Norman Lear not only knew about television, but the late TV icon was also an influential art collector along with his wife of 37 years, Lyn Davis Lear.
And now, several pieces from the Lears’ art collection will hit the Christie’s auction block, including David Hockney’s 1967 “A Lawn Being Sprinkled.” When the “All in the Family” creator bought the work in 1978 for $64,000, it marked the highest price paid for a piece by the British artist. Christie’s estimates it will bring in $25-$35 million after debuting during the 20th Century Evening Sale in New York City on May 16. “I remember when I first met Norman, he had a gallery,” Lyn Davis Lear told me. “He loved showing people art.”
David Hockney’s “A Lawn Being Sprinkled.”
Norman Lear was introduced to the local Los Angeles art scene in the 1970s by agent-turned-television-producer Richard “Dick” Dorso. “They were great friends...
And now, several pieces from the Lears’ art collection will hit the Christie’s auction block, including David Hockney’s 1967 “A Lawn Being Sprinkled.” When the “All in the Family” creator bought the work in 1978 for $64,000, it marked the highest price paid for a piece by the British artist. Christie’s estimates it will bring in $25-$35 million after debuting during the 20th Century Evening Sale in New York City on May 16. “I remember when I first met Norman, he had a gallery,” Lyn Davis Lear told me. “He loved showing people art.”
David Hockney’s “A Lawn Being Sprinkled.”
Norman Lear was introduced to the local Los Angeles art scene in the 1970s by agent-turned-television-producer Richard “Dick” Dorso. “They were great friends...
- 5/14/2024
- by Marc Malkin
- Variety Film + TV
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
The films of Kijū Yoshida are now playing in a massive retrospective. Read our piece on him here.
Roxy Cinema
A five-film retrospective of Matthew Modine (read my interview here) takes place this weekend, including work by Abel Ferrara, Alan Rudolph, and the man himself.
Museum of the Moving Image
A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective begins, with the director present on Friday and Saturday; Robert Altman’s Popeye plays on 35mm this Saturday and Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective begins, this weekend bringing Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner programs run in Essential Cinema; a Hollis Frampton retrospective is also underway.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration,...
Film at Lincoln Center
The films of Kijū Yoshida are now playing in a massive retrospective. Read our piece on him here.
Roxy Cinema
A five-film retrospective of Matthew Modine (read my interview here) takes place this weekend, including work by Abel Ferrara, Alan Rudolph, and the man himself.
Museum of the Moving Image
A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective begins, with the director present on Friday and Saturday; Robert Altman’s Popeye plays on 35mm this Saturday and Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective begins, this weekend bringing Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner programs run in Essential Cinema; a Hollis Frampton retrospective is also underway.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration,...
- 12/1/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
An extinction event has brought an end to Phil Tippett’s dinosaur days.
The legendary “Star Wars” and “Jurassic Park” VFX artist who helped bring George Lucas’ galactic menagerie to life, who gave teeth to Steven Spielberg’s T. Rex, is preparing to unveil his greatest work, while leaving “Hollywood filmmaking” in the Mesozoic-view mirror.
For the last 30 years, Tippett has been toiling away at “Mad God,” an experimental animation set in a “ghost world of mankind.” The film was funded in large part by a Kickstarter campaign, has no describable plot, and almost drove Tippett insane.
A final cut will have its world premiere next week at the Locarno Film Festival, where Tippett will pick up a lifetime achievement award and introduce two standout titles (namely “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers”) from his iconic collaboration with director Paul Verhoeven.
Variety caught up with Tippett to discuss his relationship with Verhoeven,...
The legendary “Star Wars” and “Jurassic Park” VFX artist who helped bring George Lucas’ galactic menagerie to life, who gave teeth to Steven Spielberg’s T. Rex, is preparing to unveil his greatest work, while leaving “Hollywood filmmaking” in the Mesozoic-view mirror.
For the last 30 years, Tippett has been toiling away at “Mad God,” an experimental animation set in a “ghost world of mankind.” The film was funded in large part by a Kickstarter campaign, has no describable plot, and almost drove Tippett insane.
A final cut will have its world premiere next week at the Locarno Film Festival, where Tippett will pick up a lifetime achievement award and introduce two standout titles (namely “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers”) from his iconic collaboration with director Paul Verhoeven.
Variety caught up with Tippett to discuss his relationship with Verhoeven,...
- 7/29/2021
- by Will Thorne
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe cover for the new issue of Cahiers du Cinema is a patchwork tribute to the erratic year of 2020. Frederick Wiseman's City Hall also tops the Cahiers list of this year's top ten films. Actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, best known for co-writing Dario Argento's Suspiria and appearing in a number of Argento's Giallo classics like Deep Red and Inferno, has died. Recommended VIEWINGAnthology Film Archives is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a showcase of video tributes from a wide range of artists, filmmakers, and scholars, including Bette Gordon, Abel Ferrara, Nathaniel Dorsky, and Michael Snow. They've also made available a free recreation of their inaugural program from November 30, 1970, featuring films by Georges Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith. The curators of the Museum of Modern Art and the Berlinale...
- 12/3/2020
- MUBI
As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.When you look through the IMDb entries for the early releases of the Fox Film Corporation (recommended: it's dispiriting and boggling at once: how many Buck Jones and Tom Mix westerns did the world need—and how many survive?) it's striking how many potentially interesting ones are unheard-of and impossible for the ordinary cinephile to see. My mouth waters in particular at the many, many Roy William Neill silents: Neill was a terrific, expressive filmmaker, a journeyman maybe, but a very talented one, best known today...
- 1/22/2020
- MUBI
Looking back today at the legacy of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) as a pioneer of American independent filmmaking, we like to think that he paved the way for us to enjoy our current freedom as spectators. When he was arrested for screening Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” in New York City in March 1964, along with Ken Jacobs and Florence Karpf, we tend to suppose that this was eventually to ensure that we wouldn’t be penalized for watching the film today.
But maybe we haven’t advanced quite as far in our freedom and sophistication as we like to suppose. Such, at any rate, was my thought when I found myself censored on Facebook last week and banned from posting anything there for 24 hours when I tried to post the following two images:
I assume it was the second image rather than the first that led to the censorship, but given...
But maybe we haven’t advanced quite as far in our freedom and sophistication as we like to suppose. Such, at any rate, was my thought when I found myself censored on Facebook last week and banned from posting anything there for 24 hours when I tried to post the following two images:
I assume it was the second image rather than the first that led to the censorship, but given...
- 2/7/2019
- by Jonathan Rosenbaum
- Indiewire
On November 30, 1970, New York City’s Anthology Film Archives opened its doors as the first ever “museum of film” at its original location at 425 Lafayette Street. That was an invitation-only Opening Night event with the first public screening occurring the following night, December 1.
A previous article on the Underground Film Journal uncovered the first five nights of screenings at the Anthology, and the reaction in the NYC press to this unique movie theater.
Digging around in the digital archives of the Village Voice, the Journal has been able to piece together most of the screening lineups for the month of December. Unfortunately, these archives do not contain issues for the last week of November nor the first week of December, so we do not have screening info for December 5-9.
However, below are the screenings for December 10-30. The Anthology’s original plan was to have three screenings every night...
A previous article on the Underground Film Journal uncovered the first five nights of screenings at the Anthology, and the reaction in the NYC press to this unique movie theater.
Digging around in the digital archives of the Village Voice, the Journal has been able to piece together most of the screening lineups for the month of December. Unfortunately, these archives do not contain issues for the last week of November nor the first week of December, so we do not have screening info for December 5-9.
However, below are the screenings for December 10-30. The Anthology’s original plan was to have three screenings every night...
- 8/5/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
After years of planning, the Anthology Film Archives first opened its doors in New York City towards the end of 1970. That opening came with great interest and fascination of how the world’s first “museum of film” was going to operate like no other theater before it.
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
- 6/2/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This is Part Two in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their screening series. You can read Part One here.
Formed in 1983, the Experimental Film Coalition started holding regular monthly screenings starting in 1984. The screenings brought to Chicago the work of independent, experimental filmmakers across the country, as well as screening local work.
Screenings were held at the Randolph Street Gallery, an alternative performance and exhibition space located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. The Gallery eventually closed down in 1998 and donated their archives to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; which exhibits some of the Coalition’s flyers on their website.
Below is a sample of screening information culled from those archives, listed in chronological order:
1984
March 23
2 Razor Blades, dir. Paul Sharits
Make Me Psychic, dir. Sally Cruikshank
Unsere Afrikareise, dir. Peter Kubelka
Roslyn Romance, dir. Bruce Baillie
Musical Poster #1, dir. Len Lye
April 27
Rainbow Dance,...
Formed in 1983, the Experimental Film Coalition started holding regular monthly screenings starting in 1984. The screenings brought to Chicago the work of independent, experimental filmmakers across the country, as well as screening local work.
Screenings were held at the Randolph Street Gallery, an alternative performance and exhibition space located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. The Gallery eventually closed down in 1998 and donated their archives to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; which exhibits some of the Coalition’s flyers on their website.
Below is a sample of screening information culled from those archives, listed in chronological order:
1984
March 23
2 Razor Blades, dir. Paul Sharits
Make Me Psychic, dir. Sally Cruikshank
Unsere Afrikareise, dir. Peter Kubelka
Roslyn Romance, dir. Bruce Baillie
Musical Poster #1, dir. Len Lye
April 27
Rainbow Dance,...
- 12/17/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
It’s been an interesting run-up to the Toronto International Film Festival, and in terms of the survival of the species, the good ol’ U.S.A. has been something of a race to the bottom. What would do us in first: violent neo-Nazis whose activities are almost explicitly condoned by the Klansman In Chief? Or a 1,000-year weather event on the Gulf Coast whose magnitude surely owes something to global climate change, and whose aftermath of collapsing dams and exploding chemical factories has everything to do with systematic neglect?Given the state of things down here, who wouldn’t want to repair to Canada for some challenging cinema? As always, the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) is the place to be in September, and Wavelengths once again features the best of the fest. This is because the films selected for Wavelengths are the opposite of escapism. Whether they tackle...
- 9/7/2017
- MUBI
Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday morning. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?” can be found at the end of this post.)
At long last, the Alamo Drafthouse is finally opening in Brooklyn this Friday, complementing a new wave of New York City cinemas that already includes the Metrograph, the Nitehawk (which will soon open another location), and the iPic chain, and is scheduled to add several more exciting venues 2017. With that exciting news in mind, we’ve put forward the following question to our panel of critics: What is the best movie theater that you have ever been to, and what made it so special?
Miriam Bale (@mimbale), Freelance
The Castro Theater in San Francisco is obviously the best. See anything there and you’ll know why.
At long last, the Alamo Drafthouse is finally opening in Brooklyn this Friday, complementing a new wave of New York City cinemas that already includes the Metrograph, the Nitehawk (which will soon open another location), and the iPic chain, and is scheduled to add several more exciting venues 2017. With that exciting news in mind, we’ve put forward the following question to our panel of critics: What is the best movie theater that you have ever been to, and what made it so special?
Miriam Bale (@mimbale), Freelance
The Castro Theater in San Francisco is obviously the best. See anything there and you’ll know why.
- 10/24/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music. Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...
- 10/6/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
- 1/13/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
"Openly, contentedly delighted with how our own dreams can appall us, and how close movies are to that appalling dreaminess," Luis Buñuel "may have been the greatest filmmaker of the medium's first century," suggests Michael Atkinson in the Boston Phoenix. "Had any filmmaker realized so acutely the unconscious torque inherent in cinema? Certainly among the 12 or so unassailable masters of the medium, he is the wittiest, the most philosophically imaginative, and the most formally unceremonious. His career stretched nearly 50 years, culminating amid what could be thought of as the death throes of international art cinema; his last masterpiece That Obscure Object of Desire hitting the open air the same year Star Wars forever wrecked the popular market and turned moviegoing into a experience of childish spinal emergency…. It's just as well: from the beginning Buñuel stood outside of fashion, and just as his flirtation with Surrealist dogma quickly became an...
- 6/22/2011
- MUBI
CinemaSpace is presenting Lewis Klahr: Hieroglyphs of Lost Time with Lewis Klahr himself present, on Wednesday, May 18th and Thursday, May 19th at 7:00pm in the Segal Centre CinemaSpace here in Montreal.
The Acclaimed collage artist will be making his first appearance in Montreal with two programs featuring many of his most celebrated cut-out animations in 16mm and video, including the complete epic series Engram Sepals (Melodramas 1994-2000) and stunningly beautiful Daylight Moon. This two-day event offers a rare opportunity to survey Klahr’s prolific career as a filmmaker whose poetic sensibility parallels that of artists such as Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner and Robert Rauschenberg.
-
Called “the reigning proponent of cut and paste” by J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, master collagist Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic experimental films and cut-out animations which have screened extensively in the...
The Acclaimed collage artist will be making his first appearance in Montreal with two programs featuring many of his most celebrated cut-out animations in 16mm and video, including the complete epic series Engram Sepals (Melodramas 1994-2000) and stunningly beautiful Daylight Moon. This two-day event offers a rare opportunity to survey Klahr’s prolific career as a filmmaker whose poetic sensibility parallels that of artists such as Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner and Robert Rauschenberg.
-
Called “the reigning proponent of cut and paste” by J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, master collagist Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic experimental films and cut-out animations which have screened extensively in the...
- 4/27/2011
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Above: Zoulikha Bouabdellah's Al Attlal (Ruines), left, and Pierre Léon's À la barbe d'Ivan, right.
Nicole Brenez has curated two programs of new work from the French avant-garde for this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema 2011 in New York; below she has offered her program notes in French. Program one (on Saturday) concentrates on filmmakers reappropriating images; program two (Sunday) is the new feature by Ange Leccia, Nuit bleue. Below, I’ve translated Brenez’s extended appreciation of Leccia and Nuit bleue; as usual, I’ve tried to stay faithful to the sound and rhythm of the original where possible. Beneath the translated extract you'll find the full article by Ms. Brenez in its original French. —David Phelps
***
…Although Ange Leccia has also practiced re-appropriating images (especially Jean Luc-Godard’s) in his installations and his films, Nuit bleuetakes up a different aesthetic vein, one rich with a long tradition of the French avant-garde.
Nicole Brenez has curated two programs of new work from the French avant-garde for this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema 2011 in New York; below she has offered her program notes in French. Program one (on Saturday) concentrates on filmmakers reappropriating images; program two (Sunday) is the new feature by Ange Leccia, Nuit bleue. Below, I’ve translated Brenez’s extended appreciation of Leccia and Nuit bleue; as usual, I’ve tried to stay faithful to the sound and rhythm of the original where possible. Beneath the translated extract you'll find the full article by Ms. Brenez in its original French. —David Phelps
***
…Although Ange Leccia has also practiced re-appropriating images (especially Jean Luc-Godard’s) in his installations and his films, Nuit bleuetakes up a different aesthetic vein, one rich with a long tradition of the French avant-garde.
- 3/19/2011
- MUBI
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Movieheads who like to consider themselves as alternative still often shrink from the demands and new thinking required of even the oldest and most conventional "avant-garde" film, a situation that the ubiquity of the DVD format hasn't done very much to mitigate. So be it: the hardy envelope-pushers in the crowd have enjoyed unforeseen access to the quasi-genre's history by now (the DVD menu format is a peerless mode of presentation for motley underground shorts, to be surpassed only, I suppose, once quality streaming-tube clips can be curated and thrown onto our mega TVs instead of our laptops). If you count Image's "Unseen Cinema" mega omnibus and Facets' "The Lawrence Jordan Album" among your prized media possessions as I do, then the good work of the National Film Preservation Foundation will already be on your radar: their robust, elaborately documented orphan-film collections (newsreels, shorts, home movies, etc.) have often featured avant-gardisms,...
- 4/7/2009
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.