Tag Archives: Quad Cinema

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER

I live in a world now where everything is “delegated” to photography. Nothing is left to memory, your own memory. What I’m interested in, instead, are things that can’t be seen, not those that can be… I have always labored under the illusion—but I also think it was true—that nobody ever photographed me. Because my face is not for sale. The real me is not photographable.Benedetta Barzini, to Beniamino Barrese

Beniamino Barrese is the son of Benedetta Barzini—the first Italian model to appear on the cover of American Vogue—and his mother’s obsessive interlocutor throughout his documentary THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER, one of the year’s best.

Summoned by Diana Vreeland in the mid-1960s to come to New York for a few weeks, Barzini stayed for a few years, a sought-after subject of Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, and Andy Warhol, a confident of Gerard Malanga and Salvador Dalí, and an acquaintance of Marcel Duchamp.

Barzini was a double-rebel. Modeling in Manhattan put a necessary distance between Barzini and her parents—heiress Giannalisa Feltrinelli and writer Luigi Barzini, Jr., author of The Italians. But the trajectory of second-wave feminism in the 1970s opened Barzini’s eyes to the ornamental condition of women, and she returned to Italy and became an activist and left-wing academic.

I asked myself this question: Why do we have prototypes of beauty? Why are models at the bow of the ship and the other women are squashed together into the stern? Why? Because men invent women… Maybe it would be better if female bodies disappeared from men’s imaginations.Benedetta Barzini

Barzani explains to her son that the camera is a dangerous liar because within its capture of arbitrary moments, it “freezes” life “within a limited boundary,” contaminating thought and inscribing conformity. “I don’t like frozen things… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a hundred million photos of sunsets. Frankly, they’re all the same. But they weren’t the same when you saw them.”

Barzini is by turns loving and exasperated with her son and his never-ending investment in images and their documentation. Yet Barzini still models herself—recently appearing in Simone Rocha‘s Fall-Winter 2017 show in London. Nothing if not contradictory, Barzini wants to remove herself from a world she finds deplorable, railing against ambiguity yet unsure which entrance to the void she should walk through. She explains to Barrese that their work together on this film is an act of “separation.” The filmmaker sees it differently, and together they find a sense of an ending.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER

Now playing.

Laemmle Monica Film Center

1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

Quad Cinema

34 West 13th Street, New York City.

Beniamino Barrese, The Disappearance of My Mother (2019), from top: Benedetta Barzini (3); Barrese and Barzini (2); Richard Avedon spread of Barzini in American Vogue; Barzini on the cover of Vogue Italia, September 1967; Simone Rocha Fall-Winter 2017 show, London; Andy Warhol, Benedetta Barzini Screen Test, 1966; Barzini and Marcel Duchamp, filmed at the artist’s Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery opening by Warhol, 1966 (2); The Disappearance of My Mother U.S. poster; Barzini (5). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the photographers, Benedetta Barzini, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Condé Nast, and Kino Lorber.

CHABROL — LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE

Anthony Perkins is a sculptor, Michel Piccoli a philosophy professor, Orson Welles plays God, and Marlène Jobert is his wife (all costumed by Karl Lagerfeld).

Don’t miss this rare screening of Claude Chabrol’s 1971 mystery LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE (Ten Days’ Wonder), part of the Quad series Actor for Hire—The Other Side of Orson Welles.

 

LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE

Tuesday, December 11, at 7:20 pm.

Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, New York City.

Above: Italian poster. Image credit: Notre Cinéma.

Below: Anthony Perkins (left), Marlène Jobert, and Michel Piccoli in La Décade prodigieuse.

LES PARENTS TERRIBLES

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The 70th anniversary 2K restoration of Jean Cocteau’s LES PARENTS TERRIBLES—with La belle et la bête stars Jean Marais and Josette Day—is screening in lower Manhattan for one more week.

 

LES PARENTS TERRIBLES, through June 7

QUAD CINEMA, 34 West 13th Street, New York City.

quadcinema.com/les-parents-terribles

See: filmcomment.com/les-parents-terribles

Josette Day and Jean Marais (center) in Les parents terribles (1948).

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CHRONIK DER ANNA MAGDALENA BACH

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CHRONIK DER ANNA MAGDALENA BACH (1968) was the debut feature of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, and “the strangest and most uncompromising of all musician biopics… [It] disregards most conventions of costume drama to ask some very human questions about history, [and] what it takes to be an artist.” — Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

The 50th anniversary restoration is playing an exclusive engagement at the Quad Cinema.

 

CHRONIK DER ANNA MAGDALENA BACH, through Thursday, March 22.

QUAD CINEMA, 34 West 13th Street, New York City.

quadcinema.com/chronicle-of-anna-magdalena-bach

quadcinema.com

Above: Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub shooting Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach.

Below: Christiane Lang in the title role.

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