smARTfilms series to explore ‘Quirky Musicals’

By Luciano Marano • August 7, 2019 8:30 am
Image courtesy of Focus World | “Bathtubs Over Broadway” will screen at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art later this month as part of the latest smARTfilms series “Quirky Musicals.”
Image courtesy of Focus World | “Bathtubs Over Broadway” will screen at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art later this month as part of the latest smARTfilms series “Quirky Musicals.”

The latest smARTfilms series at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, “Quirky Musicals,” will include three offbeat tuneful flicks.

Featured in this series is “Where Do We Go Now?” (2011), “Black Cat, White Cat” (1998), and “Bathtubs Over Broadway” (2018).

Curated by TJ Faddis, the series offers two showings of each movie each day, a matinee at 2 p.m. and an evening showing, with facilitated discussion to follow, at 7:30 p.m. in the museum auditorium.

Series passes are not available for this iteration of BIMA’s smARTfilms. Individual tickets, $10 for members, $12 for non-members and free for students, are available now. Visit www.biartmuseum.org to learn more and purchase.

“Where Do We Go Now?” will screen on Tuesday, Aug. 13. Directed by Nadine Labaki, premiered during the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was the highest-grossing Lebanese film, and the highest-grossing Arabic film, until being surpassed in 2018. It tells the story of a remote, isolated unnamed Lebanese village inhabited by both Muslims and Christians. The village is surrounded by landmines and only accessible by a small bridge. As civil strife engulfs the country, the women in the village try, by various means and with varying success, to keep their men in the dark, sabotaging the village radio, then destroying the village TV.

“Black Cat, White Cat” will screen on Tuesday, Aug. 20. It’s a Serbian romantic black comedy directed by Emir Kusturica, which won the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the Venice Film Festival. In it, a small-time hustler gets more than he bargained for when he tries to repay his debts by marrying his son to the sister of a troublesome gangster.

“Bathtubs Over Broadway” will screen on Tuesday, Aug. 27. It’s an American documentary film directed by Dava Whisenant. In it, comedy writer Steve Young’s assignment to scour bargain-bin vinyl for a Late Night TV segment becomes an unexpected, decades-spanning obsession when he stumbles upon the strange and hilarious world of industrial musicals — that is, a musical performed internally for the employees or shareholders of a business to create a feeling of being part of a team, to entertain and/or educate and motivate the management and salespeople to improve sales and profit.