FALL 2006 UNDERGROUND & CITY LIGHTS SCHEDULE

September 15: Breaking Away

Filmed in and around Bloomington, Breaking Away (1979, 100 min.) is the coming of age story of four young men and their determination to win the Cinzano 100 (Bloomington’s own Little 500). Director Peter Yates realistically addresses the generation gaps and class struggles that plague a college town while also telling a sensitive and well written story. Breaking Away was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay written directly for the screen.

September 22: Naked Spaces—Living is Round

Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Naked Spaces (1985, 135 min.) explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries. The nonlinear structure of Naked Spaces challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent, the private interaction of people in their living spaces.

September 29: Playtime

Playtime (1967, 119 min.) reflects the confusion and mixed enjoyment of a group of international tourists who arrive by jet planes at Orly airport. They are dispatched to Paris, a city so ultra-modern that it hardly differs from other cities throughout the world. A science fair preempts the traditional visit to the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower; the quaint bistros have been supplanted by snack bars and nightclubs. Mr. Hulot, the Innocent-at-large in his native Paris, shares the tourists’ experience as he bumbles about with his unique brand of curiosity.

October 6: Queer Cinema Night

Nitrate Kisses (1992, 67 min.) explores eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of lesbian and gay culture in this first feature by a pioneer of lesbian cinema, Barbara Hammer. A forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people is put in context by the contemporary sexual activities of four gay and lesbian couples. Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963, 45 min.) is probably the most notorious film of the 1960s American underground cinema movement. Film Culture called it “a treatment of sex which makes us aware of the restraint of all previous filmmakers” in its muddied tangle of bodies and sound.

October 13: Viridiana

After a 23 year exile, Luis Buñuel returned to Spain to direct Viridiana (1961, 90 min.), which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes, and which many consider a masterpiece. A devastating, outrageous attack on religion and society, it is a further elaboration on the subject of Nazarin: the impossibility of living a pure Christian life. The film has a consistently disturbing atmosphere, created by some of Buñuel’s most unusual erotic and religious imagery. In the famous orgy scene, everything which society holds sacred is demolished-the beggars fight, dance, and make love while Handel’s Messiah plays in the background.

October 20: Man Bites Dog

Remy Belvaux’s violent yet hilarious film (1992, 92 min.) poses striking inquiries into innocence and evil. A camera crew follows a serial killer/thief around as he exercises his craft, all the while expounding on art, music, nature, society, and life. As he begins involving the camera crew in his activities, they and we wonder about their role in the violence and the role of society in constructing the individual. An appropriately demented animated short will precede the feature.

October 27: Halloween Double Feature

Nosferatu (1922, 63 min.)

A hallmark in German film history, F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized version of Bram Stoker’s classic gothic Dracula serves as a silent yet indelible reminder of the roots of modern vampire films. Max Schreck’s skillful performance as cursed aristocrat Count Orlok is not only disquieting but hauntingly artful. The horror of this film is not derived from that which is shown to us, but the suggestion of that which lurks in the shadows, unseen and undead.

Night of the Living Dead (US 1968, 90 min.)

Director George Romero’s introduction to the film world retains its visceral impact 38 years later. This gritty tale of a group of people trapped in a remote farmhouse, battling amongst themselves while hordes of ravenous zombies converge outside, is enhanced by the use of handheld cameras, high-contrast black-and-white film and simple but effective special effects. At the time of its release Variety suggested that “until the Supreme Court establishes clear-cut guidelines for the pornography of violence, Night of the Living Dead will serve nicely as an outer-limit definition by example.”

November 3: Reason over Passion

Often overlooked Canadian filmmaker Joyce Wieland’s magnum opus, Reason over Passion (1969, 80 min.) is a playful, wistful, and complex take on Canada in all of its complexity. In tracing the contours of Canada’s landscapes from one coast to the next, Wieland points out the hugely varied specifics of the «here» of Canada while continuing to contest any simple conclusions about individual passion for the landscape and political behavior. A surprise short will precede the feature.

November 10: Open City 

Open City (1946, 102 min.) was planned in secret by Roberto Rossellini and his colleagues while the Nazis still occupied Rome, Italy. It revolves around a group of resistance fighters and a local priest. It contains strong melodramatic elements, such as broken marriages, prostitution, drug addiction, and Nazi occupation. Open City won the Grand Prize at Cannes and the Venice Film Festival and is one of the most important of all Italian NeoRealist films.

December 1: Women and Childbearing Choices Night

Tonight we have three films dealing with birth, the choice to bear, and the challenges of parenthood. Claudia Weill’s and Joyce Chopra’s Joyce at 34 (1975, 28 min.) follows Chopra’s first year of motherhood as she juggles the conflicting demands of infant, husband, and career. Marjorie Keller’s Misconception (1977, 42 min.) is composed of six parts that together chronicle the experience of one woman and her husband during the course of her natural childbirth. Its structure lends the film a rhythm that has less to do with traditional documentary or film journalism than with the pacing of poetry. Mother Load (1994, 15 min.), by Betsy Weiss, offers an alternative approach to the traditional documentary and combines live action with stock footage to illuminate the irony implicit in the life choices women today must face when considering whether or not to bear life.

December 8: City Lights/Underground Doubleheader!

Persona (1967, 81 min.) expresses a sense of visual, moral, and spiritual ambiguity with an intensity and completeness previously unseen in director Ingmar Bergman’s work. The plot concerns Elizabeth, a renowned stage actress, who suffers a nervous breakdown and cannot speak. Sent to an isolated seashore where she is cared for by a nurse/companion, Alma, an odd mechanism of mutual identification develops as Elizabeth comes to rely on Alma for moral sustenance.

Notes on the Death of Kodachrome (2005, 50 min.) pretends to be about the discontinuation of the much-loved format, Kodachrome, and with it the further endangerment of super-8 film. But it has other agendas of reclamation, political inquiry, and personal reckoning that are its true subject matter. We follow filmmaker Jennifer Montgomery as she tracks down three old friends who borrowed and never returned pieces of her super-8 film equipment.