The CJM Blog

The Shining , directed by Stanley Kubrick (GB/United States; 1978-1980).  The daughters of former caretaker Grady (Lisa and Louise Burns). © Warner Bros.  The Contemporary Jewish Museum is pleased to present  Stanley Kubrick  an exhibition by the Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, Christiane Kubrick, and The Stanley Kubrick Archive at University of the Arts London. In 2003, Stanley Kubrick’s personal estate was, for the first time, made accessible and evaluated. This exhibition gathers together a representative selection of these objects: annotated scripts, production photography, lenses and cameras, set models, costumes, and props, in order to document the directors entire career, beginning with his early photography and short documentaries and ending with his last film,  Eyes Wide Shut  (1999). In addition, the exhibition explores  Napoleon  and  Aryan Papers , two projects that Kubrick never completed, a...

The 3 Worlds of Gulliver "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And how many times have we had Clarke's Third Law cited by the pro-tech contingent? San Francisco has been at the epicenter of a new tech boom. When programming cultural events centered on technology for Bay Area arts organizations, it may be impossible not to consider the social and political issues surrounding it.

Image courtesy of the writer. As a prompt for an entry on The CJM's blog, your writer was asked to consider what makes a good movie. My usual short answer to this question is that a good, nay, a GREAT movie, allows multiple ways in. If a movie's creative team is firing on all cylinders, if the movie delivers on story, performances, design, mood, music, then you've got a classic on your hands. But even a movie that falters in one of these departments can be elevated by its other elements. Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (screening Thursday at The CJM as part of the CLEAT: Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) was intended to be Aronofsky's grandest, most ambitious work yet, telling the story of lovers whose relationship spans three time periods. But the movie wound up compromised by a halved budget (from $70 million to $35) that demanded radical changes to the scope and the story. With months to make a movie that had been years in the making, t...

T he screening series CLEAT (Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) is intended as both a cheeky riff on The CJM's NEAT:   New Experiments in Art and Technology exhibition and an expansion on some of its themes. Like NEAT , CLEAT features work by artists from three different eras, all bringing an active, creative approach to extant special effects technologies to bear on the stories they tell. Stills from The Bat Whispers. Screening on October 29 for CLEAT. Coming at us from 1930, Roland West's fantastic mystery The Bat Whispers (October 29) throws its handmade aspect right into our faces. Its very first shot pans down from a miniaturized clocktower to the busy street below, smash cutting from a tabletop set representing street-level to an actual street, populated with actors and moving vehicles. Even a 1930, post-Melies audience likely saw through the illusion, but it registers as a powerful statement of intent, and we can't help but sign on...