Event Overview:
This screening accompanies "A Theater Near You" film series.

This series celebrates the ever-changing and always vital world of New York film culture with programs highlighting 17 iconic screening venues—some long gone, some still thriving today. Each theater is represented with programs that give a sense of their unique styles and the preoccupations of such influential programmers as Iris Barry, Amos Vogel, Dan Talbot, Karen Cooper, Bruce Goldstein, Richard Peńa, and Jed Rapfogel. Though each theater presented a wide variety of films, it is also fair to say, for example, that Anthology Film Archives is known for its focus on the international avant-garde; the New Yorker Theater for its mix of forgotten Hollywood films and new releases reflecting the various new waves of the 1960s; the Elgin for its legendary midnight screenings; or the Maysles Documentary Center for an engaging mix reflecting its self-proclaimed identity as “Harlem’s Living Room.”

Chess Fever. 1925. USSR. Directed by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin. Screenplay by Pudovkin, Nikolai Shpikovsky. With Jose Capablanca, Zakhar Darevsky, Natalie Glan. 35mm. Silent, with musical accompaniment. English main and intertitles. 20 min.

The Last Command. 1928. USA. Directed by Josef von Sternberg. Story by Lajos Biró, adapted by John F. Goodrich. With Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, William Powell. 35mm. Silent, with musical accompaniment. 88 min.