New York’s ever-fleeting spring has been slow to arrive and will soon be overtaken by the sweltering heat of high summer, and on those days when it’s too cold to be crisp or too hot to be comfortable, there are few places better to kill a couple of hours than the movie theater.
Uptown, downtown, borough by borough, we scoured the calendars of our local cineplexes to find the most exciting and intriguing offerings for May. Yes, it’s "The Devil Wears Prada 2" season, but New York’s theaters have more to offer than a return to cerulean. Whether you’re a hardcore cinephile or a hardcore punk fan, there’s something for everyone at the movies this month.
Our Land/Nuestra Tierra
Film Forum, May 1 and May 2
In 2009, indigenous Argentinian activist Javier Chocobar, who spent years campaigning to protect his community’s land rights, was shot dead. The murder was captured on a single shaky cellphone video.
In the decade that followed, Argentine director Lucrecia Martel (“Zama,” “La Ciénaga”) followed the case and its controversially delayed trial. With “Our Land/Nuestra Tierra,” she’s woven together footage from the murder, interviews with indigenous community members, and lingering landscape shots of the lush Tucumán province they call home, to craft a history-spanning documentary that is much more than a simple true crime tale.
The screening on May 1 will be introduced by producer Joslyn Barnes.
Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks
Roxy Cinema, May 1 and May 4
If you’ve been bitten by the '90s nostalgia bug that’s been sweeping social media and culture at large, you’ll love this documentary about the Lunachicks, an underrated all-girl band whose devil-may-care vibes and loudly feminist ethos steamrolled through the NYC pre-Millennium punk scene.
Ilya Chaiken’s documentary tracks the rise and fall and rise again of a singular group that redefined the rules for women in rock and roll. A litany of conflicts led to their breakup in 2000, but over two decades later, the itch to reunite for one last show proves inescapable. Will the gals pull it off, or is punk dead after all?!
There There
The Old American Can Factory, May 1-3
Deep in the doldrums of the COVID-19 lockdown, director Andrew Bujalski called up his Rolodex of collaborators with an idea to test the limits of intimacy.
An interconnected series of two-person scenes weaves together the lives of multiple characters as they test the boundaries of physical and emotional intimacy, like deciding whether to see a lover again after a hookup or dealing with a child’s misbehavior.
Actors were filmed hundreds of miles apart for every scene on an iPhone 12 Pro Max while Bujalski directed them remotely from his Texas home.
He then cut the footage together to make it look as if they were in the same room, using experimental techniques to comment on separation and togetherness.
"There There" was released in 2022 following its Tribeca Film Festival premiere. In this new version, which is on view at the Old American Can Factory, the film has been adapted into a multichannel video installation with the footage spread across a long corridor.
Museum of the Moving Image First Look Festival
Redstone Theater, through May 3
The Museum of the Moving Image's annual First Look Festival is one of the best opportunities to check out innovative new films from all over the world. While it’s set to wrap up at the beginning of May, there are still ample chances to catch some of its best offerings. "The Whole World Is a Lie," a meta-documentary from Charlie Birns, toes the line between fiction and reality within the confines of a volatile method acting class. "Humboldt, USA" blends the histories and terrain of three vastly different American locations, all named after the “grandfather of ecology,” Alexander von Humboldt. Director Isabel Sandoval’s Closing Night film "Moonglow" sets a film-noir romantic crime drama in 1970s Manila.
Silent Friend
Angelika Film Center May 6-14, Lincoln Center May 6-9
An elder ginkgo tree is at the center of an epoch-spanning metaphysical drama about humanity’s attempts to connect with the natural world.
A neuroscientist studying the minds of babies in 2020, a student who befriends a geranium in 1972, and a university’s first female student who discovers sacred patterns in the cells of plants in 1908 are intertwined by the century-old tree whose ancient memory observes and connects them all.
Star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and director Ildikó Enyedi will be present for Q&As at both theaters.
Blue Film
IFC Center, May 8
After its controversial subject matter saw it rejected from the likes of Sundance and South by Southwest, Elliot Tuttle’s “camboy thriller” finally had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year, and has been taking the festival scene by storm ever since.
In “Blue Film,” a sex worker agrees to spend the night with an anonymous client, despite the client’s ever-present camcorder and series of intrusive questions. Things go too far when the client suddenly reveals a shocking connection to the sex worker's past, and the night unravels from there.
IFC Center is also hosting a sneak preview of the movie on May 6 with a post-screening Q&A with Tuttle and stars Kieron Moore and Reed Birney.
All That Jazz
Redstone Theater May 22 and May 24
Bob Fosse’s 1979 masterwork screens this month as part of the Museum of the Moving Image's unmissable Song & Dance repertory series, and we’re telling you now, you don’t want to miss the chance to see one of the best movies of all time on one of the biggest screens in town.
Roy Scheider stars as Broadway theater director Joe Gideon (Fosse in all but name), whose brushes with sudden death send him down a psychedelic spiral of musical mayhem as he confronts the sins of his past and the traumas of the showbiz life.
The inimitable Ann Reinking threw on a sparkly jacket and a top hat, and cinema was never the same. Stanley Kubrick called it the “best film I think I have ever seen.”
Shorts Program 1: Out of Bounds
BAM Rose Cinemas, May 23
BAM’s annual FilmAfrica fest has been highlighting pan-African filmmaking for over thirty years, and this year includes classics like “Black Girl” and “Mississippi Masala” alongside newer offerings.
The shorts programs, showcasing new and recent African and African diaspora pieces, are a great way to get a taste of the stories modern writers and directors are telling across the continent and beyond. In these films, two young siblings, immigrants from Gabon, see snow for the first time in Bordeaux on Christmas Eve.
The manager of a coffee roasting factory traps his employees inside, claiming the sky is falling.
A shepherd steals his village’s prize sheep, setting him at odds with his community’s traditions.
With Hasan in Gaza
Metrograph, May 29
When director Kamal Aljafari was a teenager, he was briefly imprisoned in Gaza during the First Palestinian Intifada.
He became friendly with a prison mate. In 2001, he set off with a guide and a MiniDV camera in search of the man he once met, documenting the places they saw in a travelogue.
Two decades later, Aljafari revisits the footage he’d collected of a bygone Gaza whose homes and towns he once visited have since been flattened by the ongoing violence.
The result plays as a paean to a lost era, the tranquil scenes of markets, beaches and idle conversations with friends reminding us how totally an entire region has been altered by war.
Aljafari will be at Metrograph in person for the film’s opening weekend, kicking off its one-week theatrical run.
