FILM SCREENINGS

Model

1980. USA. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman’s Warholian look at the modeling industry—Warhol himself makes a cameo appearance—reveals the tremendous expense, aspiration, and fuss that goes into selling sleek cars and couture collections. The film, structured around a television commercial for panty hose and an Oscar de la Renta runway show, is a riveting meditation on imagemaking and fantasy (one photographer demands of a confused and impressionable young model, ''A little more innocent! A little more sexual!‖). Model was made in 1980 during a seemingly pivotal moment in the industry, poised between the ethereally glamorous and seductive portraits of the fashion world in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face (1957), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966), and William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966), and today’s more populist, and somehow more tawdry, reality shows like America’s Next Top Model. 129 min.