Screening & Live Event
Spettacolo

Part of New Adventures in Nonfiction (2018) & New Adventures in Nonfiction
Sunday, April 8, 2018, 6:30 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos Screening Room

With director Jeff Malmberg in person

Dir. Jeff Malmberg. 2017, 91 mins. Digital projection. In Italian with English subtitles. Once upon a time, villagers in a tiny hill town in Tuscany came up with a remarkable way to confront their issues: They turned their lives into a play. Every summer for half a century, the villagers of Monticchiello have turned a piazza into a stage and transformed themselves into the players. This annual tradition has attracted worldwide attention and kept the town intact, but with an aging population and the next generation increasingly disinterested, the 50th anniversary performance just might be the last. Spettacolo tells the story of Teatro Povero di Monticchiello, interweaving episodes from its past with its modern-day process as the villagers turn a series of devastating blows into a new play about the end of their world. "So poignant and is so intelligently told that it feels wrong, almost insulting, to call Spettacolo charming, even if the movie is often delightful." —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Preceded by Palenque 

With Sebastian Pinzón Silva in person

Dir. Sebastian Pinzón Silva. 2017. 26 mins. In Spanish and Palenquero with subtitles.Founded by runaway slaves, San Basilio de Palenque was the first town in the Americas to break free from European domination. Palenque is an ode to a place that has been essential to Colombian culture and to its collective memory, a place where the real and the mythical, the quotidian and the musical, trauma and transcendence, are enduringly entwined.

Tickets: $15 ($11 seniors and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / free for children under 3 and Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected] with questions regarding online reservations.)

Ticket purchase includes same-day admission to the Museum (see gallery hours). View the Museum’s ticketing policy here. For more information on membership and to join online, visit our membership page.

Palenque