I am back in the city, following a week of illness, a week of Thanksgiving, and a week of NeurIPS! I’ll be here for two weeks before leaving again for winter break, which means only two newsletters for December!

This week I’ll be seeing The Gleaners and I at the Film Forum at 6:15 on Wednesday. The film is part of Film Forum’s Young Film Forum (YFF) programming, for members in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. (Isn’t it interesting who they consider to be young?) Specifically, this film is part of the YFF Archive Dive, which is curated from FF’s rich 55-year history of first-run premieres. It’ll be followed by a reception and then drinks exclusively for YFF members. Given all this, I did not feel a need to read anything about the film before deciding to go, so alas I have no information to share as to any details about The Gleaners and I. I will be going in totally blind.

To join YFF, you can grab a membership and tell them you’d like to join! The membership will pay for itself if you go to FF once a month, and you get exclusive access to special treats like this. I’m very excited!

(Also, unfortunately, this film is already sold out.)

I LOVE the Film Forum and am happy to advertise for them ;) they deserve all our love and support!

I’ll also be rock climbing Sunday at 2pm at the Riverside CRG location and I have a guest pass so the first person who joins can get in free!

The last two films for this series were Viridiana and Peter Hujar’s Day. Unfortunately I was too sick to see Peter Hujar’s Day, which was immensely disappointing!

I did, however, get to see Viridiana before I fell ill. I actually wasn’t a huge fan! (Though that may have partially been informed by the fact that I was likely falling ill when I saw it!) Though some see it almost as a MAD Magazine esque display of debauchery, I found it hard to detach myself enough to find it purely comedic and instead found it just kind of crass. A very unusual reaction for me; normally I pride myself on being able to engage with and enjoy whatever media I want. But this one didn’t really do it for me.