Doc Films Announces Spring 2006 Calendar
Doc Films, the nation’s oldest continuously running student film society, today announced its Spring 2006 calendar, showcasing works by Orson Welles, Werner Herzog and Krzysztof Kieslowski, among many others.
Hyde Park, IL. (PRWEB) March 24, 2006 -- Doc Films, the nation’s oldest continuously running student film society, today announced its Spring 2006 calendar, showcasing works by Orson Welles, Werner Herzog and Krzysztof Kieslowski, among many others.
Highlights of the season include all ten episodes of Kieslowski’s Decalogue, a series called “Sex, Sin, and Bathtub Booze: Hollywood before the Code” featuring the newly discovered “uncut” version of Alfred E. Green's Baby Face (starring Barbara Stanwyck), the underground hit Saving Face, the controversial American New Wave film Petulia, Werner Herzog's entire nonfiction corpus, Orson Welles' late masterpiece F for Fake, a group of politically themed anti-Westerns including A Fistful of Dollars, and a series focusing on new cinematic understandings of Asian-America.
Co-chairs of the Doc Films board Lilly Cunningham and David Tucker expressed enthusiasm about this quarter’s offerings. “We look forward to another quarter of rare and exciting programming this spring at Doc Films, where films from across the globe and across all genres can find an avid Chicago audience each and every night," Cunningham said. All films are screened at the Max Palevsky Cinema on the University of Chicago campus, at 1212 East 59th Street.
Highlights of the calendar follow; for the complete calendar, visit http://docfilms.uchicago.edu/calendar.shtml
Sunday Nights
A series of “Essay Films” (personal nonfiction – not exactly documentary, not exactly features) will screen rare masterpieces by Orson Welles (F for Fake), Chris Marker (A Grin Without a Cat), and Dusan Makavejev (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism) as well as newer entries into the genre (including The Ister, about Heidegger's life and work, Agnès Varda’s Cinevardaphoto, and Finshed, by William E. Jones). Extremely rare films in the series include Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Reassemblage and Ralph Arlyck's Natural Habitat.
Monday Nights (3/27 to 4/24)
This series focuses on films that used the western genre to explore issues of social and political import – which doesn't mean there isn't room for Mel Brooks. Favorites like The Unforgiven and A Fistful of Dollars populate this series which also includes relatively obscure political (anti) Westerns like Hombre (starring Paul Newman as a cowboy raised by Indians) and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (with Kris Kristofferson and an all-star cast as Wyoming settlers fighting against big industry). And, of course, the series will include Blazing Saddles.
Monday Nights (5/1 to 5/29)
Made for Polish television in 1989, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue is structured around complex morality tales and musings on the Ten Commandments. It quickly became a classic of world cinema. The Decalogue is rarely screened in 35mm or in its entirety, but Doc will feature two episodes every Monday night for five weeks (May 1st to the 29th).
Tuesday Nights
Doc will screen the best selections from the wave of recent films by and about Asian Americans, all of them having their Doc Films debut. These movies explore the changing attitudes towards Asian Americans since groundbreaking (but perhaps dated) films like The Joy Luck Club. Recent indie hits will be included in the series, among them, Saving Face, Better Luck Tomorrow, The Motel, Mysterious Skin and The Grace Lee Project – the latter of which follows a woman named “Grace Lee” who searches the country for others sharing her name. The series will also include visits by some filmmakers: Darryl Fong, director of the martial arts movie parody Kung Phooey! will visit for the screening of his own 35mm print of the film on April 11. Steve Mallorca, director of Slow Jam King, will attend on May 2.
Wednesday Nights
A series reflecting on Werner Herzog's steady output of nonfiction films will screen nearly 20 of his “documentaries.” Grizzly Man intrigued many, but few people have seen some of his early and notable work, including The Land of Silence and Darkness – his first nonfiction feature, focusing on deaf-blind communities in Germany. Certainly one of the most legendary stories about Herzog (and with such a mythical and misunderstood character, there are many) is about a bet he made with Erroll Morris: if you finish Gates of Heaven I'll eat my shoe. On May 10 Doc will screen Morris' completed film and then a short and rarely seen documentary by Les Blank in which Herzog makes good on that promise. Other highlights include his psychedelic essay on Sub-Saharan Africa, Fata Morgana (May 31) and Little Dieter Needs to Fly (April 26), which will soon be released as a fiction film (Rescue Dawn) starring Christian Bale.
Thursday Nights 7:00pm
More rare films will be screened in a series aptly called “Sex, Sin, and Bathtub Booze: Hollywood before the Code,” focusing on movies made immediately prior to the Hays Code’s institution in 1934. A recently struck print of the uncensored version of Alfred E. Green’s 1933 classic Baby Face played to sold out crowds at Film Forum in New York and features a newly discovered five minute sequence that its programmer says, “needs to be seen to be believed.” The Clara Bow star vehicle Call it Savage has never appeared on VHS and rarely on television, but Doc has tracked down a print and will be showing it in Chicago for the first time in decades. Other directors represented in the series include Ernst Lubitsch, Mervyn LeRoy, Frank Capra, Raoul Walsh and Frank Borzage. In addition to Baby Face, the prints of Trouble in Paradise, Bitter Tea of General Yen, Blessed Event and Three on a Match will be archival 35mm from the Library Congress, meaning that these screenings will be the best chance to see these films in the closest approximation to their original release.
Thursday Nights 9:00-10:00pm
In response to the “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” history of 1970s American cinema, a series of “The Rest of the American New Wave” will focus on the work of auteurs less known than the Scorsese, Altman or Coppola triumvirate. Some rarely seen works in the series include John Boorman's Point Blank (1967). Featuring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, it covers some of the same territory as its well-known counterpart (of the same year) Bonnie and Clyde. Upon release, Esquire devoted its cover to proclaiming that Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop was “the next Easy Rider,” and it's easy to see why. Nearly all the films in the series are unjustly neglected by theaters in Chicagoland, if not in the country, and some of them haven't been shown here since their openings, nearly 40 years ago.
Weekend Movies
Weekend films include critical and popular hits:
-Capote
-Good Night, and Good Luck
-Brokeback Mountain
-Syriana
-Match Point
-The New World
-Walk the Line
-Squid & the Whale
-Munich
-Cache
-Tristam Shandy
o-Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
-Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
-Transamerica
-Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
-The Producers
-Cafe Lumiere
-Pride and Prejudice
-Junebug
-Memoirs of a Geisha
###
Post Comment:
Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/Q291cC1Db3VwLVRoaXItVGhpci1IYWxmLVplcm8=
Bookmark -
Del.icio.us |
Furl It |
Technorati |
Ask |
MyWeb |
Propeller |
Live Bookmarks |
Newsvine |
TailRank |
Reddit |
Slashdot |
Digg |
Stumbleupon |
Google Bookmarks |
Sphere |
Blink It |
Spurl
|
