Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance
Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance
June 12–August 25, 2022
A selection of films in which a dance scene crystallizes the experience of the movie, a moment leaving its imprint more than the plotline or even the characters.
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Band of Outsiders
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Killer of Sheep
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Beau travail
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My Darling Clementine
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
The Gold Rush
Charles Chaplin
United States, 1925, reedited 1942Free Family Day Screening—Free Admission!
The original 1925 version of The Gold Rush will be shown for free on the outdoor screen Thursday, August 4.
Sunday, June 12 2 PMView DetailsA hapless prospector tries his luck in the frozen north in a film that glitters with some of Chaplin’s most memorable nuggets of comedy, including our hero leading a pair of rolls in a graceful soft-shoe.
Casque d’or
Jacques Becker
France, 1952Sunday, June 12 5:30 PMIntroduced by Edith KramerView DetailsA dazzling Simone Signoret is caught between a gangster tough and an honest carpenter in Becker’s “elegant masterwork” (Time Out) set in turn-of-the century Paris. With Pass the Gravy, a silent comedy short with Max Davidson.
Vivre sa vie
Jean-Luc Godard
France, 1962Thursday, June 16 7 PMView DetailsIn twelve tableaux, Vivre sa vie tells of Nana (Anna Karina) at the brief, flickering moment when she takes responsibility for her life. The ninth episode includes “perhaps the saddest ‘happy’ dance scene in cinema” (Ifan Davies).
My Darling Clementine
John Ford
United States, 1946Sunday, June 19 5 PMView DetailsIn this tender Western, a dance between Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and Clementine (Cathy Downs) “is the turning point of the movie, and marks the end of the Old West” (Roger Ebert).
Beau travail
Claire Denis
France, 1999Thursday, June 23 7 PMView DetailsIn this story of French Legionnaires isolated in a blisteringly beautiful African setting, Denis creates “a fixed, timeless world of mysterious, balletic rites, rippled with simmering homoerotic tensions. . . . Prepare to be blown away” (Time Out).
White Nights
Luchino Visconti
Italy, France, 1957Imported 35mm Print
Sunday, June 26 5 PMView DetailsMarcello Mastroianni stars in a romantic, sublimely artificial adaptation of the Dostoyevsky story about people drifting along crossing, doubling paths.
Playtime
Jacques Tati
France, Italy, 1967Sunday, July 3 5 PMView DetailsTati’s vision of 1960s Paris is “perhaps the most madly modernistic work of anti-modernism in the history of cinema” (New Yorker). And for Tati, “The more the picture continues, the more the people dance” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
Killer of Sheep
Charles Burnett
United States, 1977New 35mm BAMPFA Collection Print
Thursday, July 7 7 PMIntroduced by Ruth GebreyesusView DetailsA poetic evocation of working-class Watts, “a great—the greatest—cinematic tone poem of American urban life” (New York), Killer of Sheep’s “single most-recalled moment” is “the slow-dance scene between the . . . alienated Stan and his wife” (Adrian Martin).
Damnation
Béla Tarr
Hungary, 1988New 4K Restoration by Hungarian National Film Institute
Thursday, July 14 7 PMView DetailsDamnation, “a tale of erotic obsession,” is a brilliant calling card. “Its melancholy, hurdy-gurdy score, exaggerated sound design, ritual ensemble dances, inexorable camera moves suggest a dry run for Tarr’s. . . Satantango” (J. Hoberman).
Toute une nuit
Chantal Akerman
Belgium, France, 1982Sunday, July 17 5 PMView Details“Playing as a series of richly textured tableaux . . . featuring full-bodied embraces, phone calls punctuated by the longing of distance, breakups, recouplings and impromptu dances. . . . Akerman achieves an aura of singular intimacy” (Patrick Preziosi).
La ronde
Max Ophuls
France, 1950BAMPFA Collection
Sunday, July 24 7 PMView DetailsLove’s ceaseless roundabout, set in the Vienna of the waltz. “Ophuls displays dazzling technical virtuosity and cinematic elegance” (Chicago Reader).
Free Outdoor Screening: The Gold Rush
Charles Chaplin
United States, 1925The reedited 1942 version of The Gold Rush will be shown for free on Sunday, June 12, in the Barbro Osher Theater.
Thursday, August 4 7 PMView DetailsA hapless prospector tries his luck in the frozen north in a film that glitters with some of Charlie Chaplin’s most memorable nuggets of comedy, including a pair of dancing rolls.
Free Outdoor Screening: Band of Outsiders
Jean-Luc Godard
France, 1964Thursday, August 18 7 PMView DetailsAnna Karina gets involved with a pair of would-be burglars in one of Godard’s most accessible and entrancing films, with exquisitely gritty black-and-white cinematography by Raoul Coutard and music by Michel Legrand. “Like a reverie of a gangster movie” (Pauline Kael).
Free Outdoor Screening: Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee
United States, 1989Thursday, August 25 7 PMView DetailsLee’s frequently hilarious but hard-hitting drama charts mounting racial tensions on a hot summer day in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “The funniest, most stylized, most visceral New York street scene this side of Scorseseland” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice).