NEW YORK: Though it's not clear just how widespread this information was among the average moviegoers of the day, in retrospect it's only become clearer and clearer that Jean-Luc Godard owned the 1960s. None of the gazillions of filmmakers who tried to copy or emulate him at the time found a way to do it without looking ridiculous, and Godard himself has spent the last forty-odd years wondering why nobody believes him when he insists that his later work is much better. Deal with it: Godard's sixties movies, which began with the 1959 Breathless and ended with the 1968 Weekend, which ends with the words "End of Cinema" and which was followed by, of course, more movies, amount to an enduring alternate history of their period, one caught on the fly, and seemingly composed and moods and signals snatched from the air. They are completely of their moment and haven't really dated, and they pointed in a direction that no one has really been able to follow, Godard included. Starting today and continuing through June 5, Film Forum has the whole kicking, biting, flirting package, including the first of Godard's post-Godardian films, the 1969 Le Gai Savoir, and Sympathy for the Devil, which really doesn't belong in this company but has to be included in any comprehensive salute to Godard and the 1960s, 'cause it's got Rolling Stones in it. If you're looking for a place to escape to as summer comes clanking in, this might be the place.
Peter Hutton is a landscape specialist with a moving camera. A former art student, he has traveled the world, sometimes while working as a merchant seaman, recording his visual impressions of Southeast Asia, of the sea, of New York City in the 1970s and Hungary in the 1980s and communal living in Southern California and the Hudson River Valley, turning out a string of transcendentally beautiful, singular films that document his way of seeing. From May 5 through the 26th, the Museum of Modern Artpresents a career retrospective of Hutton's work, which should be eye-opening even for the lucky folks who've managed to have seen some of it. It opens with a "conversation" between the filmmaker and writer Luc Sante.