Elevate your movie experience with MMoCA Rooftop Cinema
MADISON, WI— The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) is pleased to announce the 2024 season of Rooftop Cinema. Beneath the stars and surrounded by art and nature, the Rooftop Sculpture Garden provides a serene setting for exploring critically acclaimed and award-winning films from across the globe.
Curated by James Kreul, this year’s series features a breadth of filmmaking. Each week offers a new perspective with dazzling animation, subversive interventions, unique comic visions, and dynamic documentary.
Tickets are $7 per screening, or free for MMoCA members and anyone under 18. Ticket sales begin at 7:30 PM on the Rooftop, and films start roughly 20 minutes after sunset. Filmgoers are welcome to bring a blanket or portable chairs to use. Snacks, including fresh popcorn, will be available for purchase at the event. Films move to the Museum Lecture Hall in the event of rain.
MMoCA’s film programming is generously funded by maiahaus, Venture Investors, LLC, and an anonymous donor.
2024 ROOFTOP CINEMA SERIES
Rooftop Cinema: Chicken for Linda!
Thursday, August 8, 2024
Chicken for Linda! | Chiara Malta & Sébastien Laudenbach | 2023 | France, Italy | 73 minutes
Paulette promises her daughter Linda a meal of chicken with peppers, a dish that Linda’s father used to make. But Paulette faces a series of obstacles honoring this request when a general strike closes all the stores in town, sending her on a mission to source a chicken elsewhere.
Directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach unleash a unique visual marvel of hand-painted animation with bright, color-blocked characters, and a story that is an intoxicating blend of slapstick comedy, musical, and family drama, as Paulette and Linda ultimately confront the grief of an unspoken tragedy, and the meal that could finally bring them closer together.
Rooftop Cinema: One Hand Don’t Clap
Thursday, August 15, 2024
One Hand Don’t Clap | Kavery Dutta Kaul | USA | 1991 | 92 minutes
Director Kavery Dutta Kaul traces the rise of calypso and soca music through the careers of Lord Kitchener and Calypso Rose in Trinidad and Tobago. The journey takes audiences from New York recording studios to the streets of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. There, the festivities culminate with the annual competition between top calypso singers for the title Monarch of the Year.
“This vivid and engaging documentary moves and shakes with inimitable music,” the Village Voice proclaimed during the film’s original release. Recently restored by the Academy Film Archive and the Women’s Preservation Fund.
Rooftop Cinema: Hello Dankness
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Hello Dankness | Soda Jerk | USA | 2022 | 130 minutes
Hello Dankness is a satirical look at the spectacle of American politics from 2016–2021 as experienced by a fictional suburban neighborhood. Told entirely through altered clips from movies, TV shows, and media sources, it creatively depicts the period’s real events, mythologies, and anxieties.
Created by the Australian artist duo Soda Jerk, the film is a rogue retelling of history, grafted together from almost one thousand sources, in which hot dogs debate the culture wars, trash cans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and events are refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats to Les Miserables.
Rooftop Cinema: Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles | Salvador Simó | Spain | 2018 | 77 minutes
Based on the true story of surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou), this animated feature film utilizes sensitive performances and excerpts from Buñuel’s filmography to present a deeply affecting and humanistic portrait of an artist hunting for his purpose.
After the scandalous release of L’age d’Or in 1930, Luis Buñuel is left penniless and at odds with his collaborator Salvador Dalí. On a whim, sculptor Ramón Acín offers to finance Buñuel‘s next film if he wins the lottery. Incredibly, Ramón wins the jackpot, sending the two friends to the remote mountains of their native Spain to film the documentary Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread. There Buñuel confronts the specter of mortality looming over the lives of his subjects—and his own.
Rooftop Cinema: The Films of Robert Downey, Sr.
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Chafed Elbows | Robert Downey, Sr. | USA | 1966 | 58 minutes
No More Excuses | Robert Downey, Sr | USA | 1968 | 46 minutes
Robert Downey, Sr. (A Prince), directed a series of films in the 1960s New York Underground in which his unique comic vision was not restrained by small budgets or limited equipment. In Chafed Elbows, Walter Dinsmore (George Morgan) suffers his annual November breakdown during a series of odd jobs and a love affair with his mother. In No More Excuses, Downey cross-cuts between the singles scene in Manhattan, a time-traveling Civil War soldier, and the Director of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals.
About MMoCA
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is always admission-free. Its vision is to be an organization that fosters the exchange of ideas and creates experiences that will inspire a wide audience; be a nexus for the work of emerging and established regional, national, and international artists; serve as a catalyst for the continued development of a vigorous community of artists; and provide a forum that will encourage people to be challenged by, reflect on, and make connections between art and the world around them. The Museum includes four galleries and The Shop, a space to provide interactive contemporary art experiences and educational workshops to the community.
The Rooftop Sculpture Garden provides an urban oasis with an incredible view which serves as a lovely venue for weddings, art openings, and cinema. The adjacent Rooftop Lounge is used for community and collaborative art pop-ups, as well as a reception area for Museum events. Please visit mmoca.org to learn more.
Published on Jul 25 2024
Categories: News, Press Release