From Wednesday, July 24 through Tuesday, August 6, BAM presents We Can't Even: Millennials on Film, a 14-day, 27-feature, three-short series that takes a prismatic approach to the experiences of a much-maligned and frequently misunderstood generation, featuring films by Barry Jenkins, Celine Sciamma, Gus Van Sant, Kenneth Lonergan, Xavier Dolan, Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola, the Safdie brothers, and others.
Though often characterized as entitled, shallow narcissists obsessed with social media likes and overpriced avocado toast, the millennial generation (defined by Pew Research Center as being born between 1981 and 1996) is in fact an extraordinarily diverse group whose lives-shaped by socio-political upheaval, economic recession, and dramatic developments in technology-are only beginning to be fully understood. This wide-ranging survey explores how this complex generation has been represented on screen and, more recently, how it has come to represent itself. What emerges is a vivid portrait of a generation finding its way and discovering its voice in an increasingly uncertain world.
Says series programmer Ashley Clark, "As a millennial myself, I've been keenly aware of the simplifying vitriol aimed at our generation from older folks, and I have felt deeply the specific social, political, economic, and technological upheavals that have defined recent times for us. With a title that hopefully conveys that special generational blend of self-aware irony, anxiety, and resignation, this series of vibrantly creative works serves as a prism through which to engage with the (broadly defined) Western millennial experience. Yes, there is a fair helping of self-absorption on display-we're not perfect-but there's also passion, joy, political activism, and a number of hitherto marginalized voices asserting themselves in front of and, in more recent times, behind the camera."
The series begins with
Brady Corbet's drama of gun violence and toxic celebrity Vox Lux (2018), starring
Natalie Portman and
Jude Law and with a score by Scott Walker and songs by Sia. The series continues with two portraits of uniquely contemporary violence, Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama (2016) and
Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003); a pair of films starring prototypical millennial celebrity
Lindsay Lohan, Mean Girls (Waters, 2004) and I Know Who Killed Me (Sivertson, 2007); intimate tales of adolescence and coming of age in the modern world Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), Boyhood (Linklater, 2014), and Girlhood (Sciamma, 2014); and
Kenneth Lonergan's portrait of reverberating trauma in post-9/11 New York, Margaret (2011).
Other films in the series include Bing Liu's acclaimed documentary about race, class, and masculinity, Minding the Gap (2018); queer teen stories Mosquita y Mari (Guerrero, 2012), I Killed My Mother (Dolan, 2009), and Beach Rats (Hittman, 2017); Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis' Ferguson documentary Whose Streets? (2017), screening with Seyi Adebanjo's Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles (2013); WILDNESS (2012), Wu Tsang's imaginative documentary about performance art at a Latinx gay bar; two explorations of contemporary black identity, the US premiere of the feature-length version of Cecile Emeke's Strolling (2015) and Jenn Nkiru's short REBIRTH IS NECESSARY (2017);
Sofia Coppola's social media heist movie The Bling Ring (2013);
Sean Baker's iPhone-shot story of transwomen in Los Angeles, Tangerine (2015); and young women's coming of age sagas in
Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2017) and the Gerwig-starring Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), as well as Nijla Mu'min's feature film debut Jinn (2018), which will later receive a full run at BAM in September.
We Can't Even rounds out with the experimental, nation-spanning The Human Surge (Williams, 2016); explorations of the role of the internet, data, and surveillance in contemporary culture in The Social Network (Fincher, 2010) and Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014); the twitchy millennial berserk of Josh and Benny Safdie's Good Time (2017);
Olivier Assayas' mysterious, melancholy Personal Shopper (2016), featuring a career-defining performance from millennial art film mainstay
Kristen Stewart; and a special screening of Peter Parlow's The Plagiarists (2019), with the short Personal Truth (Lyne, 2017). aHa
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