From Feb. 20 to March 7, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City marks 24 years of showcasing innovative filmmaking and storytelling with Doc Fortnight 2025: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media. Among the lineup of films from across the globe is Julian Castronovo’s (Film/Video MFA 24) Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued, which makes its North American premiere at the festival.
Debut follows a young filmmaker (Castronovo himself) as he attempts to piece together clues related to the disappearance of an elusive performance artist with a knack for art forgery. More about the film from MoMA:
[T]he Wisconsin-born writer and director turned $900 and a dream into this globetrotting metafiction that’s equal parts Sebald, Pynchon, Welles and Chandler—all while surfing on a computer in his bedroom. The real-life case of Eli Sakhai, a New York gallerist imprisoned for masterminding an elaborate art forgery scheme, is merely the springboard for Castronovo’s own flights of fancy, which involve a doppelgänger, a Chinese performance artist, plenty of red herrings, and a rather ingenious questioning of signs and signifiers, what’s real and what’s fake, as the filmmaker forges meaning through appropriation, reenactment, invention, and “other forms of duplicity.”
Castronovo’s feature will screen twice during the festival, both times preceded by a screening of Dongnan Chen’s “历历如画 (14 Paintings)”:
- Monday, Feb. 24 | 7 pm
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Followed by a conversation with the filmmaker moderated by Scott Macaulay - Thursday, Feb. 27 | 4 pm
MoMA, Floor T2/T1, The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1
An alum of the Film Directing program in the School of Film/Video, Castronovo has been on a creative roll since graduating last year. The screening at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight follows his selection as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” In an interview with 24700 following the ranking, he described Debut as a “laptop movie,” and expressed his gratitude for the support of his fellow CalArtians’ and conviction to spend the rest of his life making films.
