‘Portrait of the Artist: Julian Schnabel and Film’

In the tradition of its successful year-round retrospectives, devoted to Hegedus/Pennebaker in 2021 and Julie Andrews in 2022-2023, Sag Harbor Cinema will dive into Julian Schnabel’s unique cinematic universe with screenings of all his films as well as a carte blanche program highlighting classics of international cinema that have been influential to Schnabel’s own work. In addition, the cinema will present talks and a new gallery exhibit featuring artifacts from Schnabel’s films.

Timed to run in parallel with the exhibition “Julian Schnabel: Selected Works From Home,” opening at Guild Hall in East Hampton on August 4, the film retrospective will kick off on Thursday, August 8, at 6 p.m. with a sneak preview screening of “Basquiat” (1996), Schnabel’s visionary feature debut starring Jeffrey Wright as the legendary painter. With an upcoming Janus release on September 13, the film has been newly restored in black and white, from a 4k scan from the original camera negative, under Schnabel’s supervision. “Basquiat” also stars David Bowie as Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper as art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, a very young Gary Oldman as a Schnabel-like composite character, Parker Posey as gallery owner Mary Boone, and the likes of Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Courtney Love, and Tatum O’Neal. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

“Each of Julian Schnabel’s films is a world of its own. None is like the one before or the one after. Yet, it is not a coincidence that most of them are portraits of artists and passionate depictions of the artistic process,” said the cinema’s founding artistic director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “As generous as it is wildly imaginative, Schnabel’s cinematic output is a gift to film articulated through a wholly original language. As we look forward to his new feature, ‘In the Hand of Dante,’ it is a joy to be able to bring this retrospective to our audience.”

“How to achieve anomalies, inaccuracies and refashioning of reality so what comes out are lies, but lies that are more true than literal fact?” Schnabel has quoted Van Gogh in the past when describing his artistic process. “Maybe whether it is a painting or a film the not knowing is what propels one to work. Do we ever know the answer or if the answer is achieved or just settled on? We stumble with our heads down to the grindstone and our eyes open and sometimes closed brick by brick stroke by stroke gesture by gesture.”

“Julian’s a painter — an exceptional, visionary painter,” said Martin Scorsese in 2022 in his introduction to a screening of “Before Night Falls” at the Tribeca Film Festival. “And when I watch his pictures I feel the presence of a painter, really, behind the camera in any given scene — whether it’s a cut, or a series of cuts, or details or gestures that seem completely unorthodox but that always feel right, in some way, in his films. If I were pinned down and I had to describe Julian’s films, I would say they are abundant, overflowing, and that they vibrate with life, with pulse … There’s always more in that frame to see, to experience, and to feel.”

On August Thursday, 15, Sag Harbor Cinema will feature a screening of “Before Night Falls” (2000), Schnabel’s adaptation of Reinaldo Arenas’s memoir with Javier Bardem in the role of the Cuban poet, followed by a Q&A.

The carte blanche program, curated by Julian Schnabel, will include Mikhail Kalatozov’s “I Am Cuba” (1964), to be screened on August 29, as well as other classics of International cinema such as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Accattone” (1961), Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev” (1966), Elem Klimov’s “Come and See “(1985), François Truffaut’s “400 Blows “(1959), among others to be announced throughout the year.

“Portrait of the Artist: Julian Schnabel and Film” will include a third floor exhibit of art and artifacts from Schnabel’s films. The retrospective will also showcase “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007), “Lou Reed: Berlin” (2007), “Miral” (2010) and “At Eternity’s Gate” (2018).

Additional screening dates and special guests will be posted at sagharborcinema.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street in Sag Harbor.