Museum Of The Moving Image Pinewood Dialogues

Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee and his longtime collaborator James Schamus have over the course of fifteen years made films including the current Lust, Caution (2007); Brokeback Mountain (2005); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); Ride with the Devil (1999); The Ice Storm (1997); Sense and Sensibility (1995); Eat Drink Man Woman (1994); and The Wedding Banquet (1993). This evening at the Times Center included clips from their movies, a conversation, and an introduction by three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Contender (2000), The Crucible (1996), Nixon (1995)) who appeared in Lee's The Ice Storm.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh collaborated on Margot at the Wedding. The film, which has the intimate feel of a home movie yet is razor-sharp in its portrayal of family pathology, stars Leigh and Nicole Kidman as estranged sisters who try to patch up their relationship during a family celebration. In this discussion, following a preview screening, Baumbach and Leigh—who are married—talked about their working relationship and about the relationship between art and life. They also discussed how the production process and style of Eric Rohmer's films served as inspiration for Margot at the Wedding.

Sidney Lumet's critically acclaimed 2007 film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a dark family comedy and crime drama, was the latest triumph in a remarkable career as a film director that began 50 years earlier with 12 Angry Men and includes such classics as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network. This tribute evening included remarks by the three stars of Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Ethan Hawke, Marissa Tomei, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a lively conversation with Lumet about his many collaborations with great actors and his approach to filmmaking.

In the powerful drama Things We Lost in the Fire, Halle Berry gives a raw performance as the mother of two young children who is forced to cope with the sudden death of her husband. Berry, who won an Academy Award for Monster's Ball, has had an adventurous and successful career, moving between commercial blockbusters and ambitious smaller films. In this discussion, following a preview screening of Things We Lost in the Fire, Berry talks about her career and her acting process, particularly the intimate style that Danish director Susanne Bier created for the film.

The prolific and legendary actor Michael Caine starred in both the 2007 film version of Sleuth (opposite Jude Law) and the 1972 version (opposite Laurence Olivier). In the new version, an actors' tour de force directed by Kenneth Branagh and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter, Caine took the role originally played by Olivier. A riveting tale of deception and deadly games, this thriller about an aging crime novelist and a young actor in love with the same woman is essentially about the mysteries of acting and writing. In this discussion, Branagh and Caine discussed their collaboration after a special preview screening.

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises is an intense psychological thriller about a mysterious Russian immigrant tied to a London crime family. With its thematic focus on personal and cultural identity, and its exploration of violence and the male psyche, Eastern Promises makes a fascinating companion piece to Cronenberg's A History of Violence, which also stars Viggo Mortensen. Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) discussed the movie at a Museum screening prior to its successful U.S. release. The director's sardonic world view and the screenwriter's more sentimental humanism—and the duo's mutual respect—are reflected in the film and the conversation.

Michael Moore is the most famous, controversial, and commercially successful documentary filmmaker working today. The notoriety surrounding his films has obscured the fact that he is a gifted director who uses a wide range of cinematic techniques to engage, entertain, and provoke his audience. Sicko, his widely acclaimed, no-holds barred attack on the American healthcare system, uses the issue of healthcare to explore larger questions about what kind of country America is. In this discussion presented by the Museum of the Moving Image in collaboration with Variety, Moore spoke passionately about the many questions raised by his film.

This discussion brought together critics and scholars to talk about the films shown in the Museum's groundbreaking series It's Only a Movie: Horror Films from the 1970s and Today. The series was organized by assistant curator Livia Bloom, who moderated this lively discussion with: Adam Lowenstein, author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film and cinema studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh; Nathan Lee, film critic for The Village Voice; Maitland McDonagh, author of Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, the Bad, and the Deviant Directors and film critic for TV Guide; and Joshua Rothkopf, film critic for Time Out New York.

Away from Her was an impressive directorial debut for the Canadian actress Sarah Polley, best known for her performances in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, David Cronenberg's ExistenZ, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and Hal Hartley's No Such Thing. While filming No Such Thing in Iceland, Polley forged a friendship with British actress Julie Christie, and convinced her to star in Away from Her, an adaptation of a short story by Alice Munro. In this conversation, Polley discusses how she interpreted Munro's tale about an aging couple's struggle with Alzheimer's Disease as a universal love story.

Documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker is one of the pioneers of cinéma vérité filmmaking, best-known for films about politics and show business including Dont Look Back (1967), Monterey Pop (1968), and The War Room (1993, co-directed with Chris Hegedus). His rarely screened 1970 film Original Cast Album—Company (1970) follows the marathon recording session of Steven Sondheim's groundbreaking Broadway show and captures the creative process of both Sondheim and the remarkable performer Elaine Stritch. Newsday critic Jan Stuart selected this film to present during the Museum's 2007 series with the New York Film Critics Circle, Critics Choice: Great Documentaries.

Albert Maysles has been at the forefront of documentary filmmaking for more than 40 years. Collaborating with his brother David until David's death in 1987, Maysles directed and photographed such films as Salesman (1968), Gimme Shelter (1970), and Grey Gardens (1975). This discussion followed a screening of Salesman, an intimate, touching, and comic portrait of Bible salesmen, and one of the first documentary features to be released theatrically. The screening, part of the Museum's New York Film Critics Circle's series "Critics Choice: Great Documentaries," was moderated by New York Times film critic Matt Zoller Seitz.

Donald Richie has been the preeminent American scholar and historian of Japanese film since the 1950s. His books—including The Japanese Film, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, and Ozu: His Life and Films—are widely credited with introducing American audiences to the riches of Japanese cinema. Richie, who has lived in Japan for the last fifty years, is also an accomplished filmmaker. In a rare New York appearance, he discussed his career with Assistant Curator Livia Bloom, following a program of his own experimental short films: Life, Atami Blues, Dead Youth, and Five Filosophical Fables.

Terry Gilliam came to the Museum of the Moving Image in October 2006, ten years after his legendary visit on the day of the Blizzard of 1996, when hundreds of his fans braved a blinding snowstorm to see the director present Brazil. In 2006, Gilliam discussed his latest cinematic provocation, Tideland, a truly independent work that is one of his most shocking and surprisingly tender films. The film, which Gilliam describes as part Alice in Wonderland and part Psycho, takes us inside the mind of a young girl who develops a fantasy life to escape her harsh surroundings.

Forest Whitaker's electrifying performance as Ugandan leader Idi Amin Dada in The Last King of Scotland was described by Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern as "one of the great performances of modern movie history." Fresh from the film's success at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals, Whitaker, co-star James McAvoy, and director Kevin Macdonald met with a rousing ovation at a special preview at the Museum of the Moving Image—the first public screening of the film. The director and the two lead actors discussed the film's unusual blend of fact and fiction and the story behind their remarkable collaboration.

Actor Matthew Modine gives one of his best performances in Stanley Kubrick's landmark Vietnam drama, Full Metal Jacket (1987). In the film, Modine plays Joker, a wisecracking military journalist trying to maintain his cynical veneer and his sanity amid the mayhem and carnage of warfare. In his book, Full Metal Jacket Diary (2005), he pairs his personal journal with his candid photographs from the set, offering a intimate portrait of the life-changing film production. This lively conversation with Modine at the Museum of the Moving Image, which accompanied a book signing and a screening of Full Metal Jacket as part of a Stanley Kubrick film retrospective, offers rare insight into Kubrick's techniques in directing his actors.

Robert Altman's films play with the viewer's conceptions of American film and of America itself. Altman has created a unique cinematic style, with a trademark mixture of documentary camerawork, semi-improvised performances, multi-layered dialogue, and overlapping narratives. His films reinvent Hollywood genres while revealing the layers of spectacle that make up American culture and society. A month after winning an Honorary Academy Award, Altman opened a 22-film retrospective of his career by speaking at the Museum following a screening of Kansas City, a panoramic and jazz-like melodrama about politics, race, crime, and the movies, which is set in Altman's home town.

Capote is an astonishing fiction-film debut for Bennett Miller, who spoke at Moving Image the day the film was chosen as Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics. Miller discusses his collaboration with his longtime friends Dan Futterman (who wrote the screenplay) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who won an Oscar for his moving portrayal of Truman Capote). He also talks about his fascination with the inevitability of Capote's decline following the success of In Cold Blood. As one listens to Miller, it becomes clear that the film reflects his personality—quiet, wry, precise, and deeply observant.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was movie star Tommy Lee Jones's debut as a theatrical film director. Set in his native Texas, this provocative blend of road movie and western, partly inspired by Sam Peckinpah, is a unique and compelling drama that Jones described as "a study of the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social implications of having an international border running through the middle of a culture." The movie had its New York premiere on a cold December night at a special screening co-hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image and Jones's Harvard roommate, former Vice President Al Gore.

The Constant Gardener, a political thriller and romantic melodrama about a British diplomat investigating his wife's murder in Kenya, was one of the biggest arthouse hits of 2005. As in his breakthrough film City of God, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles combines a vibrant visual style, a fluid narrative structure, and acting that has the spontaneous feeling of cinéma vérité. Rachel Weisz won an Academy Award for her radiant, impassioned performance as Tessa, a young activist who speaks out against pharmaceutical companies. Meirelles and Weisz discuss the film's production and the place of socially relevant films in today's cultural climate.

Laurent Cantet, the French filmmaker who directed the Cannes Film Festival's 2008 Palme d'Or winner The Class, discussed his film Heading South (2005) at the Museum of the Moving Image, along with Karen Young, one of the lead actresses. Set in Haiti, the film follows a group of female tourists who travel to the country seeking adventure and some form of romance. They participate in the country's sex trade and, beneath the surface beauty of its lush beach front setting, the film deftly and powerfully unravels a complex web of race, sex, class, power, prostitution, and politics.