Focus On Miranda July : Film Retrospective

From DIY beginnings to Cannes Film Festival wins, we’re celebrating Miranda July's unmistakable voice in this film retrospective.

Emerging from the Pacific Northwest as a card-carrying Riot Grrl, Miranda July’s career grew out of the movement’s DIY ethos. Before she finished high school, she had written and presented her first play at an all-ages punk club and in the years following, she set up her own distribution network for video works. Today, she is an award-winning author, a Cannes prize-winning film director, an actor, narrator, a stage performer and visual artist. What tethers all of this together is her unique voice—articulate, idiosyncratic and unmistakably her.

We’ve commissioned July to create a mini golf hole at Swingers (where she’ll tell your fortune) and, together with ACMI, we’re celebrating her screen works with a film season spanning her feature films, short films, documentaries, music videos and video art. This will include three works from the ACMI Collection rarely seen on screen, including Sex, Lies, and Videotape—Steven Soderbergh’s debut feature film which has had a lasting influence on Miranda July’s own.

Films

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Her Cannes-conquering breakthrough feature debut. An eccentrically sad and funny film about a cab driver/artist and a salesman, ready for something amazing to happen.

The Future (2011)
A mid-30s couple, stuck in ‘jobs for now’ decide to adopt a sickly cat, which ends up literally altering the course of time and testing their faith in each other.

Miranda July : Early works
Get a glimpse into the formation of July’s singular style through these rarely seen pieces of video art.

Miranda July : Factual Works

Join us in the cinema for a look at factual works honing in on Miranda July's artistic practice.

Madeline’s Madeline (2018)
Josephine Decker’s triumphant offbeat drama about art vs reality. July stars as an increasingly alarmed and strung-out mother who watches her daughter descend a little too far into her work with a local experimental theatre.

Kajillionaire (2020)
July’s version of a crime caper is deeply strange and delightful. The daughter of two scam artists, plots a new scheme to pay their rent but when a stranger joins the scam her world gets upturned.

Fire of Love (2022)
July narrates this documentary—a literally volcanic love story between two French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft, living on the edge, and uncovering the secrets of volcanoes. Definitely one for the big screen.