The Village Detective: a song cycle

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Sharon Vanorny/courtesy MMoCA

A Rooftop Cinema screening at MMoCA.

A past Rooftop Cinema screening (of "Desolation Center").

Enjoy a quartet of independent documentary films on the MMoCA rooftop on upcoming Thursdays. Rooftop Cinema kicks off Aug. 4 with The American Sector, exploring what artifacts from the Cold War can tell us about politics today. It's followed on Aug. 11 by Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, in which director/screenwriter Celeste Bell (daughter of the X-Ray Spex frontwoman) pieces together her mother's past; on Aug. 25 by The Village Detective: A Song Cycle, which builds a story around reels of film from 1969 found in the ocean by Icelandic fishing nets in 2016; and on Sept. 1 by North By Current, a personal documentary from filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax about truths discovered on returning to his hometown following the death of his niece. Ticket sales begin at 7:30 p.m. in the lobby.

press release: Bring a friend, bring a blanket or camp chairs, and prepare yourself for an evening of independent films and videos under the stars. Rooftop Cinema returns to the Museum’s Rooftop Sculpture Garden each Thursday this August for its seventeenth season. Films begin at sundown, approximately 8 PM.

About The Village Detective: A song cycle

Bill Morrison | USA | 2021 | 81 minutes

In 2016, a fishing boat off the shores of Iceland caught four reels of 35mm film, seemingly of Soviet provenance, in its nets. The discovery wasn’t a lost work of major importance, but an incomplete print of a popular Soviet comedy from 1969, starring the beloved Russian actor Mihail Žarov. Bill Morrison, whose previous films Decasia and Dawson City: Frozen Time utilize lost, deteriorating footage, believes that the water-damaged print can be seen as a fitting reflection on the film work of Žarov, who re-emerges from the bottom of the sea 50 years later like a Russian Rip Van Winkle. Morrison uses the discovery as a jumping off point for his latest meditation on cinema’s past.

“Morrison’s movies feel like half-remembered reveries formed from memories you can no longer consciously recall. Hovering at the intersection of reappropriation, preservation, history, music, and art, any one of his works will haunt you for the rest of your life.” –Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic

Watch the official trailer.

Ticket Information

• Rooftop Cinema is $7 per screening, or free for MMoCA members and anyone age 18 and younger.
• Ticket sales begin at 7:30 PM in the Museum Lobby.
• Screenings relocate to the lecture hall if rain is predicted.