Pablo Larraín • 2008 • Chile • Tony is an obsessive John Travolta impersonator in Santiago de Chile.
Raúl Peralta performs at a bar on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, meticulously recreating scenes from Saturday Night Fever. His dreams of becoming a star appear reasonably attainable when the national television channel announces a Tony Manero impersonating contest. His conviction to do whatever it takes to win, however, launches Raúl on an irreversible path of violence.
Immersing the spectator in the deepest recesses of a determined mind while evoking an era's pervasive threat of violence, Tony Manero posits a murderous psychopath as the logical conclusion of an authoritarian state. Pablo Larraín's second film premiered at Cannes' Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, and is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Up Next in Michael Almereyda
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Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1969 • One of Ken Jacobs' great experiments in photography and editing.
Ken Jacobs started experimenting with found footage, expanding a five-minute fragment of Billy Bitzer’s Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1905) to feature length. In Jacobs’s words—“Ghosts! Cine-recor...
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Walden
Jonas Mekas • United States • 1969 • An epic and intimate document of 1960s New York.
A 27-year-old Lithuanian émigré sets out to film his life as it unfolds. In six reels, we encounter several chapters—including the 1960s New York arts scene, featuring many of the filmmaker’s friends: Stan Brak...
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Goodbye to Language
Jean-Luc Godard • 2014 • France-Switzerland
A beguiling video-essay on the experience of being-in-the-world—refracted through the eyes of several young lovers, and a dog.
A small town on the shores of Lak...
