BAMcinématek presents Big Screen Epics
Hollywood Epics Showcase Brooklyn’s Largest Movie Theater
From Wednesday, July 3 through Thursday, July 25, BAMcinématek will present Big Screen Epics, a series of classic Hollywood epics screening in week-long runs on the brand-new Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn’s newest movie palace. Now the largest, grandest movie venue in Brooklyn, the Harvey will showcase five beloved cinematic spectacles considered essential viewing in acclaimed 4K restorations—made to be viewed on the big screen.
Stanley Kubrick’s awe-inspiring sci-fi masterwork, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), opens the series on Wednesday, July 3 running through Tuesday, July 9. In this “extraordinary, obsessive, beautiful work of art” (Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune) apes use tools, mankind discovers a monolith on the moon, and a mission to Jupiter launches with a famously passive-aggressive computer aboard. Composed of breathtaking images unlike anything previously achieved, it is an immortal meditation on intelligence, evolution, and man’s place in the universe, all set to Richard Strauss.
The series continues the following week with David Lean’s two Oscar-winning World War I Cinemascope epics—Lawrence of Arabia (1962), starring Peter O’Toole as the eponymous British Army officer, and Doctor Zhivago (1965), the story of an illicit love affair during the Russian Revolution, with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie—screening on alternating days from Wednesday, July 10 to Monday, July 15. Winner of seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, Lawrence of Arabia features F.A. Young’s stunning 70mm cinematography and Maurice Jarre’s memorable score. Turning his lens to snow-capped Russia, Lean’s adaptation of Doctor Zhivago unravels five decades of Russian history, from the turn of the century to World War I and the upheavals of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War, alternately bringing together and wrenching apart star-crossed lovers Yuri (Sharif) and Lara (Christie).