Tuesday, January 15 at 7pm
BURNING – Exclusive Area Premiere!
Lee Chang-dong (South Korea 2018) 148 min. DCP. With Ah-in Yoo, Steven Yeun, Jong-seo Jun. Korean with English subtitles.
An adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1992 short story, itself inspired by William Faulkner’s similarly titled 1939 story “Barn Burning,” the latest from Korean master Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine, Poetry) traces an unusual romantic triangle. It is also an tense “character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller. To reveal more would ruin the story’s slow-building pleasures, which are less about the haunting final destination than the subtle, razor-sharp microcurrents of class rage, family-inherited pain, everyday ennui and youthful despair that build in scene after scene, even when nothing more seems to be happening than a simple or not-so-simple conversation” (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times). Named the best film of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival by two critics’ groups (the International Federation of Film Critics and the International Cinephile Society), Burning is expected to win a foreign-language Oscar nomination. Co-presented with Bucknell’s Korean Cultural Association.
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Tuesday, January 22 at 7pm
MONROVIA, INDIANA
Frederick Wiseman (U.S. 2018) 143 min. DCP.
Legendary documentarian Fred Wiseman – arguably the greatest living chronicler of our country – took to Monrovia, Indiana for his 44th film, the exploration of a small farming community in mid-America that illustrates how values like community service, duty, spirituality, generosity and authenticity are formed, experienced and lived. Taking a complex and nuanced view of daily life in a rural town, Wiseman trains his camera on conflicting stereotypes and a way of living that may be central to this country and its history, but is often overlooked or misunderstood by city dwellers.
“Wiseman’s postcard from the Midwest detects the lengthening shadows beyond the all-American sunshine. It is in fact a hallmark of Wiseman’s open-text films that multiple readings apply… the procedural and the symbolic and the unanswered and yes, the humorous all come nested within one another…Wiseman’s comic sense is as wicked as ever.” – Nicolas Rapold, Film Comment
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Tuesday, January 29 at 7pm
THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO – New 4K Digital Restoration!
Henri-Georges Clouzot (France 1956) 78 min. DCP. French with English subtitles.
One of the greatest films about the creative process of a painter was a collaboration between Picasso and his filmmaker friend Henri-Georges Clouzot; the two set out to make an entirely new kind of art film, and together they devised a technique in which the camera was placed behind a semi-transparent surface on which the artist drew with special inks that bled through, making the motion picture screen itself the artist’s canvas. Thus we watch the most influential artist of the 20th century create, and sometimes obliterate, twenty works, ranging from playful black-and-white sketches to Cinemascope color murals. Mesmerizing and unforgettable, The Mystery of Picasso was declared a national treasure by the French government in 1984; recently restored by Milestone Films, it has been garnering tremendous audiences wherever it plays. Co-presented by Bucknell’s Department of Art & Art History. Introduced by artist and Professor of Studio Art Anna Kell.
DETOUR – New 4K Digital Restoration!
Edgar G. Ulmer (U.S. 1945) 68 min. DCP. With Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake.
This film noir classic, described by critic Dave Kehr as “one of the most daring and thoroughly perverse works of art ever to come out of Hollywood,” tersely conjures more mood and atmosphere than most big-budget films can muster in two hours. On his way to join his girlfriend in Los Angeles, down-and-out piano player Al Roberts (Neal) hitches a ride with grifter Charles Haskell (MacDonald). When Haskell mysteriously dies, Al assumes his identity, and runs into a new set of troubles when he picks up a hitchhiker (Savage) who uses his lies against him. Long available only via battered prints and shoddy video copies, Detour has now been gloriously restored thanks to a collaboration between four film archives and Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation. With funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
“An acknowledged milestone in American cinema, about thinking you’ve hit bottom and then realizing that it’s a longer way down than you thought.” – Martin Scorsese
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Tuesday, February 12 at 7pm
FLAMENCO, FLAMENCO
Carlos Saura (Spain 2010) 97 min. DCP.
One of Spanish cinema’s great auteurs, Carlos Saura brought international audiences closer to the art of his country’s dance than any other filmmaker. Flamenco, Flamenco is a continuation of Saura’s 1980s “Flamenco Trilogy,” and his 1995 film Flamenco, all of which merge the director’s passion for music with his exploration of national identity. This latest celebration of flamenco, a unique Spanish form of folk music and dance that dates back to the 18th century, was shot by famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now). Featuring vivid performances by the next generation of young talent, along with legends Manolo Sanlucar, Paco de Lucia, Tomatito and José Mercé. Co-presented by Bucknell’s Spanish and Theatre & Dance Departments, and the Weis Center for Performing Arts, in conjunction with their presentation of flamenco artist Farruquito, on February 28th. Introduced by Weis Center Director Kathryn Maguet.
“Even for those not enamored of this particular musical/dance form, the steady flow of performances featuring highly varying styles insures that the viewer’s interest doesn’t wane. Shot at the Seville Expo ’92 pavilion and using landmark paintings by the likes of Picasso, Goya and Klimt as backdrops, the film is a visual treat, with Saura strictly controlling his camera movements to accentuate the virtuosity of the performances and Storaro providing a virtual master class lesson on how to use color and light for maximum effect.” – The Hollywood Reporter
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Tuesday, February 19 at 7pm
HALE COUNTY, THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING – Exclusive Area Premiere!
RaMell Ross (U.S. 2018) 76 min. DCP.
An inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people, Hale County This Morning, This Evening (winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival) looks at the lives of two young men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years. One attends college in search of opportunity while the other becomes a father to an energetic son. In his directorial debut, award-winning photographer and director RaMell Ross offers a refreshingly direct approach to documentary that fills in the gaps between individual black male icons, inviting us to experience the mundane and monumental, birth and death, the quotidian and the sublime. These moments combine to communicate the region’s deep culture and provide glimpses of the complex ways the African American community’s collective image is integrated into America’s visual imagination. Co-presented by Bucknell’s departments of History and Africana Studies. Introduced by Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies.
“Pure cinematic poetry… poses a quietly radical challenge to assumptions about race, class and the aesthetics of filmmaking.” — A.O. Scott, The New York Times
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Tuesday, February 26 at 7pm
MAINELAND – Director in Person!
Miao Wang (China/U.S. 2017) 89 min. DCP.
Filmed over three years in China and the U.S., Maineland follows two affluent and cosmopolitan teenagers as they settle into a boarding school in rural, blue-collar Maine. Part of the enormous wave of “parachute students” from China enrolling in U.S. private schools, Stella and Harry come seeking a Western education and the promise of a Hollywood-style U.S. high school experience. As their visions of the American dream gain clarity, they ruminate on their experiences of alienation, culture clash and personal identity, sharing new understandings and poignant discourses on home and country. Sean Price Williams’ lyrical cinematography documents the romantic dreams and more prosaic realties of the angst and thrill of teenage life, as well as the difficulty these young adults encounter finding their place between the collectivist society they come from and the individualist culture they are immersed in. Co-presented by Bucknell’s Education & International Relations Departments and the China Institute. Introduced by Professor Abe Feuerstein.
Tuesday, March 5 at 7pm
THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID
Luis Buñuel (France/Italy 1964) 101 min. DCP. With Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Michel Piccoli. French with English subtitles.
Buñuel updated the famous Mirbeau novel about the decadent French upper classes of the nineteenth century to 1928, when Fascism was a movement of growing strength in France. Against a fittingly autumnal landscape on a country estate, the master unfolds his darkly humorous tale of a chambermaid (Moreau), both demure and cunning, who takes a position in a cheerless château and becomes the newest objet d’art for a whole family of perfectly ordinary perverts, from the shoe-fetishist paterfamilias down to the gamekeeper, Joseph, a reactionary and a rapist (Adapted from Pacific Film Archive notes). Presented in conjunction with the Bucknell Humanities Center’s 2018-2019 theme, “Surrealism: Yesterday & Today,” curated by Programming Fellow and Professor of Art & Art History Roger Rothman.
Tuesday, March 19 at 7pm
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – Projectionist’s Selection!
Victor Erice (Spain 1973) 99 min. 35MM. With Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera, Ana Torrent. Spanish with English subtitles.
In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of Spain’s devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by the memory of it. Produced as Franco’s long regime was nearing its end and widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s, The Spirit of the Beehive is a bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life.
Tuesday, March 26 at 7pm
PERSONA – Restoration!
Ingmar Bergman (1966 Sweden) 83 min. DCP. With Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Margareta Krook. Swedish with English subtitles.
Last year the world celebrated the centennial of Ingmar Bergman’s birth. By the mid-60s, this soul-searching modernist director had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, the supreme artist attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema’s most influential creations. Acted with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by the great Sven Nykvist, Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.
Tuesday, April 2 at 7pm
ISM ISM ISM, RECYCLED CINEMA – Curator in Person!
Various Directors (Mexico/Cuba/Argentina/U.S./Chile/Canada 1958-2012) TRT 65 min.
Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America surveys Latin America’s vibrant experimental production from the 1930s through today. In the spirit of Oswald de Andrade’s landmark 1928 provocation, the Manifesto Antropófago, the Recycled Cinema program features works that engage in found footage filmmaking, a subaltern practice of decolonization and critique through the collage of appropriated images and audio. For ‘Cowboy’ and ‘Indian’ Film (1958), Nuyorican artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz took a print of Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73 and hacked the reels to pieces with a tomahawk “to release their evil.” Placing the film fragments in a medicine bag, he performed a ritual exorcism inspired by his Yaqui grandfather before splicing together the random fragments, some upside down and others right side up. The progeny of such an approach are diverse in their strategies and aims, ranging from Ricardo Nicolayevsky’s cinematic sprint to Artemio’s mash-up of Walt Disney’s adaptations of Winnie the Pooh and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Introduced by Ism Ism Ism’ Project Director and Co-Curator, Luciano Piazza. Co-sponsored by the Bucknell Departments of Philosophy, Spanish and Latin American Studies, and Bucknell’s University Lectureship Committee.
Tuesday, April 9 at 7pm
TRANSIT – Exclusive Area Engagement!
Christian Petzold (France/Germany 2018) With Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese. 101 min. DCP. German, French with English subtitles.
In Christian Petzold’s brilliant and haunting modern-day adaptation of Anna Seghers’s 1942 novel, Transit Visa, a German refugee (Rogowski) flees to Marseille assuming the identity of a recently deceased writer whose papers he is carrying. There he delves into the delicate and complex culture of the refugee community, becoming enmeshed in the lives of a young mother and son and falling for a mysterious woman named Marie (Beer). Introduced by Professor of German Studies Bastian Heinsohn. Co-presented with Bucknell’s German Studies Program.
Tuesday, April 16 at 7pm
IRAN HYPHENATED – A Collection of Short Films from the Iranian Diaspora
An attempt to amplify the voices of generations of people of Iranian descent in the decades following the Islamic Revolution, this collection represents some of the diasporic work done after a significant migration; it addresses the experience of having a hyphenated identity – being in between worlds or fixed identities – and also looks at the active process of forging a new cultural space. Films: Scent of Germanium (Naghmeh Farzaneh, Iran, 5 min.); The Magic Shoes (Sahand Nikoukar, U.S. 1992, 10 min.); America (Lila Yomtoob, U.S. 1979, 14 min.); The FBI Blew Up My Ice Skates (Sara Zia Ebrahimi & Lindsey Martin, U.S. 2016, 7 min.); Reluctant Bride (Shideh Faramand, Australia, 6 min.); Brain of Terror (Shahaub Roudbari, U.S., 6 min.); Eddeaa (Abjeez, Netherlands, 2 min.). Introduced by Beeta Baghoolizadeh, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies.
Tuesday, April 23 at 7pm
ASH IS PUREST WHITE – Exclusive Area Engagement!
Jia Zhangke (China/France 2018) 141 min. DCP. With Casper Liang, Liao Fan, Xu Zheng, Zhao Tao. Mandarin with English subtitles.
Jia Zhangke’s extraordinary body of work has doubled as a record of 21st-century China and its warp-speed transformations. A tragicomedy in the fullest sense, Ash Is Purest White is at once his funniest and saddest film, portraying the passage of time through narrative ellipses and a three-part structure. Despite its jianghu—criminal underworld—setting, Ash is less a gangster movie than a melodrama, beginning by following Qiao and her mobster boyfriend Bin as they stake out their turf against rivals and upstarts in 2001 postindustrial Datong before expanding out into an epic narrative of how abstract forces shape individual lives. As the formidable, quick-witted Qiao, a never better Zhao Tao has fashioned a heroine for the ages (Film Society of Lincoln Center notes). Introduced by Comparative Humanities Professor John Hunter