Tuesday Series Fall 2016


Tuesday, August 23 at 7pm

STAGECOACH – Preservation Print!

John Ford (U.S. 1939) 92 min. 35MM. With John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine.

The quintessential director of the Hollywood Western and the quintessential American cowboy paired up for the first time for Stagecoach, the film that established both John Wayne and Monument Valley as icons of the screen, and is widely credited with resurrecting the genre. Placing a motley crew of stock characters in a coach traversing Apache country, Stagecoach limns the frontier between civilization and wilderness, using a classic Western story to subvert the vision of the American dream while portraying the landscape of the West with a grandeur and poetry whose influence reverberates nearly a century later. Print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

“Stagecoach is to American movies what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to American literature.” – Charles Taylor, New York Observer

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Tuesday, August 30 at 7pm

BLUE VELVET – 30th Anniversary Restoration!

David Lynch (U.S. 1986) 120 min. DCP. With Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper.

The Lynch legend began with the director’s fourth feature, his unflinching depiction of evil lurking behind the white picket fences of small town America. Four years before Twin Peaks transformed television, Lynch introduced red curtains and a Dale Cooper-ish Kyle MacLachlan, here playing a college student who teams up with the daughter of a local detective to investigate a dark world of sensuality and violence. Still disturbed 30 years after its explosive release, Blue Velvet is not for the faint of heart.

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Tuesday, September 6 at 7pm

KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE – Pennsylvania Premiere!

Robert Greene (U.S. 2015) 112 min. DCP. With Kate Lyn Sheil.

In 1974, Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck made headlines (and became an inspiration for Sidney Lumet’s Network) when she committed suicide on live television. Actress Kate Lyn Sheil heads to Sarasota to investigate the facts as she prepares to star in “a stylized cheap ’70s soap opera” version of the story that may or may not be in production. Following Actress (2014), Robert Greene once again delves into the heady nature of performance and nonfiction–but here he also questions assumptions that fuel cinematic recreations of the past. Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Award, Kate Plays Christine is a mercilessly self-interrogating thriller that explores the ethical pitfalls of media representation.“An elegant and endlessly fascinating hall of representational mirrors.” – Variety

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Tuesday, September 13 at 7pm

NITRATE KISSES

Barbara Hammer (U.S. 1992) 67 min. 16MM.

Nitrate Kisses explores eroded images for lost vestiges of lesbian and gay culture in this first feature by pioneer of lesbian cinema Barbara Hammer. The forbidden and invisible histories of a marginalized people are put in context by the contemporary sexual activities of four gay and lesbian couples. Screening with The Attendant (Isaac Julien, 1993, 10 minutes): Made at the height of the AIDS epidemic, The Attendant is set in a museum devoted to the history of slavery, where a young white male visitor arouses sexual fantasies in a middle-aged black male museum guard. Co-presented with Bucknell’s Department of Sociology & Anthropology. Introduced by Jason Alley, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology, in conjunction with his course Sexuality and Culture. “Nitrate Kisses brings past and present into dialogue, mixing the sound of testimonials with the image of sex acts, refusing to allow its audience the escape of either amnesia, or invisibility.” – B. Ruby Rich

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Tuesday, September 20 at 7pm

HARLAN COUNTY USA

Barbara Kopple (U.S. 1976) 104 min. 35MM.

Barbara Kopple’s directorial debut was the Academy Award–winning Harlan County USA, the document of a grueling coal miners’ strike in a Kentucky town. Kopple and her crew lived among the miners for thirteen months, when there was no other media coverage, and were there for the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack—with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece—the film is a heartbreaking record of the struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line. Preserved by The Women’s Film Preservation Fund of New York Women in Film and Television and The Academy Film Archive. Co-presented by Bucknell’s Center for Sustainability and the Environment and the Weis Center for the Performing Arts, in conjunction with the year-long interdisciplinary project “Coal Collections: Local, National, and International Stories.” Introduced by Shaunna Barnhart, Director of the Place Studies Program and Associate Provost Robert Midkiff.

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Tuesday, September 27 at 7pm

THE WONDERS

Alice Rohrwacher’s visit has been canceled. Her film will screen as planned. We apologize for this change in the schedule.

Alice Rohrwacher (Italy/Switzerland/Germany 2014) 110 min. DCP. With Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Alba Rohrwacher. Italian/French/German with English subtitles.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, young Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s richly textured drama centers on a family of beekeepers living in stark isolation in the Tuscan countryside. The dynamic of their crowded household is disrupted by the simultaneous arrival of a silently troubled teenaged boy and a reality TV show (featuring a host played by Monica Bellucci). Both intrusions are of particular interest to eldest daughter Gelsomina (Lungu), who is struggling to find her footing in the world, and whose adolescent sense of wonder and confusion the film conveys with graceful naturalism. Recipient of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2016 Filmmaker Residency, Rohrwacher is in New York this year working on a new film. Co-sponsored by Bucknell’s Program in Italian Studies and the University Lectureship Committee. “Grounded in direct experience but alive to the unexpected, The Wonders signals the maturation of a significant cinematic talent.” – Tom Charity, Cinema Scope

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Tuesday, October 4 at 7pm

PIERROT LE FOU – Restoration!

Jean-Luc Godard (France 1965) 110 min. DCP. With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. French with English subtitles.

Dissatisfied in marriage and in life, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s bourgeois TV man turned artist/criminal runs off to the South of France with the babysitter, a mysterious ex-lover played by Anna Karina. Godard’s tenth feature in six years broke all of the rules upon its original release, stylishly mashing-up consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics for the violent, zigzag crime spree/road trip of what the auteur called “the last romantic couple.” Pierrot persists as one of the most audacious pieces of cinematic art, and is now ravishingly restored to feature Raoul Coutard’s sun-splashed color and Scope photography. Co-presented by Bucknell’s Program in French and Francophone Studies. Introduced by Professor John Westbrook.
“The most ravishing and romantic film ever made… The dazzling mise-en-scène alternates Lichtenstein with Cézanne, pop art with impressionism, the shadow of Amerika falling across the Provençal sun.” – Amy Taubin, Village Voice

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Tuesday, October 18 at 7pm

STOP THE POUNDING HEART

Roberto Minervini (USA/Belgium/Italy 2013) 100 min. DCP. With Sara Carlson, Colby Trichell.

Sara Carlson is part of a devout Christian goat-farming family with 12 children, all homeschooled by parents following the precepts of the Bible. On the cusp of adolescence, and taught to preserve her emotional and physical purity until marriage, Sara is nevertheless drawn to a young amateur bull rider. The third movie in the Italian-born filmmaker’s Texas trilogy is an impartial portrayal of contemporary America and the insular communities that dot its landscape, an exploration of family and social values, gender roles and religion in a rural American South that has remained isolated from technological advances and mainstream cultural influence. Co-presented with Bucknell’s Department of Religious Studies. Introduced by Assistant Professor John Penniman.
“Minervini’s method is a remarkable blend of curiosity and sensitivity… His respect for the characters and their understanding of the world is utterly without condescension, and his unpretentious humanism makes American cultural, religious and class divisions seem at once profound and irrelevant.” – A.O. Scott, New York Times

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Tuesday, October 25 at 7pm

CARNIVAL OF SOULS – Restoration Print!

Herk Harvey (U.S. 1962) 78 min. 35MM. With Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger.

Industrial filmmaker Herk Harvey’s low budget cult classic is spine-chilling. A young church organist is the only survivor of a deadly car crash into a river in a rural Kansas town. But when she emerges from the water, something isn’t quite right, especially the cadaverous apparition who haunts her, compelling her to an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Harvey’s poetic, all-American surrealism gained a following over years of late night TV showings and a subsequent rediscovery and DVD release by the Criterion Collection, but has rarely been screened in 35mm. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

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Tuesday, November 1 at 7pm

CAMERAPERSON – Area Premiere!

Kirsten Johnson (U.S. 2016) 102 min. DCP.

A tour de force visual memoir of intimacy, suffering, compassion and joy, Cameraperson travels from a boxing match in Brooklyn; to life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; to the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; to an intimate family moment at home. Kirsten Johnson’s astutely woven tapestry of footage, captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer, juxtaposes time and place, beauty and horror. Combining documentary, autobiography and ethical inquiry, she has crafted a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.

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Tuesday, November 8 at 7pm

AMERICAN HONEY – Area Premiere!


Andrea Arnold (UK/U.S. 2015) 158 min. DCP. With Shia LaBeouf, Sasha Lane, Riley Keough.

English-born Andrea Arnold’s (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) first film set in this country won the Jury Prize at Cannes last May, where the festival was buzzing about her powerful vision of contemporary America. Intrigued by a New York Times article about the door-to-door magazine subscription subculture, Arnold took a road trip to the Midwest, where she observed dramatic landscapes and witnessed disturbing poverty. There she spotted Sasha Lane, and cast her as American Honey’s lead, a teenager who runs from an abusive home with a group of hard partying young adults living on the fringes of society. Arnold applies her signature style–harsh realism conveyed with a humanist visual lyricism–to a sprawling tale of the American heartland that surges with exuberance and resiliency of spirit.

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Tuesday, November 15 at 7pm

LAND ART SHORTS PROGRAM


A selection of film and video works that capture artist interventions in the landscape, featuring films by seminal and emerging artists Lawrence Weiner (BEACHED, 1970), Vito Acconci (Digging Piece, 1970), Nancy Holt (Sun Tunnels, 1978), Holt and Robert Smithson (Swamp, 1971), Charles Atlas (From An Island Summer, 1983–84), Joan Jonas (Brooklyn Bridge, 1988) and Carrie Schneider (Burning House, 2012–2013). Co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability and the Environment and the Department of Art & Art History. Introduced by Roger Rothman, Professor of Art History.

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Tuesday, November 29 at 7pm

TROPICAL MALADY


Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand 2004) 118 min. 35mm. With Sakda Kaewbuadee and Banlop Lomnoi. Thai with English Subtitles.

Tropical Malady is the lyrical and mysterious fourth feature by maverick director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, one of the most prominent directors of the Thai New Wave. It uses two stories to explore the passionate relationship between two men: the first chronicles the mystical love affair between a young soldier and the country boy he seduces; the second launches a folkloric ghost story that sends the soldier into the heart of the jungle to track a wild beast. Ravishing and hallucinatory, Weerasethakul’s early film was the first to gain him major international acclaim, in the form of the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Co-presented with the Samek Museum in conjunction with its exhibition “Tomorrow Never Happens,” an exploration of queer futurity and the aesthetics of utopia.

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Tuesday, December 6 at 7pm

STUDENT FILM SHOWCASE

The final projects of 12 film students are unveiled!