2022 | directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch

Adapted from an award-winning novel by Italian writer Paolo Cognetti, this breathtaking, grand, intimate film follows the decades-long relationship between boyhood friends Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who meet when Pietro's well-off family vacations in Bruno's tiny Alpine village.

Over the years, their friendship waxes and wanes, but the two reconnect after the death of Pietro's father and decide to build, by hand, the remote Alpine cabin the father had dreamed of.

Winner of the Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival. In Italian, English, and Nepali with English subtitles. (147 minutes) 

“It climbs mountainous heights and rewards you with the opposite of vertigo: exaltation.” –Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

Dr. Joseph Leach, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar at the DIA, will lead a tour of Buddhist works of art in the Robert and Katherine Jacobs Asian Wing.

• 6 p.m. Meeting and Reception
• 7:30 p.m. Tour of Asian Wing.

Pakistan/2022—directed by Saim Sadiq | 127 min.

A film of groundbreaking firsts, including the first Pakistani film to play at the Cannes Film Festival and to be shortlisted for the Best International Feature Oscar®. Initially banned in its home country for its LGBTQ+ themes, Joyland is a family drama set in the bustling megacity of Lahore.

Haider, a soft-spoken husband, is pressured by his domineering father to find a job. He finds work as a dancer in an erotic theater and is drawn to the show’s dazzling star, a trans woman (played by Alina Khan). This striking feature debut upends traditional gender roles and identities through an engaging story of complex and imperfect expressions of love.

Official selection, Toronto, London, Sundance and AFI Film Festivals. Jury Prize Winner and Queer Palm Award, Cannes Film Festival. In Urdu and Punjabi with English subtitles.

“Funny, forward, and bracingly political… Pakistani director Saim Sadiq’s sensuous film mounts an indictment of misogyny and transphobia without ever lecturing us.” — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff and Dr. Clare Rogan will take members through the Print room and Galleries highlighting artwork relating to the German-speaking lands in the 1500s.

Each one-hour tour is limited to 15 participants, on a first-come, first-served basis. Auxiliary Members can RSVP using this link.

1953 | Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot | 147 min.

We’re celebrating this weekend’s Concours with what is likely the greatest film about driving ever made. And it’s not about speed – in fact, just the opposite. Four desperate men stuck in a desolate town in Central America, agree to earn $2,000 each to carefully drive two trucks filled with nitroglycerine over 300 miles of rocky, decrepit mountain roads to help extinguish a raging oil well fire.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece is one of the great, existential movie thrillers – both darkly funny and utterly nerve-wracking. Clouzot (Diabolique) has staged sequences that are as agonizingly suspenseful as anything in movie history. That's no accident, since endurance, fate, and the human condition are what The Wages of Fear is about.

The restored original cut of this visionary work is thrilling in ways we always hope suspense films will be; we are reminded, almost perversely, to be careful what we wish for. Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival. In French with English subtitles.

"The film is about their responses to the grueling test of driving the trucks. You sit there waiting for the theatre to explode." -Pauline Kael, The New Yorker 

The Firewalkers are a hot new R&B, blues and rock band from Detroit, specializing in the pre-Motown sounds of the late 1950s and early '60s.

The band includes some of the city's finest musicians and is fronted by the fiery vocals of Laura Mendoza, (White Shag, The Ricky Rat Pack, Mark Farner’s American Band) featuring David James (Jon Rice Band) on guitar, Rudy Varner (Chris Casello Trio, JC and the Royal Keys) on upright bass, and Loney Charles (Jack Scott) on drums.  

USA/2021-directed by Megan Mylan | 97 mins

Megan Mylan’s new documentary feature takes a humble idea: telling intimate and humanizing stories of Syrian families affected by their home country’s civil war.

Filmed over five years in five separate countries, Simple as Water is anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun. 

“The level of access that Mylan and her team receive is remarkable on a personal front as well as a political one.” —Claire Shaffer, The New York Times

The Southeast Michigan Refugee Collaborative (SEMIRC) in partnership with the Detroit Film Theatre will present a free screening of Simple as Water as part of the inaugural year of Michigan's first Refugee Film Festival. SEMIRC is the state's largest refugee response collective with a broad range of members including refugee resettlement agencies, government partners and other organizations working to foster vibrant communities in the region.
 

Energizing Paris After Cubism

Jennifer M. Friess, Associate Curator of Photography, University of Michigan Museum of Art, will discuss how electric light energized a new and experimental era of photographic image-making in Paris after the First World War. Although painters and printmakers had been representing scenes illuminated by electric light as early as the 1870s, photographers only started to do so in earnest after the First World War. Featuring photographs, prints, and drawings from the exhibition After Cubism: Modern Art in Paris, 1918–1948.

Sponsored by the Detroit Institute of Arts Friends of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
 

Dance and Celebration is a favorite event for Detroit Dance City Festival audiences and features performances by world-renowned guest dancers and choreographers, this year including 

• ArtLab J I
• ArtLab J II
• ArtLab J for Grown-Ups
• Kelsey Lewinski
• Xing Dance Theater Student Company
• Seong Jeong Kim 

A major highlight of the weekend-long festival, you will not want to miss this celebratory performance!

Detroit Dance City Festival (DDCF) is an annual community building event curated by ArtLab J that celebrates dance in its various forms and disciplines. DDCF brings the work of renowned local, national, and international performing artists, choreographers, and companies to the stage in a weekend full of performances, master classes and networking events. 

Two of Detroit Dance City Festival's programs highlighting new works come together for an evening of exciting dance!

DDCF’s College Showcase was developed to give platform and agency to collegiate choreographers, professors and guests artists to present their newest work. This year’s showcase features:

• Univeristy of Michigan
• Western Michigan University
• Hope College
• Lindenwood University

Choreographers Showcase II, presents new works by local, national, and international artists and dancers, this year including:

• ARK Initiative Ballet
• Smutek Dance
• Morgan Walker
• Norberto Collazo
• Wellspring/Cori Terry & Dancers
• ConteXture Dance Detroit
• Mark Gonzalez
• Jazz Spectrum Dance Company

Detroit Dance City Festival (DDCF) is an annual community building event curated by ArtLab J that celebrates dance in its various forms and disciplines. DDCF brings the work of renowned local, national, and international performing artists, choreographers, and companies to the stage in a weekend full of performances, master classes and networking events.