Jacob Burns

"This film flies when Mr. Chi is on screen. When he is on stage, spinning and leaping to the strains of magnificent music, the film soars." (Wall Street Journal)

Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy) crafts an inspiring tale based on the the autobiography by Li Cunxin, who was plucked at age 11 from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. When Li falls in love with an American woman, a remarkable chain of events leads to his defection from Communist China and emergence as an elite dancer on the worldwide stage. Mao's Last Dancer poignantly captures the struggles, triumphs, and intoxicating effects of first love and celebrity amid the pain of exile.

"Duvall’s acting turns magical. Scary, touching, and full of grace." (Entertainment Weekly)

Based on a 1938 true story, Get Low features a majestic performance by Robert Duvall as Felix Bush, a hermit in the Tennessee backwoods who decides it is time to plan his funeral while he’s still alive. But his funeral will not be any old macabre occasion. Organized by a sleazy local undertaker (Bill Murray) and his sidekick (Lucas Black), no one is quite sure just what Felix has planned for this strange ritual.

"The movie is stunningly intelligent; the concluding passages... are frightening and, finally, very moving." (The New Yorker)

In 1981, KGB Colonel Sergei Grigoriev, disenchanted with what the Communist ideal has become, decides he is going to change the world by dumping national secrets into the lap of a French engineer working in Moscow. As the two men form an unlikely, strained relationship, they risk everything to deliver classified information to the West, hoping to topple the old order of the Soviet Union. This true story constitutes one of the most important Cold War espionage operations known to date.

"So an 80-year quest that ranged over three continents seems finally to be over. The cumulative result is a version of Metropolis whose tone and focus have been changed. The balance of the story has been given back." (New York Times)

Finding the original version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has long been one of the holy grails of cinema. One of the universally acknowledged masterpieces of the silent film canon, it had not been seen in full since its 1927 Berlin premiere, when a great deal of its footage was removed, and, until recently, presumed destroyed. However, a chance discovery by an Argentine film archivist at the Museo del Cine has unearthed the complete version of Lang's vision, and the Jacob Burns Film Center is pleased to announce a weeklong run of the digital restoration, with an opening night of the wonderful Alloy Orchestra to revive one of the great films of the silent era.

LIVE PERFORMANCE Sept. 17, 7:00 pm: The Alloy Orchestra will perform a live musical accompaniment to the restored Metropolis. Alloy has been lauded as "the best in the world at accompanying silent films" by Roger Ebert, and has performed the world over—from the Louvre to Lincoln Center.

LIVE PERFORMANCE Sept. 22, 7:00 pm: Ben Model will perform a live piano accompaniment. Model has been playing scores for silent films at the Burns, the Museum of Modern Art, and other venues since 1984.

Sponsored by the Westchester Community Foundation and made possible through The Rudyard and Emanuella Reimss Fund, which is dedicated to promoting Germanic culture in Westchester County.