WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — This September and October, the Clark Art Institute hosts a series of films celebrating Mariel Capanna's yearlong public spaces installation, Giornata. 

 

Inspired by Capanna's practice of imposing time constraints upon herself while painting, this five-part series showcases films by directors who worked within time constraints.

 

All films are free and screened in the Manton Research Center auditorium on select Thursdays at 6 pm.

 

September 18

Rififi (1955)

After making such American noir classics as Brute Force and The Naked City, the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light. Rififi is the ultimate heist movie, a mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor that was an international hit, earned Dassin the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and has proven wildly influential on the decades of heist thrillers that have come in its wake. Its most famous scene imposes a time constraint on the bank heist, one that must be carried out in absolute silence. (Run time: 1 hour, 55 minutes)

 

September 25

Rope (1948)

Director Alfred Hitchcock often imposed stylistic constraints upon himself and his film projects. It was a strange practice that transformed his thrillers into explorations of cinematic style. Lifeboat (1944) was set entirely in, you guessed it, a lifeboat. The Birds (1963) used more special effects shots than any film before it, up until Star Wars (1977). Picture Rear Window (1954), and you will start to see the pattern. Rope is, as the title hints, one continuous shot. It stars Jimmy Stewart as a detective trying to solve a murder in front of his nose. Stewart asserted that no film project made him more anxious. (Run time: 1 hour, 20 minutes)

 

October 2

Run Lola Run (1998)

Run Lola Run feels like a video game playing you. The same story is told three times, each with a slight twist. Lola (Franka Potente) must somehow raise 100,000 German marks in twenty minutes to save her forgetful, criminal boyfriend from his gangster boss. A techno-punk mélange of styles, including animation, it was uncommonly prescient, both in gesturing toward the uncertain future of cinema and in capturing the bizarre mixture of optimism and cynicism that marked the maturation of Gen-X, fittingly set in a recently unified Berlin. Tom Tykwer's direction catches your eye, and Potente's performance holds it, stitching together the frenetic puzzle.

 

October 9

The Five Obstructions (2003)

Lars von Trier has never been shy to burnish his reputation as the malevolent puppet master of his protagonists' misfortune, but never quite so literally as in this playful documentary. One of the great films about filmmaking, The Five Obstructions is a reflexive marvel of cinematic problem solving. In 1967, Jørgen Leth made The Perfect Human, a short anthropological comedy, which became a favorite of the young Lars von Trier. Decades later, von Trier came to Leth with an offer he couldn't refuse: he would produce five remakes of Perfect Human, each to be directed by Leth according to von Trier's diktat. The heart and soul of the film comes in their interactions: they meet, review the previous effort, and lay down the rules for the next. Von Trier's ruthless instinct for his collaborator's soft spots may be sadistic, but it's vastly entertaining. When he really wants to punish Leth, he gives him complete freedom. (Run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

 

October 16

Boyhood (2014)

 

There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater. An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director's native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness. (Run time: 2 hours, 45 minutes)

 

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524.