The Hottest August
Ongoing
MoMI is partnering with Grasshopper Film to bring the online-viewing release of Brett Story’s prescient documentary directly to members and patrons—your ticket purchase helps to support the Museum. Please use the link below to watch the film.
Click here to watch The Hottest August and help support the Museum.
Tickets: $12. Ticket purchase is good for a three-day pass to see The Hottest August online.
The Hottest August
Dir. Brett Story. 2019, 94 mins. Digital projection. A Grasshopper Film release.
A complex portrait of a city and its inhabitants, The Hottest August offers a window into the collective consciousness of the present. The film’s point of departure is one city over one month, canvassing the five boroughs of New York City during August 2017. It’s a month heavy with the tension of a new President, heightened anxiety over everything from rising rents to marching white nationalists, and recurring news reports of wildfires and hurricanes along the coasts. Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes), her camera and crew survey the community, asking (sometimes explicitly, other times implicitly) what the future looks like from where they are standing, knowing all along that not everyone stands in the same place. The Hottest August offers a mirror onto a society on the verge of catastrophe, registering the anxieties, distractions, and survival strategies that preoccupy ordinary lives. View trailer.
“This collection of interactions with ordinary people is a cinematic gift both simple and multilayered, an intellectual challenge and an emotional adventure.”—Glenn Kenny, The New York Times, Critic’s Pick