#InTheLoop | Film Festivals Offer a First Look and a Second Look
BY QEDC It's In Queens
Second goes first, and first goes second.
The Museum of the Moving Image presents a de facto warm-up weekend, Second Look: Selections from a Decade of First Look, that includes timely films on Ukraine and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Then, the cultural venue hosts First Look 2002, the eleventh version of an international festival that introduces audiences to new, inventive movies from around the world.
Second Look runs from Friday, March 11, to Sunday, March 13. The selection consists of five movies that showed in previous First Look programs.
Chantal Akerman’s Almayer’s Folly, a 2011 French adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s eponymous 1895 novel about a European trader’s frustrated dreams of striking it rich in Borneo, shows on March 11 at 7 pm and March 12 at 3:30 pm. (It was the first film to screen in the inaugural First Look in 2012.)
Vitaly Mansky’s Putin’s Witnesses follows Vladimir Putin as he maneuvers to become the leader of Russia after Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resignation in 2000. It shows on March 12 at 1:30 pm.
Ukrainian master Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass, a 2018 look at a region of Ukraine that is currently in dispute, is on March 12 at 6:30 pm. Then, the program finishes with Polish filmmaker Pawel Lozinski’s You Have No Idea How Much I Love You + Three Songs for Benazir, a story about an impoverished Afghan family that was nominated for the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, on March 13 at 4 pm.
Back to the Future
First Look 2002 starts on Wednesday, March 16, and runs until Sunday, March 20. The lineup includes 40 features from more than 30 countries along with workshops and discussions.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s Murina, a coming-of-age tale set in coastal Croatia that won Best First Feature at Cannes, screens on opening night, March 16, at 7 pm. It’s paired with The Night, Tsai Ming-liang’s new short ode to Hong Kong.
Other movies on the schedule include Pawel Lozinski’s The Balcony Movie (March 20 at 7 pm), a documentary shot entirely from the balcony of the Polish director’s apartment in Warsaw; Egyptian filmmaker Omar El Zohairy’s debut feature Feathers (March 19 at 5 pm), which received the Grand Prix at the Cannes 2021 Critics Week; and the New York premiere of Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection (March 20 and March 27 at 4 pm), which follows a Ukrainian surgeon who — moved to join his fellows at the front of Russia’s military incursion into Donbass — is promptly captured, subjected to sickening horrors, and then released as though from an alien abduction.
Click here for the full, jam-packed schedule.
General admission is $15 per screening, but there are options for a $120 all festival pass and a $60 weekend pass.
The Museum of the Moving Image is located at 36-01 35th Ave. in Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District.
Images: Museum of the Moving Image