Release Date: October 5, 2016 

Film Series on Virginia Dwan, Barbara Kruger, and Umberto Eco: Premieres; Portrait of Ellsworth Kelly; Rich Legacy of the Silk Road; Early Works by Buñuel; Annual Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture with Historian Tom Gunning; Selections from the International Festival of Films on Art; and Ciné-Concerts Highlighted in National Gallery of Art Fall Film Season  

Still from Soundhunters — A Musical Expedition, to be screened as part of the International Festival of Films on Art-1, Friday, November 25, 12:00 p.m., National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Image courtesy of International Festival of Films on Art.

Washington, DC—The fall film season opens with the series Film, Video, and Virginia Dwan, organized to complement the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971. The four-part series Ipersignificato: Umberto Eco and Film honors the legacy of the late Italian philosopher and aesthetics specialist Umberto Eco. Dunhuang Projected, shown in association with the Freer Gallery of Art while the Freer theater is closed for renovation, is an eclectic mix of cinematic works illustrating the rich legacy of areas once comprising the Silk Road.

Other programs this fall include the film series Barbara Kruger Selects, relating the cinematic inclinations of this conceptual artist who analyzed the messages disseminated through mass media. The Gallery will screen two early works by Luis Buñuel as part of the citywide project Objects of Desire: The Films of Luis Buñuel. The annual Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture features a discussion by historian Tom Gunning titled The Innovations of the Moving Image. Selections from the popular International Festival of Films on Art, several ciné-concerts, and Steven Spielberg's first feature-length film, Duel, add to the fall film schedule at the National Gallery of Art.

Film, Video, and Virginia Dwan
October 8–30
Virginia Dwan was instrumental in the development and exhibition of artists' work in all mediums, including the motion-picture arts. In conjunction with the National Gallery of Art exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971 (on view September 30, 2016–January 29, 2017), this eight-part series features archival materials, documentation of happenings and installations, contemporary films, and documentaries—some produced and directed by the gallerist Virginia Dwan herself. With special thanks to Anne Kovach, Doug Dreishpoon, Tom Martinelli, Richard Shebairo, Whitney Museum of American Art, Canyon Cinema, Electronic Arts Intermix, LUX, and Video Data Bank.

Dwan Los Angeles
October 8 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Niki de Saint Phalle: An Architect's Dream
October 8 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Dwan New York City 
October 9 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Ongoingness: Smithson and Holt Films
October 15 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

casting a glance
October 15 at 3:30
East Building Auditorium

Nancy Holt Film and Video 
October 16 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Of Minimalists and Land Artists
October 29 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Produced by Virginia Dwan
October 30 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Special Events: Fall 2016
Ellsworth Kelly Fragments
Introduced by Harry Cooper, head of the department of modern art, National Gallery of Art
October 9 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Festival del film Locarno: O Cinema, Manoel de Oliveira e Eu (Cinema, Manoel de Oliveira and Me)
October 23 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

For Florence (Per Firenze)
November 4 at 12:30
November 6 at 5:30
East Building Auditorium

Objects of Desire: Ciné-concert: Un chien Andalou, followed by L'Age d'or
November 12 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Olga
November 20 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

International Festival of Films on Art—I
November 25 at noon
East Building Auditorium

International Festival of Films on Art—II
November 27 at noon
East Building Auditorium

Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture: The Innovations of the Moving Image by Tom Gunning
December 4 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Ciné-concert: Little Match Girl (La Petite marchande d'allumettes)
December 17 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Archie's Betty: Celebrating a Pop Icon at 75
December 17 at 3:30
East Building Auditorium

Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
December 29 and 30 at 12:30
East Building Auditorium

Dunhuang Projected
November 12–27
Dunhuang is the Gobi desert oasis town in northwestern China that was, for one thousand years (400–1400 CE), an important nexus of the Silk Road and the gateway for Buddhism from India into China. The town's mile-long complex of caves holds the largest extant collection of Buddhist mural art and sculptures in the world and is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The migration of ideas and cultures through trade and conquest finds exemplary expression in The Cave of the Silken Web, Stage Sisters, and A Better Tomorrow, while Saving Mes Aynak chronicles the urgent struggle to rescue an imperiled Greco-Buddhist past in a Western counterpart of Dunhuang on the Silk Road. Today, that site lies in Taliban-threatened territory in Afghanistan. "Each film is a hallmark of its own filmmaking era, yet collectively they emanate the cultural syncretisms of the Chinese treaty ports of Shanghai and Hong Kong in the twentieth century"—Cheng-Sim Lim, chief curator, China Onscreen Biennial. Dunhuang Projected is a multiyear, interdisciplinary media arts project of the UCLA Confucius Institute presented in this, its pilot year, as an affiliated program of the China Onscreen Biennial. Presented in association with the Freer Gallery of Art. With special thanks to San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Tom Vick, and Cheng-Sim Lim.

Ciné-concert: The Cave of the Silken Web
November 12 at 1:00
East Building Auditorium

Stage Sisters
November 26 at 1:30
East Building Auditorium

A Better Tomorrow
November 26 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

Saving Mes Aynak
November 27 at 4:30
East Building Auditorium

Ipersignificato: Umberto Eco and Film
November 13­–December 28
A literary and cultural giant whose influence reached all facets of our rapidly evolving media, Umberto Eco (1932–2016), through decades of interdisciplinary writing, moved seamlessly from semiotics to aesthetics, popular culture, philosophy, fiction writing, and informal cultural commentary. Cinema informed his own theoretical approach to his work in semiotics and in turn, the field of cinema studies has been enriched by his versatile contributions. He was a founding father (along with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz, and Roland Barthes) of the concept of film language. This program of two divergent film pairings evokes Eco's philosophy of the cinema. For supplementary notes on Umberto Eco and film, with references to this program, see nga.gov/film. With special thanks to Umberto Varricchio.

Amarcord, followed by Teorema
November 13 at 2:00
East Building Auditorium

Casablanca
December 18 at 4:00
East Building Auditorium

L'Avventura, followed by Stagecoach
December 28 at 12:30
East Building Auditorium

Barbara Kruger Selects
December 3–31
Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist who, beginning in the early 1980s, empowered the female subject through a resistance to the gaze. Her art developed at a time when the critical discourse questioning power structures dominated visual practice. An investigation into the way in which viewer identity is constructed and how meaning is embedded and disseminated through mass media led artists such as Kruger to challenge the dynamics of what it means to look and be looked at. This extended naturally to film and television. Indeed, she wrote as a critic on these topics for Artforum. Kruger's concerns have taken on increasingly broader meaning, to explore the nature of human relationships. In conjunction with the exhibition In the Tower: Barbara Kruger, the artist has selected four favorite films for this series.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
December 3 at 1:00
East Building Auditorium

Anomalisa
December 10 at 1:00
East Building Auditorium

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
December 24 at 1:00
East Building Auditorium

Duel
December 31 at 2:30
East Building Auditorium

Commedia dell' Arte—Reprise
December 10–11
Two Italian filmmakers contrive contemporary, but very different, roles for two of the popular masked figures of Commedia dell' Arte. Io, Arlecchino, while reviving the traditional character of
Harlequin, underscores the Commedia's reliance on ensemble playing and comic technique, and its fondness for predictable scenarios. Bella e perduta, on the other hand, reworks the ancient symbol of Pulcinella to form a metaphysical statement about loss and decay. With special thanks to the New Italian Cinema Event, Florence, and the Italian Cultural Institute, Washington.

Io, Arlecchino
December 10 at 3:30
East Building Auditorium

Bella e perduta (Lost and Beautiful)
December 11 at 4:30
East Building Auditorium