Tuesday, January 16 at 7pm
BUSHMAN – Exclusive Sneak Peek!
David Schickele (U.S. 1971) 74 min. DCP. With David Schickele, Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, Elaine Featherstone, Jack Nance.
“For a few days you are unable to think of anything else,” Il Cinema Ritrovato co-director Cecilia Cenciarelli rightly observes of this astonishing rediscovery by David Shickele, the younger brother of Peter (aka P.D.Q. Bach). Interweaving past and present (and the organ music of Henry Purcell’s Ground in C Minor with tribal chants and Yoruba percussion), Schickele’s film focuses on his friend Gabriel, who straddles two worlds with firm roots in neither. The young Nigerian, having escaped a bloody civil war back home—“entering its second year and no end is in sight”—finds himself adrift in a San Francisco riven by its own cultural antipathies and political violence. “With one eye on cinéma vérité, the European new waves and early Cassavetes, and the other on African pioneers like Sembène, Ecaré and Hondo,” Cenciarelli writes, “Schickele not only condemns the reactionary and racist America which will later frame Gabriel on the slightest of pretexts, but also the liberal America of progressive intellectuals who quote McLuhan and Malraux but lapse into rhetoric and misunderstand the deeper meaning of human experience. With irony, poetry and a delicate touch, Bushman leads us into the darkness of the beginnings of an odyssey.” This special screening was arranged as part of Bucknell’s Martin Luther King Week 2024: Sustaining Social Movements.
4K digital restoration by University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and The Film Foundation from the original negatives, funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Additional support provided by Peter Conheim, Cinema Preservation Alliance; courtesy Milestone Films and Kino Lorber.
“An example of cinema’s ability to encode little packages of explosive revelation into its fabric… just waiting for the next viewer to trigger another real-time detonation.” – Jessica Kiang, Film Comment
Tuesday, January 23 at 7pm
HOUSEHOLD SAINTS
Nancy Savoca (U.S. 1993) 125 min. DCP. With Lili Taylor, Tracey Ullman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael Imperioli.
Nancy Savoca’s star-studded indie gem is a chronicle of a spirited Italian-American New York family that perfectly balances humor, tragedy, and pathos. Joseph Santangelo (D’Onofrio) is a butcher with a wicked sense of humor who “wins” his wife Catherine (a stellar Tracey Ullman) in a pinochle game. Over the protests of his mother (Malina) who talks to ghosts and makes deals with saints, Joseph marries Catherine. When the old lady dies, her spirit is channeled into her granddaughter Teresa who overtakes the film with her yearning to serve God. Perfectly embodying a modern-day Bernadette, Lili Taylor imbues Teresa with a mix of dedicated innocence and naïveté. Executive produced by Jonathan Demme, with memorable performances from Michael Imperioli, Michael Rispoli and Victor Argo, Household Saints showcases a unique voice in 1990s independent filmmaking.
Household Saints has been digitally restored and remastered by Lightbox Film Center at University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in collaboration with Milestone Films with support from Ron and Suzanne Naples. Restoration Supervisor: Ross Lipman, Corpus Fluxus. Picture Restoration: Illuminate Hollywood. Sound Restoration: Audio Mechanics.
“An offbeat, involving story told with perfect confidence… Savoca has a way of magnifying small, unglamorous events until they become unaccountably magical.” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Tuesday, January 30 at 7pm
FALLEN LEAVES
Aki Kaurismäki (Finland/Germany 2023) 81 min. DCP. With Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen. Finnish with English subtitles.
Sweet-souled in story, scalpel-sharp in filmmaking precision, this enchanting love story from Finnish virtuoso Aki Kaurismäki circles around two financially strapped Helsinkians who keep finding and losing one another in a world that seems to be falling apart. Evoking dark-comic romances from his early career such as Shadows in Paradise and Ariel, the sardonic yet exquisitely melancholic Fallen Leaves devotes its wry, humane gaze to grocery clerk Ansa (Pöysti) and construction laborer Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), who commence an on-again, off-again relationship of extreme tentativeness, while seeking employment and stability. As with the greatest of Kaurismäki’s films, everyday details register as grand, meaningful cinematic gestures. This filmmaker has scrupulously carved another fictive universe out of a handful of specific, vivid locations, yet Fallen Leaves very much takes place in the world we’re living in, which makes its surrender to hope all the more affecting. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Finland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards.
“Fallen Leaves is 81 minutes long and light on dialogue, its third most pivotal character is a wayward dog Ansa takes into her life—yet it’s one of the best movies of the year.” – David Sims, The Atlantic
Tuesday, February 6 at 7pm
ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY – Exclusive Area Engagement!
Paul B. Preciado (France 2023) 98 min. DCP. French with English subtitles.
“Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.” Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography as its starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has fashioned the documentary, Orlando: My Political Biography, as a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto which premiered and took home four prizes at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine has inspired readers for their gender fluidity across physical and spiritual metamorphoses over a 300-year lifetime. Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of more than twenty trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition. Not content to simply update a seminal work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the continuing struggle against anti-trans ideologies and in the fight for global trans rights. Introduced by Erica Delsandro, Associate Professor of Womens & Gender Studies.
“Few movies this year have lived in my head as long and as happily…a sharp, witty, low-budget experimental work of great political and personal conviction…a pointed, spirited, up-to-the-minute exploration of sex, gender and sexual difference through the character of Orlando, who serves as Preciado’s mirror and avatar…This is, on the one hand, a movie made by a philosopher who studied with Michel Foucault. At the same time, Preciado’s lightness of touch and intellectual nimbleness buoys the movie, lifting both it and you…Preciado’s superpower in this warm, generous movie is that while he speaks brilliantly to the cages of identity, he sees — and shares — a way out of them…He insists on pleasure, speaks to happiness, invites laughter and opens worlds. Here, joy reigns supreme, and it is exhilarating.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Tuesday, February 13 at 7pm
HERE – Exclusive Area Engagement!
Bas Devos (Belgium 2023) 85 min. DCP. With Stefan Gota, Liyo Gong. Dutch, French, Romanian, and Mandarin with English subtitles.
On Valentine’s Day eve, we are thrilled to bring to Lewisburg a gorgeous Brussels city symphony radiating with grace and love. The story: a migrant construction worker plans a trip home to his mother in Romania. While waiting for his car to be fixed, he meets a Belgian-Chinese woman preparing a doctorate on mosses. Her attention to the near-invisible stops him in his tracks. Their friendship “motivates this hushed, emotionally resonant film about the power of observation, of people often deemed socially invisible, and of the larger green world surrounding us. In his lovely and tranquil fourth feature, Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos (Ghost Tropic) has created a work that finds transcendence in the simplest human encounters and the most radiant of cinematic gestures” (Film at Lincoln Center). Winner of the Best Film prize in the Berlin International Film Festival’s Encounters competition. Introduced by Bucknell Film Club President Jamie Granato (’25).
“Remarkable…A quietly overwhelming study of human connection and our relationship with the natural world.” -Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
Tuesday, February 20 at 7pm
THE MYSTERY OF THE LAGOONS, ANDEAN FRAGMENTS
Atahualpa Lichy (Venezuela 2011) 92 min. DCP. Spanish with English subtitles.
Venturing into the once-inaccessible region of Venezuela’s southern Andean frontier, vet documaker and cinephile Atahualpa Lichy and his crew lovingly capture the cultural traditions and working lives of the region’s people in The Mystery of the Lagoons. This serious-minded and entertaining piece of anthropological cinema is a cascade of observations edited with concision and graceful transitions; the film that emerges is a cinematic mural of a place few audiences have seen (adapted from Variety film review). Introduced by Spanish professor Victor Garcia Ramirez.
Tuesday, February 27 at 7pm
GILDA
Charles Vidor (U.S. 1946) 110 min. DCP. With Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready.
Rita Hayworth’s entrance in Gilda, her head tossed back with an amused, teasing smile in Charles Vidor’s quintessential noir, is the stuff of legend. Yet as with so many preposterously beautiful movie stars, sheer glamour and erotic force sometimes got in the way of a full appreciation of talent—Hayworth, like Marilyn Monroe, is one of that handful of major movie stars who went unnominated by Oscar their entire careers. In the twisting and turning Gilda, she plays the wife of a dastardly criminal (Macready), living in Buenos Aires and reconnecting with an old flame (Ford) who she sees as her last chance to escape her prison of a marriage. Gilda provides undeniable evidence of Hayworth’s ability to hold the screen, toggling between sympathetic victim and wiseacre femme fatale. A major hit, it confirmed Hayworth’s superstar status and remains one of the most unpredictable and artful crime dramas of the era (Museum of Moving Image program notes). Introduced by Film/Media Studies professor Josie Barth.
Tuesday, March 5 at 7pm
POISON – Zeitgeist Co-Founder in Person!
Todd Haynes (U.S. 1991) 85 min. 35MM. With Edith Meeks, Millie White, Buck Smith, Anne Giotta.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival
The second feature directed by Haynes — the Oscar-nominated filmmaker of Far from Heaven and Carol—this groundbreaking American Indie was the most fervently debated film of the early 1990s and a trailblazing landmark of queer cinema. A work of immense visual invention, Haynes’ spectacular follow-up to his legendary Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is audacious, disturbing and thrillingly cinematic.
Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Poison deftly interweaves trio of transgressive tales-“Hero,” “Horror” and “Homo”-that build toward a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot in mock TV-documentary style, tells a bizarre story of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice; “Horror,” filmed like a delirious ’50s B-movie melodrama, is a gothic tale of a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague; while “Homo” explores the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.
A runaway hit which made national headlines when it was attacked by right-wing figures including Dick Armey, Ralph Reed and minister Donald Wildmon, Poison is unsettling, unforgettable and thoroughly entertaining.
Tuesday, March 19 at 7pm
NOT A PRETTY PICTURE – New Restoration!
Martha Coolidge (U.S. 1976) 83 min. DCP.
In 1976, trailblazing director Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Rambling Rose) made her feature debut with the startling Not a Pretty Picture, a documentary-fiction hybrid that continues to raise provocative questions about sexual violence and the ethics of its on-screen representation. Coolidge based the film’s fictional sections on her rape at the age of sixteen; in the role of her younger self, she cast Michele Manenti, also a rape victim. As they interpret Coolidge’s script, cast members reflect on their encounters with assault; their feelings about acting out these scenes of intense aggression; their attitudes concerning consent, trauma, and self-blame; and, in the case of Coolidge’s best friend, Anne Mundstuk, their ability to play themselves. Realizing documentary’s potential to foster catharsis and interpersonal dialogue, Not a Pretty Picture stands as one of the genre’s boldest and most revelatory experiments in metacinema.
“A film I wished I had seen as a teenager. Not a Pretty Picture feels strikingly close to contemporary narratives and the reflexive politics around the gaze … it means it contributed to inventing them all.” – Céline Sciamma (Director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Tuesday, March 26 at 7pm
THE TRAMP’S NEW WORLD – Director in Person!
Zoe Beloff (U.S. 2021) 62 min. DCP. With Barrett Martin, Diana DeLaCruz.
In 1948 James Agee wrote a scenario for his lifelong hero, Charlie Chaplin. Deeply disturbed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Agee imagined New York destroyed. In the ruins, Chaplin’s Little Tramp builds a shack in Central Park. Gradually a small community of the dispossessed grows up around him. For Agee, his story was a thought experiment about how one might start again in the aftermath of disaster, to go beyond capitalism and just how hard that is in the face of our modern technological world. The Tramp’s New World focuses on Agee’s imaginative journey and what it might mean for us today. Playing with a short film. This screening was organized in conjunction with the current Samek Museum exhibit, an installation of Beloff’s The Infernal Dream of Mutt and Jeff. Beloff’s visit was made possible thanks to the Samek, the University Lectureship Committee, and the Department of Art & Art History.
“A meditation on, and a visualization of, the scenario that James Agee wrote in 1948 for his lifelong hero, Charlie Chaplin… Beloff’s film links back to her previous works about failed projects by two great radical artists, Sergei Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht. Once asked about her methodology, Beloff replied: ‘I talk with people in the past.’ The Tramp’s New World continues that dialogue, with a further and fascinating exploration of how radical artists might mine the popular, and fragments of mass culture, to create political art for ordinary people.” – Laura Mulvey
Tuesday, April 2 at 7pm
MADEMOISELLE KENOPSIA – Area Exclusive!
Denis Côté (Canada 2023) 80 min. DCP. With Larissa Corriveau, Evelyne de la Chenelière, Olivier Aubin, Hinde Rabbaj. French with English subtitles.
This latest film from the always interesting and often provocative Quebec cineaste Denis Côté is a ghostly study. In a derelict building, a woman watches over its anonymous interiors with dedication, her presence becoming an echo of how we relate to time, solitude and the melancholy of forsaken spaces. Mademoiselle Kenopsia is “a performance piece, and a meditation on loneliness. It’s theatrical, and wholly cinematic. It’s about the isolation we’ve all just shared, embodied in one person. Vincent Biron’s eerily precise camerawork encourages us to look closer, adding to the nervous tension as Côté slowly reveals what sort of movie we’re watching” (Toronto International Film Festival program notes). Introduced by French Studies professor Nathalie Dupont.
“A haunted-house adventure evacuated of action … An exemplary pandemic film, though stripped of that ostensible subgenre’s cutesy footholds.” – Beatrice Loayza, Film Comment
Tuesday, April 9 at 7pm
DECASIA – Projectionist’s Choice!
Bill Morrison (U.S. 2023) 67 min. 35MM.
Bill Morrison created Decasia entirely with decaying, old found footage, melded to the music of Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, performed by the 55 piece basel sinfonietta. Compelling and hauntingly unforgettable, the film is both totally unique and universally appealing, a delirium of deteriorated film stock, that trembles itself into a masterpiece that leaves its meaning open to interpretation and, most importantly, your imagination. Introduced by Campus Theatre Technical Director and projectionist Andy Seal.
“A few minutes [into Decasia] I found myself completely absorbed, transfixed, a pillow of air lodged in my stilled, open mouth. Now, I’m no particular authority on film, but I do know one – Errol Morris. A short time later, when I happened to be visiting him, I [showed him Decasia] and proceeded to observe as Morrison’s film once again began casting its spell. Errol sat drop-jawed: at one point, about halfway through, he stammered, ”This may be the greatest movie ever made.” — Lawrence Weschler, The New York Times Magazine
Tuesday, April 16 at 7pm
SAMA IN THE FOREST – Producer in Person!
Carlo G. Gomez (India/U.S. 2023) 75 min. DCP. Maithili and English with English subtitles.
This hybrid documentary is set in contemporary Mithila, where a rich cultural identity extends from the mythical past into a globalized present in which pressures on tradition are accelerating. Maithil identity is passed on in part through its renowned painting tradition, as well as through its lesser known wealth of orally transmitted folktales. Women play a central role in both of these expressions. In a creative collaboration with local community members, the film highlights the tale of Sama, a young princess who wanders into the forest and befriends a young man, only to be slandered by a muckraking confidante of the king, and subsequently cursed and banished by her father. The film combines footage of women telling different versions of the tale, the making of elaborate narrative paintings, a dramatization of the story, a yearly festival that celebrates Sama, and in-depth conversations about the morals and meanings of this and other traditional tales. Community members of different genders, castes, and generations — help paint a complex picture of the social tensions evident in Mithila today. Introduced by Presidential Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and anthropologist Coralynn Davis, who is the film’s producer. Presented as part of the International Feminist Artivism Film Festival, with the additional support of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender (CSREG), the Humanities Center, and the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Latin American Studies.
Tuesday, April 23 at 7pm
THE GLEANERS AND I
Agnès Varda (France 2000) 82 min. DCP. French with English subtitles.
Agnès Varda’s extraordinary late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive documentary in which the ever-curious French cinema icon explores the little-known world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for that which society throws away. Embracing the intimacy and freedom of digital filmmaking, Varda posits herself as a kind of gleaner of images and ideas, one whose generous, expansive vision makes room for ruminations on everything from aging to the birth of cinema to the beauty of heart-shaped potatoes. By turns playful, philosophical, and subtly political, The Gleaners and I is a warmly human reflection on the contradictions of our consumerist world from an artist who, like her subjects, finds unexpected richness where few think to look. Introduced by Katie Daly, Associate Director of Student Learning Support at Bucknell’s Teaching & Learning Center.