AMERICA is sort of a grandiose title, but I didn’t want to shy away from what it would mean to title the film after my country, because the impetus for this was to visually illustrate inclusivity and make a case for the beauty of what that could mean… The heart and soul of the project asks us to evaluate the role of pleasure particularly within communities still in some ways barred from that fundamental experience or right. So AMERICA is both a meditation and recognition of the beauty that exists in the past, a resurfacing of that beauty, and also a proposal for the future. — Garrett Bradley
The latest iteration of Bradley ’s AMERICA—a multichannel installation at MoMA organized by Thelma Golden and Legacy Russell, in partnership with the Studio Museum in Harlem—is on view for one more week.
A series of historical enactments of twentieth-century Black life, the work takes the unfinished film Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1914, starring comedian Bert Williams) as an initial point of investigation. AMERICA features a score by Trevor Mathison and Udit Duseja. See link below for details.
I think the desire to make films has always been in me… [But] more than making a film, it was to make an artistic gesture that was important to me. I wanted to create images, a story, and a tone that resembled myself…
I was 15 and it was the summer before starting high school. Even though I was happy at school, with my friends and my family, I felt a certain melancholy. I decided to write about it; about this certain age when you are not totally a child anymore, but not really an adult yet. I feel this feeling is universal and I was living it while writing the movie. To me, being sincere was the only thing that mattered. — Suzanne Lindon
SPRING BLOSSOM / SEIZE PRINTEMPS—Lindon’s directorial debut—is a Paris fantasia about a young, awkward, intelligent adolescent (played by the director) transitioning out of childhood. Bored with the vapid banalities of her peers, she prefers to get lost in books by Boris Vian and dream of musical interludes on the streets of Montmartre. She is struck in particular by the milieu surrounding the Théâtre del’Atelier, and falls in love with a disengaged actor in his thirties (Arnaud Valois)—or at least in love with the idea of him.
The film is now streaming as part of the virtual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema program, presented by Film at Lincoln Center. See link below for details.
FAITHFUL—a swift, heartfelt procédurale based on Joseph Andras’ debut novel De nos frères blessés (Of Our WoundedBrothers, 2016)—tells the story of Fernand Iveton (played by Vincent Lacoste), a French national in 1950s Algeria. Atypical for Europeans of his time—he was a member of the local Communist Party and a supporter of the FLN—he numbered Arabs among his closest friends and abhorred the murderous racism of the occupying French forces.* Perhaps too much of a humanist to be a true revolutionary, Iveton participated in a 1956 plot to destroy a power station.
As filmed by Hélier Cisterne, FAITHFUL jumps between Iveton’s first Parisian encounters with his wife Hélène (Vicky Krieps), his life in Algiers with fellow activist and childhood friend Henri Maillot (Yoann Zimmer), and his trial for treason, subsequent imprisonment, and ultimate fate.
As part of this year’s virtual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema festival, FAITHFUL is streaming nationwide. See link below for details.
*During the period of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962), the FLN—Front de libérationnationale—was the nationalist movement advocating for the removal of the French colonizers.
In the context of America, it’s very difficult to prove racism. It’s very difficult to prove what that looks like and how it’s articulated on a systematic level. — Garrett Bradley
Join Bradley for a streamed screening of her new film TIME, followed by an online Q & A with the director. See link below for details.
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