Phillip Lopate Presents: Two Selections from My Affair with Art House Cinema

To coincide with his latest collection of film essays, author Phillip Lopate presents two fascinating 1976 works from antipodal regions of the world that speak to the unbounded adventurousness of independent world cinema. In his new book My Affair with Art House Cinema (Columbia University Press), he writes about coming of age during a high point of international film at American art-house cinemas. Though he never served as a staff film critic, the renowned essayist has been writing about movies throughout his career, contributing to publications like the New York Times, Film Comment, the Criterion Collection, and the New York Review of Books, and for eight years served on the New York Film Festival selection committee. “I would be loath to articulate in so many words my critical principles,” he writes, “anyone who reads the book can perceive what these mainly are: experiencing the integrity of each shot; relishing a flow of images that unfolds flexibly into its environmental space; endorsing a nuanced, humanistic psychology of character; and demonstrating some sort of wisdom.” All of which apply to his selections of Lino Brocka’s gritty melodrama Insiang and John Cassavetes’s seedy noir The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  

Lopate will be signing copies of My Affair with Art House Cinema in the MoMI shop between films on Saturday, August 24.