Maysles Cinema June 13-21 Schedule

1st Annual NYC Revolutionary Latino Film Festival
In Celebration Of The 82nd Birthday Of Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara
(Opening Night)

El Che
Dir. Aníbal Di Salvo & Maurice Dugowson, 1997, 83 min.
Documentary that retraces Guevara’s life and political career, beginning with his youth in 1950′s Argentina, when he set out on the road, writing travel diaries, poetry, and stories. His wanderings through the Andes, Patagonia, Peru, and the Chilean desert informed his identity not as a citizen of one nation but as a Latin American. Following his medical studies, he left Argentina forever, dedicating his life to fighting imperialism, poverty, and social injustice throughout the continent.

El Machetero
Dir. Vagabond, 2010
Post 9/11 definitions, ideas and notions of terrorism are challenged in this controversial film. French journalist Jean Dumont (Isaach de Bankolé) interviews Pedro Taino (Not4Prophet) a “Puerto Rican Terrorist” in prison. Pedro is a self-described Machetero fighting to free a colonized Puerto Rico from the United States. Jean questions Pedro about his decision to use violence to achieve that freedom. As they speak, a ghetto youth (Kelvin Fernandez) trapped in a cycle of violence, is encouraged by Pedro and a mentor (Dylcia Pagan) from his childhood in Puerto Rico to become the next generation of Machetero.

Panel discussion Machetero dir. Vagabond, former 20-year Puerto Rican political prisoner Dylcia Pagan, and other representatives from the Cuban Mission, Cuba Solidarity & the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.

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Jock Docs: Soccer
Curated by Laura Coxson

10:00am
The World Cup: Aired Live!
Ivory Coast vs Portugal

7:30pm
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

Dir. Paul Crowder, 2006, 97 min.
“Giddy, gossipy and endearingly unslick, Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos chronicles the rise and fall of the most famous soccer team in the United States with slapdash glee. Fielding heroes and villains, gentlemen and rogues, booze and women, it plays like the “Dynasty” of sports documentaries. There’s even a little soccer. Via newsreels and interviews (both winking and candid) we watch a ragtag team of part-time players move from a scrubby field that had to be spray-painted green before games to a 1977 North American Soccer League championship playoff in Giants Stadium in front of 77,691 fans.” – Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times
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Jock Docs: Soccer
Curated by Laura Coxson

DDPA Watch Group Presents RED CARD as part of the DDPA Human Rights Film Series

Red Card: Soccer and Racism
Dir. Rudolfo Munoz, 2007, 93 min.
This documentary about racism in Ecuador tells the story of Afro-Ecuadorian soccer player, Agustin “El Tin” Delgado. Arguably the best soccer player in the Ecuadorian national team, Delgado exposes the deep racial divide in this multiracial country and argues that Black Ecuadorians have been penalized both on the soccer field and in everyday life.

Followed by a panel discussion.

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Jock Docs: Soccer
Curated by Laura Coxson

2:30pm
The World Cup: Aired Live!
France vs. Mexico

6:30pm
Soccer as Never Before
(Fußball wie noch nie)
Dir. Hellmuth Costard, 1971, 105 min.
“The real Warholian moment of football cinema is Hellmuth Costard’s film Fußball wie noch nie (Football as Never Before, 1971). A point of reference for Zidane, the film takes the famously charming George Best as its subject and edits multiple camera views to produce a real-time portrait of the player singled out during the course of an entire match. Lest we miss the homoerotic subtext of football art (and football culture), the half-time interval features a cruisey bit of filmmaking as we follow Best through a narrow hallway and into what looks like the boot room. Best turns and faces the camera for nearly three minutes. He holds our gaze as long as he can, pursing his lips, looking away and then back in a seemingly overt homage to the Warholian screen test. Best strikes a deal here with the camera, inviting us to look at him when he takes the field again; shots of his socks, his shoulders and his crotch seem to go on for ever.” – Jennifer Doyle, Frieze.

8:30pm
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Dir. Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno, 2006, 90 min.
Halfway between a sports documentary and a conceptual art installation, “Zidane” consists of a full-length soccer game (Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005) filmed entirely from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane.

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Staunch: The Second Annual Grey Gardens Festival
Curated by Rebekah and Sara Maysles

Grey Gardens
Dir. Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde & Muffie Meyer, 1976, 94 min.
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale-high-society dropouts, mother and daughter, reclusive cousins of Jackie O.-thriving together amid the decay and disorder of their ramshackle East Hampton mansion. An impossibly intimate portrait and an eerie echo of the Kennedy Camelot, Albert and David Maysles’s 1976 Grey Gardens quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen. The film and the Beales themselves have since inspired fashion lines, songs, a broadway musical, several off-broadway shows, and a 2009 HBO film.

Followed by a panel discussion with Albert Maysles, Lucy Barzun Donnelly (Executive Producer, HBO’s Grey Gardens), other speakers TBA.
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Staunch: The Second Annual Grey Gardens Festival
Curated by Rebekah and Sara Maysles

**1930′s Ambitious Women Pre-Code Matinee Double Feature**

3:00pm
Blonde Venus
Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1932, 93 min
One of many collaborative efforts between director Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich, Blonde Venus is depression-era film exemplifying the melodramatic conceit of the “fallen woman” who must suffer for her indignity. Dietrich plays German cabaret singer, Helen Faraday, who, driven to raise money to save her husband from an illness, works her mojo at nightclubs and has an affair with tycoon Nick Townsend (Cary Grant). But Helen’s means of support only tears apart her marriage, and threatens her custody of her beloved son. Particularly notable is a scene of Dietrich singing “Hot Voodoo” in a gorilla suit, imbued with problematic racial overtones, but also boundary crossing for the time in which the film was made. As writer Patrice Petro states, is “blackness an ‘accessory’ for white women – a mask or costume to be worn and removed at will,” or is Dietrich’s “position in this film much more ambivalent, as suggested, for instance, by the dizzying fusion of incompatible images in the ‘Hot Voodoo’ number, or even by [Helen/Dietrich's] friendship and identification with…Cora / Hattie McDaniel, who helps her protect her child and elude the long arm of the law?”- Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History, p 155

5:00pm
Imitation of Life
Dir. John M. Stahl, 1934, 111 min
Based on Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel of the same name, John Stahl’s film version casts Claudette Colbert as the widowed Bea Pullman, who becomes businesswoman extraordinaire with the assistance of her black friend Delilah (Louise Beavers), and then goes on to follow Bea and Delilah’s relationships with their daughters Jessie and Peola, as they each try to navigate their place in the world. Though the film’s take on race, class and gender is certainly dated, Time Magazine listed it as one of the 25 Most Important Films on Race because of the complex relationship between Delilah and her light-skinned a daughter Peola, played by Fredi Washington, who renounces her mother in order to gain success by “passing” as a white woman. The New York Times at the time of its release called it “the most shameless tearjerker of the Fall,” and wrote, “The stentorian sobbing of the ladies in the Roxy mezzanine yesterday seemed to suggest that it held a vast appeal for the matinee trade as well as for Miss Hurst’s large and commercially attractive public. On the whole the audience seemed to find it a gripping and powerful if slightly diffuse drama which discussed the mother love question, the race question, the business woman question, the mother and daughter question and the love renunciation question.”

7:30pm

Primary
Dir. Robert Drew, 1960, 60 min.
Shot by Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles and edited by D.A. Pennebaker, Primary is considered a milestone in the direct cinema movement in America. With their use of mobile cameras and light equipment, Leacock and Maysles were able to achieve a level of intimacy with the film’s subjects unseen in earlier documentaries. The film covers the 1960 Wisconsin Primary election between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic Party nomination for President, with stunning black and white close-ups of both candidates on the road while campaigning, which speak for themselves. It also portrays a young Jacqueline Kennedy supporting her husband on the road, a role which, but for a twist of fate (the death of the elder Joe Kennedy) Little Edith Bouvier Beale may herself have filled.

Followed by a discussion with Albert Maysles, a cinematographer on Primary and Grey Gardens dir.
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Staunch: A Grey Gardens Festival II
Curated by Rebekah and Sara Maysles
12:00pm
The Beales of Grey Gardens
Dir. Albert Maysles & David Maysles, 2006, 91 min.
The 1976 cinema vérité classic Grey Gardens, which captured in remarkable close-up the lives of the eccentric East Hampton recluses Big and Little Edie Beale, has spawned everything from a midnight-movie cult following to a Broadway musical, to a Hollywood adaptation. The filmmakers then went back to their vaults of footage to create part two, The Beales of Grey Gardens, a tribute both to these indomitable women and to the original landmark documentary’s legions of fans, who have made them American counterculture icons.

1:30pm
Sneak Preview:
The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens
Dir. Jason Hay & Steve Pelizza, work-in-progress, 13 min.
From the filmmakers: “Jerry Torre’s life story unfolds as a classic American tale. A compromising childhood, then a dash for freedom leading him indirectly to Grey Gardens, a formative event in his life. Later awakening to his sexuality in the 1970′s in New York City, going on to travel in Europe and the Middle East under unique circumstances, and sadly falling into some of the darker passions in life. Eventually pulling himself up and dusting himself off, he decides to heed a lifelong call to carve stone and discovers his love for the craft. Jerry Torre’s sculptures help free him, and he fully develops into the beloved individual he is today.”
Followed by a discussion with sculptor Jerry Torre and directors Jason Haye and Steve Pelizza. Light brunch fare and mimosas available before, during and after the screenings/discussion.

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Jock Docs: Soccer
Curated by Laura Coxson

2:30pm
The World Cup: Aired Live!

France vs. Mexico
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