Miramax Gems Free at MoMA

Any modern art museum worth its salt should house a significant collection of the quintessential 20th century art form: the motion picture.

The Museum of Modern Art, one of the world’s finest contemporary art museums, boasts the largest collection of international films in the United States with some 25,000 films in its Film and Media center. MoMA celebrates its 75th anniversary this year not only with a completely new look, but also with a film retrospective celebrating Miramax’s 25th anniversary. The retrospective represents the marriage of two essential New York filmic institutions.

The foyer of MoMA’s Film and Media Center is connected to the main museum by a passageway from its atrium, and looks on to the Sculpture Garden. Upon entrance, a parade of vintage classic movie posters (including La Dolce Vita and La Belle et La Bête) lead to the theaters below, setting the atmosphere for a physical and imaginative journey into film nostalgia.

The underground foyer in front of the theaters houses the installation Projects 82: Mark Dion—Rescue Archaeology, a display of the artifacts discovered when digging up the site of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s, former townhouse to make space for MoMA’s new digs. This eclectic installation heaps authentic mantelpieces with relics and old photographs—a curious and fascinating piece of local history to peruse while waiting for the movie to start.

The theaters are remarkably spacious. The interior features coolly undulating white walls, hinting at Art Deco while maintaining minimalist comfort. Moviegoers are the expected crowd of a modern art museum: hip urbanites and distinguished retirees toting copies of The Village Voice. All in all, the ambience is uniquely New York.

Perhaps best known for cranking out Oscar-winning crowd-pleasers such as Chicago and Shakespeare in Love, Miramax has also consistently produced intellectual auteur films that appeal to serious film connoisseurs like The Piano and In the Bedroom. But what distinguishes Miramax from most other American production companies is its commitment to bringing world cinematic gems to the United States, such as Mexico’s Like Water for Chocolate and Italy’s Cinema Paradiso.

Offered this weekend at the retrospective are some top-quality foreign films that rarely get, but indeed deserve, a showing on the big screen. Winner of the 1993 Palme d’Or, Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine is an epic of sweeping proportions that brings to life the opulence of the Beijing Opera and the gritty turmoil of China amidst five decades of political turmoil.

Its stellar cast dramatizes the conflation of art and life. Gender differences within the context of the classic Beijing Opera story gives the film its title. The two leads are forcefully brought together, then violently ruptured by their tenacious devotion to their art—a dramatic spectacle just as stunning as Gu Changwei’s striking cinematography, which garnered an Oscar nod.

Last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions, will also be screened, rounding off the Oscar-winning hard hitters on Miramax’s foreign film roster this weekend.

Miramax’s tribute to whimsy takes the shape of Princess Mononoke, an epic in its own right. Released by beloved Japanimation guru Hayao Miyazaki in 1997, this film was made entirely using traditional hand-drawn animation techniques. Its organic beauty totally captivates the audience from its first wide-panning frame until its darkly apocalyptic ending.

A fable about man’s imminent destruction of the natural environment, Miyazaki brings Japanese forest-spirits to life amidst lushly painted watercolor backdrops, each scene saturated in vivid colors and each movement rendered to such fine detail that it cannot help but elicit eerie wonder.

Before Richard Gere and J. Lo’s tepid remake, there was Masayuki Suo’s Shall We Dance?, a contemporary Japanese comedy that was a smash success in Asia upon its release in 1996. The film’s innocently comic moments are apt precisely due to its context of Japan’s uptight blue-collar milieu. This original and witty romance will appeal to the same audience as Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, an exuberant and charming ode to love in the big city by Hong Kong’s most famous filmmaker.

Known for his eye for composition and color, Wong filmed Chungking with a hand-held camera to capture the breathless pace of his protagonists and the bewildering city, a tribute to New Wave inspirations Truffaut and Godard.

The MoMA’s yearlong retrospective provides an invaluable opportunity to see 50 Miramax classics as they are meant to be experienced: on the big screen.

And if one possibly needed more convincing to visit MoMA for a highbrow cinematic experience, note that all screenings are free for Columbia students with CuID. So venture out of Kim’s and Loews Cineplex this weekend in exchange for a movie at MoMA, coffee at Terrace 5, shopping at the Design Store, and a stroll around Rockefeller Center. What better way to spend an afternoon in New York, New York?