We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
TO FEB. 15
What happened in Danish filmmaking between 1925 and 1990? You won’t find the answer in this retrospective, which covers the highly accomplished output of Denmark’s silent-film era, then jumps to the cockeyed renaissance engendered by the Dogma 95 movement. The leading directors of the two periods are, respectively, Carl Theodor Dreyer, who’s represented by the newly restored 1922 Once Upon a Time (at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15), and Lars von Trier, whose latest provocation is the upcoming Dogville (at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11). A bewildering but never dull amalgam of Our Town, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and The Godfather, the three-hour Dogville seems to be another one of von Trier’s tales of female martyrdom, with Nicole Kidman in the Emily Watson/Björk role, until it takes a final twist. For insight into von Trier’s methods, The Humiliated (at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18) documents him shooting perhaps his most unbearable flick, The Idiots. Other featured Dogma movies include two seen here before, Mifune (at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25) and Open Hearts (at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1), and Inheritance (at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 10), in which a man saves the family business while ruining his marriage. Among the silent films (1912’s The Great Circus Catastrophe is pictured) are 1925’s Fra Piazza del Poppolo (at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14), set in a Danish artists’ colony in Rome, and a program of three “erotic melodramas” made between 1910 and 1912 (at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7). The series runs to Sunday, Feb. 15, at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. (202) 842-6799. (Mark Jenkins)