The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, January 13-19
Selma (2014)
Directed by Ava DuVernay
DuVernay very suddenly rose to prominence as the voice of a movement, a new black cinema, on the back of her third feature. Selma is a deeply felt portrait of the communal organism that traveled around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—part PR-machine, part security detail, part family. The film is about hope rising from the ashes of explosions and burnt crosses. It’s about the ingenuity of a filmmaker tasked with constructing a public figure without access to his words. DuVernay, Director of Photography Bradford Young and actor David Oyelowo produce a vision of King that modern audiences can understandz—a man who has to remember that he’s not allowed to be human because the opposition needs him to be. He trembles with the regret that he couldn’t have saved one more life. This film and its warm images of King act as his backbone when his heart won’t talk to him. The sureness and strength of Selma leave little doubt why DuVernay had a doll made in her likeness. Who wouldn’t want their daughter to grow into a filmmaker so compassionate and interesting?
Scout Tafoya (January 18, 3pm at the Museum of the Moving Image)