Film Screening: Paris, Texas (1984)

UMOCA is screening Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas on Thursday, November 19, from 6:30 to 9 PM. It's a 1984 film that's built on solitude, memory, and the mythic weight of the American road. It follows Travis Henderson, played by Harry Dean Stanton, as he wanders out of the desert to piece together the fragments of his past. Cinematographer Robby Müller shot it in luminous, enduring color that captures the vast, melancholy beauty of the Western landscape.

The screening is presented in dialogue with artist Madeline Rupard's solo exhibition, 2002 Subaru Forester, which is also on view at the museum. Rupard takes the vehicle and the open highway as a scrappy, pragmatic sanctuary from which to observe the contradictions of the contemporary American landscape. The two work together around the same ideas: the car, the road, and the distance between people.

If you've seen Paris, Texas before, it's a good one to revisit on a big screen. If you haven't, it's a slow-burn of a movie that takes its time with the scenery and the silence. Between the film and the exhibition, you've got two different ways of looking at the same thing—the American road as both a way out and a way back.

It's at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art at 20 South West Temple in Salt Lake City. Admission is free, but you'll need to RSVP to get in. The screening runs from 6:30 to 9 PM.