Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum / The Conversation, 1974

Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum | A rich weekend of films inspired by the exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out / From the Marie and Jose Mugrabi Collection.
Artistic Director: Karin Rywkind Segal

The screenings will be accompanied by introductions from the Museum’s curators and guest lecturers.

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The Conversation

USA, 1974 | Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Frederic Forrest, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford | 113 min., English with Hebrew subtitles

Francis Ford Coppola’s prescient masterpiece The Conversation is a mesmerizing psychological thriller made at the height of the Watergate era. Gene Hackman delivers a remarkable performance as Harry Caul, a reclusive surveillance expert hired to record a conversation between a young couple in San Francisco. As he begins to suspect that their lives are in danger, he is drawn ever deeper into the case, only to realize that he himself is under surveillance and that his own privacy is slipping away. Through masterful editing, groundbreaking sound design, and Hackman’s finely calibrated performance, supported by an exceptional ensemble cast, Coppola crafted a haunting psychological thriller whose relevance has only deepened over time.

Like Tom Wesselmann, Coppola was captivated by the emerging technologies of his era, yet each explored their implications in profoundly different ways. In The Conversation, technology becomes an instrument of surveillance, invading the private sphere and eroding intimacy. In Wesselmann’s work, by contrast, it is absorbed into the artwork itself through the incorporation of real sounds and mechanical devices—from a ringing telephone to the roar of an engine emanating from a painting. In both, technology emerges as a force that reshapes the relationship between image and reality.

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The exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out, currently on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, provides the point of departure for a weekend film program devoted to America in the 1960s and 1970s. Wesselmann’s work emerged from a visual culture saturated with images of the body, advertising, and consumerism, at a moment when American society was undergoing profound social and cultural change. The program expands the exhibition’s perspective through a selection of films that capture the spirit of the era: the counterculture; growing skepticism toward institutions and authority; shifting ideas about sexuality, femininity, and gender; the struggle for civil rights; and the social and political critique that defined the years of the Vietnam War.

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Note: Film introductions will be in Hebrew.
The number of participants is limited | Advance reservations are required for all participants.
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For more information on “Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum” and the full screening program >