Mike Nichols

Bookends

Feb 25–Mar 7, 2021

Online

Silkwood. 1982. USA. Directed by Mike Nichols. Courtesy of Photofest

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In 2009, MoMA hosted the first museum retrospective of films by the great Mike Nichols. An accomplished performer (most notably alongside Elaine May) and renowned stage director, Nichols was, above all, a great American filmmaker. The laughs or tears in a Nichols film are always born of something tangible, with authentic actions leading to comprehensible results. He invited us to connect with our own devastating, illuminating humanity. In celebration of the new biography Mike Nichols: A Life, by Mark Harris, we are pleased to revisit Nichols’s legacy with selections from his early work, a career-reviving midcareer film (Silkwood), and two examples of his late output, including the 2003 adaptation of Angels in America.

Organized by Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film.

  • Watch Rajendra Roy interview Mark Harris about Harris’s recent biography Mike Nichols: A Life

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    Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black and by Steven Tisch, with major contributions from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Karen and Gary Winnick, and The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston.

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