Museum of the Moving Image Pinewood Dialogues

When we comment on the look of a movie, or on the beautiful cinematography, we are often commenting on what the production designer, working with the director and cinematographer, has put there to be photographed. Legendary designer Patrizia von Brandenstein has shown a remarkable range, from the period settings of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to the swank Manhattan interiors of Six Degrees of Separation to the weather-beaten and far less sumptuous interiors of Leap of Faith and Silkwood. In this presentation, von Brandenstein leads the audience through sequences from her work, and lucidly defines the art of production design.

The Canadian director David Cronenberg has redefined the notion of what a horror film can be. While horror and science-fiction films traditionally have been about threats from the outside—monsters or alien forces—Cronenberg's films (including The Brood and The Fly) have been about threats that come from inside our own bodies, and our psyches. It was fitting, then, that Cronenberg should be the director to adapt William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, with its grotesque and comical mix of the organic, the chemical, and the hallucinatory. Cronenberg spoke at the Museum with a premiere screening of Naked Lunch on the opening day of a complete retrospective of his films.

Stan Brakhage was America's preeminent avant-garde filmmaker. From the early 1950s until his death in 2003, he made more than 300 films, each an adventure in visual perception. His films have astonishing variety, ranging from psychodrama and hand-painted animation to diaristic study, abstract collage, and epic lyricism. In this talk, opening a month-long retrospective, Brakhage humorously recalled his brief flirtation with Hollywood. For Brakhage, film was not primarily a narrative medium: "There are other things that are more natural to film, and that's where I try to begin. Resisting story, but something more like how the mind thinks—free of words." Here, he introduces a screening of Desistfilm, The Way to Shadow Garden, In Between, Reflections on Black, The Wonder Ring, and Night Cats, followed by a discussion of his work with Chief Curator David Schwartz.

Mike Nichols took Broadway by storm in the early 1960s with his comedy partner Elaine May. He began his directing career with the stage production of Barefoot in the Park and became a film director with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, followed by his landmark film The Graduate. In this interview, just before he was honored with a gala Salute by the Museum of the Moving Image, Nichols talks about how the assured, controlled style of his early films evolved into a looser, more naturalistic approach, and about how, for him, directing actors is largely a matter of trust and letting go.

Ken Jacobs is a master of avant-garde cinema. For more than 50 years he has inventively probed the nature of the moving image. "Ghosts! Cine-recordings of the vivacious doings of persons long dead," he wrote, fascinated by the power of cinema to coax reality from the flatness of the screen. Finding new ways to delve into filmed images, Jacobs created the Nervous System, a live two-projector system with which he "plays" film, in the spirit of jazz improvisation. During a major month-long retrospective, Jacobs premiered the Nervous System piece Two Wrenching Departures, to mark the deaths of Jack Smith and Bob Fleischner.

Michael Powell directed such vibrant film classics as The Red Shoes (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), and Tales of Hoffman (1951) in collaboration with his long-time partner Emeric Pressburger. Peeping Tom (1960) was Powell's first solo feature, a startling thriller about a murderer who films his victims. In August 1989, Powell made one of his last public appearances at the Museum of the Moving Image. He presented Peeping Tom in the film series Hollywood Beyond Sunset, and spoke passionately about his life and career