NAM JUNE PAIK Documentary and Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST Showing at Film Forum
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NAM JUNE PAIK:MOON IS THE OLDEST TV Directed by Amanda Kim (US, 2023)
“ENGROSSING. A clear picture of the artist as a joyfully disruptive presence.”
– Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com
Fearlessly innovative and playfully prophetic, Nam June Paik comes to life in Amanda Kim’s feature debut through a skillful assembly of interviews and archival footage that portrays the father of video art both in his time and through his far-reaching legacy. While covering the artist’s peripapetic journey across the mid-century avant-garde in Europe and the United States, Kim pays special attention to Paik’s Korean-American identity and his life as an artist at the forefront of an emergent art form.
THE CONFORMIST Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 1970) Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominiqie Sanda
“Juggling past and present with the same bravura flourish as Welles in CITIZEN KANE, Bertolucci conjures a dazzling historical and personal perspective, demonstrating how the search for normality ends in the inevitable discovery that there is no such thing.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)
In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode – and murder – joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue (CONTEMPT, JULES AND JIM, etc.) and breathtaking color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
Gartenberg Media distributes this restored Kino Lorber Blu-ray and DVD release of THE CONFORMIST. It is also available as a HD downloadable, DSL file. GME also offers FLUXFILM ANTHOLOGY, which includes work by Nam June Paik, and Jonas Mekas’ ZEFIRO TORNA (1992), from which GME provided clips to NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV, along with clips from other films from the period.