Movie Night with James Toback: F for Fake
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thu Dec 10 at 7:00pm! We’re happy to bring James Toback — the controversial writer-director whose films range from 1978’s Fingers to 2009’s Tyson — to the IFC Center for a special “Movie Night” on Thursday, December 10 at 7:00pm. Toback will be presenting one of his favorite films, Orson Welles’s late masterwork F FOR FAKE (1973), followed by a discussion with filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev (Fighter), whose recent documentary My Kid Can Paint That also tackled issues of deception and fakery in the art world.
Trickery, deceit and magic abound in Welles’s free-form documentary F FOR FAKE, with the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully engaging the central preoccupation of his career-the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying cinematic journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes-not the least of whom is Welles himself. Charming and inventive, F FOR FAKE is an inspired prank and a searching examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.
In our “Movie Night” series, we turn over a theater to special guests and lets them call the shots. Audiences can discover what some of their favorite authors, musicians, artists, and filmmakers would pick if it were Movie Night at their house. Participants appear in person to acknowledge the brilliance of a timeless classic, spotlight an unsung gem, or defend a guilty pleasure. Past guests include filmmaker David Gordon Green, Slovenian theorist and philosopher Slavoj Zizek, singer-songwriter-actor Will Oldham, director and Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam, French auteur Gaspar Noe, author Jonathan Lethem, performer and director John Cameron Mitchell, iconoclastic filmmaker David Lynch, actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini, and comedian and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Fred Armisen and Canadian cineaste Guy Maddin.
IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.