Film at Lincoln Center will interpret the cosmology outlined in this book through a presentation of double features, supplementary reading material, in-person appearances from some of the book’s contributing writers, and never-before-seen 35mm presentations of Us.
This 35mm-heavy series embraces the multitudes contained in Peele’s 2019 feature. Films are grouped under recurring motifs- The Shadow Self, The Uncanny, Labyrinths, Rabbits, The Uniform-each drawing out a distinct thread in Peele’s vision. Some titles speak directly to Us through shared iconography: the indelible red scrubs of Dead Ringers, the scissor-wielding White Rabbit of Alice (screening from a rare, imported print), the mirrored maze in The Lady from Shanghai, and the implements of psychological unraveling in Scissors and Dead Again. Others echo the film’s deeper fixations: A Nightmare on Elm Street weaponizing domestic space and repressed memories, C.H.U.D. and Donnie Darko spiraling through conspiratorial underworlds and looping timelines.
The series will include a range of in-person events featuring writers and special guests who contributed to Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay. Opening Night kicks off with a two-for-one 35mm double feature: Oscar Micheaux’s silent classic Body and Soul featuring live grand piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura, followed by a conversation between Shana L. Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, and Michael Gillespie, Associate Professor in NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies, and a reception. The evening will conclude with a screening of an unseen print of Us from Peele’s personal collection.
Fashion designer Mary Ping and Mellissa Huber, Associate Curator at The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will discuss costume design and the visual politics of the Tethered’s red uniform in Us. Later in the week, following a 35mm screening of Nightbreed, writer and designer Leila Taylor and filmmaker Sierra Pettengill will explore the subterranean parallels between Clive Barker’s Midian and the Underpass imagined in Us.
Copies of the annotated screenplay will be available for purchase at all in-person events, with an option to bundle the book with a ticket to the Opening Night double feature or a signed copy with a series All-Access Pass. Throughout the series, audiences will also be treated to curated preshows and playlists, along with suggested supplemental readings for those eager to venture even deeper down the rabbit hole.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson in collaboration with Monkeypaw Productions and Inventory Press.
For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on May 22, 2025.
