The 15th First Look Festival, featuring New York premieres of innovative international cinema, runs April 23–May 3
Holiday hours: Museum open daily April 2–12, during spring recess for NYC Public Schools
Astoria, New York, March 31, 2026 — This April, Museum of the Moving Image welcomes families during spring recess with added hours and a focus on classic video arcade games; honors Marilyn Monroe with a weekend screening program; presents the 15th edition of First Look Festival, MoMI’s annual showcase of innovative, new cinema; celebrates the winners of the Sloan Student Prizes; hosts Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser for a 20th anniversary screening of Fast Food Nation, and other special screenings; and continues with a robust slate of free Open Worlds events including an artist talk with Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song, selections from the Ceres Food Film Festival, and The Precarious Body, featuring a conversation with artist Panteha Abareshi, radiologist Lily Offit, and scholar Elisabeth Sherman, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body.
During spring recess, April 2–12, families can play the classic ’80s video arcade games Centipede and Pole Position in our Fox Amphitheater, with an afternoon tournament on April 4; catch a weekday matinee of Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon (1956) and White Mane (1953), April 6–10; and drop into two different media-making spaces, Media Game Lab, within our core exhibition Behind the Screen, and Moving Image Studio, a free ground-floor space for all ages. For the arcade games, game tokens are available for 25 cents per play. Plus, in the galleries, The Jim Henson Exhibition and Behind the Screen offer fun, educational experiences for all ages; inside Tut’s Fever Movie Palace, an artwork by Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong, visitors can see three delightful animated shorts by the legendary animation director Yuri Norstein, including his masterpiece Hedgehog in the Fog.
The 15th First Look Festival opens April 23 with the U.S. premiere of James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s The Misconceived and closes with the North American premiere of Isabel Sandoval’s Moonglow, framing a lineup of 21 features and experimental shorts programs. Special showcase screenings include New York premieres of Rachel Lambert’s Carousel, starring Chris Pine and Jenny Slate; Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai; and Ramzi Bashour’s Hot Water. The Museum will also present the world premiere of Ken Jacobs’s A Date with Shirley, as part of a citywide celebration of the legendary avant-garde filmmaker who died in October. First Look 2026 Presenting Sponsor is MUBI.
Also among special film events, the Museum presents screenings of In Jackson Heights, in memory of the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman who died in March (April 5); the classic comedy Horse Feathers accompanied by a live taping of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast (April 12); The Sound of Music, in a singalong version (April 12); Jim Henson’s Labyrinth on the occasion of its 40th anniversary (April 18 & 19) (materials from the film are on view in The Jim Henson Exhibition); and the big-screen experimental film program Earthly Delights: Historic Psychedelia, Animation, and Avant-Garde Films in Large Format (April 18).
The Museum continues its Accessibility programs: on the last Saturday of each month, Touch Object Experience invites visitors to engage with select objects, including a projector, 8mm camera, textiles, and face molds, to learn about the story of the moving image in a new way; and every Saturday, through April 25, 10:00–11:30 a.m., free Access Mornings offer a dedicated hour before the Museum opens to the wider public, for families with children on the autism spectrum to explore exhibitions and participate in workshops in a sensory-friendly environment.
Unless noted, all programs take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY 11106. Screenings are presented in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater and/or the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room. Schedule and tickets are available at movingimage.org.
Schedule is subject to change. Additional programs will be added as they are confirmed.
SCREENING AND EVENT SERIES
Open Worlds 2026
Ongoing
This year-round initiative offers free access to the Museum’s ground floor to the public accompanied by a series of free community events that spark curiosity with explorations of the moving image across platforms—gaming, film, television, immersive experiences, and emerging technologies. April programs include Arcade Classics: Centipede and Pole Position (Apr. 2–12), Coin-Op Clash: Centipede Tournament (Apr. 4), Artist Talk: Lick Pic with Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song (Apr. 11), Food, Closeup: Ceres Food Film Festival Shorts (Apr. 12), Open Worlds: Science: The Precarious Body (Apr. 17), and Story Studio: For Our Mothers (May 2). Series info
Programmatic support for Open Worlds 2026 is provided by the NY City Council, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Bank of America, the William Fox Jr. Foundation, NYSCA, and the Office of the Queensborough President. Open Worlds: Science programs are made possible by the Simons Foundation.
2001: The Year, Not the Movie
February 14–April 11
MoMI honors the watershed year 2001 with a major screening series featuring more than 30 titles, all of which released or premiered in the United States that year. April titles include What Time Is It There? (Dir. Tsai Ming-liang. 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive), Millennium Mambo (Dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien), Trouble Every Day (Dir. Claire Denis. 35mm print courtesy of The Film Desk), Waking Life (Dir. Richard Linklater. 35mm), Donnie Darko (Dir. Richard Kelly), The Lady and the Duke (Dir. Eric Rohmer. 35mm), That Old Dream That Moves (Dir. Alain Guiraudie), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Dir. John Cameron Mitchell. 35mm). Press release | Series info
Family Matinees: The Red Balloon and White Mane
April 6–10, daily at 1:00 p.m.
Albert Lamorisse’s Oscar-winning 1956 masterpiece The Red Balloon is one of the most enchanting and beloved children’s films of all time. A young boy finds a stray balloon; the two soon become inseparable as the boy follows the balloon through the streets of Paris. With its rich colors and exquisite visuals, The Red Balloon is a magical experience on the big screen. Screens with Lamorisse’s 1953 short White Mane, in which a gang of ranchers try to capture and tame the magnificent leader of a herd of wild horses, but only Folco, a young fisherman, is able to ride him. White Mane won numerous awards upon its release, including the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. Recommended for ages 8+.
Marilyn Monroe in New York
April 11–12
On the occasion of Marilyn Monroe’s centenary, the Museum presents a selection of the eternal movie star’s films set in New York City, including The Seven-Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire, and the rarely shown Don’t Bother to Knock. As part of this weekend, the Museum will also highlight the work of legendary photographer and lifelong New Yorker Sam Shaw, whose vibrant images of Monroe charted the actress throughout her career. Shaw took the iconic shot of Monroe standing over the subway grate in New York City. To celebrate this relationship, ACC Art Books published the beautiful volume Dear Marilyn: The Unseen Letters and Photographs by Sam Shaw. Through Shaw’s words and photographs, Dear Marilyn offers newly discovered correspondence and never-before-seen, digitally remastered photographs from the original 1940s–1960s archival material, from behind the scenes of The Seven-Year Itch to candid images of her on the streets of New York and the beach in Amagansett. On April 11, Melissa Stevens, Shaw’s granddaughter, joins film scholar Imogen Sara Smith (The Criterion Collection) for a special conversation about the myth, the image, and the reality of Marilyn Monroe. Series info
First Look 2026
April 23–May 3
The 15th First Look Festival opens April 23 with the U.S. premiere of James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s The Misconceived and closes with the North American premiere of Isabel Sandoval’s Moonglow, framing a lineup of 21 features and experimental shorts programs. Special showcase screenings include New York premieres of Rachel Lambert’s Carousel, starring Chris Pine and Jenny Slate; Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai; and Ramzi Bashour’s Hot Water. The Museum will also present the world premiere of Ken Jacobs’s A Date with Shirley, as part of a citywide celebration of the legendary avant-garde filmmaker who died in October. Filmmakers appearing in person include Wilkins, Sandoval, Lambert, Enyedi, Bashour, Kunsang Kyirong (100 Sunset), Erin Espelie (Ideas of Order), Ashley Connor and Joe Stankus (It Goes That Quick), Robb Moss (The Bend in the River), Itab Azzam and Jack Macinnes (One in a Million), Charlie Birns (The Whole World Is a Lie), Rachael J. Morrison (Joybubbles), Anthony Svatek (Humboldt USA), and Hansel Porras Garcia (Tropical Park). First Look 2026’s Presenting Sponsor is MUBI. Press release | Series info and tickets
EXHIBITIONS
Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body
March 14, 2026–January 3, 2027
Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body traces how innovations like cinema and X‑ray imaging radically transformed the way we see—and understand—the human form. Bringing together more than a century of research films and contemporary artworks by 16 artists, the exhibition explores how looking beneath the skin has shaped ideas about science, power, care, and identity.
Organized by Sonia Shechet Epstein, Curator of Science and Technology.
Lead support for Overexposed was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional generous support was provided by Romy Cohen, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Elaine Goldman, May & Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, and Doug Pugh. Press release | Exhibition info
Icarus Proudbottom’s Typing Party
March 26–August 23
Free to play in the Museum lobby
Typing Party is part of Holy Wow Studio’s “Icarus Proudbottom” series. Beginning in 2013, the indie game series began borrowing the familiar structure of typing tutors, such as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and Mario Teaches Typing, while pushing the educational format toward competition and absurdity. Debuting at MoMI in 2016 as part of IndieCade East, Typing Party takes the form of a social arcade game comprising nine competitive minigames, played on two keyboards mounted side by side in a custom cabinet. The two keyboards are central to the game’s character: slightly out of place within arcade conventions, yet immediately legible to most players; they turn a familiar act into something social, rhythmic, and unexpectedly challenging. Presented in collaboration with Wonderville. Exhibit info
Yuri Norstein: Three Tail Tales
March 5–May 31
This screening program is presented inside Tut’s Fever Movie Palace, an artwork and working theater by Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong; part of the core exhibition Behind the Screen. Three short films by renowned master of cut-out animation Yuri Norstein tell captivating and endearing stories of friendship, romance, and the wonders of nature. The films include: The Fox and the Hare (1973, 12 mins.), The Heron and the Crane (1974, 10 mins.), and Hedgehog in the Fog (1975, 11 mins.). Recently restored by Deaf Crocodile as part of their collection Treasures of Soviet Animation, they showcase Norstein’s aesthetic range and sly humor and feature a special technique in which he uses multiple glass planes to create depth. Organized by Emily Greenberg, Film and Public Programs Manager. Exhibition info
Stories and Set Designs for The Sopranos
February 14–May 31
In the Amphitheater Gallery
The exhibition centers materials that trace how the series’ narrative and visual worlds were established. Drawing from David Chase’s personal archive, the exhibition features scripts, notes, and research that document the development of the celebrated series’ story arcs and character trajectories as it moved from a pilot into the first season. It also examines the design of the four principal sites where the series’ central action unfolds—Dr. Melfi’s office, the Soprano home, the Bada Bing strip club, and Satriale’s Pork Store—through a presentation of concept art, construction drawings, and ground plans by production designers Edward Pisoni (pilot) and Dean Taucher (season one). Organized by Barbara Miller, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.
This exhibition was made possible with the support of Lisa and Richard Plepler.
Press release | Exhibition info
Lick Pic
Collaborative work by Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song
February 19–May 10
On the Herbert S. Schlosser Media Wall and in the Museum lobby. Presented in partnership with the Tezos Foundation.
Friend and Song tether the contemporary art market, the Museum’s collection, and screen dependence through shared themes of desire and possession. Images from the permanent collection rotate on the lobby wall each time activity occurs on the contemporary marketplace Objkt. The collection image is shown beside hallucinated variants that produce an uncanny, dizzying effect: which is the true object of desire? A nearby installation of robotic tongue sculptures mounted to iPhones and iPads, devices already charged with erogenous energy through acts like habitual stroking, act as crude symbols of lust; each tongue swipe affects the image on the screen. Organized by Regina Harsanyi, Associate Curator of Media Arts. Exhibition info
Lu Yang: The Great Adventure of Material World
Extended through May 3
In the Jane Henson Amphitheater
Exhibition info
The Jim Henson Exhibition
Ongoing
Exhibition info
Behind the Screen
Ongoing
Exhibition info
See a listing of all current exhibitions here.
HIGHLIGHTED SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
SPRING RECESS ACTIVITY
Arcade Classics: Centipede and Pole Position
April 2–12
New York City kids on spring recess and their families can play Centipede and Pole Position, two vintage arcade games from the Museum’s collection. Innovative for their use of track balls and steering wheels, these original 1980s Atari cabinet games are presented here for new players to enjoy. Part of Open Worlds 2026; 25 cents per play. Event info
SPRING RECESS ACTIVITY
Moving Image Studio
April 2–12, 12:30–5:30 p.m. (except for Sat. Apr. 11)
Moving Image Studio is a drop-in media-making space where visitors can experiment and create media as well as arts and crafts, inspired by characters and subjects featured in the Museum’s galleries and screening programs. Facilitated by Museum educators, visitors can try green-screen, create stop-motion animation, build in virtual reality, and draw whimsical characters from films, video games, and TV shows. Free.
FREE COMMUNITY EVENT
Coin-Op Clash: Centipede Tournament
Saturday, April 4, 2:00-6:00 p.m.
Join MoMI’s video game tournament, featuring Centipede! Battle it out to claim the high score on an original cabinet of Atari’s 1981 arcade hit. Sign up in advance for free play in the tournament. Limited drop-in space available. Part of Open Worlds 2026; free with RSVP. Event info
SCREENING
In Jackson Heights
Sunday, April 5, 1:00 p.m.
Dir. Frederick Wiseman. 2015, 190 mins. The teeming diversity of Jackson Heights, and the larger landscape of Queens itself, is the subject of Frederick Wiseman’s acclaimed nonfiction epic, presented on the Museum big screen in tribute to the director, who died in February. As with the finest of his films, Wiseman has created a kaleidoscopic and novelistic view of his subject, here showing the many ways that people form smaller communities within a larger, chaotic world. Reverse Shot crowned it as the best film of 2015 in its annual critics’ poll. Part of Reverse Shot Presents. Event info
SPECIAL EVENT
Sloan Science and Film Reception and Celebration
Thursday, April 9, 6:30 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image partners with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to celebrate the best science-themed screenplays from graduate film schools nationwide. Join them for a reception with food and drink, a script reading, and Q&A with journalist Evan Ratliff, on an evening to celebrate the 2025 Sloan Student Prize winners: Nora Kaye (Brooklyn College) and Quinn Spicker (AFI). Free with RSVP. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
The Seven-Year Itch
Followed by a conversation with Melissa Shaw and Imogen Sara Smith
Saturday, April 11, 1:00 p.m.
Dir. Billy Wilder. 1955, 105 mins. U.S. DCP. With Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell. Envelope-pusher Billy Wilder turned a potential hot-button comedy about possible adultery (a Production Code no-no) into an enormous box-office success and gave Marilyn Monroe one of her most lasting, beloved roles. With its ultimate married-guy fantasy dilemma, The Seven-Year Itch remains one of Wilder’s most delightful comic confections, and Monroe brings her customary combination of sexiness, warmth, and vulnerability.
FREE COMMUNITY EVENT
Artist Talk: Lick Pic
Saturday, April 11, 3:00–4:00 p.m.
Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song join Associate Curator of Media Arts Regina Harsanyi for a conversation on Lick Pic, the current Schlosser Media Wall commission on view in the Museum lobby, presented in partnership with the Tezos Foundation. The work puts collecting, commerce, and screen dependence in the same bed through shared themes of desire and possession. Triggered by sales on Objkt, images of objects from MoMI’s collection rotate alongside three fictional variants, testing what counts as the real object of desire. Part of Open Worlds 2026; free with RSVP. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
Horse Feathers + Marx Brothers Council Podcast Live
Sunday, April 12, 12:00 p.m.
Dir. Norman Z. McLeod. 1932, 68 mins. U.S. DCP. In one of his most riotous roles, Groucho Marx plays the President of Huxley College, with Harpo his secret weapon in a football rivalry against Darwin University. Horse Feathers is among the Marx Brothers’ funniest and most scathing attacks on authority, featuring some of their greatest songs, including “I’m Against It” and “Everyone Says I Love You.” Following the screening, join the Marx Brothers Council Podcast as they record an episode with a live audience. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
Food, Closeup: Ceres Food Film Festival Shorts
Sunday, April 12, 2:30 p.m.
See a slate of food-focused short films presented in partnership with the Ceres Food Film Festival, one of the leading international film festivals dedicated to exploring the multifaceted role of food in our lives. Followed by a conversation with Michael Robinov, Co-Founder & CEO of Farm to People, and moderated by Qiana Mickie, Executive Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture. Ceres friends at Slow Food NYC will be tabling for a chance for guests to connect with their work, and Brooklyn Granary and Farm to People will offer tastings. Attendees will get a 10% discount off beer, wine, and cocktails at Mon Amour café in the Museum lobby. Part of Open Worlds 2026; free, RSVP recommended. Event info
SCREENING
The Sound of Music (Singalong Version)
Sunday, April 12, 3:00 p.m.
Dir. Robert Wise. 1965, 172 mins. U.S. DCP. With Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer. Robert Wise’s spectacular adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show is one of cinema’s greatest musical extravaganzas. Julie Andrews gives an iconic performance as a novice nun whose life changes when sent to care for the children of a handsome military captain (Plummer) as the world anxiously awaits the start of World War II. The Sound of Music bursts with unforgettable songs and glorious CinemaScope images shot on location in Salzburg, Austria. Winner of five Oscars, including Best Picture. Part of Song & Dance. Event info
FREE COMMUNITY EVENT
The Precarious Body
An Open Worlds: Science program
Friday, April 17, 6:00 p.m.
Showcasing the art and medical imaging technologies featured in the current exhibition Overexposed: Art, Technology, and the Body, artist Panteha Abareshi, whose work is included in the exhibition, will give a talk considering the relationship between the sick and/or disabled body and its able-bodied spectators; followed by a panel discussion about the ways that personal health, medical imaging, and creative inspiration collide, with radiologist Lily Offit in conversation with Abareshi and Overexposed catalog co-editor Elisabeth Sherman, moderated by the exhibition’s curator Sonia Epstein, MoMI’s Curator of Science & Technology. The event will be followed by a reception. Open Worlds: Science, returning for another full season April-October 2026, is supported by the Simons Foundation. Free admission, RSVP required.
FREE COMMUNITY EVENT
Hand-Colored Film Workshop
Saturday, April 18, 12:00–3:00 p.m.
In the spirit of the experimental filmmakers featured in the same-day screening program Earthly Delights experimental film program (at 3:00 p.m.), visitors are welcome to try their hand at “drawn-on-film” animation, led by teaching artists Rachel Guma and Alice Cohen. All materials provided, including 16mm film and a viewer to see the results of your work. Part of Open Worlds 2026; free, RSVP requested. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
Earthly Delights: Historic Psychedelia, Animation, and Avant-Garde Films in Large Format
Saturday, April 18, 3:00 p.m.
Experimental and avant-garde filmmakers have historically been associated with smaller formats: 16mm, 8mm and Super-8mm, VHS tapes, camera phones. But there is also a legacy of film artists who have worked in larger, industrial-sized formats. In this special program organized and hosted by Andy Ditzler and Gregory Zinman, the films come at the large-format medium from different angles, but all are concerned with new visions that foreground extant technologies of the moving image. Whether it’s Stan Brakhage painting directly on the filmstrip, Norman McLaren hand-printing his musical score directly on the soundtrack, Jennifer West’s film frames dunked in liquid nitrogen, or the high-tech psychedelia of Robert Abel’s 1970s television commercials, these films are all pleasurably overwhelming in the material sense. Several of the selections will screen in 35mm or 35mm Cinemascope. Experience them in the Museum’s glorious Redstone Theater. Event info
SCREENING
Labyrinth: 40th Anniversary Screening
April 18 and 19, 12:30 p.m. each day
Dir. Jim Henson. 1986, 101 mins. With Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie. In order to save her baby brother, who has been captured by the Goblin King, teenager Sarah must find her way through a magical labyrinth. Rich with elaborate set pieces, including a castle inspired by M.C. Escher, and a witty and fantastical script by Monty Python member Terry Jones, Henson’s beloved fantasy film is a stunning visual achievement. In a role that launched a million disquieting crushes, a perfectly cast Bowie plays the teasing, tempting seducer whom Sarah must both want and reject in order to learn the labyrinth’s lessons. Part of Jim Henson’s World. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
Fast Food Nation
20th Anniversary Screening with Richard Linklater and Eric Schlosser in person
Saturday, April 18, 5:30 p.m.
Dir. Richard Linklater. 2006, 116 mins. With Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Wilmer Valderrama, Ashley Johnson, Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke. Twenty years on, Richard Linklater’s sprawling, multilayered inquiry into capitalism’s effect on American life is more relevant than ever. It was never just about the meat: inspired by Upton Sinclair’s classic muckraker The Jungle, Linklater and Eric Schlosser, adapting his own revelatory best-seller, construct a film about the ever-widening ripples of our monopolized corporate culture and its impact on the individual, from the exploited immigrant laborer (Moreno, Valderrama) to the hapless tentative whistle blower (Kinnear) to the low-wage teen turned wannabe activist (Johnson). All are united—or vertically integrated—in their association with the Mickey’s hamburger chain, a fast-food behemoth modeled on you–know–who. Unceremoniously released and underappreciated, Fast Food Nation remains one of the most clear-eyed American films about our complicity in a sociopolitical machine that’s only gotten stronger. Followed by a discussion with Linklater and Schlosser. Part of Writers’ Room. Event info
SCREENING
Kyuka: Before Summer’s End
Sunday, April 19, 3:00 p.m.
Dir. Kostis Charamountanis. 2024, 105 mins. A single father takes his young adult twin son and daughter on a boating holiday to Poros, secretly planning for them to meet the birth mother who abandoned them when they were very young. Winner of two 2025 Hellenic Film Academy Awards. Presented in association with the Hellenic Film Society USA, a dynamic cultural organization devoted to the presentation of outstanding Greek films in the United States. Part of Always on Sunday: Greek Film Series Series info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
The Misconceived
Opening Night of First Look Festival with filmmakers in person + reception
Thursday, April 23, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. James N. Kienitz Wilkins. 2026, 88 mins. U.S. With Jesse Wakeman, John Magary, Jess Barbagallo, J. Dixon Byrne, Emily Davis, Rachel Lin, Callie Hernandez, Theodore Bouloukos, Paul Dallas. A social satirist whose work rejects fixed genres and forms, James N. Kienitz Wilkins (The Plagiarists) offers entertaining, if slippery critiques of the creative class, and his latest, which the director calls, somewhat beguilingly, “a tragicomedy about Millennials in crisis,” is a merciless yet provocative take on contemporary culture and the state of the “indie” film itself. Co-written by Robin Schavoir, The Misconceived centers on a forty-something carpenter who never cracked the code to become a movie director and whose new job, renovating the vacation home of a more successful college friend, triggers a series of confrontations and realizations about his own dwindled creativity and persistent economic precarity—rendered using motion capture and 3D animation via a computer graphics game engine. U.S. premiere. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
Carousel
New York premiere with director Rachel Lambert in person
Friday, April 24, 6:30 p.m.
Dir. Rachel Lambert. 2026, 103 mins. U.S. With Chris Pine, Jenny Slate, Sam Waterston, Katey Sagal, Jessica Harper, Abby Ryder Fortson, Hélène York. With her discerning visual sense and gratifyingly unsentimental approach, filmmaker Rachel Lambert brings a genuine emotional tangibility to her tale of two fortysomethings embarking on a tentative, rekindled affair amidst the unforgiving churn of everyday life. Noah (Chris Pine) is a divorced doctor and single parent of an anxiety-ridden teenager; Rebecca (Jenny Slate), his high-school sweetheart, has temporarily relocated back to town to assist her aging parents. Together they must navigate midlife disappointments, regrets, and fears, while balancing their own needs and desires. Beautifully performed with psychological clarity by its entire cast, especially Pine and Slate, and shot in Cleveland with a distinct sense of place, Lambert’s follow-up to her memorably melancholic 2023 film Sometimes I Think About Dying is a resonant portrait of people trying to overcome life’s uncertainties. Part of First Look 2026. Event info
SCREENING AND LIVE EVENT
A Date with Shirley
Sunday, April 26, 1:00 p.m.
Dir. Ken Jacobs. 2025, 48 mins. U.S. This colorful and cubist record of a Chinatown haircut is the final long-form work by the great avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, who died last October. As with his first film, Orchard Street (1955), made 70 years earlier, A Date with Shirley is a slice of New York City life that transforms urban energy into cinematic spectacle. Three cameras capture the action, one operated by Ken as he is having his Einstein-ian locks shorn, and the others by his children, Aza and Nisi. A loving and poignant family scene, the film is also a dazzling work of art—and a tribute to a fine barber whose phone number is offered in the credits. The screening, part of a citywide celebration of Ken Jacobs, will be followed by a book launch event for the Film Desk reprinted edition of Films That Tell Time: A Ken Jacobs Retrospective, the catalogue for his landmark 1989 show at MoMI. World premiere. Part of First Look 2026. Event info
About Museum of the Moving Image
MoMI celebrates the history, art, technology, and future of the moving image in all of its forms. Located in Astoria, New York, the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, and creative leaders; and education programs. It houses the nation’s most comprehensive collection of moving image artifacts and screens over 500 films annually. Its exhibitions—including the core exhibition Behind the Screen and The Jim Henson Exhibition—are noted for their integration of material objects, interactive experiences, and audiovisual presentations. For more information about MoMI, visit movingimage.org.
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Museum of the Moving Image is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and has received significant support from the following public agencies: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York City Council; New York City Economic Development Corporation; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Institute of Museum and Library Services; National Endowment for the Humanities; National Endowment for the Arts; and Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation). For more information, please visit movingimage.org.
Photo: Marilyn Monroe photographed by Sam Shaw (courtesy of Shaw Family Archives)