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Big Screen: TÁR

  • Saturday, June 3, 2023 / 2:00 PM - 5:45 PM (PDT)
  • Pollock Theater
  • Screening Format: 4K DCP (158 Minutes)
  • With Todd Field (Filmmaker)
  • Starring: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant
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Part of the CWC Presents series

Lydia Tár sits at the very summit of the world of classical music. As the first woman principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, she holds one of the most coveted positions in a field still largely dominated by her male counterparts. TÁR (2022) delves into this rarified and cutthroat world, introducing its titular character as she undertakes final preparations for one of the great challenges of her career: completing a live recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

But as rehearsals intensify, shadows of a troubled past and unexpected new temptations begin to emerge. Together, they chip away at Lydia’s meticulously curated public persona, eventually revealing a uniquely monstrous villain and raising unsettling questions about exploitation, cultural authority, and the geopolitics of abuse.

In this event, director Todd Field joined moderator Tyler Morgenstern (Assistant Director, Carsey-Wolf Center) for a virtual post-screening discussion of TÁR. In addition to discussing the film, Field addressed the involvement of Xapiri Ground—a non-profit organization dedicated to grassroots work with the Indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest—and photographer David Díaz Gonzales, who created a key image for the film. Prior to the screening, some of Díaz’s photography was exhibited in the lobby of the Pollock Theater.

Biographies

Todd Field

Filmmaker Todd Field

Six-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Todd Field made his feature debut at the Sundance Film Festival with In the Bedroom. Internationally acclaimed, the film was named Best Picture of the Year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The film went on to receive five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture of the Year and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Field followed this with Little Children, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, which premiered at the 44th New York Film Festival and received similar accolades. The film received three Golden Globe nominations including Best Picture of the Year, and was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and three Academy Awards, including one Field shared with Perrotta for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Field’s next film, TÁR, premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival to universal acclaim, becoming only the fourth film in history to be named Best of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the London Film Critics’ Circle as well as the National Society of Film Critics. TÁR was named the year’s best by more critics than any other film released in 2022. The film received six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture of the Year, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

Of Field’s short films, “Nonnie & Alex,” premiered at Sundance, and received a Special Jury Prize, “When I was a Boy” also made its premiere at the festival, and was selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films Series at the Museum of Modern Art.

As an actor, Field has appeared in such films as Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

Headshot of Tyler Morgenstern. The black and white image depicts a man wearing a scarf and floral button-up long sleeve shirt. He is smiling and posed in front of a nature background which features a pond, large trees and mountains.

Moderator Tyler Morgenstern

Tyler Morgenstern is Assistant Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center and an alumnus of the UCSB Film and Media Studies PhD program. As a scholar, his research and teaching focused on the media and technological cultures of empire and settler colonialism. He completed his dissertation, Colonial Recursion and Decolonial Maneuver in the Cybernetic Diaspora in 2021, and has published in journals including International Journal of Communication, Media+Environment, and Synoptique. With Krista Lynes and Ian Alan Paul, he is also co-editor of Moving Images: Mediating Migration as Crisis (Transcript Verlag, 2020).

 This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.

Big Screen

The movie theater has always been a space of wonder and anxiety. Since the inception of the cinema, audiences have enjoyed the collective experience of viewing a film on the big screen, but fears of contagion and disease have undercut that pleasure since the cinema’s earliest years. In our current moment, closures of international festivals and competition with streaming platforms have significantly altered the film industry. The Carsey-Wolf Center’s “Big Screen” series at the Pollock Theater will explore this tension as we welcome cinemagoers back to the theater. The series will spotlight films made to be seen on the big screen, including works that are almost never seen in North America (Satyajit Ray), as well as classical Hollywood films (featuring Bette Davis) and more. This series will recall those early cinemagoers who first marveled at early moving pictures or new technologies like Cinerama and CinemaScope, and invite conversations with scholars and filmmakers about their varied, personal, and unexpected experiences with the big screen.

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