Events & Activities
Film and Performance
Movies at a museum? We may not have popcorn, but Phoenix Art Museum screens thought-provoking movies with themes that may directly relate to our current exhibitions or collections. Screenings are followed by related discussion, often led by topic experts. Starting at 1pm on selected Sunday afternoons, movies are free of charge. Seating is available on a first come, first serve basis.
Movies at the Museum
Enjoy outstanding independent and classic cinema and documentaries relating to art, artists, and works on view in the Museum, usually followed by discussion. All Movies at the Museum showings are free and first come, first seated.
Bollywood Hollywood
Sunday, May 11, 1pm
Told against a funky Bollywood beat, the story centres around dotcom millionaire Rahul Seth (Rahul Khanna), who is forced to get hitched simply to pacify his family. In desperation, he hires Spanish escort Sue (Lisa Ray) to pose as his fiancé...
"if you're looking for a hearty laugh, thenBollywood/Hollywood should fit the bill"
BBC
Presented by No Festival Required in conjunction with Movies at the Museum.
Runtime: 105 minutes.
Lunafest
Tuesday, May 13, 7pm
Filled with stories of reflection and whimsy, hope and humor, grace and perseverance, Lunafest films are renowned for celebrating the talents and stories of women. This national touring show by, for and about women includes animation, documentary and narrative subjects from international women directors.
Produced by LUNA. Adult content for mature audiences.
Admission: $10 (cash only); net proceeds benefit The Breast Cancer Fund.
For more information, visit www.lunafest.org.
Site and Sound: The Experimental Works of Richard Lerman
Sunday, May 18, 1pm
Arizona filmmaker Richard Lerman's haunting sound recordings, Super 8 filmmaking and video pieces explore the nature of places by recording sounds too soft for the human ear.
Check out his interview with Seattle Weekly for more.
Presented by No Festival Required in conjunction with Movies at the Museum.
Runtime: 90 minutes.
Jazz Film Series: Let’s Get Lost
Sunday, June 8, 1pm
Directed by Bruce Weber, this documentary on the life of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker is a fascinating series of interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlier life and some modern-day performances.
"Early on in Let's Get Lost, Bruce Weber's 1989 documentary about Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter is asked if he'd like a glass of wine. "Yeah," he replies in that wispy exhale of a voice that always made his singing sound so imperiled - and irresistible. The way Baker pronounces the word you hear diffidence, avidity, resignation, possibly even thirst. It may be that no syllable has been more seductively uttered in a movie. It also may be that no documentary has ever been more seductive than Let's Get Lost."
The Boston Globe
Adult language and content. Presented by No Festival Required in conjunction with Movies at the Museum. Runtime: 120 minutes.
Jazz Film Series: A Great Day in Harlem
Sunday, June 15, 1pm
Screened in celebration of Juneteenth, this documentary compiles interviews with many of the musicians in Art Kane’s 1958 photograph of the top jazz musicians in New York City for Esquire magazine.
"A Great Day in Harlem is a wonderful documentary about a seemingly ho-hum subject - the taking of a photograph. Even when the photograph in question involves some of the greatest jazz musicians who ever lived, building a film around a static subject like a photograph is not an easy task. Jean Bach's achievement lies in making this come brilliantly alive; indeed, there's a surprising buoyancy and a sprightliness to the entire enterprise that makes the film unique".
The New York Times
Matthew Seig, co-producer of “A Great Day in Harlem”, and director of jazz biographies on Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Sarah Vaughn, will answer questions following the film.
Adult language. Presented by No Festival Required in conjunction with Movies at the Museum.
Runtime: 60 minutes.
Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?
Tuesday, June 17, 7pm
When Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver with an eight grade education bought a painting in a thrift shop for five dollars, she didn’t know that it would pit her against the most powerful people in the art community and perhaps forever change the way art is authenticated around the world.
Come see the movie that the New York Times headlines as:
"One Feisty Woman Takes On the Art World"
Presented by the Museum’s Contemporary Forum and sponsored by Lisa Sette Gallery.
Runtime: 74 minutes.
Jazz Film Series: Dizzy Gillespie in Havana
Sunday, June 22, 1pm
Dizzy Gillespie helped irrevocably alter jazz history form the burgeoning “bebop” movement in the 1940s. This film offers a glimpse of a trip to Cuba with the legendary trumpet player, where he provided entertainment for the audience at Havana’s Fifth International Jazz Festival.
"An entertaining mixture of documentary, travelogue, concert and historical music lesson. The last is fascinating, illustrating the difference in the development of rhythm in the Caribbean and South America and in the US (slaves shipped to South America and the Caribbean were allowed to keep their percussive instruments - their common 'language' - and those sold to the US were not). The music is a unifying thread. He plays 'A Night in Tunisia', duets with fast and flashy Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, rehearses a big band, and finales with Manteca".
Time Out Magazine, London
Following the film, enjoy live jazz music performed by Music for Bowlers.
Adult language. Presented by No Festival Required in conjunction with Movies at the Museum.
Runtime: 84 minutes.
The Moderns
Tuesday, July 22, 6:30pm
Director Alan Rudolph stylishly evokes the legendary milieu of 1902’s Paris café society and “the lost generation” of American artists and writers who lived there. While Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and Stein move in and out of scenes, the story centers around fictional Nick Hart (Keith Carradine), a struggling painter who spends his time drinking and socializing in the local cafes, and pestering gallery owner Libby Valentin (Genevive Bujold) to sell his paintings. He becomes entangled with a darkly mysterious woman named Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) and her corrupt husband Bertram Stone (John Lone). Mr. Stone is supposedly an art collector who knows all of the most important of people and reduces those he cares little for to pulp. Danger threatens and fortune looms as Hart colludes in a plot by wealthy art patroness Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin) to forge three now-famous paintings. One is left wondering whose paintings are really hanging in NY MOMA.
Presented by the Museum’s Contemporary Forum and sponsored by Lisa Sette Gallery.
Runtime: 126 minutes.
My Kid Could Paint That
Tuesday, August 19, 6.30pm
Amir Bar-Lev's "family human interest story" indelibly captures the media maelstrom that engulfed the Olmsteads of Binghamton, N.Y. when their daughter, Marla, age 4, became the darling of the art world with her abstract paintings. As a gallery owner tells Bar-Lev, the situation is "perfect": The family is charismatic, and Marla is, indeed, "a doll" and her paintings, "unbelievable." Bar-Lev chronicles how a community newspaper article about Marla was picked up by the New York Times, leading to more newspaper articles, sold out gallery showings, and media throngs. Marla's paintings sold upward of $25,000 (the owner of the Houston Rockets bought one), and talk-show hosts (Conan, Dave, Oprah) wanted Marla on their shows. "You're in for a wild ride, I hope you're prepared for this," the gallery owner says he told Mark Olmstead, Marla's father, a Frito Lay factory worker who also dabbles as an artist.
But no one is prepared when Charlie Rose, during a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast, raises questions on whether Marla is the sole artist. Was she coached? Were the paintings doctored, or even painted by someone else? Could she even be called a prodigy? Bar-Lev's canvas expands to consider the nature of art and media culture. It also becomes something of a self-portrait as he struggles with his own growing suspicions about Marla's paintings after he has befriended the family and earned their trust.
An Official Selection of both the 2007 Toronto Film Festival and the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, My Kid Could Paint That will resonate especially for everyone who says they don't know art, but they know what they like.
Presented by the Museum’s Contemporary Forum and sponsored by Lisa Sette Gallery.
Performance at the Museum
Included with Museum general admission, unless otherwise noted.
Music in the Gallery: Passport to Europe
Begin your voyage through the centuries with sounds from the Old World.
- Saturday, May 17, 1 - 3pm: Resonance of Four Hundred Years by Musica Dolce
- Saturday, June 7, 1 – 3pm: The French Connection by Arpeggio