Tuesday, August 22 at 7pm
EARTH MAMA – Exclusive Area Premiere!
Savanah Leaf (U.S. 2023) 100 min. DCP. With Tia Nomore, Erika Alexander and Doechii
A devastating and evocative portrait of motherhood refracted through the prisms of race and class, Savanah Leaf’s auspicious debut feature is a deeply affecting work of cinematic humanism. Set in the Bay Area, the film follows Gia (portrayed with immense complexity by Oakland rapper Tia Nomore) as she contends with pregnancy and poverty while longing for her children (who have been placed in foster care) and dodging Child Protective Services in the fear that they’ll take her soon-to-be-born baby from her as well. Lensed in richly textured 16mm by Jody Lee Lipes, Earth Mama is both a heartrending film about a young woman grappling with the most fundamental questions of motherhood amid utterly hostile socioeconomic conditions, and a formally sophisticated work that suggests and conjures rather than facilely connecting the dots for us (notes courtesy Film at Lincoln Center). An A24 release!
Intimate, modestly scaled and often so outwardly unassuming that you might not at first notice its artistry. It also features one of the most expressive scenes that I’ve seen all year, one that reveals a world of heartache with a single camera movement.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Tuesday, August 29 at 7pm
42ND STREET
Lloyd Bacon (U.S. 1933) 90 min. 35MM. With Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Bebe Daniels, Ginger Rogers.
42nd Street is the archetypical backstage musical. Here, the now familiar story sees striving understudy Ruby Keeler (in her film debut) get her big break when the production’s temperamental star is injured and the show must go on. The phenomenon of Berkley’s eye-popping cine-choreography, including three of Busby Berkeley’s most iconic dance numbers, is showcased in this not-to-be-missed reminder of the joys of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Co-presented with the Department of Theatre & Dance. Introduced by Professor of Theatre and dance Dustyn Martincich.
“The artistry of Berkeley remains one of the wonders of the cinema. Few filmmakers have such an instantly recognizable style. […] It’s worth celebrating his work today for its manifestly ecstatic surfaces as well as for its secretly pithy substance.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Tuesday, September 5 at 7pm
REAR WINDOW
Alfred Hitchcock (US 1954) 114 min. 35MM. With James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey.
Hitchcock’s brilliant meditation on cinema and voyeur- ism binds the viewer to the perspective of photojournalist Stewart, bound to a wheelchair with a broken leg and obsessively spying on his West Village neighbors. One of the Master of Suspense’s greatest successes. Introduced by Film/Media Studies Professor Eric Faden.
Tuesday, September 12 at 7pm
LA HAINE
Mathieu Kassovitz (France 1995) 97 minutes. 35MM. With Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui. French with English subtitles.
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Cassel), Hubert (Koundé), and Saïd (Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis. Presented in connection with the Bucknell Humanities Center’s “Colonial Entanglements” programming (organized by Adam Burgos, Erica Delsandro and Carol White). Introduced by Professors Adam Burgos (Philosophy) & Jenna Christian (Geography).
Tuesday, September 19 at 7pm
SPA NIGHT
Andrew Ahn (U.S. 2016) 90 minutes. DCP. With Joe Seo, Haerry Kim. English, Korean and Spanish with English subtitles.
Andrew Ahn’s debut feature opened a dialogue about identity that runs deeper than more conventional LGBTQ coming-of-age stories. It is also a tragedy about the grim realities of an immigrant family with a shattered American dream, and the burdens of an obedient son who feels he’s the last hope for his parents’ collapsed aspirations. With a delicate cinematic touch, Spa Night masterfully unravels a young man’s conflicting emotions and loneliness while shining a light on the cultural clash between Koreans and Americans (TIFF program notes). Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Breakthrough Performance at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Presented in connection with APIDA, Bucknell’s Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Student Association. Introduced by APIDA member Thao Nguyen (’25).
Tuesday, September 26 at 7pm
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST
Julie Dash (U.S. 1991) 112 min. With Alva Rogers, Bahni Turpin, Barbara-O.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a multi-generational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina – former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions – struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots. The first wide release by a black female filmmaker, Daughters of the Dust was met with wild critical acclaim and rapturous audience response when it initially opened in 1991. Casting a long legacy, the film still resonates today, most recently as a major in influence on Beyonce’s video album “Lemonade.” Restored (in conjunction with UCLA) for the first time with proper color grading overseen by cinematographer AJ Jafa, audiences can now finally see the film exactly as Julie Dash intended. Presented in connection with the class Black Film and Antiblackness and introduced by Jaye Austin Williams, Professor of Performance Studies, Critical Black Studies, and Theatre & Dance.
Tuesday, October 3 at 7pm
CONTEMPT – 60TH ANNIVERSARY 4K RESTORATION
Jean-Luc Godard (France 1963) 103 min. DCP. With Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance. French with English subtitles.
Godard’s foray into commercial filmmaking is a Cinemascope epic about marital breakdown and artistic compromise that overturns conventions of mainstream filmmaking and critiques post-Hollywood movies even while working with a star-studded cast and the biggest budget of his career. Michel Piccoli is a screenwriter trying to doctor the script for an adaptation of The Odyssey, a man torn between the demands of his disillusioned wife (Bardot), a European director (played by the legendary director Fritz Lang, representing the argument for art as cinema) and a crude, arrogant American producer (Palance, cinema as commerce). The remarkable final shot has Godard himself as the Director of Photography, turning the camera to the audience, as if to ask: “which side are you on?”
“Splendid, prophetic, visually ravishing… This pop-art masterpiece is still light years ahead of its time.” – J. Hoberman
Tuesday, October 17 at 7pm
THE LONG FAREWELL – Restoration and Re-Release!
Kira Muratova (USSR 1971) 95 min. DCP. With Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Vladimirsky. Russian with English subtitles.
This pointillist family portrait by Kira Muratova is one of the bracingly original Soviet filmmaker’s long-banned major works. A kind of psychological breakup movie, The Long Farewell traces the rift that grows between an emotionally impulsive single mother (the transcendent Sharko) and her increasingly resentful teenage son (Vladimirsky), who upends her world when he announces he wishes to live with his faraway father. The seemingly simple premise is rendered anything but simple by Muratova’s dreamy, drifting style, with off-kilter framing, editing, and dialogue continually pushing cinema’s aesthetic and expressive boundaries outward. Introduced by Lenora Murphy, Professor in the Russian Studies Program.
“In one dazzling image, Muratova conveys [a character’s] loneliness: She shows the mother simulating being next to [her son] by projecting photos of him on the walls of her apartment. Standing in the projector’s glow, [she] gazes at the images, enduring social artifacts that — like Muratova’s films — hold small universes of comfort and pain.” – The New York Times
Tuesday, October 24 at 7pm
CAT PEOPLE
Jacques Tourneur (U.S. 1942) 73 min. With Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway. 35MM.
The first Lewton thriller is still the definitive one, for the way it locates horror in the unseen — not only on the level of technique, with its suggestive shadows and offscreen sonic shocks, or of psychology, with its Freudian sublimations, but in the nuances of social relations. A Serbian immigrant (Simon) yearns for companionship but fears that a lover’s kiss will activate an ancestral curse. Her suitor cleaves to others of his kind, like his office confidante. While sexual jealousy escalates the plot, the conflict between unassimilated imagination and amiable ordinariness is at the heart of the film’s tragedy. Lewton is compassionate toward both the alien and the Americans: one woman’s tragedy is another’s happy ending (Pacific Film Archive program notes). Preserved by the Library of Congress. Introduced by Film/Media Studies professor Josie Barth Torres.
Tuesday, October 31 at 7pm
HALLOWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA
Join us for a shorts program placing a winning student film alongside a bizzaro mixtape from the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA)!
The Bucknell Film Club’s annual 24-Hour Film Challenge will showcase the winner of the 2023 edition at the Campus Theatre! This 5-minute film will play with VIDEORAGE: unleashed from the video dungeons of AGFA and Bleeding Skull!, THE AGFA HORROR TRAILER SHOW: VIDEORAGE is uncut brain cocaine from beyond the cosmos. Meticulously constructed by the mad scientists at AGFA to resemble a transmission from an otherworldly public access TV station, this mixtape features the wildest shot-on-video and direct-to-video trailers that you’ve never seen — complete with spooky commercials and ephemera from the vaults.
Tuesday, November 7 at 7pm
USERS
Natalia Almada (Mexico/U.S. 2022) 81 min. DCP. English & Spanish with English subtitles.
A mother’s question – will my children love the perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother – guides Natalia Almada’s inquiry into the intimate relationship we have with technology. Users traverses places ranging from the largest indoor vertical farm in the world to the perfect artificial wave, from an IVF embryo lab to a fiber optic cable landing. Invisible infrastructure that we all rely on is made visible. Our reliance on machines and our alienation from each other is palatable. Urgent global issues like climate change and privacy are explored from the intimate perspective of a mother thinking, worrying and loving her children.
“A dazzling documentary about the menacing nature of modern times and the fundamental beauty of cutting-edge progress.” — Indie Wire
“Bracing, poetic, painterly…Users looks and sounds stunning.” — The Hollywood Reporter
Tuesday, November 14 at 7pm
CLOSE
Lukas Dhont (Belgium/Netherlands/France 2023) 104 min. DCP. With Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker. French , Flemish and Dutch with English subtitles.
Leo and Remi are two thirteen-year-old best friends, whose seemingly unbreakable bond is suddenly, tragically torn apart. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and a nominee for last year’s best international film Oscar, Lukas Dhont’s second film is an emotionally transformative and unforgettable portrait of the intersection of friendship and love, identity and independence, and heartbreak and healing. An A24 Release. Introduced by Professor of French Studies Natalie Dupont.
“This beautifully evocative film, which hails from an openly queer director, offers as pure a portrait of innocent, innocuous same-sex affection as we’ve ever encountered on film.” – Variety
Tuesday, November 28 at 7pm
OUR BODY – Exclusive Area Premiere!
Claire Simon (France 2022) 168 min. DCP. French with English subtitles.
French documentary titan Claire Simon observes the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. Through these many encounters, the specific fears, desires and struggles of these individuals become the health challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself.
“In the face of resurgent attacks on bodily autonomy around the world, Our Body is an urgent and political project.” –Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
“An intimate, moving, intelligent doc about the frontlines of women’s healthcare.” –Jessica Kiang, Variety
“A remarkable documentary recalling the work of Frederick Wiseman in its patient, observational style.” –Sight & Sound
“Extraordinarily clear-eyed and heartbreaking.” –Daniel Kasman, MUBI Notebook
“A fascinating journey…both larger than life and deeply personal.” – Jason Gorber, POV Magazine
Tuesday, December 5 at 8pm
Short Film Showcase!
Run time approximately 75 minutes
Join us for the annual unveiling of a new batch of short films made by Bucknell students. World premieres for these young artists, these films convey the anxiety, humor and joy of living in the 21st century.