Film Studies @ Emory University

Calendar (please scroll down for further information):
Please watch this page. We'll add information pertaining to our events for the Fall 2009 semester as it becomes available.

DIVAN at THE TEMPLE
1589 Peachtree St., NE
Atlanta, GA 30309-2401
(404) 873-1731
directions to The Temple

VICTOR FLEMING, AN AMERICAN MOVIE MASTER
The full-length, definitive biography of the legendary director of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Talk and book signing by author Michael Sragow
Monday, April 20, 4:30pm
White Hall 207

Victor Fleming was the most sought-after director in Hollywood’s golden age, renowned for his ability to make films across an astounding range of genres–westerns, earthy sexual dramas, family entertainment, screwball comedies, buddy pictures, romances, and adventures. Fleming is remembered for the two most iconic movies of the period, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but the more than forty films he directed also included classics like Red Dust, Test Pilot, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Captains Courageous. Paradoxically, his talent for knowing how to make the necessary film at the right time, rather than remaking the same movie in different guises, has resulted in Victor Fleming’s relative obscurity in our time.

Michael Sragow restores the director to the pantheon of our greatest filmmakers and fills a gaping hole in Hollywood history with this vibrant portrait of a man at the center of the most exciting era in American filmmaking. The actors Fleming directed wanted to be him (Fleming created enduring screen personas for Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Gary Cooper), and his actresses wanted to be with him (Ingrid Bergman, Clara Bow, and Norma Shearer were among his many lovers).

Victor Fleming not only places the director back in the spotlight, but also gives us the story of a man whose extraordinary personal style was as thrilling, varied, and passionate as the stories he brought to the screen.

Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television
Book Talk and Signing
with Author Matthew H. Bernstein
Thursday, April 2, 2009, 5-7pm
Druid Hills Bookstore
1401 Oxford Road
404.727.2665

The Leo Frank case of 1913-1915 was ffone of the most sensational trials of the early twentieth century. Frank, a northern Jewish factory supervisor in Atlanta, was convicted for themurder of Mary Phagan, a young laborer native to the South, largely on the perjured testimony of an African American janitor. The subsequent lynching of Frank in 1915 by an angry mob made the story irresistible to historians, playwrights, novelists, musicians and filmmakers for decades to come.

Matthew H. Bernstein's Screening a Lynching is the first book to examine the tow major 1930s feature films and two television shows that dramatize the Leo Frank Case. Using extensive illustrations from the films and shows, Bernsteins that complex issues such as racism, anti-Semitism, class resentment and sectionalism were at once irresistibly compelling and painfully difficult to portray in the mass media. Film and television shows can provide worthy interpretations of history, Bernstein argues, even when they depart from the historical record.

At the book signing, Professor Bernstein will illustrate his brief talk with clips from these all tooo rare films and television shows.

Professor Gyula Kodolányi
Senior Visiting Scholar
"A Lull, a Music and a New Body: Notes on Translation and Adaptation"

The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning invites you to a lecture by Professor Gyula Kodolányi entitled: "A Lull, a Music and a New Body: Notes on Translation and Adaptation." A reception will follow the lecture.

Translation has acquired a central place as a metaphor in 20th century arts. The writer or the film director is inspired by an impulse, an image or a text to make an original work or an adaptation. The inspiration of such intimations and fragments will define the character of the new work,
more than it is usually admitted.

In the talk, Professor Kodolányi will show examples of the translation of modern poetry and of the adaptation from fiction to screen, where the original inspiration is transformed into a triumph of phrasing or a stunning visual sequence. We will be looking at motifs from American, Russian and Hungarian writing and cinema.

The Halle Institute would like to thank the Department of Film Studies for helping to organize this event.

Please contact Evan Goldberg at 404.727.4060 or evan.goldberg@emory.edu for information on this event.

The Department of Film Studies, Asian Studies and Colsulate General of Japan-Atlanta present

The film stars kabuki actor Kantaro Nakamura as Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism, who teaches shikantaza (zazen meditation in which one focuses on sitting without actively seeking enlightenment) during the turbulent Kamakura Period. Additionally, the all-star cast includes Banmei Takahashi, Ryudo Uzaki, and Tatsuya Fujiwara. This artistic film is not just about Zen Buddhism, but also provides a great deal of insight into the history and culture of the Kamakura Era. The official website for the film is http://www.zen.sh/ (Japanese only).

Professor Cheryl Crowley of Japanese Studies and REALC will introduce this screening

Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television
Book Talk and Signing
with Author Matthew H. Bernstein

Sunday, March 8, 2009, 4pm
Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum
1440 Spring Street NW
http://www.thebreman.org/progevents/books.htm

Frequent Small Meals presents
CIVIL RIGHTS ON FILM PART 4:
“My name is Jason Holliday…”
The landmark film Portrait of Jason in a new 35mm print, restored by the Museum of Modern Art
"The most fascinating film I've ever seen" - Ingmar Bergman on Portrait of Jason

Co-sponsored by the following Emory University departments: the Studies in Sexualities Initiative, the James Weldon Johnson Institute, the Department of Film Studies, and the Office of LGBT Life

Behind Every Good Man (Nikolai Ursin, 1965) 16mm, 8 minutes
Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967) 35mm, 100 minutes

Filmed in one wild night at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Shirley Clarke’s explosive “Portrait of Jason” is a landmark of nonfiction film – the combination of a visionary director, a complex and enigmatic subject, and a moment of new cinematic and social possibilities.

Jason Holliday is an unapologetically gay cabaret performer with charisma to spare, a knack for drama, and a life that’s provided him with plenty of stories to tell – about racism, homophobia, parental abuse, show business, drugs, sex, prostitution, the law, and whatever else he can think of while the cameras are rolling. Jason is endlessly entertaining – he sings, tells his stories, performs, breaks down, gets back up, keeps going. But he is as elusive as he is talented, and the more intimate the details he reveals, the less clear his "identity" becomes. As the night goes on he plays an increasingly intense game of cat-and-mouse with the filmmakers, who can be heard egging him on from behind the camera. The climax of the film is a shocking attempt by the crew to break through the layers of Jason's charisma to reveal the person underneath.

Courageous, funny, disturbing, prophetic, and unlike any other film, “Portrait of Jason” is a powerful viewing experience. Unavailable for many years, it has now been restored and rereleased by the Museum of Modern Art.

“Portrait of Jason” is accompanied by “Behind Every Good Man,” a student film from 1965 Los Angeles. Breezy yet compassionate, this film is very possibly the first cinematic portrayal of an out-of-the-closet gay African-American.

VENUE INFORMATION
White Hall Room 205
208 Dowman Drive
Emory University
Atlanta, GA

CO-SPONSORS
The following Emory University departments: the Studies in Sexualities Initiative, the James Weldon Johnson Institute, the Department of Film Studies, and the Office of LGBT Life

CIVIL RIGHTS ON FILM is a Film Love event. The Film Love series provides access to rare but important films, and seeks to increase awareness of the rich history of experimental and avant-garde film. The series is curated and hosted by Andy Ditzler for Frequent Small Meals. Film Love was voted Best Film Series in Atlanta by the critics of Creative Loafing in 2006. Archives of the series may be found at www.frequentsmallmeals.com.

The Russian and East European Studies Program at Emory University is proud to present two new 35mm prints of films by the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó (b. 1921), one of the major innovators in world cinema. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see these powerful films on the big screen in their original theatrical format.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Film Studies.

Tuesday, February 17
THE ROUND-UP / SZEGÉNYLEGÉNYEK (1966)
White Hall 205, 8:00 PM. Free admission.
94 minutes, black-and-white, 'scope, 35mm
Set at the tail end of the 1848-49 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence against the Habsburg Empire, The Round-Up depicts gendarmes employing "enhanced interrogation techniques" against the last remaining rebels to break their will and ferret out the chief of a rebel army. The film, not entirely authentic in its historical details, was rightly seen by Hungarians as a thinly disguised parable about the Communist terror after the 1956 Revolution. The Round-Up is the first film showing Miklós Jancsó as one of the major innovators of cinema, with its long unedited tracking shots running to several minutes in places, and its use of the wide screen in stark black-and-white, so befitting for the haunting landscape of the Great Hungarian Plain (cinematographer Tamás Somló). The other innovation of Jancsó's direction is the precisely choreographed movement of figures in a landscape. All this contributes to create an unforgettable image of the diabolical nature of totalitarian power. Nominated for a Palme d'Or at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival; one of the most important European films of the Sixties.

Friday, February 27
RED PSALM / MÉG KÉR A NÉP (1972)
White Hall 205, 8:00 PM. Free admission.
88 minutes, color, 35mm
Arguably Jancsó's masterpiece, and the pinnacle of his unforgettable visual style. The film's subject is a brutally suppressed agrarian revolt in the late nineteenth century; Jancsó stages the event as a hallucinatory pageant of color, movement and music. In some thirty astonishingly choreographed shots (most films have hundreds) the camera circles the actors, using a zoom lens to catch fleeting details and to subtly alter the viewer's perception of space. The actors sing and dance for most of the time - this is Jancsó's ultimate homage to Hungarian folk dancing, which was his initiation into art and comradeship as an anti-Nazi activist during WWII. Film historian David Cook describes Red Psalm as "a film of nearly perfect formal beauty, great humanity, and awesome cinematic power." Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) writes: "May well be the greatest Hungarian film of the 60s and 70s, summing up an entire strain in [Jancsó's] work that lamentably has been forgotten here." Winner of Best Direction at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

Notes by James Steffen and Gyula Kodolányi. Special thanks to Bunyik Entertainment and the Magyar Filmunió.

For more information, contact James Steffen (jsteffe@emory.edu), phone (404) 727-1777.

Atlanta Jewish Film Festival
January 14-25, 2009

For More Information, please Click Here

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Gender and the Monstrous
2 35mm films introduced by Dr. Michele Schreiber
6:00pm White Hall 205

Feb. 9
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, USA, color, 1968, 136 min.)
Roman Polanski followed his acclaimed international films Repulsion (1965) and Knife in the Water (1962) with this psychological thriller based on the best-selling novel by Ira Levin. Mia Farrow and John Cassevetes play a young couple that move into their dream apartment in New York City only to discover some rather strange goings-on within their building. You will never look at your busybody neighbors the same way again.

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Apr. 20
Hostel (Eli Roth, USA, color, 2005, 94 minutes)
Eli Roth’s directorial debut, along with James Wan’s Saw (2004), spawned a new sub-genre of the horror film known as “torture porn.” Hostel tells the story of two American frat-boy types who are in pursuit of cheap thrills during a backpacking trek around Europe. Tired of the usual Western European humdrum, they follow the recommendation of a fellow traveler and venture to Slovakia where they check in to a hostel that is, in a word, unique. This enormously successful film was executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino and saw an equally successful 2007 sequel.

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INTERNATIONAL MOVIE CLASSICS SINCE 1938

ALL SCREENINGS ARE AT 8PM IN WHITE HALL 205

January 14:
YOUNG MR. LINCOLN
1939 was a heck of a year for Hollywood. Not only did the dream factory roll out enduring favorites like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, one of the studio system’s best journeyman directors, John Ford helmed THREE classic pictures in 1939: Drums Along the Mohawk, the sublime Stagecoach, and Young Mr. Lincoln, a seamless fusion of biopic, courtroom drama and national mythmaking that helped make a place on the A-list for star Henry Fonda. Though has been eclipsed in retrospect by Ford’s straight-up Westerns and Fonda’s earnest dramatic turns in films like Grapes of Wrath and Twelve Angry Men, Young Mr. Lincoln, their first film together, shows both men at their best: Fonda is understated, winningly human and practically vibrating with high ideals, and Ford’s handling of Lamar Trotti’s Oscar-winning script is fleet, unpretentiously reverent, and precise without ever being cold. Neither would shine so bright here, however, were it not for the film’s stellar art department. Meticulously designed by Richard Day and Mark-Lee Kirk and sumptuously dressed by Thomas Little, the detailed 19th century sets in Young Mr. Lincoln rival the best period work the American “Majors” ever produced.

January 21:
CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, USA, Black & White, 1941, 119 min.)
Perhaps the most celebrated motion picture ever made, Orson Welles’ controversial debut feature was a box-office disaster in 1941. Already a darling enfant terrible of the theater world and catapulted to international notoriety by his 1938 War of the Worlds radio hoax, Welles had been given by the studio a degree of creative freedom no director had enjoyed since the debacle of Greed. The film’s financial failure would assure that few directors would enjoy such latitude again. Resurrected by critics in the 1950s, Citizen Kane is now acknowledged as a major work of film art, setting new standards for narrative complexity (Welles’ script, written in collaboration with Herman Mankiewicz is staggering in its ambition and depth), cinematographic virtuosity (Gregg Toland’s use of German expressionist technique and “deep-focus” are a revelation), and elegance of formal construction that would inspire generations of filmmakers around the world, and remains a cornerstone in the development of the moving image as an expressive medium.

January 28:
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (William Wyler, United States, black & white, 1946, 172 min.)
A remarkable cinematic time capsule, Wyler’s quotidian epic follows the fortunes of American servicemen returning home after years of combat and is a powerful testament to the profound human and social cost of the Second World War. In perfect step with the post-war trend towards cinematic realism, The Best Years of Our Lives made extensive use of location photography, off-the-rack clothing, and non-actors, including disabled vet Harold Russell, who took home a record two Oscars for his supporting role as a disabled vet Homer Parrish. Few films since have so poignantly captured the complexity of an era often distorted in movies by jingoistic nostalgia.

February 4:
LA STRADA (Federico Fellini, Italy, black & white, 1954, 108 min.)
Sometimes tragic, frequently funny, profoundly human, this picaresque tale of a kind-hearted naïf bought by a thuggish circus strongman, is haunted by the ghosts of Italian Neo-Realism, but by no means bound by Neo-Realism’s austerities. Dreamy, ironic, lush and even cruel, La Strada established Fellini as a major voice on the international cinema scene (it took home an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957, back when movies still took a little time to make it across the Pond), and made headliners of Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina, who was married to Federico Fellini from 1943 until his death in 1993 and appeared in several of the director’s finest films, including Nights of Cabiria and Juliet of the Spirits.

February 11:
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (Billy Wilder, United States, Black & White, 1944, 107 min.)
The men don’t come harder boiled or the femmes more fatale than they are in this landmark film noir. Based on a novel by pulp prose-poet laureate James M. Cain (he also penned The Postman Always Rings Twice and Out of the Past), Wilder’s handling of this sordid little story about an insurance agent (Fred MacMurray) seduced into helping a tough-talking blonde “rattlesnake” (Barbara Stanywck) murder her husband is razor-sharp and dry as a martini. Edward G. Robinson, veteran of many a gangster thriller, is a curmudgeonly delight as one of the angels this time, playing the shady salesman’s mentor and nemesis.

February 18:
PSYCHO (Alfred Hitchcock, United States, black & white, 1960, 109 min.)
The cornerstone of modern horror cinema, Psycho strikes nerves as effectively today as it did over 40 years ago. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as mild-mannered mama’s boy Norman Bates, at whose out-of-the-way motel lovely-on-the-lam Janet Leigh stops one rainy night, changing the way we think about showers forever. Moody cinematography, exquisite editing, and Bernard Hermann’s memorably jangling score accent Hitchcock’s masterpiece of suspense, Oedipal crisis, and slaughter.

February 25:
YOIDORE TENSHI (a.k.a. Drunken Angel, Akira Kurosawa, Japan, black & white, 1948, 98 min.)
An alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) fights to save the life of a consumptive hoodlum (Toshiro Mifune) in a septic post-war slum in this riveting early work by one of the grand masters of cinema. Spare, sentimental and for the time, shockingly frank in its depiction of corruption, vice and poverty under the American occupation of Japan, Kurosawa shows here both his unique perspective as a director and his deep debt to Hollywood cinema. Mifune is mesmerizing here in his first film with Kurosawa, with whom he would go on to forge a collaboration rivaled only perhaps by that of Johns Ford and Wayne, and which includes landmarks like High and Low and Seven Samurai.

March 4:
SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (Sergei Parajanov. Ukraine. 1964.Color. Ukrainian with English subtitles. 97 min.)
Set in the Carpathian Mountains of the Ukraine in the 19th century, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors tells the story of the young peasant Ivan in a series of vignettes. The film takes visual style to the extreme and violates most known codes of representation, blending the narrative of one man and the mythic into a deeply psychological masterpiece.

March 11:
(Spring break--no film tonight)

March 18:
ALICE'S RESTAURANT (Arthur Penn, United States, color, 1969, 111 min.)
A time-capsule of the collapsing counterculture, Alice’s Restaurant may best be described as psychedelic realism: Arlo Guthrie stars as Arlo who is in turn the central figure in Arlo Guthrie’s rambling story-song of the same name, a hapless hippie kid whose fairly innocent act of illegal dumping lands him in jail, in court, in church, and finally in uniform. Directed by Arthur Penn, of Bonnie & Clyde fame (who was nominated for an Oscar for it), the film also includes found locations, non-actors, communes, folk-rock, interracial romance, cop-baiting, draft-bashing, demonstrations, drug use, and Pete Seeger. It is fair to say the film is less a committed social statement than a calculated effort to cash in on the late ‘60s scene, but Alice’s Restaurant is still about as far out as mainstream Hollywood ever dared to get.

March 25:
LASKY JEDNE PLAVOVLASKY (a.k.a. Loves of a Blonde, Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia, black & white, 1965, 88 min. In Czech with English subtitles)
Ah, Youth! One of the watershed films of the Czech “New Wave,” Forman’s breakthrough feature offers a very different, very Eastern block take on the global Youth Culture. A town cursed with a surplus of girls builds an army base to balance the equation, but when the soldiers turn out to be a disappointment, naïve shopgirl Andula falls for, and falls into bed with, the piano player in a traveling band. When true love turns out to be a one night stand, she packs a bag, hops on a bus and shows up on his parent’s doorstep. Lásky Jedné Plavovlåsky is a comedy of generations, mores, and manners whose echoes can be clearly heard in 40 years of subsequent teenpics, and helped catapult Forman to the international prominence that would bring him to Hollywood, where he has helmed such classics as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus.

April 1:
JAWS (Steven Spielberg, United States, color, 1975, 124 min.)
Based on Peter Benchley’s blockbuster book, Steven Spielberg’s signature hit rewrote the book on the blockbuster. The first film ever to take in more than $100 million at the box-office in its initial theatrical run, Jaws is a canny combination of genres: part monster movie, part buddy picture, and part maritime adventure. It made an indelible mark on the movies and popular culture, spawning sequels, spoofs, knock-offs, and a pre-occupation with predatory cartilaginous fish that plays out in documentaries scattered across cable, and in classrooms scattered across the globe. Also noteworthy is composer John Williams’ career-making, and most memorable score. Thanks to Jaws, American mainstream cinema would, forever after, need bigger boats.

Apriil 8:
CEDDO (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, color, 1977, 120 min. In French and Wolof with English subtitles)
Tragically lost to the medium in 2007, Ousamane Sembene helped put sub-Saharan African cinema on the world movie map with bitingly passionate, socially committed, superbly plotted films like this story of dynastic intrigue, feud, kidnapping, and Colonialism. A picture of late 18th century Africa in exquisite, satiric miniature, Ceddo chronicles the struggles of the titular tribe to preserve their way of life against the depredations of slave-peddling European Christians on the one hand and slave-taking Islamic expansionists on the other. Like so many of Sembene’s films, cynicism is nicely balanced with a celebration of the inextinguishable ingenuity, rhetorical flair, and spirit of ordinary men and women living in the shadow of extraordinary events.

April 15:
BIAN LIAN (a.k.a. The King of Masks, Wu Tian-ming, Peoples Republic of China, color, 1996, 91 min. in Mandarin with English subtitles)
Abandoned years before by his wife and still grieving for his dead son, an aging street performer adept in the dying Sichuan art of masks buys what he thinks is a young boy from what he thinks is the child’s penniless father, only to find he has been hoodwinked by a human trafficker into purchasing a “worthless” little girl, a child who will eventually heal the mask-master’s heart and preserve his legacy. While the set-up – adorable urchin wins the heart of geriatric crank – is as old as the hills (or at least as old as Little Orphan Annie), arresting glimpses of life in pre-revolutionary China, a phenomenally gifted cast and Wu’s expert eye and skilled direction make this fable as fresh and surprising as if Bian Lian were its first, and not its 300th telling.

April 22:
SIN CITY(Robert Rodriguez, United States, color, 2002, 124 min.)
A strikingly literal adaptation of comics legend Frank Miller’s graphic novel series of the same name, Rodriguez’s eye-popping, gut-wrenching, bullet-riddled dive through the lives (and usually deaths) of assorted gangsters, ghouls, heavies and heartbreakers inhabiting a mythical crime-ridden metropolis is representative of the profound changes currently remaking the movies. Shot in High-Definition Video on a “green-screen” compositing stage, Sin City is almost entirely a creation of a digital post-production environment that makes the cinematic image become almost infinitely manipulatable and is a harbinger of things to come as the moving image enters the 21st century.

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Kundun
Screened by composer Philip Glass

Join world renown composer Philip Glass as he screens Kundun, a powerful movie about the life of Tibet's 14th dalai lama.

Kundun (Martin Scorsese, 1997, 134 minutes, color)

Scorsese’s exquisite, deeply moving film tells the life story of the present Dalai Lama – known to his people as Kundun, or “The Presence” – and the tragic events that led up to his escape to India, followed by the complete occupation of Tibet in 1959. Winner of numerous awards, especially in the areas of cinematography (Roger Deakins) and music (Phillip Glass), Kundun has quickly become a classic in the area of Tibet-related films.

"Philip Glass's score for Kundun is the realization of a long-cherished dream. For years, I had hoped to work with Glass, and in Kundun we found the ideal subject for a special collaboration. His Buddhist faith and deep understanding of Tibetan culture combine with the subtlety of his composition to play an essential role in our movie on the life of the Dalai Lama. Philip Glass is an artist of tremendous sensitivity whose music works from the inside of the film, from its heart, to produce a powerful emotional intensity which remains for days in the listener's head. The beauty, magic, grandeur, and spirituality of the score allow us to feel the pulse of the story as it unfolds. For me, the images in the film no longer stand on their own without Philip Glass's music. I consider myself fortunate, indeed blessed, to have worked with him on Kundun..." -- Martin Scorsese.

Sunday, February 1, 2009:
5:00-7:00pm
JANE AUSTEN BOOK AND FILM FESTIVAL, PANEL DISCUSSION: "MONEY, MARRIAGE AND LOVE--JANE AUSTEN PAST AND PRESENT
Jones Room, Woodruff Library, Reception following
The panel will offer two perspectives on how money, marriage, and love appear in Jane Austen's novels and their contemporary film adaptations. Dr. Judith Miller's presentation will focus on marriage and property law in the time of Austen. Dr. Michele Schreiber of Emory's Department of Film Studies, will discuss how the significance of these issues in the post-feminist era underlies the popularity of recent Austen film adaptations.

8:00pm
JANE AUSTEN FILM FESTIVAL: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
White Hall 205
Young British star Kiera Knightley add stunning beauty to her portrayal of witty, opinionated and outspoken Elizabeth Bennett, the one of the five Bennett girls not exclusively focused on getting married.

Monday, February 2, 2009:
8:00pm
JANE AUSTEN FILM FESTIVAL: EMMA
White Hall 205
This Gwyneth Paltrow film postdates the 1995 Clueless in portraying Jane Austen's meddling heroine whose matchmaking efforts run amuck.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009:
8:00pm
JANE AUSTEN FILM FESTIVAL: BECOMING JANE
White Hall 205
Elaborated from an incident in Jane Austen's life, the film speculatively depicts the yung author-to-be (Anne Hathaway) as she falls in love with the impecunious Irish lawyer-in-training Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) in an event which is believed to have inspired the Elizabeth Bennett-Fitzwilliam Darcy romance in Pride and Prejudice.

A Series of Creative Conversations in Public Scholarship and Public Humanities

Join us for the 2nd discussion in this exciting series!

Thursday, September 18, 2008
Reception Hall – 3rd Floor
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Emory University
4:00pm

Film is a means of creativity, expression, entertainment, persuasion and, at times, manipulation. From silent beginnings to the forefront of technology, film has offered ways to reflect upon the past, comment upon the present and project a broad range of possible futures. In the second event of the Artists & Critics series, a renowned screenwriter and director and a widely-respected film critic will come together for a lively panel discussion to discuss their crafts and the way they see themselves in relation to each other and various public constituencies. Matthew Bernstein, chair of Emory’s Film Studies Department, will moderate.

Director, producer and writer Todd Field made his feature film debut at the Sundance Film Festival with In the Bedroom. Internationally acclaimed by critics, the film was named Best Picture of the Year by TheNew York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It went on to receive five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture of the Year. Field followed In the Bedroom with Little Children. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival to similar accolades and received three Golden Globe nominations, two Screen Actors Guild awards, the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and three Academy Award nominations. As an actor, Field appeared in such films as Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

A.O. Scott joined The New York Times as a film critic in January 2000. Previously, he was a Sunday book reviewer for Newsday, and a frequent contributor to Slate, The New York Review of Books and many other publications. A. O. Scott graduated with a B.A. degree in Literature (magna cum laude) from Harvard College in 1988 and was a grad-school dropout (from Johns Hopkins, in American Literature). He has also served on the editorial staffs of Lingua Franca and The New York Review of Books.

Artists & Critics is organized by the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship, the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry & the Center for Creativity and the Arts.

Cosponsors for the series, as of September 8, include African American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Center for Women at Emory, Comparative Literature, Creativity and the Arts Initiative, Creative Writing, Emory Graduate School, Film Studies, Goizueta School of Business, Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, the Hightower Fund, Journalism, Luminaries in the Arts & Humanities, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the Public Humanities Initiative of the Emory College Humanities Council and Women’s Studies.

Red Heroine
(“Hong Xia,” Wen Yimin, black and white, silent with English intertitles, 1929, 90 minutes),
with live accompaniment by Devil Music Ensemble.

Episode six of Red Knight-Errant a.k.a. Red Heroine, the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. A band of outlaws raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman's grandmother. The captive maiden is rescued by a mysterious Daoist hermit and reemerges three years later as a full-fledged warrior, flying to the sky to revenge her grandmother's death. While generously sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (imagine a bandit's harem of beauties in bikinis!), the film remains a robust telling of a young woman's transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior.

The Devil Music Ensemble offers a unique multimedia experience that synthesizes live music and movies. Recent performances by the DME have taken place at The John F. Kennedy Center for the performing arts in Washington D.C., the Chicago Cultural Center, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles CA, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA, the Caixa Forum in Barcelona Spain and the Danish Film Institute in Denmark.

This screening is co-sponsored by Emory College’s Center for Creativity and the Arts, the Departments of Film Studies, REALC (the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures), Theater Studies, Music, and the Confucius Institute of Emory University.

Professor Maltby will present an overview of recent historical work in writing the history of cinema distribution and exhibition, and the histories of cinema’s audiences. He will explore some of the issues involved in writing historical studies of cinema that are not centrally about films, and indicate some of the questions that this new perspective raises for the study of American cinema between 1908 and 1940.

Richard Maltby is Professor of Screen Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at Flinders University, South Australia. Before moving to Australia in 1997, he was the founding Director of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter and then Research Professor of Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University. His publications include Hollywood Cinema: Second Edition (Blackwell's, 2003), “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 1925-1939, which won the Prix Jean Mitry for cinema history in 2000, and Going to the Movies: Hollywood and the Social Experience of Cinema, which was published in 2007 and is the most recent of five edited books on the history of movie audiences and cinema exhibition. He is Series Editor of Exeter Studies in Film History. He is currently completing Reforming the Movies: Politics, Censorship, and the Governance of the American Cinema, 1908-1939.

White Hall 205
12 noon
Tuesday, October 14
A reception will follow this lecture.

Produced in 1992, Released in 1998 after being banned for 8 years (115 min.) In Persian with English subtitles

When director Dariush Mehrjui released The Lady in 1992, it was quickly banned by officials who objected to the film's depiction of the poor and viewed it as a corrosive political allegory. Whether audiences detect a subversive subtext or see it as a Dostoyevskian tale of faith and redemption, The Lady is a powerful study of a woman's search for meaning. Its central character is Maryam, an affluent, middle-aged housewife whose husband of many years has just left her. Shattered by his betrayal and inspired by her religious beliefs, she opens her door to a poor family who live in a hovel beyond her garden. Soon they have invited a myriad of relatives, driven away Maryam's devoted cook, and transformed the atmosphere of her home from serenity to chaos.

Also showing: Lost Cousin (33 min.). A combination of comedy and romance about an actor's fantasy about his drowned cousin, this is Mr. Mehrjui's contribution to the 2000 film Tales of an Island.

Wednesday, September 3
My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, United Kingdom., Color, 1985, 97 min.)

The first of two films shown in honor of screenwriter/author Hanif Kureishi’s visit to Emory September 8 -9. Kureishi’s first and Oscar-nominated screenplay depicts a Pakistani-Briton’s (Gordon Warnecke) takeover of his uncle’s (Saeed Jaffrey) laundromat with the help of his childhood friend (Daniel Day Lewis, in a breakthrough role, in the same year as A Room with a View). With its portrait of multicultural 1980s Britain and the Thatcher Era desire to succeed in business, MBL was a key film in signaling the robust, inventive nature of 1980s British cinema. The film was also a major success for Frears, who went on to direct Kureishi’s script for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, as well as Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity and more recently, The Queen.

Wednesday, September 10
Venus (Roger Michell, United Kingdom, Color, 2006, 95 min.)

Peter O'Toole gave an Oscar-nominated performance in Hanif Kureishi’s bitingly funny and poignant portrait of an aging actor who still has a yen for the ladies, and strikes up an unusual, sometimes perturbingly intimate relationship with the niece (Jodie Whittaker in her first feature role) of a close friend. Michell also directed Kureishi’s screenplay for The Mother (2003), as well as the Julia Roberts- Hugh Grant romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999) and the acclaimed 1995 TV movie of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Wednesday, September 17
Little Children (Todd Field, U.S.A., Color, 2006, 130 min.)

Shown on the occasion of actor-writer-director Todd Field’s visit to Emory September 18-19. Adapted (in an Oscar-nominated script) by Fields and Tom Perotta from the latter’s novel, Field’s second feature film after the highly-acclaimed In the Bedroom (2001), depicts a group of emotionally damaged adult suburbanites, focusing most intensely on two parents (Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson) stuck in loveless marriages. Winslet received an Oscar nomination, as did Jackie Earle Haley. The cast includes Jennifer Connelly.

Wednesday, September 24
Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim, U.S.A., black and white, silent with music and intertitles, 1928, 97 min)

In 1928, after years of struggles within the studio system, Erich von Stroheim found the opportunity to create his crowning achievement: a storybook romance of intoxicating beauty, counterbalanced with a typical (for von Stroheim) frightfully grim tale of moral corruption. Gloria Swanson stars as an innocent convent girl who falls under the spell of a handsome prince (Walter Byron) on the eve of his marriage to a diabolical queen (Seena Owen). Star-producer Swanson shut down production before it ended, in part because of scenes set in an African brothel (many included in this acclaimed restoration print).

Wednesday, October 1
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, Germany, black and white, silent with music and intertitles, 1926, 123 min.)

Silent era visionary German director Fritz Lang realized this astonishing science fiction film, with state of the art special effects at the time, which envisions class exploitation and warfare in allegorical terms in the near future. Its influence can be seen well into contemporary sci fi around the world (most prominently, Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner.

Wednesday, October 8
Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, U.S.S.R., black and white, silent with music and intertitles, 1928, 68 min.; dvd)

Dziga Vertov's artistic testament, a self-reflexive tribute to Soviet filmmakers and the ways in which they contribute to the creation of a new industrial, Bolshevik society, is astonishingly brilliant in the connections it makes. We are showing it the extraordinary percussive score by the Alloy Orchestra.

Wednesday, October 15
CANCELLEDModern Times (Charles Chaplin, U.S.A., b/w, 1936, 87 min.)

The Public Enemy (William Wellman, U.S.A., black and white, silent with intertitles, 1931, 83 min.)

One of the earliest and best of the 30s gangster films, The Public Enemy was released right before the censorship codes took effect. Its casts includes some of the great 30s stars: James Cagney, Jean Harlowe, Joan Blondell, and Edward Woods. The film concerns the rise and fall of a brutal, ruthless hooligan. Although he learns the error of his ways in the end, he succumbs to the very of violence that he himself instigated. The film's subject matter spurred Warner Bros. to include an opening title card that provides a disclaimer: "It is the ambition of the authors of 'The Public Enemy' to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal. While the story of 'The Public Enemy' is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing herein, are purely fictional." Thankfully, the movie's prudish show of outrage at the liquor racket and its plea for civic order is overshadowed by its Pre-Code mischief and the sheer delight of watching James Cagney hone the cock-of-the-walk persona that made him an instant star.

Wednesday, October 22
M (Fritz Lang, Germany, black and white, in German with English subtitles, 1931 117 min. )

This saga of a child murderer and the police and underworld who seek him was an innovative breakthrough for early sound film, featuring a star-making turn by Peter Lorre.

Wednesday, October 29
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, U.S.A., black and white, 1934, 104 min.)

One of the last collaborations between master director von Sternberg and his discovery Marlene Dietrich (after a series of films including The Blue Angel, Dishonored, Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus),The Scarlet Empress constitutes the most outlandish, baroque historical biopic in American film history, here concerning the life of Catherine Sophia II of Germany, who favors romance with a Count over her marriage to Grand Duke, seizes power and becomes Catherine the Great.

Wednesday, November 5
A Story of Floating Weeds (“Ukikusa Monogatari,” Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, black and white, 1934, silent with English intertitles, 86 min.)

Ozu's bittersweet comedy about a traveling actor who returns to a small town and encounters his former lover and illegitimate son, much to the chagrin of his current lover. Takashi Sakamoto, Ozu's favorite comic actor of the time, stars in this much acclaimed example of Ozu's dynamic early style.

Wednesday, November 12
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, USA, black and white, 1936, 94 min.)

William Powell (of Thin Man fame) cleans up real good in this quintessential screwball comedy, playing a droll, Depression-era “lost man” collected by a delightfully daffy socialite (Carole Lombard) for a charity scavenger hunt and then hired to “butle” for her eccentric upper crust family. As much a scathing caricature of the Idle Rich as it is zany love story, My Man Godfrey is gracefully directed, smartly scripted, and charged throughout with the complex chemistry between Powell and Lombard, who had previously been married and divorced. It was also the first film ever to be nominated for Oscars in all four acting categories.

Wednesday, November 19
Le Roman d’un Tricheur (Sacha Guitry, France, Black and White, French with English subtitles, 1936, 81 min.)

Crime pays, for the protagonist (and for the audience) of this wicked romp written, starring, and directed by the multitalented Sacha Guitry, one of the brightest lights of French theater and cinema between the Wars. The autobiography of a rogue whose criminal career starts early – sent to bed without supper as a boy, he alone of his family is spared a gruesome demise brought on by a dinner of poisonous mushrooms – and lands him a lucrative gig as a crooked croupier in a Monocco casino. Narrated by the cheat himself (Guitry’s voice-over is the only “dialogue” in the film), this finely-tuned tale of intrigues, ironies, beautiful women and not-quite-perfect crimes is a rich reminder of the gifts of one of European cinema’s nearly forgotten Greats.

Wednesday, December 3
Alexander Nevsky ("Aleksandr Nevskiy," Sergei Eisenstein, U.S.S.R., black and white, Russian with English subtitles,1938, 112 min. )

Eisenstein's historical biopic about a Russian prince who leads an makeshift army against invading Teutonic knights features the dazzling sequence of the Battle on the Ice, a heroic performance by Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role, and a moving score by Sergei Prokofiev. The film's allegorical treatment of the threat of Nazi Germany was unmistakable at the time, as was the brilliance of Eisenstein's imaginative direction.