NEW YORK, NY.- To highlight a week that includes both Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day, the Department of Film has chosen ten noteworthy films from the archives that celebrate, criticize, satirize, or otherwise comment upon American-style politics.

Abraham Lincoln. 1930. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffit. Screenplay by Stephen Vincent Benet. With Walter Huston, Una Merkel, Ian Keith. A respectful and poetic account of Lincoln's entry into politics, Griffith's first sound film is a sincere, passionate, and moving portrait of a remarkable man. 97 min.
Sunday, January 18, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Thursday, January 22, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Young Mr. Lincoln. 1939. USA. Directed by John Ford. Screenplay by Lamar Trotti. With Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver. In this fictionalized account, a young Abraham Lincoln moves from Kentucky to small-town Springfield, Ohio, where he begins to practice law. 100 min.
Sunday, January 18, 2009, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Thursday, January 22, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

King: A Filmed Record...Montgomery to Memphis. 1970. USA. Produced by Ely Landau and Richard Kaplan for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Foundation. Newsreels and other footage document the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Anthony Quinn, Clarence Williams III, and Joanne Woodward read King's speeches and other texts in passages directed by Sidney Lumet and Joseph Mankiewicz. 180 min.
Monday, January 19, 2009, 2:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, January 23, 2009, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Primary. 1960. USA. Produced and directed by Robert Drew. Photographed and edited by Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles, D. A. Pennebaker. With Robert Drew, Hubert Humphrey, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy. An early example of cinema vérité, this landmark American documentary employed lightweight cameras and sound-recording equipment to capture the 1960 Democratic primary in Wisconsin between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. 60 min.
Monday, January 19, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

The Great McGinty. 1940. USA. Written and directed by Preston Sturges. With Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff. In Sturges's directorial debut, a thoroughly corruptible man rises from homelessness to the governor's mansion, but the tide turns against him when he tries to be honest. 82 min.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, January 31, 2009, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Nixon. 1995. USA. Directed by Oliver Stone. Screenplay by Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson, Stone. With Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, James Woods, J. T. Walsh, Powers Boothe, David Hyde Pierce. "Nixon remains one of the most compelling, frustrating, and fascinating figures of twentieth-century American history. In fact, Nixon is, in the truest sense of the word, a man of the century.... It's almost as if he embodies everything that's right and wrong about America in general and American politicians in particular.... His potential was limitless, but ultimately was limited by powers that even he couldn't control. To some degree, Nixon is about the illusion of power" (Stone). 190 min.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Sunday, January 25, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Advise & Consent. 1962. USA. Directed by Otto Preminger. . Screenplay by Wendell Mayes, based on the novel by Allen Drury. With Henry Fonda, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney, Charles Laughton, Don Murray. Preminger's intelligent, dark, and multilayered look at the (mostly covert) ways and means of political maneuvering inside the nation's capital is a compelling portrait of a "business" at once ideal and dirty. 139 min.
Saturday, January 24, 2009, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 1939. USA. Directed by Frank Capra. Screenplay by Sidney Buchman. With James Stuart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold. In Capra's classic tale of idealism and corruption in Washington, D.C., Stuart plays the naive Mr. Smith, appointed to fill Wisconsin's vacant Senate seat by the governor. Instead of doing as he's told, however, Smith ends up making trouble for his corrupt fellow officials. 120 min.
Saturday, January 24, 2009, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1

All the King's Men. 1950. USA. Directed by Robert Rossen. Screenplay by Rossen, based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren. With Broderick Crawford, Joanne Dru, John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge. The grand rise and even grander fall of Willie Stark, a rural politician who was once hell-bent on cleaning up the corruption around him. 110 min.
Monday, January 26, 2009, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1