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Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter & Gov­er­nors Island Arts Announce Free Out­door Films for 2023 Season

May 23, 2023 11:12 am

Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter, and Gov­er­nors Island Arts announce a pro­gram of free out­door film screen­ings for sum­mer 2023, open­ing a three-film series on June 9.

From June through August, Gov­er­nors Island Arts and Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter presents ​“Rule-Break­ers and Trou­ble­mak­ers,” a line­up of free out­door movie screen­ings for the 2023 sea­son. This year’s out­door film series will take place on the Island’s his­toric Parade Ground, an eight-acre lawn with expan­sive open views of Low­er Man­hat­tan. The series will be pro­duced by Rooftop Films.

This year’s Governor’s Island screen­ings will fea­ture a selec­tion of films that cel­e­brate relat­able, resilient pro­tag­o­nists who refuse to accept the con­straints that soci­ety has imposed on them. Films in this year’s line­up are F. Gary Gray’s Set It Off; Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, and Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beck­ham.

Orga­nized by Made­line Whittle.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

“Rule-Break­ers and Troublemakers”

Set It Off

F. Gary Gray, 1996, USA, 124m

For­mer bank teller Frankie (Vive­ca A. Fox) is strug­gling to make ends meet, work­ing a low-pay­ing job as a jan­i­tor along­side close friends Cleo (Queen Lat­i­fah), Stony (Jada Pin­kett Smith), and T.T. (Kim­ber­ly Elise) in mid-’90s Los Ange­les. When the four women, angered and demor­al­ized by the sta­tus quo of relent­less injus­tice that cur­tails and under­mines their aspi­ra­tions, set about sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly rob­bing banks around the city, com­pli­ca­tions soon arise in the dis­parate forms of their tyran­ni­cal boss (Thomas Jef­fer­son Byrd), an unsym­pa­thet­ic LAPD detec­tive (John C. McGin­ley), and a bud­ding romance between Stony and a charm­ing bank man­ag­er (Blair Under­wood). Direc­tor F. Gary Gray infus­es the heist genre with brac­ing emo­tion­al clar­i­ty, sen­si­tive­ly yet unsen­ti­men­tal­ly dra­ma­tiz­ing the chal­lenges faced by work­ing-class women of col­or who are forced to nav­i­gate an unac­cept­ably inhos­pitable socioe­co­nom­ic reality.

Fri­day, June 9 at 8:30pm

Out of Sight

Steven Soder­bergh, 1998, USA, 123m

Razor-sharp wit and expert­ly deployed star wattage — not to men­tion crack­ling sex­u­al chem­istry between the two leads — were in abun­dant sup­ply when Steven Soder­bergh burst into the main­stream, direct­ing Scott Frank’s ultra-cool adap­ta­tion of Elmore Leonard’s 1996 nov­el. George Clooney is Jack Foley, a career bank rob­ber on the run after break­ing out of a Flori­da pen­i­ten­tiary; Jen­nifer Lopez is U.S. Mar­shal Karen Sis­co, the no-non­sense law enforce­ment offi­cer who’s deter­mined to put Foley back behind bars. Along­side a stacked sup­port­ing cast that also includes Ving Rhames, Don Chea­dle, Albert Brooks, and Vio­la Davis in one of her ear­li­est film roles, Clooney and Lopez bring humor and heat to a sin­gu­lar­ly sexy game of cat-and-mouse as Foley makes his way to Detroit in pur­suit of a rumored stash of dia­monds, with Sis­co in hot pur­suit. Edit­ed with wry pre­ci­sion by the leg­endary Anne V. Coates, Soderbergh’s sev­enth fea­ture is a mas­ter class in smart, ensem­ble-dri­ven genre film­mak­ing, and remains a relent­less­ly enter­tain­ing crowd-pleas­er 25 years after its release.

Fri­day, July 7 at 8:30pm

Bend It Like Beckham

Gurinder Chad­ha, 2002, U.K./Germany/USA, 112m

Eng­lish, Pun­jabi, Hin­di, and Ger­man with Eng­lish subtitles

British Indi­an direc­tor Gurinder Chadha’s third fea­ture tells the sto­ry of teenag­er Jess Bham­ra (Par­min­der Nagra in a win­ning break­out per­for­mance), an avid soc­cer fan, dreams of liv­ing up to the exam­ple of her idol, star play­er David Beck­ham, against the wish­es of her cul­tur­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Pun­jabi elders. When new friend Jules (Keira Knight­ley) per­suades her to join the local women’s team with­out her par­ents’ knowl­edge, Jess quick­ly wins the accep­tance and respect of her team­mates and their coach (Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers), but must strug­gle to rec­on­cile her pas­sion for the game with her family’s expec­ta­tions. In the 21 years since its U.K. release, Chadha’s film — which remains the high­est-gross­ing soc­cer film of all time, and boasts scene-steal­ing sup­port­ing per­for­mances by Anu­pam Kher, Archie Pun­jabi, and Juli­et Steven­son — has con­tin­ued to be hailed as a lat­ter-day clas­sic of its inter­sect­ing gen­res, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly excelling as crowd-pleas­ing sports movie, win­ning roman­tic com­e­dy, and heart­felt cross-cul­tur­al com­ing-of-age fable.

Fri­day, August 11 at 8:30pm

GOV­ER­NORS ISLAND ARTS

Gov­er­nors Island Arts, the pub­lic arts and cul­tur­al pro­gram pre­sent­ed by the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island, cre­ates trans­for­ma­tive encoun­ters with art for all New York­ers, invit­ing artists and researchers to engage with the issues of our time in the con­text of the Island’s lay­ered his­to­ries, envi­ron­ments, and archi­tec­ture. Gov­er­nors Island Arts achieves this mis­sion through tem­po­rary and long-term pub­lic art com­mis­sions, an annu­al Orga­ni­za­tion in Res­i­dence pro­gram in the Island’s his­toric hous­es, and free pub­lic pro­grams and events in part­ner­ship with a wide range of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary NYC cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tions. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.gov​is​land​.org/​g​iarts.

FILM AT LIN­COLN CENTER

Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter is ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing the art and ele­vat­ing the craft of cin­e­ma and enrich­ing film culture.

Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter ful­fills its mis­sion through the pro­gram­ming of fes­ti­vals, series, ret­ro­spec­tives, and new releas­es; the pub­li­ca­tion of Film Com­ment; and the pre­sen­ta­tion of pod­casts, talks, spe­cial events, and artist ini­tia­tives. Since its found­ing in 1969, this non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion has brought the cel­e­bra­tion of Amer­i­can and inter­na­tion­al film to the world-renowned Lin­coln Cen­ter arts com­plex, mak­ing the dis­cus­sion and appre­ci­a­tion of cin­e­ma acces­si­ble to a broad audi­ence and ensur­ing that it remains an essen­tial art form for years to come.

Film at Lin­coln Cen­ter receives gen­er­ous, year-round sup­port from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts and the New York State Coun­cil on the Arts with the sup­port of the Office of the Gov­er­nor and the New York State Leg­is­la­ture. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www​.film​linc​.org and fol­low @filmlinc on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.