BAMcinématek presents Back with a Vengeance, an encore of February s hit series Vengeance is Hers, Apr 18 27 Revenge is ladled up hot and cold by the inflamed distaff protagonists in BAMcinématek s Vengeance is Hers series, yet another ingenious program from the Kings County repertory redoubt. Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor for BAMcinématek and BAM Rose Cinemas. Brooklyn, NY/Mar 28, 2014 From Friday, April 18 through Sunday, April 27, BAMcinématek presents Back with a Vengeance, a redux of February s highly popular Vengeance is Hers series. The series includes highlights from the first edition, new additions, and rare discoveries for Back With a Vengeance, gathering even more of cinema s most unforgettable heroines and antiheroines as they seize control and take no prisoners. Seen through the eyes of some of the world s greatest directors, these films explore the full gamut of cinematic retribution in all its thrilling, unnerving dimensions. Back by popular demand and opening the series is Colin Higgins Nine to Five (1980 Apr 18 & 19), starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton (in her film debut) as shoulderpad-clad office employees bursting through the glass ceiling. Also returning is Chantal Akerman s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975 Apr 20), a visionary portrait of three days in the life of a widowed mother. Shot with an entirely female crew, the film was hailed by The New York Times as the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema. Carrying on Coffy s legacy from Vengeance is Hers, Pam Grier the best of the blaxploitation heroines of the 70s (Barbara Scharrs, Chicago Reader) stars in Jack Hill s Foxy Brown (1974 Apr 26), masquerading as a prostitute to get her revenge on the crooks who killed her boyfriend. Bette Davis plays another kind of vulpine heroine as an icy matriarch in William Wyler s Southern melodrama The Little Foxes (1941 Apr 24 & 25), their second consecutive collaboration (after 1940 s The Letter) to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Actress, and Director. Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen s rarely-screened experimental film Riddles of the Sphinx (1977 Apr 19) is a special highlight of the series, a cornerstone of feminist film theory and its influence on cinematic form. Back with a Vengeance also includes Barbara Peeters Bury Me an Angel (1972 Apr 23), the first female-helmed biker movie, screening with Sarah Jacobson s underground short film I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993); Michael Curtiz noir-melodrama Flamingo Road (1949 Apr 24), in which an ex-carnival dancer (Joan Crawford, fresh off of her Oscar-winning turn in Mildred Pierce) gets cozy with a posh businessman to exact her revenge; Clint Eastwood s Sudden Impact (1983 Apr 23), featuring the iconic catchphrase go ahead, make my day; and Ousmane Sembène s caustic satire of post-colonial corruption, Xala (1975 Apr 20). Closing the series is François Truffaut s essential tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, The Bride Wore Black (1968 Apr 27). In this seamless marriage of the French new wave and Hollywood tradition (Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times), a new bride (Jeanne Moreau) embarks on a murderous rampage, hunting down the five men who killed her husband on their wedding day, all to the feverish pitch of Bernard Hermann s score.
For press information, please contact: Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / lthomas@bam.org Hannah Thomas at 718.724.8002 / hthomas@bam.org Back with a Vengeance Schedule Fri, Apr 18 2, 4:30pm: Nine to Five Sat, Apr 19 2, 7pm: Riddles of the Sphinx 4:30, 9:15pm: Nine to Five Sun, Apr 20 2, 8:30pm: Xala 4:30pm: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles Wed, Apr 23 4:30, 9:30pm: Sudden Impact 7pm: Bury Me an Angel + I Was a Teenage Serial Killer Thu, Apr 24 4:30, 9:30pm: Flamingo Road 7pm: The Little Foxes Fri, Apr 25 2pm: The Little Foxes Sat, Apr 26 7, 9:15pm: Foxy Brown Sun, Apr 27 4, 9:30pm: The Bride Wore Black Film Descriptions All films in 35mm except where noted. The Bride Wore Black (1968) 107min Directed by François Truffaut. With Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Bouquet. A grieving widow becomes an ice-cold avenging angel, picking off the five men, one by one, who murdered her husband on their wedding day. Truffaut turns each killing by everything from poisoned arak to bow and arrow into a deliciously perverse, black-comic set piece, while the Hitchcockian overtones are gloriously heightened by the delirious Bernard Herrmann score. Sun, Apr 27 at 4, 9:30pm Bury Me an Angel (1972) 89min Directed by Barbara Peeters. With Dixie Peabody, Terry Mace, Clyde Ventura. A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge! screamed the tagline for this female-driven biker flick. Said hellcat Dag (Peabody) grabs her shotgun, revs her engines, and hits the road to inflict some pain on the motorcycle gang who killed her brother. Along the way there are chairbreaking barroom brawls, gratuitous 70s-era nudity, and an encounter with none other than Dan Grizzly Adams Haggerty as a friendly hippie. Screens with I Was a Teenage Serial Killer Directed by Sarah Jacobson (1993) 27min, 16mm. Wed, Apr 23 at 7pm
Flamingo Road (1949) 94min Directed by Michael Curtiz. With Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet. A dancer in a carnival (original tough-girl Crawford) goes from the wrong side of the tracks to posh Flamingo Road, getting mixed up with two men and political corruption along the way. Directed in high- Euro style by Michael Curtiz, this noir-melodrama is sweaty, delirious, and purposefully perverse A strange, strange movie, it casts its own kind of spell (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Thu, Apr 24 at 4:30, 9:30pm Foxy Brown (1974) 94min Directed by Jack Hill. With Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Peter Brown. Pam Grier cemented her status as a super-fly grindhouse icon with this whiz-bang Blaxploitation follow-up to Coffy. Once again, she s got vengeance on the brain as the tough-as-hell Foxy Brown, who packs a pistol in her Afro and poses as a prostitute in order to infiltrate a criminal underworld and hunt down the baddies who murdered her boyfriend. Sat, Apr 26 at 7, 9:15pm I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993) 27min This no-budget underground short film follows a former good girl who decides to take revenge on the sexist pigs of the world. 16mm. Screens with Bury Me an Angel Directed by Barbara Peeters (1972) 107min. Wed, Apr 23 at 7pm Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) 201min Directed by Chantal Akerman. With Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, Jacques Doniol- Valcroze. Three days in the humdrum life of a widowed Belgian mother: in near-real time, we watch as the title character (Seyrig) peels potatoes, runs errands, and entertains the occasional gentleman caller leading up to one of cinema s most shocking endings. Akerman s landmark of slow cinema has been heralded as the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema (The New York Times). Sun, Apr 20 at 4:30pm The Little Foxes (1941) 116min Directed by William Wyler. With Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright. Bette Davis is at her best in this luxuriously mounted adaptation of Lillian Hellman s poison-pen stage play. She plays the mincing matriarch of an aristocratic Southern family who stops at nothing to get the money she wants to build a cotton mill. The venomous proceedings are splendiferously rendered in velvety deep-focus courtesy of Citizen Kane cinematographer Gregg Toland. Thu, Apr 24 at 7pm Fri, Apr 25 at 2pm Nine to Five (1980) 110min Directed by Colin Higgins. With Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman. Three overworked and underpaid female employees (the formidable team of Fonda, Tomlin, and Parton) join forces to take revenge against their chauvinistic boss (Coleman) via a rather half-baked kidnapping scheme. This women s-lib 80s comedy classic features the memorable image of Tomlin as a homicidal Snow White and, of course, Dolly Parton (in her film debut) warbling that indelible theme song. DCP. Fri, Apr 18 at 2, 4:30pm Sat, Apr 19 at 4:30, 9:15pm Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) 92min Directed by Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen. With Dinah Stabb, Merdelle Jordine, Riannon Tise. Pioneering film theorist Laura Mulvey ( Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ) and husband Peter Wollen helmed this landmark of 70s experimental cinema, a radical attempt to forge a new, feminist filmic language. In thirteen distinct chapters it fuses provocative psychoanalytic theories about female representation and spectatorship with arresting imagery and an electronic score by Soft Machine s Mike Ratledge. Digibeta.
Sat, Apr 19 at 2, 7pm Sudden Impact (1983) 117min Directed by Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke. Go ahead, make my day, utters.44 Magnum-toting rogue cop Harry Callahan (Eastwood) in the lean, mean fourth installment of the Dirty Harry series. This time around, everyone s favorite vigilante finds his soul mate in Jennifer (Locke), who is seeking revenge on the men who raped her and her sister. Wed, Apr 23 at 4:30, 9:30pm Xala (1975) 123min Directed by Ousmane Sembène. With Thierno Leye, Seune Samb. A snooty Senegalese businessman (Leye) he drives a Mercedes and drinks water imported from France blames his inability to get it up anymore on his three wives but comeuppance awaits. Equating impotence with colonialist sympathies, Sembène s cunning satire is a comic delight, until it explodes with righteous anger. Cutting, radiant and hilarious Animal Farm applied to African independence (The New York Times). Sun, Apr 20 at 2, 8:30pm About BAMcinématek The four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas (BRC) opened in 1998 to offer Brooklyn audiences alternative and independent films that might not play in the borough otherwise, making BAM the only performing arts center in the country with two mainstage theaters and a multiplex cinema. In July 1999, beginning with a series celebrating the work of Spike Lee, BAMcinématek was born as Brooklyn s only daily, year-round repertory film program. BAMcinématek presents new and rarely seen contemporary films, classics, work by local artists, and festivals of films from around the world, often with special appearances by directors, actors, and other guests. BAMcinématek has not only presented major retrospectives by major filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Manoel de Oliveira, Shohei Imamura, Vincente Minnelli (winning a National Film Critics Circle Award prize for the retrospective), Kaneto Shindo, Luchino Visconti, and William Friedkin, but it has also introduced New York audiences to contemporary artists such as Pedro Costa and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In addition, BAMcinématek programmed the first US retrospectives of directors Arnaud Desplechin, Nicolas Winding Refn, Hong Sang-soo, and, most recently, Andrzej Zulawski. From 2006 to 2008, BAMcinématek partnered with the Sundance Institute and in June 2009 launched BAMcinemaFest, a 16-day festival of new independent films and repertory favorites with 15 NY feature film premieres; the sixth annual BAMcinemaFest runs from June 18 29, 2014. Credits The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor of BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek. Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater is made possible by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust. Pepsi is the official beverage of BAM. Brooklyn Brewery is the preferred beer of BAMcinématek. BAM Rose Cinemas are named in recognition of a major gift in honor of Jonathan F.P. and Diana Calthorpe Rose. BAM Rose Cinemas would also like to acknowledge the generous support of The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Bloomberg, and Time Warner Inc. Additional support for BAMcinématek is provided by the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, The Grodzins Fund, The Liman Foundation and Summit Rock Advisors. Back with a Vengeance is programmed by Nellie Killian and Thomas Beard. Special thanks to Jonathan Howell/ New Yorker Films; San Green; Canyon Films; Joe Reid/20th Century Fox; James King/British Film Institute; Brian Belovarac/Janus Films; Todd Wiener & Steven Hill/UCLA Film & Television Archive; Germaine Simiens/New World Pictures; Kristie Nakamura/Warner Bros. Classics; Chris Chouinard/Park Circus; Jake Perlin/The Film Desk. General Information
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). Both locations house Greenlight Bookstore at BAM kiosks. BAM Fisher, located at 321 Ashland Place, is the newest addition to the BAM campus and houses the Judith and Alan Fishman Space and Rita K. Hillman Studio. BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn s only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, offers a bar menu and dinner entrées prior to BAM Howard Gilman Opera House evening performances. BAMcafé also features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music for BAMcafé Live on Friday and Saturday nights with a bar menu available starting at 6pm. Subway: Train: Bus: Car: 2, 3, 4, 5, Q, B to Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center (2, 3, 4, 5 to Nevins St for Harvey Theater) D, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street; C to Lafayette Avenue Long Island Railroad to Atlantic Terminal Barclays Center B25, B26, B41, B45, B52, B63, B67 all stop within three blocks of BAM Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM For ticket information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.