FilmNewYork

Fashion In Film Festival 

Saturday, March 24-----Just in time for the first weekend of Spring, the Museum of the Moving Image melds two New York obsessions, fashion and film, in a mini-festival embrace that is a double feast for the eyes. Fashionistas and film buffs will mix and mingle at this weekend's festivities, held in the newly fashionable Astoria section of Queens, known by some as the Way East Side. Come bedazzled and be dazzled. More information on the program is available on the website of the Museum of the Moving Image: www.movingimage.us

Saturday, March 24

2:00 p.m.
MODEL
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
1980, 130 mins., 16mm. Cinema verite pioneer Frederick Wiseman applies his cool, understated approach to examining the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television, and fantasy in the day-to-day lives of models at a New York agency. “[Wiseman’s] film is above all a paean to New York, which is a splendid visual presence throughout. Its critical mass of talent and money, the spontaneous styles of its vigorous street life, and the real-life backdrops that set the world dreaming are seen to converge in even the most trivial advertisements,” writes Richard Brody in this week's New Yorker.

4:30 p.m.
“Assuming a Pose” Short Film Program
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
Four Beautiful Pairs (1904, A.E. Weed for American Mutoscope and Biograph), How Mannequins Are Made (Italy, 1941, Giornale Luce), Mannequins for Sale (1938, Pathé News), School for Mannequins (1944, Pathé News), Volume (France, 2000, Jean-Pierre Khazem), I Feel (2005, Jean-François Carly/SHOWstudio), It’s Like Being(Belgium, 2003, Marie-France and Patricia Martin), Photo Shooting (UK, 2001, Jen Wu), Smooth with the Rough (1944, British newsreel), Shelley Fox 14 (UK, 2002, Shelley Fox/SHOWstudio), Puce Moment (1949, Kenneth Anger, 16mm). Total running time: 51 minutes.

5:30 p.m.
LADY WITH A HAT
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
1999, 68 mins., video. Elsa Kvamme’s portrait film takes a staggering journey through the life and career of the Jewish hat-maker May Aubert, who used her millinery skills during World War II to smuggle money from Norway into Canada.

7:00 p.m.
WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO? and CEILING
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
Vera Chytilová's Ceiling (1962, 42 mins. Imported 35mm print.) is an introspective essay, while William Klein's Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966, 102 mins., 35mm.) is an uncompromising parody. Both Chytilová (a model in the early 1950s) and Klein (an on-and-off fashion photographer) were fashion-industry insiders, and thus ideally equipped to take a critical approach to the worlds of fashion and media.

Sunday, March 25

2:00 p.m.
CHOP SUEY
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
2001, 98 mins., 35mm. Part self-portrait, part documentary, photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber’s startling and unpredictable film about fashion and photography centers on the discovery of a young male model and includes a portrait of iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland.

4:30 p.m.
UNZIPPED
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
1995, 75 mins., 16mm. “Think Eskimos!” screams the outrageous, extroverted designer Isaac Mizrahi, looking for inspiration to revive his career. Douglas Keeve’s film shows how Mizrahi achieves creativity amidst the frenzy of models, celebrities, enemies, and magazine editors, and stages a fashion show that saves his sanity and his career.

6:30 p.m.
TRUE STORIES
FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
1986, 89 mins., 35mm. With John Goodman, Spalding Gray. In his first feature film, David Byrne used actual stories from supermarket tabloids to create an exaggerated patchwork exposé of American life. The stylized costumes express Byrne’s incisive, cartoon-like vision.

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor