Tuesdays at the Gish 2009-10 Schedule
Sita Sings the Blues
April 6, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2008) United States, 82 minutes
Director: Nina Paley
Cartoonist Nina Paley mixes genres, eras, autobiographical recounts of her divorce, jazz music, and a modern take on the story of the Ramayana to create Sita Sings the Blues. The film revisions the story of Prince Rama and his faithful wife Sita as their love is tested. Although misfortune after misfortune befalls the couple Sita keeps a song in her heart, thanks to the music of Annette Hanshaw.
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Bad Taste
September 8, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1987) New Zealand, 91 minutes
Director: Peter Jackson
The first feature-length film by Peter Jackson, Bad Taste follows a group of special government agents in their attempt to save the world from flesh-harvesting aliens. Made over the course of four years on an original budget of around twenty-five thousand dollars, this film demanded that Jackson and a core group of his friends play many roles themselves both on- and off-screen. This movie, with its splashy visual effects and bravura camera work, is a great introduction to the filmmaking style that eventually made Peter Jackson a star.
Peeping Tom
September 15, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1960) Great Britain, 101 minutes
Director: Michael Powell
This film tells the story of Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), a soft-spoken cameraman with a deadly secret: he murders young women and captures their dying moments on film. At the time of its release, this thriller, directed by the legendary Michael Powell, was accused of being a sadistic exercise in bad taste. Over the years, however, the film has come to be recognized as a powerful meditation on the seductive lure of the cinematic apparatus, the nature (and violence) of representation, and the misogyny of patriarchal culture. Nearly fifty years after its release, Peeping Tom still has the power to shock and provoke thought.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
September 22, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1986) United States, 83 minutes
Director: John McNaughton
Based loosely on the life of infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, this low-budget film shocked audiences not with gratuitous violence and gore, but with a powerful screenplay and blistering performances from its cast. When the eponymous homicidal drifter (Michael Rooker) moves in with his friend Otis (Tom Towles) and Becky (Tracy Arnold), Otis’s abused sister, Henry introduces Otis to a life of crime at first unimaginable to the small-time hood. At the same time, Henry unintentionally woos Becky with his surprising vulnerability. The lives of these lost souls collide in a climax that is both unforgiving and unforgettable.
Swoon
September 29, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1992) United States, 82 minutes
Director: Tom Kalin
In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two young thrill-seekers obsessed with planning and committing the “perfect crime,” kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy. Their scandalous story has been endlessly adapted for stage and screen, but few of these adaptations are as audacious as Swoon, the feature-length debut of writer/director Tom Kalin. Swoon became a landmark film in the “New Queer Cinema” movement of the early 1990s due, in part, to the ways in which Kalin interrogates how the news media, lawmakers, and even scientists “blamed” Leopold and Loeb’s murderous behavior on their homosexuality and how the vestiges of this homophobia remain with us today.
Cine-Posium: Department of Theatre and Film Student Work
October 6, 2009, 7:30 pm
This evening will feature short films and other material created in production courses such as Film I: Cinematography; Film II: Editing, Image, and Sound; Film III: Sync Sound Production; Acting/Directing for Film; and Digital Technology for Film. Screenings of individual and group projects by the Department's film majors will be accompanied by discussions that include feedback from members of the film faculty as well as question and answer periods between student filmmakers and audience members.
White Zombie
October 20, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1932) United States, 69 minutes
Director: Victor Halperin
Long before 28 Days Later and Night of the Living Dead, Victor Halperin introduced the walking dead to the silver screen with White Zombie. Featuring Bela Lugosi as the evil-eyed Murder Legendre, a sinister plantation owner and voodoo sorcerer, the film weaves a diabolic web of infatuation, jealousy, and murder set in the rural cane fields of Haiti. Filmed on sets “borrowed” from the recently completed Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Halperin’s inaugural entry into zombie cinema offers a haunting portrait of the racial anxieties that plagued the United States’ ill-fated occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934.
I Walked with a Zombie
October 27, 2009, 7:30 pm
(1943) United States, 69 minutes
Director: Jacques Tourneur
This eerie film tells the story of Betsy (Frances Dee), a young nurse sent to a Caribbean island to care for the comatose wife of plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway). As Betsy settles into her assignment, however, she begins to uncover the bizarre world of secrecy and voodoo that permeates the island’s lush tropical environment. Is her charge really suffering from a naturally-occurring illness, or is she the victim of something significantly more malevolent? Produced by legendary horror guru Val Lewton, this adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a classic tale of mystery and suspense.
Fully Awake: The Black Mountain College Experience
November 3, 2009, 7:30 pm
(2007) United States, 70 minutes
Directors: Cathryn Davis and Neeley House
Black Mountain College was an experimental college based in North Carolina from 1933-1957 and was the location for such events as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, John Cage's first multimedia happening, and the publication of early Beat poets in the Black Mountain Review. This documentary looks at the unique educational style and long-term significance of Black Mountain College through interviews with students, teachers, historians, and current artists, which serve to illuminate this school’s emphasis on balancing academics, art, work programs, and community living.
The Quorum
November 10, 2009, 7:30 pm
(2004) United States, 60 minutes
Directors: Maurice M. Martinez and Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer
In the politically and racially charged atmosphere of the 1960s, The Quorum coffee house created a successful model for multicultural exchange. Opened in 1963 to persons from all racial backgrounds, The Quorum became a frequent target of segregationist harassment in New Orleans. In 1964, police raided The Quorum taking 73 people to jail and accusing them of things like "playing guitars out of tune." Combining oral history and rare archival materials, this documentary shows what happens when ordinary people become involved in extraordinary events.
Carts of Darkness
January 26, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2008) Canada, 60 minutes
Director: Murray Siple
Set in pictureâperfect North Vancouver, this blend of character study and extreme sports video documents the lives of homeless men who have transformed their dull routine of bottle collecting into a subculture of shopping cart racing. Capturing the intensity of life on the edge, Siple, a former snowboarder who has been wheelchair bound since a 1996 auto accident, introduces us to men like Big Al, a fearless cart-rider, Fergie, a still handsome alcoholic, and Bob, a gentle artist-musician. As his affinity with them grows, Siple seeks to recapture the rush of snowboarding in an act of daring and trust.
Gish Film Series Special Presentation
February 2, 2010, 7:30 pm
In honor of the 2010 Battleground States Conference theme, “War(s) and Peace” the Gish Film Series kicks off the semester with a powerful look at the horrors of war and national trauma. For every casualty on the battlefield scores are impacted at home, whether it is yards from the front line or half a world away. Our first film explores the intersections of war and peace, soldier and civilian, the personal and the political.
Death in Gaza
February 9, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2004) United Kingdom, 80 minutes
Director: James Miller
Death in Gaza is a gripping documentary that examines the lives of children affected by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the filmmakers originally intended to film both Palestinian and Israeli children, production was tragically cut short when director James Miller was shot to death in Gaza by Israeli soldiers who mistook him for a militant. Nevertheless, the film offers audiences a poignant look into the lives of three Palestinian children whose development is profoundly impacted by the violence and poverty of the world around them.
One, Two, Three
February 16, 2010, 7:30 pm
(1961) United States, 115 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
From the director of Some Like it Hot (1959) and Sabrina (1954), Billy Wilder brings us One, Two, Three. James Cagney stars as the managing director of Coca-Cola’s branch in Berlin, but when the boss’s daughter visits and elopes with a communist he finds himself struggling to keep her antics under wraps and secure his position within the company. Through the madcap and campy comedy comes commentary of post-war rebuilding, capitalization, Americanization, and culture clash.
Beer Wars
February 23, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2009) United States, 89 minutes
Director: Anat Baron
It’s no secret: America is in love with beer. Independent director Anat Baron explores the tumultuous relationship between corporate brewers, craft brewers and the beer drinking public in her first feature length documentary. At once a critical exploration of the centrality of beer in American culture and our culture of consumption, Beer Wars highlights the bitter battle for the souls of American beer drinkers.
Cine-Posium: Department of Theatre and Film Student Work
March 2, 2010, 7:30 pm
The evening will feature short films and other material created in production courses such as Film I: Cinematography; Film II: Editing, Image, and Sound; Film III: Sync Sound Production; Acting/Directing for Film; and Digital Technology for Film. Screenings of individual and group projects by the Department’s film majors will be accompanied by discussions that include feedback from members of the film faculty as well as question and answer periods between student filmmakers and audience members.
Shotgun Stories
March 16, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2007) United States, 92 minutes
Director: Jeff Nichols
A story of revenge and rage that would make even the Hatfields and McCoys rethink their priorities. Jeffrey Nichols’s directorial debut centers on the misdirected anger of two sets of half brothers that escalates after their father’s death. The interaction between brothers Kid, Son, and Boy reveal the importance of family ties, while their confrontations with their father’s other sons helps to deconstruct such a concept. From the Arkansas landscape to the brothers involved, Shotgun Stories explores rage and violence through what is unsaid rather than raw emotion and action expected from a film about feuding.
Carnival of Souls
March 23, 2010, 7:30 pm
(1962) United States, 80 minutes
Director: Herk Harvey
The sole survivor of a tragic car accident, young Mary (Candace Hilligoss) attempts to put her ordeal behind her by moving to a small town to take a position as a church organist. Upon her arrival, however, Mary finds herself increasingly beset by troubling hallucinations of a mysterious figure (director Herk Harvey) that call her sanity into question. As her visions intensify, Mary finds herself drawn to an abandoned carnival outside of town where the answers to her bizarre experiences await her.
Snow Angels
March 30, 2010, 7:30 pm
(2008) United States, 106 minutes
Director: David Gordon Green
Adapted from Stewart O’Nan’s novel, Snow Angels is a tumultuous coming of age story. Arthur busses tables in a Chinese restaurant, plays trombone in the high school marching band, and has his eye on smart, funny, offbeat Lila-who definitely has her eye on him. As Arthur takes tentative steps toward his first romantic relationship, the long-time relationships of the adults around him teeter and crash, drawing Arthur into a vortex of events that will change his world forever.