FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL
March 17 - 25, 2007


This eclectic series of feature films, documentaries, video art, experimental film, newsreels, and silent cinema investigates how the moving image represents and interprets fashion as a concept, an industry, and a cultural form.


"The Enigma of Clothing"
Illustrated talk by curator Marketa Uhlirova Saturday, March 17, 2:00 p.m.

The Extinct World of Gloves (1982. Imported 35mm print. Jirí Bárta.)
Ghosts before Breakfast (1928, Directed by Hans Richter)
Going to Bed under Difficulties (1900, George Méliès)
In a Hurry to Catch a Train (1901, Ferdinand Zecca)
Enfant Terrible (2000, Anna-Nicole Ziesche)
59 Positions (1992, Erwin Wurm)
One and One Now Make Two While Before It Only Made One (2000, Marie-France and Patricia Martin)
Chapels (Bernhard Willhelm) (2002, Diane Pernet)
Warner Corset Advertisement (1910, Thomas Edison)
A Week in Film (1947, Czech newsreel)
Tough Stockings (1960, British newsreel)
Dress Rehearsal and Karola 2 (1979-80, 16mm, Noll Brinckman)

Total running time: 70 mins. Video and film. This program celebrates the secret life of clothes and the enigmatic qualities that emanate from the filmic treatment of their materiality. Clothes and cloth, when filmed independent of the body parts that normally give them meaning, are revealed as estranged, dreamlike, playful, and elusive—making them potent carriers of fascination, desire, emotion, and sensual pleasure. Musical score by Karaoke Tundra/Muteme.cz.


Rear Window
With lecture by Pat Kirkham
Saturday, March 17, 4:00 p.m.

1954, 112 mins., 35mm. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With James Stewart, Grace Kelly. Lisa Fremont, Grace Kelly’s fascinating and high-powered character in Hitchcock’s classic study of voyeurism, murder, and the fear of marriage, is based on the pioneering fashion consultant Anita Colby. Bard College professor Pat Kirkham writes widely about design, fashion, and film.


Liquid Sky
Introduction by Slava Tsukerman, Yuri Neyman, and Marina Levikova
Saturday, March 17, 6:30 p.m.

1982, 112 mins., 35mm. Directed by Slava Tsukerman. In this time-capsule cult favorite, with plenty of early-1980s fashion, a pleasure-seeking alien lands in downtown New York and gets caught up in a world of casual sex and heroin abuse with androgynous hipsters Margaret and Larry (both played by Anne Carlisle). Director Slava Tsukerman, cinematographer Yuri Neyman, and production and costume designer Marina Levikova will introduce the screening.


Fig Leaves
Introduction by Drake Stutesman. Live music by Donald Sosin.
Sunday, March 18, 2:00 p.m.

1926, 68 mins. Restored 35mm print from the Museum of Modern Art. Directed by Howard Hawks. This joyful satire suggests that fashion is the Satan responsible for the fall of (wo)mankind. Temptation is found in a decadent couture salon on “rue de la Fifth Avenue,” and the climax is a parade of Adrian’s designs. Drake Stutesman, editor of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, and author of a forthcoming book on fashion and film, will introduce the screening.


“Shoes, Eroticism, and Fetishism”
Talk by curator Christel Tsilibaris
Sunday, March 18, 4:00 p.m.

Diary of a Chambermaid 1964, 98 mins., 35mm. Directed by Luis Buñuel. With Jeanne Moreau.
Preceded by Paris: Women's Shoes in Lafayette Galleries (1912, Pathé-Gaumont), The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903, Edwin S. Porter. Music composed by The Wolfmen), Amor Pedestre (1914, Marcel Fabre. Music composed by The Wolfmen), Shoes Talk Too (1949, La Settimana Incom) Total running time of short films: 12 mins. Women’s shoes trigger amorous behavior and sexual fixations that can cause a breakdown in social etiquette. These films explore various routines of wearing and showing off shoes for the camera, focusing on notions of exhibition, voyeurism, and lust. In the Buñuel film, Jeanne Moreau is a maid at a country estate whose eccentric inhabitants include a boot fetishist.


Paris Is Burning
Sunday, March 18, 6:30 p.m.

1991, 71 mins. Directed by Jennie Livingston. A surprise hit when it opened in New York, this documentary reveals the downtown community of black and Latino drag queens who invented “voguing” and competed in lavish drag balls that both embraced and spoofed the world of high fashion.


Model
Saturday, March 24, 2:00 p.m.

1980, 130 mins., 16mm. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Cinema verite pioneer Frederick Wiseman applies his cool, understated approach to examining the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television, and fantasy in the day-to-day lives of models at a New York agency.


“Assuming a Pose”
(short film program)
Saturday, March 24, 4:30 p.m.

Four Beautiful Pairs (1904, Directed by A.E. Weed for American Mutoscope and Biograph.); How Mannequins Are Made (Italy, 1941,Giornale Luce); Mannequins for Sale (1938, Pathé News); School for Mannequins (1944, Pathé News); Volume (France, 2000, Jean-Pierre Khazem.); I Feel (2005, Jean-François Carly/SHOWstudio); It’s Like Being (Belgium, 2003, Marie-France and Patricia Martin), Photo Shooting (UK, 2001, Jen Wu.); Smooth with the Rough (1944, British newsreel); Shelley Fox 14 (UK, 2002, Shelley Fox/SHOWstudio); Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 16mm). Total running time: 51 minutes. Video unless noted. Posing, dressing up, staging, and masking are at the heart of this program, which plays on cinema’s preoccupation with moments where reality meets fiction. “Posing” connotes not just a position or posture of the body, but also artificiality and pretense.


Lady with a Hat
Saturday, March 24, 5:00 p.m.

1999, 68 mins., video. Directed by Elsa Kvamme. This portrait film takes a staggering journey through the life and career of the Jewish hat-maker May Aubert, who used her millinery skills during World War II to smuggle money from Norway into Canada.


Who Are You, Polly
Maggoo? and Ceiling
Saturday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.

These films are powerful commentaries on 1960s fashion and cinematography; Ceiling (1962, 42 mins. Imported 35mm print. Vera Chytilová) is an introspective essay, while Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966, 102 mins., 35mm. William Klein) is an uncompromising parody. Like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, they take a critical approach to the worlds of fashion and media. Both Chytilová (a model in the early 1950s) and Klein (an on-and-off fashion photographer) were fashion-industry insiders, and thus ideally equipped to launch into a thorough investigation of the subject.


Chop Suey
Sunday, March 25, 2:00 p.m.

2001, 98 mins., 35mm. Directed by Bruce Weber. Part self-portrait, part documentary, photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber’s startling and unpredictable film about fashion and photography centers on the discovery of a young male model and includes a portrait of iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland.


Unzipped
Sunday, March 25, 4:30 p.m.

1995, 75 mins., 16mm. Directed by Douglas Keeve. Photographed by Ellen Kuras. “Think Eskimos!” screams the outrageous, extroverted fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, looking for inspiration to revive his career after several bad seasons. The film shows how Mizrahi achieves creativity amidst the frenzy of supermodels, celebrity friends, enemies, and magazine editors, and stages a fashion show that saves his sanity and his career.


True Stories
Sunday, March 25, 6:30 p.m.

1986, 89 mins., 35mm. Directed by David Byrne. With John Goodman, Spalding Gray. In his first feature film, David Byrne used actual stories from supermarket tabloids to create an exaggerated patchwork exposé of American life. The stylized costumes play a key role in expressing Byrne’s incisive, cartoon-like vision.


Made possible with support from the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Special thanks to Rafik Video for production services, and to the Czech Center in New York and The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The Fashion in Film Festival also gratefully acknowledges the University of the Arts London; Film London; Institut Français; the Horse Hospital; ICA; SHOWstudio; Exposure; 10 Cane Rum; and Bond No. 9.