As we bid farewell to another awards season, Museum Films’ May lineup opens with encore screenings of one of 2021’s most beloved audience favorites, Oklahoma-made indie blockbuster, Minari. Fresh from celebrated Korean actress Yuh-jung Youn’s history-making win for Best Supporting Actress, Lee Isaac-Chung’s beautifully bittersweet family drama returns to OKCMOA’s Noble Theater for a richly deserved Oscar victory lap.
Also this month, we’re excited to shine a spotlight on New Scandinavian cinema with a stylistically diverse trio of acclaimed festival favorites from Sweden and Norway. A returning Museum Films favorite, influential Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence), earned the Best Director prize at this year’s Venice International Film Festival for About Endlessness, (also available in our Virtual Cinema), a serene meditation on the human condition composed from a series of dreamlike vignettes. Shot with Andersson’s trademark crystalline sharpness, each brief sequence vibrates with enigmatic meaning that demands active reflection while resisting any single interpretation. A visual encyclopedia of love and loneliness, care and cruelty, transcendence and debasement; this 76 minute marvel is much more than the sum of its parts.
Shortlisted for the Best International Feature Oscar, Norwegian drama Hope (also screening in OKCMOA’s Virtual Cinema) stars Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellan Skarsgård (Out Stealing Horses) as Anja and Thomas, a pair of creatively driven artists who struggle to hold their blended family together in the wake of Anja’s cancer diagnosis. Unfolding in the days between Christmas and New Year’s, writer-director Maria Sødahl’s moving autobiographical film evokes Ingmar Bergman’s domestic dramas in its combination of warm, beautifully composed images; fully rounded characters; and intensely committed performances. Another Norwegian production, director Viktor Kosakovskiy’s wordless, black-and-white documentary Gunda enchanted New York and Berlin Film Festival audiences with its immersive portrait of a mother pig, a herd of cows and a curious one-legged chicken. Executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix, this singular work of slow cinema offers an empathetic and thought-provoking meditation on animal consciousness.
May in the Noble Theater also brings a pair of inspiring art documentaries. We’re proud to host a free, special presentation of The Art and Times of Frosty Myers, an engaging look at the life and career of American sculptor Forrest “Frosty” Myers over the past half century. Myers’ sculpture Lazers Daze (1966) is currently on view as part of OKCMOA’s Moving Vision exhibition. The latest blockbuster documentary from Exhibition on Screen (Frida Kahlo, Leonardo: the Works), Sunflowers offers a revelatory exploration of the mysteries behind Van Gogh’s beloved Arles sunflower paintings.
Last but not least, Museum Films is very proud to present the stunning new restoration of Mirror, Andrei Tarkosvsky’s visionary interweaving of 20th-century Russian history with dreamlike fragments of the director’s own childhood and family memories. Following on the heels of the rapturous rediscoveries of Solaris and Stalker, the rerelease of Mirror offers an unmissable opportunity to experience Tarkovsky’s most personal and poetic masterwork on the big screen.
OKCMOA Film Society members, we hope you’ll join us on Thursday, May 6 for a special screening of Kent Mackenzie’s landmark 1961 drama, The Exiles, followed by a Zoom presentation and Q&A with special guest, Dr. Joshua Glick. Members have the option of attending the screening and presentation in the Noble Theater or participating online.
Thanks as always for supporting Museum Films! We hope to see you soon.
