The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 17-23
Charmed Particles (1978)
Directed By Andrew Noren
With shots of silhouetted crowds in darkened, cavernous streets and sunbathed curtains animating with textured reliefs, Charmed Particles excites the prosaic, pursuing a silver lining that is transcendent and bewitching. Peculiarly luminous, spartan, and exalting, Charmed Particles is the fourth episode of Andrew Noren’s avant-film diary, “The Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse.” A series increasingly defined by shadow, light, and time, Charmed Particles is sort of a turning point, fascinated by the everyday ways that light makes up the world, darkness can conceal and reveal, and something(s) can come from nothing; elements Noren himself seemed to mirror. In the Exquisite Corpse’s beginning, he appeared prominently, often nakedly, but over the years he receded from the screen and, with screenings restricted by Noren, so did his films. By the time of his death in 2015, both film and filmmaker had fallen deeply into the dark. Perhaps appropriately. But it’s about time to come back into the light. Jeremy Polacek (February 23, 7:30pm at Light Industry)