Jacob Burns

A JBFC Spotlight Production
All proceeds will benefit JBFC educational programs and outreach.

Tamara Rabil began taking classes at the JBFC’s Media Arts Lab as soon as it opened, and she hasn’t stopped since, completing 17 courses over nine semesters. Drawing on personal experience and skills learned at the Lab, Tamara cowrote and produced Unburden, the dramatic story of a mother haunted by the memory of a tragic accident who’s pushed into new territory by her daughter’s persistent questions.

Check out this Q&A video with Tamara Rabil on our blog!

RECEPTION and Q&A producer/co-writer Tamara Rabil, filmmaker Andrew Young, producer Susan Todd, co-writer Billy Shebar.

“Funny, touching, and cliff-hangingly suspenseful.” (Daily Telegraph)

It’s 1974 and the corridors of government ring with the sounds of infighting and backbiting as Britain’s political parties battle to change the future of the nation—whatever it takes. Biting and energetic, This House, directed by James Graham, has enjoyed two sell-out runs at the National Theatre.

Meet the This House cast
This House cast members, including Charles Edwards, Reece Dinsdale and Vincent Franklin, describe how it feels to be part of such a large ensemble cast, and which of the events depicted in the play they found the most surprising. 

Run time is approximately 180 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.

"Shot in black-and-white video that lends this New York odyssey a scrappy feel, Frances Ha foregrounds a characteristically endearing Greta Gerwig performance defined by her usual onscreen combination of high energy wit and awkward self-effacement." (Eric Kohn, Indiewire.com)

Frances Ha is a modern comic fable that explores adjusting to life in the post-college years. The film reteams the always charming Greta Gerwig (Damsels in Distress, To Rome with Love) with filmmaker Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) and smartly deals with issues of friendship, class, ambition, failure, and redemption

Q&A Noah Baumbach with NY Times critic Janet Maslin

"Ai Weiwei is a crucial figure of East-West cultural communication and contemporary history, whose middle finger extended at the centers of power stands for a rising tide of global discontent." (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com)

Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous international artist and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai uses art and social media to express himself—and in response, the authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention. This award-winning inside story of a dissident for the digital age is a powerful exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

Q&A filmmaker Alison Klayman

“A ready and vital voice in cinema” —Sean Penn

“I can’t wait to share the excitement of what’s going on down in Jacmel with the JBFC.”- Jonathan Demme

Discover the work of Haiti’s rising young filmmakers, and the extraordinary organization that is allowing them to make their voices heard. Ciné Institute provides Haitian youth with film education, training, employment opportunities and production support, working to build a local audiovisual industry and new creative economy. In a country where only one percent of young people attend college, the Institute’s Haitian and international faculty teaches a two-year university-level curriculum that prepares students for a career and a way to pull themselves out of poverty. 

FILM and DISCUSSION Join us for a look at Ciné Institute short films, Suze-Anne (dir. Amiral J.C. Gaspard) and Anita (dir. Ricardo Traquilin) and a conversation with Ciné Institute Director David Belle and Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme.

An All-Jobim Bossa Nova Night with Westchester Jazz Orchestra septet!

FILM: THE HOUSE OF TOM—MUNDO, MONDE, MONDO A lyrical and intimate documentary on Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, best known in the US for creating the 1960s bossa nova craze with tunes like “Girl from Ipanema.” The “house” of the title is really three places “Tom” Jobim called home: Rio de Janeiro, New York City, where he maintained a small apartment, and his property in the Brazilian countryside. Directed by his widow, an accomplished photographer, the film features Jobim playing piano, reading poetry, and sharing tender moments at home with family and friends.

PERFORMANCE: A Westchester Jazz Orchestra septet plays an all-Jobim program. Featuring Marvin Stamm (trumpet), Jay Brandford (alto saxophone and flute), Artistic Director Mike Holober (piano), Mike McGuirk (bass), Andy Watson (drums), and special guests Paul Meyers (guitar) and Rogerio Boccato (percussion).

In 2003 filmmaker Safinez Bousbia heard about a wildly popular Jewish-Muslim musical group that had flourished in the Algiers casbah in the 1950s but was torn apart by history. Intrigued, Bousbia combed France and Algeria, tracking down the surviving members, and they joyously reunited. Their new orchestra, called El Gusto (the Good Mood), has performed and recorded their beloved chaabi music to much acclaim. This glorious, moving documentary reveals the whole story.

Followed by LIVE MUSIC and a reception Enjoy Arab music performed by Zafer Tawil and a tarab ensemble! Jerusalem-born Tawil is an accomplished Palestinian musician who performs and teaches across the US and in the Middle East. His areas of expertise include the oud, violin, qanun, and Arab percussion.

Wine generously donated by Wine Enthusiast.

US PREMIERES

Istislam 
A documentary look at the Muslim Brotherhood, which has come to power in Egypt. What does it preach? How does it operate? What does it demand? Follow the lives of four young men and women as they learn about sex, marriage, and gender roles at a Brotherhood charity. How to build a home? Istislam, which means “submission,” is one solution. • Mona El-Naggar. 2013. 46 m. PG. Egypt/US, in Arabic with subtitles.

AND

Sanctity
Shot in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, this film centers on a young pregnant widow mourning the death of her husband and going to extremes to protect her unborn child from her exploitative brother-in-law. Starring, written, and directed by Ahd, the first Saudi woman to study film acting and filmmaking in the US.
• Ahd. 2013. 37 m. NR. Saudi Arabia, in Arabic with subtitles.

Q&A Istislam filmmaker Mona El-Naggar, an Egyptian journalist and a former reporter for the New York Times in Cairo. This is her first film.

Jonathan Demme: A riveting tone-poem of a film that I have loved and been haunted by since first seeing it in London in the 1960s. Its portrayal of an Egyptian family that has subsisted for generations by selling artifacts removed from ancient tombs is an unlikely gateway into a motion picture of rich mood and visual texture. Not a thriller, The Night of Counting the Years is rather a cinematic state of mind, a rare treasure tracked down for us by the indefatigable sleuths of the JBFC programming unit.

Q&A w/ Jonathan Demme

This riveting, splendidly made film is set in Casablanca’s slums. A young boy, Yachine, fruitlessly tries one scheme after another to raise himself from his hopeless surroundings. When his brother comes home from prison as an Islamic fundamentalist, he persuades Yachine and his friends to join their “brothers,” and they begin their physical and mental preparation to become martyrs. Horses of God was inspired by the May 2003 suicide attacks in Casablanca. It competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Q&A filmmaker Nabil Ayouch and host/Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme Filmmaker Nabil Ayouch will be in residence at the JBFC during this week, attending screenings and participating in our education programs.

FILM: ERROLL GARNER NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU READ Jazz legend Erroll Garner composed sparkling melodies and played piano with liquid ease. “You could hear the smile in his touch,” said pianist George Shearing. Entirely self-taught, Garner gained international fame with “Misty,” Johnny Mathis’s signature song, followed by the album Concert by the Sea, which made him the biggest-selling Columbia Records jazz artist of his time. This captivating documentary—featuring archival footage of Garner’s virtuosic playing and interviews with Woody Allen, Ahmad Jamal, Dick Hyman, and other musicians and family—brings Garner’s story to the big screen for the first time.

PERFORMANCE: The Konrad Paszkudzki Trio performs tunes by Garner and other composers he recorded. The trio released its debut US album in March and can be heard on weekends at 54 Below in New York when they’re not on tour.

“A mesmerizing look behind the curtain.” (LA Times)

This must-see film for followers of contemporary painting is a gorgeously rendered presentation of Richter’s creative process, along with conversations with his critics, collaborators, curators, and gallery owners. It gives an unprecedented perspective on the 79-year-old artist as he uses fat brushes and a massive squeegee to apply (and scrape off) layer after layer of brightly colored paint to make his large-scale canvases, sometimes scrapping his work to start over.

INTRODUCTION Author Mason Currey will introduce the screening. Currey’s book about the work habit of artists, Daily Rituals, will be on sale during the reception.
RECEPTION Join us for a light reception with wine generously donated by Wine Enthusiast.

Screenings of Gerhard Richter Painting and Hans Richter: Everything Turns—Everything Revolves are sponsored by the Westchester Community Foundation and made possible through The Rudyard and Emanuella Reimss Fund, dedicated to promoting Germanic culture in Westchester County. These screenings are part of the series Masters of German Culture, highlighting great works by and about German artists.

“I loved every minute.” (The Times, London)

Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren and writer Peter Morgan reunite after their collaboration on the film The Queen. And this time Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) is directing. This new play imagines what
goes on in the queen’s very private no-holds-barred weekly meetings with the prime minister.

Run time is approximately 180 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.

Tickets: $20 (members), $30 (nonmembers) 

No one who’s seen Jazz on a Summer’s Day can forget the woman who took the stage in feathered hat and white gloves to serve up a mean “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Anita O’Day, a master of rhythmic exhibitionism, was one of the greatest jazz singers of all time. She also led the proverbial “jazz life” of lonely nights and years of drugs, booze, and bad associates. But as O’Day once said, “That’s the way it went down.” All of it—from stunning performances with the likes of Gene Krupa and Louis Armstrong to frank talk of addiction—is captured in this swinging documentary.

Q&A Thomas Staudter has been writing about music for over 30 years, and his work has appeared in Downbeat and other publications. He will be joined by award-winning singer and recording artist Alexis Cole, who has been called “one of the great voices of today.”

“I wanted to make a piece that was heroic and eternal in its nature, but was at its base an impossibility.” (James Grashow)

Artist James Grashow, with a long history of building sculptures from unconventional media, painstakingly planned the creation of his next project: a colossal Trevi Fountain made out of cardboard. This intimate film shows his powerful Neptune and charging horses taking shape in the studio and disintegrating outdoors in the elements at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

Q&A w/filmmaker Olympia Stone (The Collector), artist James Grashow and Richard Klein, Aldrich Museum Exhibitions Director

Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. This intensely personal profile of a young homeless undocumented immigrant has turned heads wherever it’s been shown. It’s an immensely moving and inspiring story about the transformative power of art and the new face of homelessness in America: children.

DISCUSSION Westchester Children’s Association Executive Director Cora Greenberg and Neighbors Link Executive Director Carola Bracco. Join us for a reception following the discussion.

Community Matters is a series dedicated to generating discussion and activism around topics that affect us locally, including health, environment, education, housing, and energy. Sponsored by the Westchester Community Foundation.

“I have always used film as a free and creative medium, equal in every respect to the other arts.” (Hans Richter)

Dadaist provocateur, surrealist painter, and pioneering filmmaker, Hans Richter was a major force in 20th century art. At the forefront of the German avant-garde, he fled to the US in 1941, becoming director of City College’s department of documentary production. There, he was prophet to a generation of experimental filmmakers. Featuring interviews with colleagues, footage from Richter’s revolutionary films, and recently discovered audiotapes of Richter himself.

Q&A filmmaker Dave Davidson, who will also show two re-scored short films by Richter, Filmstudie and Ghosts Before Breakfast

Screenings of Gerhard Richter Painting and Hans Richter: Everything Turns—Everything Revolves are sponsored by the Westchester Community Foundation and made possible through The Rudyard and Emanuella Reimss Fund, dedicated to promoting Germanic culture in Westchester County. These screenings are part of the series Masters of German Culture, highlighting great works by and about German artists.

Visit the world’s greatest art exhibitions without leaving the JBFC! Munch 150 presents Oslo’s once-in-a-lifetime Edvard Munch retrospective as Norway celebrates the 150th anniversary of his birth. Also offering behind-the-scenes views, visits to key Norwegian sites, and interviews with experts, this event reveals the full range of the work created by the great artist most people know only as the painter of The Scream.