MoMA's the Longest, Hardest in Marathon Film Throwdown

Rainer Werner Fassbinder on the set of Berlin Alexanderplatz coming to NYC April 10-15 (Photo: Berlinale)

News like this reminds me how much I love New York -- and then it makes me throw up with skittish foreboding: A trio of films programmed through April at BAM, Museum of the Moving Image and now MoMA promise local cinephiles three of the most infamously long moviegoing experiences known to man. BAM kicks the 35-hour set off Feb. 24 with Bela Tarr's 7.5-hour dark comedy Sátántangó, while MMI's encore of the 12.5-hour Jacques Rivette marathon Out 1 screens over two days March 3-4 (coincidentally the same weekend Anthology Film Archives plans two of its own Sátántangó screenings.)

But according to word handed down this afternoon to Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, endurance art reaches its Teutonic zenith at MoMA from April 10-15, when the museum will screen a restored print of the 15-hour Fassbinder marathon Berlin Alexanderplatz. The restoration premiered this weekend at the Berlinale, evidently winding down this morning around 3:20 with a bleary-eyed standing ovation. It doesn't appear (yet, anyhow) that New Yorkers will have the same "privilege" of viewing in one sitting, but it's OK: Everyone knows width is favorable to length.

Posted at February 12, 2007 4:55 PM