This has been a ridiculous week for me so far, and I’m just trying to make it through tomorrow. A new job, still not done with the old job, plus these Gothamist interviews … sadly it has precluded me from writing some of the other pre-Razzie, pre-Spirit Award, pre-Oscar things I intended. Hopefully tonight. Maybe this weekend.
But I think it’s been worth it. And I hope that anyone who reads this site has been interested in learning a bit about the thoughts of those people who program some of the amazing repertory houses around town. Today we stay east of the East River, heading from Astoria, Queens to Fort Greene, Brooklyn and a visit to BAM and the BAMcinématek for a little chat with Florence Almozini. Yes, it’s true … not all film programmers are male. In fact, the two at BAMcinématek are both women. I guess that’s a point in favor of Brooklyn, eh?
BAMcinématek is a program that runs out of the BAM Rose Cinemas, and if you’ve never checked out their schedule, you really should. Right now they have an amazing series playing featuring the films of Henri-Georges Clouzot, the man many people called France’s answer to Hitchcock. In fact, on Saturday they screen <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0046911/" target="_blank"Diabolique. No, not that piece of trash remake from about 10 years ago with Sharon Stone and Chazz Palminteri, but the original film from 1955 that helped prompt Hitchcock to go out and make Psycho! Clouzot‘s film is one of the all-time great thrillers, and should not be missed.
BAMcinématek also gives you a chance to see what the fus is all about with Korean director Park Chan-wook late next week with a four day engagement of his films under the title “Mr. Vengeance: Park Chan-wook.” As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, his film Oldboy blew me away. Oldboy is getting a limited theatrical release, I believe rolling out at the end of March. But if you go to BAM, you can also see If You Were Me, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Joint Security Area.
And the great programming will continue through April and May. Florence is especially excited about a series dedicated to one of her favorite filmmakers, French Director Arnaud Desplechin, which will run April 13-17 and feature an appearance and Q&A by Mr. Desplechin after the screening of his latest film Kings and Queen. Keep watch on the BAMcinématek web site for more information.
We’ll be wrapping up our film programmer series tomorrow. If you read this site, you should easily be able to figure out who, or at least what venue, will be featured. It’s basically the only place I spend as much time raving about as I do TCM, and for good reason.
Out of Focus 