Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art is bringing back its annual ‘Short Films for Short Nights’ series in July with a theme that looks closely at ‘faces in the crowd.’ The final program, ‘Crowds and Power,’ is scheduled for July 24 in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at The Met Fifth Avenue, with the event running from 6 to 7:30 pm.
According to the museum, the three-part film series includes dozens of rare short films made between 1900 and 1973. This year’s programming is framed around the idea of human presence in many forms, from close-up portraits to chance encounters and scenes of bustling urban life. The Met describes the selection as spanning ‘the full spectrum of the human experience,’ with the concluding program focused specifically on mass gatherings, city crowding, and films about people resisting authoritarian control.
The series is organized by the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, a Met department devoted to modern art research. Its return fits within the museum’s broader summer programming, which also includes tours, talks, performances, workshops and classes at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters unless otherwise noted. For the film series, the museum says advance registration is recommended, though admission is free with museum admission.
The material for ‘Short Films for Short Nights’ centers on short-form cinema as a way to view the 20th century through a different lens. Rather than presenting a conventional feature-film lineup, the series draws on archival and rare works that connect formal experimentation with social history. In the museum’s description, the theme of ‘faces in the crowd’ moves from intimate portraiture to larger questions of collective life, allowing the final program to shift toward the political scale of crowds and public action.
For the July 24 screening, The Met identifies the venue as Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, The Met Fifth Avenue, in New York. The event is listed as free with museum admission, and the museum notes that registration is needed. No additional film titles are provided in the source material for the final program beyond ‘Crowds and Power.’
The event follows the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center’s ongoing effort to present modern art and related media in ways that widen the frame beyond the gallery wall. In the same summer newsletter, The Met also lists a range of other programs, but ‘Short Films for Short Nights’ remains the main film item tied to July’s schedule, with its closing session set for July 24, 6–7:30 pm.
