Robert Redford, Hollywood Icon and Architect of Independent Cinema, Dies at 89

Posted on September 16, 2025 by admin

Robert Redford during the filming of The Sting (1973). Photo by Ken Dare, Los Angeles Times / Courtesy of the Dutch National Archives.

Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor, director, and visionary who built Sundance into the home of independent film, has died at his home in Utah. He was 89. Redford was first known as one of Hollywood’s most magnetic leading men, but his greatest impact came later, as he reshaped the future of filmmaking by giving independent voices a place to be heard.

Redford began his career in television and on Broadway before breaking through in film. His first leading role that brought him recognition was Barefoot in the Park (1967) opposite Jane Fonda. Two years later, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) made him a household name. His pairing with Paul Newman became one of the most beloved duos in film history. They reunited in The Sting (1973), which became a massive hit and earned Redford an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

An American Icon

In the 1970s, Redford wasn’t just a star. With his blond hair, windswept style, and natural charisma, he became a cultural symbol of American masculinity. But he quickly proved he was more than an image. In The Candidate (1972), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976), he pursued stories with political and social weight. By the end of the decade, he had become both a top box office draw and one of the most respected actors of his generation.

Behind the Camera

In 1980, Redford made his directing debut with Ordinary People, a family drama that went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film marked his transformation from leading man to accomplished filmmaker and proved he could command just as much respect behind the camera.
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“Darling” 4K Restoration to Open at Film Forum for 60th Anniversary Run

Posted on September 14, 2025 by admin

John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey, returns to the big screen in a new 4K restoration for its 60th anniversary. The bittersweet satire of Swinging London will screen at Film Forum in New York from October 10 to October 23.

The film, which helped define the British New Wave, earned five Academy Award nominations, winning Best Actress for Christie, Best Original Screenplay for Frederic Raphael, and Best Costume Design for Julie Harris. Christie’s performance as ambitious model Diana Scott launched her to international stardom.

Darling also earned four BAFTAs and three New York Film Critics Circle Awards, cementing its place as a cultural landmark of the 1960s.

Film Forum Celebrates 100 Years of Peter Sellers With Two-Week Retrospective

Posted on August 31, 2025 by admin

Film Forum will honor one of cinema’s greatest comic actors with 100 Years of Peter Sellers: From Britcoms to International Icon, running September 19–October 2. The series spans Sellers’ career from early U.K. comedies like The Ladykillers (1955) and his BAFTA-winning role in I’m All Right Jack (1959), to Hollywood landmarks including The Pink Panther series, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), and his Oscar-nominated turn in Hal Ashby’s Being There (1979).

Eighteen features are included, alongside rare 35mm screenings of Casino Royale (1967), What’s New Pussycat? (1965), A Shot in the Dark (1964), and Sellers’ Oscar-nominated short with Richard Lester, The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959).

Film critic Siddhant Adlakha will introduce the opening-night screening of Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968) on September 19.

Highlights include:

The Ladykillers (1955) – Sept 19, 21, 22, 29
I’m All Right Jack (1959) – Sept 19, 21, 26, 27, 30, Oct 1
Dr. Strangelove (1964, 35mm) – Sept 19, 20, 22, 28, Oct 1–2
Lolita (1962) – Sept 20, 21, 25, 27, Oct 2
The Pink Panther (1963) – Sept 21, 24, 30
Casino Royale (1967, 35mm) – Sept 23
Being There (1979, 35mm) – Sept 26–28, Oct 2

(Additional titles include Two Way Stretch, Only Two Can Play, Heavens Above!, The World of Henry Orient, What’s New Pussycat? and more.)

The full schedule and ticket information are available at filmforum.org.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Returns to Theaters Nationwide for One Night Only

Posted on August 17, 2025 by admin

Fans of classic horror will have a chance to see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre back on the big screen for a single night this summer. On August 18, 2025—52 years to the day the film’s events are set—Dark Sky Films and Fathom Events will present the original 1974 feature in 4K at theaters nationwide.

The screening arrives after a year of 50th anniversary celebrations and recognition of the film’s place in the National Film Registry. Long regarded as one of the most influential works in the genre, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre continues to draw both longtime fans and new audiences.

In addition to the restored feature, the event will include a sneak peek of Chain Reactions, a forthcoming documentary directed by Alexandre O. Philippe. The film examines the legacy of Texas Chain Saw through the perspectives of artists including Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Karyn Kusama.

Film Forum Launches Screen Deco, Festival of 1920s and 1930s Art Deco Classics

Posted on August 14, 2025 by admin

Film Forum in New York will present Screen Deco, a festival showcasing more than 25 films from the 1920s and 1930s that exemplify the style later dubbed Art Deco. Running from September 8, 2025, through January 1, 2026, the series commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which helped introduce the movement to the world.

Highlights include silent-era landmarks such as Our Dancing Daughters with Joan Crawford, A Woman of Affairs with Greta Garbo, Pandora’s Box with Louise Brooks, and the French production L’Inhumaine. Pre-Code features include Michael Curtiz’s Female, Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, William Wyler’s Counsellor at Law with John Barrymore, Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise, and Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade. Musicals such as Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers also feature in the lineup.
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Jack Lemmon 100: Festival of Classics Opens May 16 at Film Forum

Posted on April 22, 2025 by admin

JACK LEMMON 100, a two-week festival of classics from the 1950s to the 1990s, will run at Film Forum from Friday, May 16 to Thursday, May 29, in commemoration of Lemmon’s centennial year in 2025. The festival will include Lemmon’s best-known movies, including THE APARTMENT, SOME LIKE IT HOT, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, THE ODD COUPLE, IRMA LA DOUCE, and THE CHINA SYNDROME.

One of the most beloved actors in movie history, with a 50-year career that included comedies, musicals and dramas, Jack Lemmon (1925-2001), known for his quintessential “every man” persona, became the first person to win Academy Awards for both Best Supporting Actor for his role in MISTER ROBERTS (1955) and Best Actor for SAVE THE TIGER (1973). Lemmon also received Oscar nominations for THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979), TRIBUTE (1980) and MISSING (1982).

A frequent collaborator of director Billy Wilder and actor Walter Matthau, Lemmon first worked with Wilder on the comedy masterpiece SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), shortly followed by the Oscar-winning THE APARTMENT (1960). He first starred opposite Matthau in THE FORTUNE COOKIE (1966), but it was their iconic clashing of personalities in THE ODD COUPLE (1968) that cemented their place as one of the all-time great comedy teams, with The New York Times dubbing them “one of Hollywood’s most successful pairings.”
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René Clément’s “Forbidden Games” New 4K Restoration At Film Forum

Posted on April 10, 2025 by admin

“Forbidden Games”, the 1952 French war drama by René Clément based on François Boyer’s novel Les Jeux Interdits, will run in a new 4K restoration at Film Forum from Friday, May 9 to Thursday, May 15.

“Michel! Michel! Michel!” France 1940, as a refugee column trudges along a country road, a dog makes a break for it, with its tiny blonde mistress in pursuit — and then the German fighters strike. But if 5-year-old Brigitte Fossey’s understanding of death is limited as she strokes her mother’s cold face, at least she can bury the dog discarded by her peasant rescuers, aided by 11-year-old farm boy Georges Poujouly. As they build a special, secret friendship, their pet cemetery steadily grows, topped by crosses stolen from graveyards, even as the adults play their own games of grotesque peasant feuds… And then Fossey (“in a performance that rips the heart out” – The New York Times) shouts his name again.

A masterpiece of French post-war cinema by director René Clément (who would make the classic thriller Purple Noon, starring Alain Delon, eight years later), adapted by the legendary team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost from Boyer’s successful novel, with a haunting hit score played by guitar virtuoso Narciso Yepes, the ultimately beautiful, hilarious and disturbing “Forbidden Games” initially did so-so box office and screened only on the fringes of the Cannes Festival, then nearly got shut out of Venice — where it promptly won its top prize, the Golden Lion — and then became a worldwide art house smash and Clément’s second Best Foreign Film Oscar winner (following the previous year’s The Walls of Malapaga).

Film Feature: “Killer of Sheep” Charles Burnett’s American Independent Masterpiece

Posted on March 25, 2025 by admin

“Killer of Sheep”, Charles Burnett’s 1977 debut feature and landmark American independent masterpiece, will run at Film Forum from Friday, April 18 to Thursday, April 24, in a new 4K restoration.

Stan, employed at a slaughterhouse in the neighborhood of Watts, Los Angeles, is suffering from the emotional side effects of his bloody occupation to such a degree that his entire life unhinges. He seeks out tenderness in the face of unending struggle. Focusing on everyday life in Black communities with ingenuity, heart, and meticulous detail–a manner that had rarely been seen in American cinema–Burnett (acting as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor) combines lyrical elements with a starkly neorealist, documentary-like approach that unfolds with kaleidoscopic intimacy.

On a budget of less than $10,000, Burnett shot KILLER OF SHEEP in roughly a year of weekends, filmed on location with a mostly amateur cast, a gritty documentary-style cinematography and much handheld camera work. The film’s soundtrack, which Burnett envisioned as an aural history of African-American popular music, includes songs by Etta James, Paul Robeson, Little Walter, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The new 4K restoration, which has improved picture and sound, marks the first theatrical release with the Dinah Washington song “Unforgettable” recovered in the ending, as was found in Burnett’s original release of the film, since being replaced in 2007 due to copyright issues.

Largely overlooked for decades following its 1977 release, KILLER OF SHEEP is now celebrated as a pivotal work of the LA Rebellion movement and hailed as a masterpiece that brought Black American lives to the screen with an unparalleled, poignant compassion.

“I come from a working-class environment and I wanted to express what the realities were. People were trying to get jobs, and once they found jobs they were fully concerned with keeping them. And they were confronted with other problems, with serious problems at home for example, which made things much more difficult… “[The] real problems lie within the family, trying to make that work and be a human being. You don’t necessarily win battles; you survive.” – Charles Burnett

“Tales from The New Yorker”, 30-Film Series Opens February 21 at Film Forum

Posted on January 17, 2025 by admin

Robert Benchley

Tales from The New Yorker, a two-week series celebrating the iconic magazine’s first century, will run from Friday, February 21 to Thursday, March 6 at Film Forum, with a slate of over 30 films inspired by fiction and reporting from its pages, and by the legendary writers who helped define it.

The series opens on the 100th anniversary of the magazine’s very first issue (dated February 21, 1925, featuring the magazine’s top-hatted dandy, Eustace Tilley, on the cover), with Richard Brooks’ faithful adaptation of Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD (1967), which first appeared in serial form in The New Yorker in 1965. The opening night screening will be introduced by New Yorker editor David Remnick.

Other films in the series adapted from New Yorker stories include Alexander Hall’s MY SISTER EILEEN (1942), based on stories by Ruth McKenney; Vincente Minnelli’s MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944), based on stories by Sally Benson, Norman Z. McLeod’s THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947), based on the story by James Thurber; Nicholas Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956), based on the Annals of Medicine story “Ten Feet Tall” by Berton Roueché; Frank Perry’s THE SWIMMER (1968), based on the short story by John Cheever; Ang Lee’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005), based on the short story by Annie Proulx; Lee Chang-dong’s BURNING (2018), based on the short story “Barn Burning,” by Haruki Murakami; and many more.
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Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Woman Is A Woman” At Film Forum

Posted on January 7, 2025 by admin

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, writer/director Jean-Luc Godard’s “subversive” color and Scope tribute to the Hollywood musical comedy, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and the director’s then-wife and muse Anna Karina, will run at Film Forum from Friday, February 7 to Thursday, February 20, in a new 4K restoration being shown for the first time in the United States.

“I want to be in a musical with Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly… choreographed by Bob Fosse!” declares Karina, and she almost gets her wish in this first color, Scope, and partly studio-shot film by her then-husband, the second (following LE PETIT SOLDAT) of their seven and a half collaborations. Karina’s Angela — an afternoon dancer in the sleazy Zodiac Club – yearns for motherhood, but live-in boyfriend Brialy “isn’t ready yet,” while hanger-on Belmondo is more than happy to oblige.
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