Barbarella

1968, USA, Roger Vadim, 98 min.

Introduced by artist Maia Cruz Palileo.

Satisfy your summer wanderlust for the cosmic, cool, and transgressive. Travel with Barbarella, a 41st-century astronaut played by a scantily clad Jane Fonda, as she seeks the renowned scientist Durand Durand on planet Lythion, where a new sin is invented every hour. Along the way Barbarella meets a lesbian queen who makes her fantasies come to life in her Chamber of Dreams and encounters the Excessive Machine, designed to drive its victims to death through physical pleasure.

“During her mission, Barbarella never finds herself in a situation where it isn’t possible to lose at least part of her already minimal dressing.”

—Kim Newman, Empire Magazine

About Cabaret Cinema: Face of the Future

Curated by Rubin Museum fellow and artist Chitra Ganesh, Cabaret Cinema takes its cue from the exhibition Face of the Future, in which emerging artists reimagine how the visual languages of science fiction and fantasy take shape and proliferate around the world through cinema. Each film will be introduced by an artist whose work expands and redefines the aesthetics of science fiction, explored in posters that can be viewed in the Art Lounge gallery just outside the theater.

Chitra Ganesh: Face of the Future is made possible by Rasika and Girish Reddy, Manoj and Rita Singh, Akhoury Foundation, and contributors to the 2018 Exhibitions Fund.

About the Introducer

Maia Cruz Palileo is a multidisciplinary, Brooklyn-based artist. Migration and the permeable concept of home are constant themes in her paintings, installations, sculptures, and drawings. Influenced by the oral history of her family’s arrival in United States from the Philippines, as well as the history between the two countries, Maia infuses these narratives with memory and imagination. When stories and memories are subjected to time and constant retelling, the narratives become questionable, bordering the line between fact and fiction, while remaining cloaked in the convincingly familiar. She received an MFA in sculpture from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and BA in studio art at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts.