Paid tickets required
$8 ($6 members and students with valid ID); after Museum admission.

Directed by Vincente Minnelli and adapted from Irving Stone’s book, Lust for Life erupts with the expressive colors of van Gogh’s own paintings. Kirk Douglas stars as van Gogh, harnessing his own primal reticence and deeply insecure arrogance. Minnelli dials Douglas’s performance further up, as film critic Dave Kehr noted, anchoring “the film in a dazzlingly schizophrenic, first-person point of view.”

Paid tickets required
$8 ($6 members and students with valid ID); after Museum admission.

As legend has it, when Akira Kurosawa decided to abandon his training as a painter in the 1930s and become a film director, he burned all of his canvases. It wasn’t until his mental breakdown while working on Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) that he turned to painting again, but it was only little touches of color in storyboards and costume designs. Kurosawa saved his van Gogh–esque explosion of color for Dreams, which features an appearance by the director Martin Scorsese as van Gogh.

Paid tickets required
$8 ($6 members and students with valid ID); after Museum admission. Ticket required.

What do Salvador Dalí, Samuel Beckett, and Bruce Nauman have in common? Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton’s work as a film director and actor influenced Surrealism, Russian Constructivism, and a wide range of contemporary art practices. The strange visual logic of his movies and his virtuosic ability to throw his body around stages and film sets have remained an evocative articulation of modernity for the past ninety years. Sherlock Jr., directed by Keaton, stands out as perhaps his most surreal work. Join Will Schmenner for a talk before the film and an informal discussion afterward about the film and its relationship to modern and contemporary art history.

• Wednesday, April 11, 2012, Starts at 2:30 p.m.
• Friday, April 13, 2012, Starts at 6:30 p.m.

Paid tickets required
$8 ($6 members and students with valid ID); after Museum admission.

This beautifully photographed film directed by Maurice Pialat delivers a pitch-perfect account of van Gogh’s final months. Jacques Dutronc portrays the artist with a mix of restrained empathy and carefully observed details. Together the filmmaker and lead actor avoid the pitfalls and expectations of the biopic, presenting a portrait of the man and not a lionization of a genius.