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Being Human: The Films of Roy Andersson

Dec 15 — Dec 31, 2023

Roy Andersson has had one of the most idiosyncratic careers of any great film director. After the success of his charming debut, A Swedish Love Story (1970), his bold follow-up, Giliap (1975), a wry neo-noir experiment, was a resounding commercial and critical failure. Chastened, Andersson stopped making features and became a successful director of TV commercials, minimalist comedies that were admired by Ingmar Bergman for their trenchant humor and inventive visuals. His success in advertising gave Andersson the resources to build his own film production facility, Studio 24, and he returned to making features in 2000 (at the age of 57) with his bittersweet existentialist comic masterpiece Songs from the Second Floor. Eschewing straightforward narratives, Andersson’s feature films since Songs are made of loosely related vignettes, filmed in long takes and meticulously crafted compositions worthy of Jacques Tati or Buster Keaton, on sets made with an artisan’s astonishing attention to detail and a poet’s ability to cut everything but the essential—while at the same time layered with ambiguity and mystery. Andersson’s subject is nothing more or less than the experience of being human, from the trivialities of daily life to the horrors—and, at times, the beauty—that people create. The brilliance of his films is a strong rejoinder to the melancholic despair of their world view. 

Organized by David Schwartz, Curator-at-large. Made possible with assistance from the Consulate General of Sweden in New York (Aviva Neuman). Special thanks to Coproduction Office (Cecilia Pezzini, Zhana Kalinova), the Swedish Film Institute (Kajsa Hedström), Janus Films (Brian Belovarac), and Studio 24 (Johan Carlsson). 

 Note: All programs will include a selection of commercials directed by Roy Andersson. 

 

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Past Films in Series

A man with pale ghostly makeup stands looking at models of birds at a museum

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
An old man in a top hat sits at a bar in a gray, smokey room.

Songs from the Second Floor
A newly married couple, she in a wedding dress and he in a tux and holding a guitar, stand near an open window in a city apartment waving at a crowd of people on the street

You, the Living + World of Glory
Three girls look through a chain link fence

A Swedish Love Story
A man stands in a grim gray kitchen holding a spoon and staring past camera while a woman sits at a dinner table behind him

About Endlessness + Something Happened
A man and woman walk on a beach

Giliap
A man stands at a street protest with his arms in the air while people in the distance take photos of him; a sign near him says RHODESIA GO HOME!

The White Game
A man stands in a grim gray kitchen holding a spoon and staring past camera while a woman sits at a dinner table behind him

About Endlessness + Something Happened
A man with pale ghostly makeup stands looking at models of birds at a museum

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
A man stands at a street protest with his arms in the air while people in the distance take photos of him; a sign near him says RHODESIA GO HOME!

The White Game
Three girls look through a chain link fence

A Swedish Love Story
A newly married couple, she in a wedding dress and he in a tux and holding a guitar, stand near an open window in a city apartment waving at a crowd of people on the street

You, the Living + World of Glory
A man holding his fingers in his ears stands behind a man wearing blue sound-canceling headphones

Tomorrow’s Another Day
An old man in a top hat sits at a bar in a gray, smokey room.

Songs from the Second Floor