$12 General Admission, $9 Member, $7 child age 14 or younger
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
Sarah Kernochan has won two Academy Awards for her documentaries Marjoe and Thoth. As a screenwriter, she has written many films, among them Nine and ½ Weeks, Impromptu, and What Lies Beneath; she both wrote and directed the film All I Wanna Do as well. Her latest script Learning to Drive recently finished filming in New York. In addition to her film work, Kernochan has written two novels: Dry Hustle (1977) and Jane Was Here (2011). At present she is writing on her blog a memoir of her encounters with ghosts. She lives in New York and Martha’s Vineyard with her husband, playwright James Lapine.
THOTH:
This 2002 winner of the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary focuses on Thoth, one of the most unusual street musicians ever seen, who “prayforms” in the heart of New York’s Central Park. Passersby stop to stare at his flamboyant outfit, but they stay to experience his music: original one-man operas. Thoth sings all parts male and female in an unknown language as he simultaneously dances, plays the violin, and beats out rhythms with bells tied to his ankles.
Filmmaker Sarah Kernochan leads us through the details of Thoth’s eccentric life’s journey, and we discover his mission: no less than to heal the universe. By turns earnest, funny, poignant, and outrageous, THOTH is the portrait of a modern mythmaker.
MARJOE:
The Academy-Award®-winning MARJOE is the ferocious and extraordinary chronicle of a firebrand evangelical preacher who wholeheartedly and humorously exposes himself as a fraud. The film also covers Marjoe’s childhood, when he was ordained as a minister at the age of 4.
Please join us after the program for a Q&A session with filmmaker Sarah Kernochan at the Film Center. These short films are both fascinating and moving. Thoth offers insight into experiencing life to the fullest, or how he puts it when asked if he preforms for a living, “I do this to live.” MARJOE is part documentary, part expose on the story behind famed child evangelist Marjoe Gortner and the Revivalist circuit.
Co-presented with Wendy Taucher Dance Opera Theater and Joseph Ashcroft & Mollie Whalen
“Especially entertaining is this con man’s exposing all the tricks of the trade, from how he healed confederates feigning illnesses to the special gestures and vocal cadences designed to hypnotize his gullible followers.”
–Kam Williams
“This extraordinary documentary shows Marjoe back in the pulpit for an expose of the church-and-tent revival circuit.”
–Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
