Film series: Zany, cute, interesting 10 March – 16 May 2021

Spanning the 1930s to today, this series unites screwball comedies with masterpieces of Japanese kawaii, African nouvelle vague with path-breaking documentaries. These are films that make your head spin at their exuberant energy; films that make you melt and go ‘aww’; films that reconfigure how you see the world: ‘aha!’

Zany, cute, interesting (10 March – 16 May 2021) is inspired by cultural theorist Sianne Ngai’s insight that the colloquial ways we respond to artworks reveal something about contemporary society. We feel zany because of our frantic working lives, our love for cute things indexes the cult of commodities, we are easily bored and on the hunt for novelty because of the lightning-fast flow of information around us. How have filmmakers elicited these affects and transformed them over time?

The series opens with a lineage of zanies whose manic performances blur the line between work and play. It bounces from Charlie Chaplin in 1930s LA (Modern times) to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in 1950s New York (Artists and models), hitches a ride with young outlaws in Dakar (Touki bouki), and ends up in Bucharest with Toni Erdmann, 21st-century cinema’s quintessential crank.

Next, we peer into the pint-sized realm of the squishy and adorable. In some films, the ‘cute’ hinges on sentimental feelings toward the diminutive, infantile and unthreatening. In others, suspicion and hostility mingle with tenderness: perhaps those doe-eyes are a trap. This strand features cute kids (Ohayō), creepy kids (The bad seed), a romantic drama enchanted by small things (The earrings of Madame de…) and exemplary cinema by two high priests of millennial cute: Wes Anderson and Hayao Miyazaki.

The ‘interesting’ sparks with curiosity and wonder. In the final strand, we chase this appetite for engrossing true stories across a quartet of acclaimed documentaries. We are introduced to mid-century travelling Bible salesmen, an eccentric VHS activist, resistance filmmakers in Sudan, and the hidden workings of the New York Public Library. These are docos which shine a light on our information-saturated world.

Films

• 10 March – Modern times (director Charlie Chaplin, US, 1936, 35mm)

• 14 March – Toni Erdmann (director Maren Ade, Germany, 2016, digital)

• 17 March – Bringing up baby (director Howard Hawks, US, 1938, 35mm)

• 21 March – Artists and models (director Frank Tashlin, US, 1955, 35mm)

• 24, 28 March – Touki bouki (director Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1973, 35mm-to-digital)

• 31 March, 4 April – After hours (director Martin Scorsese, US, 1985, 35mm)

• 7 April – Ohayō (director Yasujirō Ozu, Japan, 1959, 35mm-to-digital)

• 11 April – The bad seed (director Mervyn LeRoy, US, 1956, 35mm-to-digital) + Dr Cute (director Rachel Maclean, Scotland, 2019, digital)

• 14, 18 April – The earrings of Madame de… (director Max Ophüls, France, 1953, 35mm)

• 21 April – The Royal Tenenbaums (director Wes Anderson, US,  2001, 35mm)

• 25 April – Ponyo (director Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2008, 35mm)

• 28 April, 2 May – The wonders (director Alice Rohrwacher, Italy, 2014, digital)

• 5 May – Salesman (director Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, US, 1969, 16mm) 

• 9 May – Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (director Frederick Wiseman, US, 2017, digital)

• 12 May – Talking about trees (director Suhaib Gasmelbari, Sudan, 2020, digital) + Jamal (director Ibrahim Shaddad, Sudan, 1981, digital)

• 16 May – Recorder: the Marion Stokes project (director Matt Wolf, US, 2019, digital)