Capital Projections: Love and togetherness edition

Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.

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WOODSTOCK: THREE DAYS THAT DEFINED A GENERATION

Fifty years ago, hundreds of thousands of music fans gathered in an upstate New York farm for a three-day music festival that would become a formative moment in pop culture history. While the August 1969 event will be commemorated with a 38-CD box set offering nearly every note of music (and most of the onstage announcements) recorded at Woodstock, this 95-minute documentary is a more easily digestible chronicle that focuses more on the how of the event than on The Who and other headliners. Directors Barak Goodman and Jamila Ephron interview the ambitious event producers who worked behind the scenes and the idealistic attendees in search of a good and peaceful time. The film comes off like a hagiography; nobody alive seems to have a bad thing to say about the whole adventure, an idealism that seems unlikely. The closest thing to a bad trip here is the resistance that promoters meet from the town of Wallkill, where the festival was originally set to take place. But if that conservative hamlet hadn’t turned down the chance to host the throng of young people who showed up at Woodstock, then concertgoers — and filmmakers — wouldn’t have had the pleasure of finding an unlikely hero in Max Yasgur, the card-carrying Republican who owned the farm where the concert was held. Yes, there is music in this Woodstock, but not nearly as much as in Michael Wadleigh’s definitive concert film, released in 1970. This film suggests that the main event wasn’t Jimi Hendrix, but the love and togetherness experienced by everyone who met along the way.

Watch the trailer.

Opens Friday, June 13, at E Street Landmark Cinema. $12.50.

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5B

In the early days of the AIDS crisis, nobody knew exactly how the disease was contracted. Fears were such that many health care workers would refuse to treat patients for fear that merely breathing the same air would be a death sentence. This moving but flawed documentary tells the story of the San Francisco General Hospital ward that was the first in the nation designed specifically for those infected with HIV. The staff members at 5B were unable to heal their charges, who were not only physically devastated but often emotionally wounded, their loved ones having rejected them. The doctors and nurses in this ward did something radical yet simple: They showed compassion to the suffering, providing comfort by holding their hands and hugging them in their moments of need. 5B is a story of tenderness, but too often directors Paul Haggis (Crash) and Dan Krauss (The Kill Team) play this gentle story as a thriller. This effort to create a horror movie-like tension by treating dissenting surgeon Lorraine Day as a cartoonish villain and withholding information ends up cheapening the story. As I wrote in my Washington Post review, the film is “ultimately about survival, and the struggle at its center is undeniably a heartbreaking one. Too often, however, the filmmakers get in the way of their own story.”

Watch the trailer.

Opens Friday, June 13, at AMC Hoffman Center. $12.50.

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CHARLESTON

The National Gallery of Art’s series Reinventing Realism: New Cinema From Romania wraps up this weekend with a black comedy from director Andrei Crețulescu. The unlikely buddy movie tells the story of Alexandru (Serban Pavlu), who’s mourning the recent death of his wife Ioana in a car crash. On the night of his 42nd birthday, the widower is visited by Sebastian (Radu Iacoban), a younger man who confesses that he was Ioana’s lover. If that isn’t enough chutzpah, Sebastian asks Alexandru to help him get over the loss. The title Charleston reflects a premise that’s a morbid twist on the dance instruction to switch partners. Crețulescu told Variety that he was inspired by the “Technicolor template of Golden Age Hollywood” and expressed his admiration of Red Shoes director Michael Powell, which makes this a surprising departure from the bleak tone and long takes that typify the Romanian new wave.

Watch the trailer.

Saturday, June 15, at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.

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THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE

Weather is one of the fundamentals of small talk, and as climate anxieties increase, this 1961 British science fiction film gives us one harrowing vision of apocalypse that may set tongues a-wagging. Peter (Edward Judd, a regular in ‘60s British sci-fi) plays an acerbic, ambitious reporter looking for a juicy story after a series of massive nuclear tests seem to wreak havoc on the environment. Instead he’s told to gather temperature data, which doesn’t seem very sexy until the assignment somehow leads him to Jennie (Janet Munro, all grown up after the Disney classic Darby O’Gill and the Little People), whose job as a telephone operator makes her privy to alarming conversations. Shot at iconic London sites such as Battersea Park and the art deco Daily Express building, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is based on the seemingly ludicrous premise that atomic bombs could throw the Earth off its rotational axis. But director Val Guest (best known for the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale — not to be confused with the more somber franchise thriller from 2006) immerses viewers in a realistically sweltering world, albeit one that seems to exploit the heat (as well as Munro, who’s seen in increasingly skimpy outfits). The production was a complicated one: Police agreed to close off major streets for filming, but only for a limited period, requiring crews to act fast. The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center is screening a new 2K digital restoration of this rarely screened classic.

Watch the trailer.

Monday, June 17, at 7 p.m. and Tuesday, June 18, at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.

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THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT

One of the most prolific figures in the German new wave, filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder was only 37 when he died in 1982 from a mix of cocaine and barbiturates. But in the space of 15 years he managed to direct 42 features. Among the most celebrated is this vivid melodrama adapted from his own stage play and inspired by the Technicolor films of Hollywood director Douglas Sirk. Bitter Tears observes the life of fashion designer Petra (Margit Carstensen), a role that seems to feed off the seething yet vulnerable mid-career work of Joan Crawford — but with a twist. Petra’s bile comes from two failed marriages, but after she meets Karin (Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla), a love affair blossoms. As I wrote in a Spectrum Culture survey of the Best Queer Films, “The series of hairpieces that Petra wears as her career and relationship rises and falls is its own kind of narrative, reaching feverish heights as, wearing a platinum blonde wig, she throws a fantastic drunken tantrum waiting for a phone call that never comes; it’s an over-the-top moment that has inspired a number of imitators, but Fassbinder found the right balance between mere camp and heartbreaking drama.” The Mary Pickford Theatre at the Library of Congress (disclosure: I work there, but did not program this film) will be screening a 35mm print.

Watch the trailer.

Thursday, June 20, at 7 p.m. at the Mary Pickford Theatre on the third floor of the Madison Building at the Library of Congress. Free. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

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THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS

As part of its ongoing Music Movie Mondays series, the Warner Bros. Theater at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is screening a jazz-tinged drama that’s one of the great movies of the ‘80s. Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges star as piano-playing brothers struggling to make a living with an outdated cocktail lounge act. When they meet an aspiring singer (Michelle Pfeiffer, in a breakout role), everything changes — although, in terms of the siblings’ relationship, that’s not for the better. The Fabulous Baker Boys was the first film from writer-director Steve Kloves, released years before he adapted most of the Harry Potter novels for the big screen. But while Kloves made his money on something fantastical, this early, more personal work has an enduring real-life feel. Music critic Terry Teachout recently tweeted about his admiration of the film: “I know nothing about Steve Kloves, but either he played commercial music at some point in his life or he spent a lot of time talking to a lot of small-time musicians. Every line in his Baker Boys screenplay is as true as a bruise.”

Watch the trailer.

Monday, June 17, at 5:15 p.m. in the Warner Bros. Theater at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. $10.