Films This Week 10/15/21
by Gary Palmucci | 15th October 2021 | Gary's Corner
We’re very happy to add to this week’s Virtual Cinema lineup the documentary In Balanchine’s Classroom, direct from its downtown cinema premiere engagement. The legendary Russian choreographer who arrived in America in 1933 (via Paris’ Ballets Russes) taught and provided lifelong inspiration to thousands of dancers, some of whom are interviewed here by filmmaker Connie Hochman, herself once a student at his School of American Ballet.
As one interviewee explains, “When Balanchine came to America there was no real ballet training…he not only started a company, he changed the whole look of ballet.”
A NY Times Critic’s Pick review last month proclaimed, “In mathematics, there was Newton; in psychology, Freud; and in American ballet George Balanchine was a foundational genius….There is a beautiful act of translation that this documentary observes, as (his) former students – now wizened teachers themselves – attempt to render his movements into speech.”
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On the box-office front, James Bond proved pretty successful in drawing back older moviegoers to the big screen last weekend. Industry eyeballs will now be trained on No Time To Die’s critical second weekend of release.
And in the coming month, a slew of ambitious new films including Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, Will Smith in King Richard and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza will be competing for adult cineastes’ attention…
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema