BY
In this modern world, there are countless ways to watch a movie, but let’s be honest, it’s always more fun on a huge screen in a comfortable chair with friends.
Museum of the Moving Image presents See It Big: 70mm! from Thursday, July 18, to Sunday, Aug. 18.
Back for a ninth edition, New York City’s only annual 70mm film festival mixes six classic and contemporary movies this time around. It opens with the East Coast premiere of a new print of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), followed by Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967), Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020), and Ron Howard’s Far and Away (1992).
Tickets cost $20.
Digital projection is the norm these days, but the analog widescreen 70mm format delivers a crisp, luminous image and great color fidelity. It’s the ideal format for ambitious cinematic spectacles and panoramic vistas.
All screenings take place at MoMI’s Sumner M. Redstone Theater at 36-01 35th Ave. in Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District. The schedule and descriptions for See It Big: 70mm! are below.
The Searchers
Thursday, July 18, 6:30 pm
Friday, July 19, 5:30 pm and 8 pm
Saturday, July 20, 5 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday, July 21, 3 and 5:30 pm
Director John Ford, 1119 minutes, John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood. This story sweeps from the American Southwest to the Canadian border as Wayne’s Ethan Edwards looks for his beloved niece who was kidnapped in a raid years before.
Playtime
Thursday, July 25, 6:30 pm
Friday, July 26, 8 pm
Saturday, July 27, 2:15 pm
Sunday, July 28, 3:15 pm
Director Jacques Tati, 115 minutes, Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden. With an ultramodern metropolis as a background, this film is wall-to-wall with brilliantly choreographed jokes and astonishing compositions. The 1983 short Here’s Chicago! The City of Dreams shows beforehand. Director Ted Hearne’s 13-minute travelog features breathtaking shots of the Windy City by helicopter.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Thursday, Aug. 1, 6:30 pm
Friday, Aug. 2, 7 pm
Saturday, Aug. 3, 1 pm
Sunday, Aug. 4, 5:30 pm
Sunday, Aug. 11, 5:30 pm
Sunday, Aug. 18, 5:30 pm
Director Stanley Kubrick, 149 minutes (plus intermission), Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. Set in a future that is already the past, this SciFi epic stars HAL (Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer), a spaceship’s computer system that battles Russian and American astronauts on a journey through space and time.
Lawrence of Arabia
Saturday, Aug. 3, 6:15 pm
Sunday, Aug. 4, 1 pm
Friday, Aug. 9, 6:30 pm
Saturday, Aug. 10. 5:30 pm
Director David Lean, 227 minutes (plus intermission), Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn. O’Toole plays real-life adventurer T. E. Lawrence, a former British officer whose 1916 expedition to Cairo leads him to side with the Arabs against the Turks, eventually organizing his own guerrilla army.
Tenet
Thursday, Aug. 8, 6:30 pm
Friday, Aug. 9, 7:30 pm
Sunday, Aug. 11, 2 pm
Saturday, Aug. 17, 7:30 pm
Director Christopher Nolan, 150 minutes, John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh. This international espionage thriller’s seemingly inevitable doomsday scenario can only be averted through the manipulation of time.
Far and Away
Saturday, Aug. 10, 2:30 pm
Friday, Aug. 16, 7:30 pm
Sunday, Aug. 18, 2:45 pm
Director Ron Howard, 140 minutes, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Thomas Gibson, Robert Prosky, Barbara Babcock, Clint Howard. This melodrama follows Irish immigrants pursuing fortune and glory in late-19th-century America. Cruise’s Joseph Donnelly is a tenant farmer who falls for Kidman’s Shannon Christie, the daughter of a cruel landlord. They run away to the New World, only to battle poverty amid Boston’s bare-knuckle backrooms and burlesque halls.
MUBI is the presenting sponsor of See It Big: 70mm, which is co-programmed by MoMI Curator of Film Eric Hynes, MoMI Associate Curator of Film Edo Choi, and Reverse Shot Co-Editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert. The program is supported by a Market New York grant from Empire State Development and I LOVE NY/New York State’s Division of Tourism through the Regional Economic Development Council initiative.
Images: Courtesy of Museum of the Moving Image