Brothers in Anarchism
Films by Jean Vigo, Luis Buñuel, H.C. Potter and the Marx Brothers

December 5 and 26 to 30, 2004

Variations on a favourite Film Museum tradition: every year, films of the Marx Brothers are being presented in the period between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Placed alongside these films this year are Groucho, Chico and Harpo‘s anarchic European relatives: Jean Vigo and Luis Buñuel, who began their film careers at the same time as the Marx Brothers.
 
The Film Museum will screen Buñuel's L'Age d'or, Las Hurdes, Viridiana and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, as well as all four films made by the great Jean Vigo during his lifetime: À propos de Nice, Taris, Zéro de conduite and L'Atalante.
 
Vigo, son of the famous anarchist Miguel Almereyda, died in 1934 at the age of twenty-nine. This tribute also means to highlight the upcoming „Year of Jean Vigo“ - in 2005, the centenary of his birth will be celebrated all over the world.
 
Two other Film Museum classics offer a balancing act between cinematic anarchy, surrealism and fantasy: H.C. Potter's Hellzapoppin' with its zany lunacy, carries on an old house rule (it is being screened every 5th of December, Austria’s “Day of the Hellboy“), while The Wizard of Oz is in the process of establishing a new one: For the third time now, we are showing it on the last Saturday afternoon before Christmas.