Dance on Camera 2015
Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 W. 65th St., (212) 875-5601
Friday—Feb. 3
Choreographer and composer Meredith Monk pays a visit to opening night of the annual Dance on Camera festival. The avant-garde dance legend will talk about her 1972 piece “Education of the Girlchild,” which is documented in her new film “Girlchild Diary.” Other documentaries and performance films carry the schedule, exploring dance in popular forms (“American Cheerleader”), celebrating iconic figures (“Dancing Is Living: Benjamin Millepied ”) and veering experimental (“Ghost Line”).
‘Hard To Be a God’
32 Second Ave., (212) 505-5181
Friday—Feb. 8
Pig slop will never be as aesthetically sublime as framed by the late Russian director Aleksei Guerman (1938-2013), whose final testament offers a vigorous wallow in the muck of a parallel Earth where the Renaissance never happened. The science-fiction fable dwells on the moral plight of a time-traveling scientist Don Rumata ( Leonid Yarmolnik, in a commanding performance), who is compelled only to stand by and observe as mankind grovels in the violence and ignorance of a dark age. Gorgeous black-and-white photography illuminates the Hieronymus Bosch-influenced setting. Three earlier Guerman films will be shown in 35mm during and after the theatrical run.
Academy Award-Nominated Short Films 2015
323 Sixth Ave. (212) 924-7771
Friday—Feb. 5
Leading in to the 87th Academy Awards, IFC Center presents its popular annual roundup of the nominees that have enjoyed the least theatrical exposure: the short films. In addition to collections of animated and live-action shorts, there are two programs of nonfiction titles. Two Polish films share a theme of illness and family. “Joanna” is the lyrical story of a dying mother and her child, while in “Our Curse” the filmmakers Tomasz Sliwinski and Maciej Slesicki turn the camera on themselves, as they learn to care for their own infant, who suffers from potentially fatal congenital disorder.
“I Am Suzanne!”
11 W. 53rd St. (212) 708-9400
Through Sunday
Justifiably celebrated for a dream sequence in which its star Lillian Harvey is put on trial by an ensemble of singing puppets, “I Am Suzanne!” is full of surreal interludes. The 1933 romance traces the comeback of a Paris dancer (Harvey’s title character) after an injury sidelines her career and an admiring puppeteer takes her under wing. Rowland V. Lee directs with idiosyncratic flair, with sexy musical routines and bizarre imaginative twists.
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