“Into the Real” - Movie Nights in Brooklyn

"Perhaps it would be worth con­sid­er­ing that what we need from movies, in the face of a dis­may­ing and con­fus­ing re­al world, is re­al­ism." A.O. Scott, NY Times, march 2009

Launched last Fall, our Movie Nights be­came a month­ly ren­dez-vous for cin­e­ma lovers from Brooklyn and be­yond. Starting in September, our 2009-2010 sea­son will fol­low the same track, with a slight change though: movies will now be screened on Saturdays at 7:00 p.m. Throughout the year we will ex­plore the the­me of re­al­ism.

Our so­ci­ety does not suf­fer so much from a want of moral­i­ty, not even of re­li­gios­i­ty, as from a weak­en­ing of our sense of re­al­i­ty. Life tends to be lived like a per­for­mance on a stage, where feel­ings are mimed and ac­tions are with­out con­se­quences. Only a dif­fer­ent gaze, a re­al one, can save us from this temp­ta­tion of a vir­tu­al so­ci­ety. Cinema of­fers us to see the world through the lens of the cam­era, and there­by through the eyes of the artist. Come and join us to dis­cov­er the world as it is - good or bad, beau­ti­ful or ug­ly - through the eyes of the Dardenne broth­ers, Pasolini, Kurosawa, Ermanno Olmi, Tarkovsky and many others. Each with his unique gaze, they all lead us, with pas­sion and tal­ent, in­to the re­al.

Pascal with Moussa, a very close friend of the neighborhood, Lebanon, 2005.