Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum / The Graduate, 1967

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 Graduate

USA, 1967 | Director: Mike Nichols | Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross | 106 min., English with Hebrew subtitles

Mike Nichols’s brilliant satire The Graduate stars Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a directionless recent college graduate who embarks on an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father’s law partner, before falling in love with her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). A tremendous success with both audiences and critics, the film proved that a Hollywood leading man no longer had to fit the mold of the classic romantic hero.

Influenced by contemporary cinematic movements—most notably the French New Wave—and propelled by an unforgettable soundtrack by Simon & Garfunkel, Nichols’ film captured the uncertainty, alienation, and restless self-doubt that defined a generation coming of age in the 1960s. Set against the backdrop of America’s deepening involvement in the Vietnam War, The Graduate became one of the defining films of its era, offering a sharp portrait of the generational divide and the profound sense of dislocation experienced by young people confronting a world shaped by their parents.

The spacious suburban homes, swimming pools, automobiles, and consumer goods that fill the film’s frames evoke the visual culture of American affluence from which Tom Wesselmann’s artistic language also emerged. Yet beneath these polished surfaces lie alienation, emotional emptiness, and dissatisfaction. The film’s treatment of sexuality, like Wesselmann’s representations of the nude body, unsettles the conventions of the previous generation, oscillating between liberation and seduction on the one hand, and objectification and discomfort on the other.

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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 >