Robert Altman Centennial

July 18–Sept. 18

A signature stylist in American filmmaking, Robert Altman (1925–2006) was known as an innovator and iconoclast. Altman’s work helped to define the 1970s. He may have slowed down in the 1980s, but he reemerged in the 1990s and early 2000s (more than once) with some of his best work. The hallmarks of Altman’s celebrated style — overlapping dialogue, improvisational acting, mobile camera and zooms, subversive humor — have been displayed since the career-making M*A*S*H in 1970. (Ironically, it might have never been: his unorthodox methods so puzzled co-stars Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould that they tried to have him removed from the picture!) A century after his birth, his films have lost none of their vitality. They have also continued to greatly influence younger filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson. Altman received five Academy Award® nominations for Best Director and never won, but the Academy awarded him an honorary Oscar® in 2006 “for a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike.”