Major

Thu, Oct 29, 2009
5:00 PM – 9:00 PM

New Museum Theater (directions)

Urs Fischer’s Film Selections

Part of Exhibition Related
 
Film / Video

In conjunction with "Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty," Urs Fischer selects a group of films to be screened in the New Museum theater. 

5 p.m.
Touki Bouki

7 p.m.
Cosmonaut Polyakov (US PREMIERE)

Touki Bouki (1973)
95 min, Wolof language with English subtitles
Dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty
Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, meet in Dakar. Alienated and disaffected by both Senegal and Africa, they work up schemes to raise money to go to Paris. On the course of their journey, they begin to discover the cruelty of life as their aspirations slowly begin to dissolve. Full of dreamlike surrealism and colorful symbolism, Touki Bouki is often considered the first avant-garde film to come out of Africa. Restored in 2008 by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna / L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory.

Cosmonaut Polyakov(2007)
110 min, Russian language with English subtitles
Dir. Dana Ranga
This highly acclaimed 2007 documentary directed by Dana Ranga (East Side Story, and Story). Cosmonaut Polyakov follows Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who holds the record of the longest trip into space: one year and two months. For the first time he speaks publicly about the KGB, being in exile, and the struggle of space travel.

Caption: Still from Cosmonaut Polyakov (2007).

Sponsors TOP

Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty is made possible with generous support from the Brant Foundation; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; the Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation, Inc.; Dakis Joannou; Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann; Eugenio López; the LUMA Foundation; the Peter Morton Foundation; François Pinault; the Ringier Collection; Tony Salame; and the Teiger Foundation. Additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Support for the accompanying publication Urs Fischer: Shovel in a Hole is provided by the J. McSweeney and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New Museum and Mr Keet, LLC, New York.

Profiles TOP

Urs Fischer

Born 1973, Zurich, Switzerland/Lives and works New York City

Urs Fischer was born in Zurich in 1973, and currently lives and works in New York City. He was included in Unmonumental, the New Museum’s inaugural exhibition for the SANAA-designed building in 2007. Fischer’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in European museums, including the Kunsthaus in Zurich; the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam; and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His work was also included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.