The National Gallery's summer preservation series this year features work from EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam; the British Film Institute, London; Park Circus, London; Rialto Pictures, New York; Columbia Pictures/Sony; and Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris. With thanks to Agnès Bertola, Nick Varley, Marleen Labijt, Laura Argento, the Italian Cultural Institute, and Leenke Ripmeester.

September 29 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italian master filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007), arguably the most influential director of the postwar era. The National Gallery of Art joins the American Film Institute (AFI) and the Italian Cultural Institute, Washington, in a retrospective of his most distinguished works. The early Italian films, including several shorts and documentaries—loaned through the courtesy of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia–Cineteca Nazionale—are screened at the National Gallery during August and early September, while the English-language classics are shown at the AFI Silver Theatre in September. Fare un film per me è vivere (1996), a documentary that Enrica Antonioni made while her husband was on the set of Beyond the Clouds, screens at the Italian Cultural Institute in September.

The Psychological Landscapes of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) A Centenary Tribute (PDF 735K)
Essay by David Gariff

Artist, filmmaker, curator, and teacher Liza Johnson has exhibited her work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Centre Pompidou, and at major European festival venues such as the Berlinale, Cannes, and Rotterdam. Return, her first feature, was selected for the 2011 Festival de Cannes, and her short South of Ten was screened on the opening night of the 2006 New York Film Festival. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm and the Sundance Institute, and is professor of art at Williams College.

That Aleksei Guerman has completed only a few films merely adds to the mystery surrounding this filmmaker who, though not well known in the West, enjoys a unique reputation in Russia. His fixation on moments of historical consequence for the Soviet Union, coupled with his unconventional approach, has given his work a particular weight. Guerman was born in 1938 in Leningrad to Soviet cultural elite: his father was the distinguished writer Yuri Guerman, and the younger Guerman studied theater and then cinema under Grigory Kozintsev. In spite of recurring problems with authorities, Guerman managed production delays, losses of funding, and the collapse of the Soviet Union to fashion one of the most richly cinematic bodies of work in contemporary culture. His latest, an adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's sci-fi novel Hard to Be a God, will be released this year. This first North American retrospective of Guerman's work is presented in association with Seagull Films and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, with thanks to Lenfilm Studios, Alla Verlotsky, Paul Richer, Scott Foundas, and George Gund III.

Distinguished leader of the Czech new wave and celebrated Hollywood director Miloš Forman (born 1932) turned 80 years old this year. From any perspective, his life has had more than its share of dramatic situations. His parents died in concentration camps, his earliest work was challenged by the authorities, and he was denied admission to drama school, yet managed to graduate from the FAMU film academy and work for Czech television in the 1950s. When barely 30, during the early days of cultural liberalization known as the Prague Spring, he launched his experimental approach to filmmaking under the watch of the communist regime. Yet as the brief but pivotal Prague Spring drew to a close in 1968, Forman was forced to leave for the United States where, somewhat tentatively, he resumed his filmmaking career. This cycle of Forman's work is presented in association with the Czech Film Archive and the Embassy of the Czech Republic, with thanks to Barbara Karpetova, Mary Fetzco, and Michal Bregant.

Discussion by Jonathan Conlin

Forty years have passed since the fabled 1972 BBC John Berger series Ways of Seeing made its television debut. As one reviewer quipped about this iconoclastic and ultimately trendsetting project, "it plays like a Marxist comeback to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation." Historian Jonathan Conlin of the University of Southampton discusses the four half-hour programs that opened up the social history of Western art to new areas of cultural study. (John Berger, 1972, approximately 90 minutes)

Washington premiere

Near the town of Culiacan, Mexico, is a cemetery containing the majestic mausoleums of the drug lords, its silences suppressing the brutal truths about the bodies beneath. Acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Natalia Almada's documentary unfolds through the daily rhythms of the velador (caretaker) who sees it all—the hearses, the families, the politics, the deeply rooted class conflicts. Observational filmmaking at its most artistic, developed through long takes and careful sound recording, El Velador is serene and deferential, "an acknowledgment of the chasm between our lives and theirs"—Elise Nakhnikian. (Natalia Almada, 2011, DCP, Spanish with subtitles, 72 minutes)

Ben Model, piano
Introduction by Andrea Rousova

The seduction of a rural stationmaster's daughter (Ita Rina) by a handsome lothario (Olaf Fjord) is painted in the understated details of Václav Vích's photography and Alexander Hammid's art direction, with a hint of avant-garde élan. Surrealist writer Vítězslav Nezval contributed to the screenplay which, despite a few melodramatic moments (the young woman marries another man, then encounters her seducer years later), is deftly rendered. Andrea Rousova is a curator from the National Gallery, Prague. (Gustav Machatý, 1929, silent with intertitles, 85 minutes)

Produced by the Gallery, this film uses original footage shot in Manhattan and Maine to chronicle Bellows' career. In his works, Bellows captured the rapidly changing face of early 20th-century New York, explored the rocky coast of Maine, and addressed the social and political issues of the day.

Made possible by the HRH Foundation.
The film screens with minor exceptions.