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PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST:

JULIAN SCHNABEL AND FILM 

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BEGINS AUGUST 8TH AT SAG HARBOR CINEMA

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Starting with Basquiat, Sag Harbor Cinema will pay tribute to Julian Schnabel throughout the fall with a complete retrospective, carte blanche screenings, talks, and a new gallery exhibit featuring works and artifacts from Schnabel’s films

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In the tradition of its successful year-round retrospectives, devoted to Hegedus/Pennebaker in 2021 and Julie Andrews in 2022-2023, Sag Harbor Cinema will dive into Julian Schnabel’s unique cinematic universe with screenings of all his films as well as a carte blanche program highlighting classics of international cinema that have been influential to Schnabel’s own work.

Timed to run in parallel with the exhibit Julian Schnabel: Selected Works from Home, opening at Guild Hall in East Hampton on August 4th, the film retrospective will kick off on August 8th at 6pm with a sneak preview screening of Basquiat (1996), Schnabel’s visionary feature debut starring Jeffrey Wright as the legendary painter. An upcoming Janus release (September 13th), the film has been newly restored in black & white, from a 4k scan from the original camera negative, under Schnabel’s supervision. The screening will be followed by a q&a with the filmmaker. 

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“Each of Julian Schnabel’s films is a world of its own. None is like the one before or the one after. Yet, it is not a coincidence that most of them are portraits of artists and passionate depictions of the artistic process,” says Sag Harbor Cinema’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “As generous as it is wildly imaginative, Schnabel’s cinematic output is a gift to film articulated through a wholly original language. As we look forward to his new feature, In the Hand of Dante, it is a joy to be able to bring this retrospective to our audience.”

“How to achieve anomalies, inaccuracies and refashioning of reality so what comes out are lies, but lies that are more true than literal fact?” Schnabel has quoted Van Gogh in the past when describing his artistic process. “Maybe whether it is a painting or a film the not knowing is what propels one to work. Do we ever know the answer or if the answer is achieved or just settled on? We stumble with our heads down to the grindstone and our eyes open and sometimes closed brick by brick stroke by stroke gesture by gesture.”

“Julian’s a painter – an exceptional, visionary painter. And when I watch his pictures I feel the presence of a painter, really, behind the camera in any given scene – whether it’s a cut, or a series of cuts, or details or gestures that seem completely unorthodox but that always feel right, in some way, in his films,” said Martin Scorsese in his introduction to a screening of Before Night Falls at the Tribeca Film Festival, in 2022. “If I were pinned down and I had to describe Julian’s films, I would say they are abundant, overflowing, and that they vibrate with life, with pulse…There’s always more in that frame to see, to experience, and to feel.”

In his Cahiers du Cinema review of Basquiat, Serge Toubiana praised Schnabel’s intuitive approach to telling the story of a fellow painter he knew intimately: “The strength of this film consists precisely in not seeking to be more of an ‘artist’ than the model: Jean Michel Basquiat. That a painter as recognized as Schnabel shows such humility is precisely what gives the film greater emotional force.” 

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A portrait of the artist, as well as the contemporary New York art scene, Basquiat also stars David Bowie as Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper as art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, a very young Gary Oldman as a Schnabel-like composite character, Parker Posey as gallery owner Mary Boone, and the likes of Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Courtney Love, and Tatum O’Neal.

On August 15th, SHC will feature a screening of Before Night Falls (2000), Schnabel’s adaptation of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir with Javier Bardem in the role of the Cuban poet, followed by a Q&A.

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The carte blanche program, curated by Julian Schnabel, will include Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964), to be screened on August 29th, as well as other classics of International cinema such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966),   Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985), François Truffaut’s 400 Blows (1959), among others to be announced through the year.

Portrait of the Artist: Julian Schnabel and Film will include a third floor exhibit of art and artifacts from Schnabel’s films. The retrospective will also showcase The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Lou Reed: Berlin (2007), Miral (2010), and At Eternity’s Gate (2018).

Additional screening dates and special guests will be posted on our website, www.sagharborcinema.org

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More on the films in August

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Jeffrey Wright and Julian Schnabel on the set of Basquiat_from the Julian Schnabel Archives.

BASQUIAT

Directed by Julian Schnabel

USA, 1996; 107 mins, in English

Rated R

Julian Schnabel brings the all-too-brief life and incandescent world of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the screen with this dreamily stylized tribute from one creative phenom to another. Jeffrey Wright fully embodies the elusive Basquiat, who goes from homeless graffiti tagger to the toast of a colorful 1980s Manhattan art scene presided over by the witty, eccentric Andy Warhol (a perfectly cast David Bowie). Fame, though, comes at a price, and Basquiat’s rapid ascent—and struggles with drug addiction—threaten to cost him his friendships, love, and life. 

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BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

Directed by Julian Schnabel

USA, 2000; 133 mins, in English

Rated R

The film follows the incredible journey through the life and work of late Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. Victimized by a government that banned his books and jailed him for a crime he didn’t commit, Reinaldo endured unspeakable persecution in a courageous stand against censorship and oppression.  Without a country but not without integrity, he fled to America where he continued to fight for personal expression and produced a stirring body of work.  

Javier Bardem, Julian Schnabel and Johnny Depp on set of Before Night Falls.

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I AM CUBA

Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov

Cuba/Soviet Union, 1964; 141 mins, in Spanish with English subtitles

Both a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually ravishing films ever made, this legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream of rebellion. The result of an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration between the Soviet and Cuban film industries, director Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba unfolds in four explosive vignettes that capture Cuban life on the brink of transformation, as crushing economic exploitation and inequality give way to a working-class uprising. Backed by Carlos Fariñas’s stirring score, the dazzling camera work by Sergei Urusevsky—an inspiration for generations of filmmakers to follow—gives flight to the movie’s message of liberation. 

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Julian Schnabel, photo by Louise Kugelberg

JULIAN SCHNABEL BIOGRAPHY

Julian Schnabel was born in New York City in 1951. In 1965 he moved with his family to Brownsville, Texas. He attended the University of Houston from 1969–73, receiving a BFA, and returned to New York to participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

In 1978 Schnabel traveled throughout Europe and in Barcelona was particularly moved by the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. That same year he made his first plate painting, The Patients and the Doctors. His first solo painting exhibition took place at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York City in February 1979. Schnabel’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper have been the subject of numerous international exhibitions.

In 1996 Schnabel wrote and directed the feature film Basquiat about fellow New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The film was in the official selection of the 1996 Venice Film Festival. Schnabel’s second film, Before Night Falls, based on the life of the late exiled Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Coppa Volpi for best actor, Javier Bardem, at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. In 2007 Schnabel directed his third film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Schnabel received the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival as well as Best Director at the Golden Globe Awards, where the film won Best Film in a Foreign Language. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was nominated for four Oscars. That same year, 2007, he made a film of Lou Reed’s Berlin concert at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. His 2010 film Miral, won the UNESCO as well as the UNICEF award at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Miral was shown at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations. His most recent film At Eternity’s Gate held its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival in 2018, where Willem Dafoe won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. Dafoe was then nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama. Schnabel’s upcoming film In the Hand of Dante is an adaptation of the Nick Tosches 2002 novel of the same name.

Julian Schnabel currently lives and works in New York City and Montauk. 

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Tickets for the program will be available at the Cinema box office or on the Cinema’s website, sagharborcinema.org.

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As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village. SHC Members enjoy discounts on tickets and merchandise. 

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AAQ / Resource: Christopher Jeffrey Architects 

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AAQ / Resource: Westhampton Architectural Glass

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