The Sundance Institute at BAM
Brooklyn Academy of Music
For the second year in a row, BAM has teamed up with the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah to bring a selection of innovative film, theater and music programming to Brooklyn audiences. Last night the series kicked off with a screening of the adorable Son of Rambow, an audience favorite from the '07 festival in January about two English school boys in the '80s creating a cinematic homage to the Sylvester Stallone action classic. Borough president Marty Markowitz was in the house, as was Sundance founder Robert Redford, who gamely took Marty's joke that his recent weight loss has closed the attractiveness gap between the Brooklynite and the movie star. As Redford pointed out in his introduction, many of the filmmakers involved in the workshop process every year at the festival are Brooklyn residents, so it makes sense for the two organizations to team up to show these selected works ahead of a conventional screening schedule.
Just some of the films featured this weekend includes the winner of the Dramatic Directing Award, Rocket Science (Fri., June 1 at midnight; Fri. June 8 at 6 pm), a Q&A with director David Gordon Green following the screenings of his movie Snow Angels (Fri. June 1 at 9 pm; Sat. June 2 at 6 pm) and the renowned video director Julien Temple's new documentary about the punk legend, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. There will also be selections on Sunday from shorts entered in the festival, as well as a panel about documentaries with the directors Nick Broomfield, Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles and Raoul Peck a week from Sunday, June 10. Tickets cost $11 for the screenings, $15 for the panel event and are available online or at 718.636.4100.
Other movie events of note happening around the city include the annual film festival devoted to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender cinema, Newfest which runs through June 10, more outer borough film fun with the 10th Brooklyn International Film Festival (which we mentioned earlier), and "Magnum In Motion," a series at Walter Reade devoted to the Magnum photo agency, including a free panel discussion on "Magnum and the Future of Photojournalism" on Sunday, June 3 at 2 pm.
Pictured: Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale in Snow Angels. Photo by Chris Reardon/Crossroads Films.
