First Look Film Series Begins Tonight at the Museum of Moving Image

Tonight, the Museum of the Moving Image opens its third annual First Look series, which showcases new and inventive cinema. Sixteen films from 10 countries will screen over this weekend and the following one. The launch movie is the U.S. premiere of director Alexandre Rockwell’s Little Feet (7 pm), which stars his two children as siblings whose widowed father dresses in an animal suit for a living and collapses drunk at night. They go on an adventure to find a mate for a pet goldfish. Rockwell and his children, Lana and Nico, will attend the screening. The rest of the series will proceed as follows:

• January 11th: Rohmer in Paris (2 pm) is an ode to the Nouvelle Vague master Eric Rohmer and his beloved Paris. The Inner Jungle (4:15 pm, above) expresses the combination of terror and amazement surrounding romance and pregnancy. Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (7 pm) is set in director Denis Côté’s native northern Québéc. It follows a pair of lesbian lovers and ex-cellmates after their release from prison.
• January 12th: Visitors (2 pm) consists of 74 black-and-white shots, taking viewers to the moon and back, while examining the human species and a gorilla from the Bronx Zoo. In the remote Chilean mountains in 1974, three goat-herding sisters survive after the death of a fourth sister in The Quispe Girls (5 pm). Chilean documentarian Marcela Said’s debut feature The Summer of Flying Fish (8 pm) is a coming-of-age story in the expansive terrains of southern Chile near Patagonia, where a bright-eyed teenager vacations with her family in their lake house, meets new friends, and finds her first love.
• January 17th: The documentary Wavemakers (7 pm) delves into the history and legacy of the Ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument with a haunting, ethereal sound. Director Caroline Martel will be present and Jean Laurendeau will play the Ondes Martenot after the screening.
• January 18th: Escaping after years in jail, a man finds his way home on the outskirts of a Cairo that has been turned upside down by the protests of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 in Rags and Tatters (1:30 pm). He finds that everything about life as he knew it has irrevocably changed. In Ape (4 pm), the phrase “struggling comedian” has never been more fitting than to describe the fictional Grand Rapids standup comic and part-time arsonist Trevor Newandyke. DirectorJoel Potrykus will attend.
• January 19: In To the Wolf (2 pm, below), poverty and rain seem to be the constants in the grim lives of two goatherding families struggling to survive in the Greek mountains during a period of national crisis. The second movie (4 pm) is a documentary on Bernard Natan, a pioneer of French cinema who died in Auschwitz, and is known as an early director of silent soft-core porn movies. Co-director Paul Duane will attend. Fast-paced, pun-and-gag-filled and refreshingly silly, The Rendez-Vous of Déjà Vu (6:30 pm) is a romantic burlesque about a lovelorn museum guard who falls for a woman—a friend of a friend—and tries to win her heart during a beach vacation. Director Antonin Peretjatko will attend.

Details: First Look 2014, Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, January 10th to January 19th, times vary, tickets are $10 each ($6 for museum members/free for Silver Screen members) with the exception of those for Visitors which are $20 ($12 museum members/free for Silver Screen members). An All Festival Pass is available for $40 ($24 museum members). Complimentary industry and press passes are available.

Photos: Museum of the Moving Image FB