Dave Kehr
@davekehr.bsky.social
Longtime film critic -- Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, New York Times -- now a curator in the Department of Film of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Opinions are my own.
The schedule is up for THE LADY AT 100, my affectionate variation on the Columbia Pictures retrospective that Ehsan Khoshbakht curated for the Locarno Film Festival last summer. 30 Columbia bangers April 16 through May 24. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...
The Lady at 100: Columbia Classics from the Locarno Film Festival | MoMA
Film series. Apr 16–May 24, 2025. In celebration of Columbia Pictures’ centennial, MoMA and the Locarno Film Festival present a series tracing the evolution of Hollywood’s scrappiest major studio. Fro...
moma.org
Playing daily at MoMA through Feb. 12. The most formally accomplished film you are likely to see this year.
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · last yr.Rob Tregenza’s new film, “The Fishing Place,” offers a clear-eyed look at the evils of the Nazi occupation during the Second World War and the danger of tyrannical fascism overwhelming democratic routine.
Rob Tregenza has worked with Godard, Béla Tarr, Alex Cox … His new film, THE FISHING PLACE, sees its North American premiere tonight @ MoMA — www.criterion.com/current/post...
Manohla Dargis on ‘The Fishing Place,’ a new film by Rob Tregenza (TALKING TO STRANGERS). At MoMA through Feb. 12. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/m...
‘The Fishing Place’ Review: A Village Under Suspicion
Rob Tregenza’s latest film, set in a German-occupied Norwegian village, follows a housekeeper dispatched to spy on a priest.
nytimes.com
Prepared something special at MoMA with @davekehr.bsky.social. Q&As with Jerry Schatzberg this Friday (7 pm) for Puzzle of a Downfall Child & Scarecrow on February 8, 4 pm.
Jerry Schatzberg | MoMA
Film series. Jan 31–Feb 9, 2025. This comprehensive retrospective celebrates Jerry Schatzberg, the photographer-turned-filmmaker whose work captured the raw edges of American life in the 1970s and bey...
moma.org
Ben Kenigsberg on MoMAFilm's restoration-in-progess of Chaplin's WWI comedy SHOULDER ARMS. Screens Thursday at 7 pm. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...
A Charlie Chaplin Movie Like You’ve Never Seen It Before
The Museum of Modern Art has worked on a meticulous restoration of Chaplin’s 1918 film “Shoulder Arms,” screening on Thursday, that likely differs in every frame from what viewers have seen.
nytimes.com
Whenever someone writing about Westerns uses some variation on the phrase, "the white hats vs the black hats," I stop reading. This has never been standard in the genre, even in the serials & B-Westerns. If you said that shit in front of John Ford, he'd throw your ass out of his movie screening:
Released at the height of the 1918 pandemic, Chaplin's SHOULDER ARMS still broke box office records. Here's the Strand boasting that "New Yorkers took their lives in their hands" to pack the theater "all week." New @MoMAFilm resto plays 7pm Thurs.
On this day, it's important to remember that the Oscar statue was likely modeled after Mexican-Kickapoo filmmaker & actor Emilio Fernandez (aka, Gen. Mapache in The Wild Bunch)
Last chance for TSAP's sleeper of the year, today at 4:30.
Dave Kehr@davekehr.bsky.social · 2y agoDavid Schwartz on a real sleeper in this year's @MoMAFilm preservation festival, the unclassifiable ROSAURA AT 10 O'CLOCK. Mario Soffici’s 1958 film begins as a folksy comedy and ends on the far side of noir. 6:30 Mon/4:30 Fri. www.screenslate.com/articles/ros...
A Fox trade ad from 1929, looking back on their last full year of silent films: FOUR SONS and MOTHER MACREE by John Ford, STREET ANGEL and 7th HEAVEN by Frank Borzage, RED DANCE and IN OLD ARIZONA by Raoul Walsh, AIR CIRCUS and FAZIL by Howard Hawks, and FOUR DEVILS by F.W. Murnau. Not too shoddy.
Hoping they'll make some DCPs, and this isn't just a streaming proposition.
Shout! Studios@shoutstudios.bsky.social · 2y agoWe're so excited to share that we've acquired the Golden Princess library! Crown jewels include Woo’s action masterpieces “Hard Boiled,” “The Killer,” the complete “Better Tomorrow” trilogy, “Bullet in the Head,” and “Once a Thief.” variety.com/2025/film/as... via @variety.bsky.social
David Schwartz on a real sleeper in this year's @MoMAFilm preservation festival, the unclassifiable ROSAURA AT 10 O'CLOCK. Mario Soffici’s 1958 film begins as a folksy comedy and ends on the far side of noir. 6:30 Mon/4:30 Fri. www.screenslate.com/articles/ros...
Rosaura at 10 O’Clock
Released the same year as Vertigo (1958), and similarly driven by sexual obsession, psychological delusion, narrative game-playing, and dream logic, the great Argentine director Mario Soffici’s late-c...
screenslate.com
Thanks to Katarina Docalovich for this fine account of Alberto Cavalcanti's rare Brazilian comedy A REAL WOMAN, which screens today and Thurs., Jan 16 in TSAP, @MoMAFilm's annual preservation festival. www.screenslate.com/articles/rea...
TO SAVE AND PROJECT, MoMA's annual festival of preserved films, starts tonight and continues through Jan. 30. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...
A nice BTS still from 7th HEAVEN, with director Frank Borzage horsing around with character actor Albert Gran. An upgraded restoration opens MoMA's preservation festival, TO SAVE AND PROJECT, Thurs. Jan. 9. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...
New NitrateVille Radio episode! Dave Kehr on MoMA's To Save and Project (including Raskolnikow from 1923), Thomas Christensen on the Copenhagen Silent Film Festival, and the authors of Moguls: The Lives and Times of Hollywood Pioneers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck. www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.ph...
Next week brings us To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, programmed this year by the mighty @davekehr.bsky.social. Opening night Jan. 9 is a new restoration of 7TH HEAVEN. I wrote about this Frank Borzage masterpiece in 2018: silentfilm.org/seventh-heav...
Here's a statement from the Executive Committe of FIAF (the International Federation of Film Archives) concerning the recent dismissal of eight senior employees from the Academy Film Archive. Spoiler alert: they are not in favor of it. www.fiafnet.org/pages/Commun...
International Federation of Film Archives
The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) brings together institutions dedicated to rescuing of films both as art and as historical documents
fiafnet.org
We're thrilled to be premiering our restoration of Pittsburgh filmmaker Billy Jackson's short, WE ARE UNIVERSAL, at To Save and Project next year! A little clip from the film, which features Black artists and thinkers like late greats Nikki Giovanni and Quincy Jones:
Dave Kehr@davekehr.bsky.social · 2y agoThe schedule is up for MoMA's annual festival of film preservation, TO SAVE AND PROJECT. Organized by yours truly this year, with the invaluable help of Cindi Rowell. Starts Jan. 9 with our upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's silent masterpiece, 7th HEAVEN. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...
The schedule is up for MoMA's annual festival of film preservation, TO SAVE AND PROJECT. Organized by yours truly this year, with the invaluable help of Cindi Rowell. Starts Jan. 9 with our upgraded restoration of Frank Borzage's silent masterpiece, 7th HEAVEN. www.moma.org/calendar/fil...
To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation | MoMA
Film series. Jan 9–30, 2025. Our annual To Save and Project festival returns in 2025 with a rich selection of newly restored treasures from archives around the world. This year’s program spans nearly ...
moma.org
Francis Ford (mysterious older brother of John Ford) loved mixing his real life into his films. In this jewel thief caper (1913, 1917 reissue), the detectives caught him by matching his ring to his monographed cane. Ford's grandson has the ring.
This is cool: The 35mm camera that Eduard Tissé used to shoot Sergei Eisenstein's films from STRIKE to ALEXANDER NEVSKY has been donated to the Cinematheque Française by Tissé's granddaughter, Eleanora.
It isn't unusual for important late career work to be ignored or misunderstood, but it's still painful to watch what's happening to Robert Zemeckis's HERE, a film of great formal invention and emotional power. It's screening at MoMA Dec. 29; here's a link to my blurb. www.moma.org/calendar/eve...
Here. 2024. Directed by Robert Zemeckis | MoMA
Here. 2024. USA. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay by Zemeckis, Eric Roth, based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire. With Tom Hanks, Robin Wright. DCP courtesy Sony Pictures. 104 min. Rober...
moma.org
They aren't promoting it for some reason, but that is indeed the newly restored, substantially different pre-censorship version of Frank Borzage's 1933 MAN'S CASTLE on the Criterion Channel -- a masterpiece now even masterpiecier. @criterionchannl www.criterionchannel.com/pre-code-col...
Man’s Castle - Season 1 - The Criterion Channel
Directed by Frank Borzage • 1933 • United States Starring Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young, Marjorie Rambeau Finding her homeless and half-starved, happy-go-lucky wanderer Bill (Spencer Tracy) takes in T...
criterionchannel.com