March 2009 Archives

Temple University Cinematheque presents: Devi, dir. Satyajit Ray, 1960, B&W, 93 min, Bengali with English subtitles.

This film by the Indian master of art cinema, Satyajit Ray, explores the collision of modernity and traditional Indian life, religious fanaticism and class. A rural land baron becomes convinced that his daughter is the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, Kali, and expects their village to treat her as such. Nominated for the 1960 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film won the President's Gold Medal of India. Preceded by a brief introduction from Vijay Mohan.

"[Satyajit Ray] is the most sensitive and eloquent artist..." --Elia Kazan

"His work is in the company of... Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini." --Martin Scorsese

"He is a 'giant' of the movie industry… Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." --Akira Kurosawa

Thursday, April 2, 5:30PM
Tuttleman Learning Center Room 101
13th St between Montgomery and Berks
FREE
Presented on DVD projected onto a big screen.

April's event for the Philadelphia Cinema and Media Seminar will be a one-day symposium on documentary studies. Additionally, there may be a couple of additions to the roster, which will be updated at the PCMS website:

Documentary Studies: A State of the Field Symposium

Saturday, April 11
Temple University Center City (TUCC)
room 320
10:30 AM - 5:15 PM

This one-day symposium will gather area scholars and media makers in a conversation about documentary studies today. Documentary studies has often held a minority but important position within the larger field of film studies. During the 1980s and 1990s, post-semiotic interventions into the truth and meaning of documentaries dominated the research agenda. Lately, newer concerns – from a social theory of cinema to the phenomenology of spectatorship – have supplemented this agenda. How do we best characterize documentary studies today? How has the subfield responded to wider changes in the discipline and to changes in documentary itself? How has the relationship between documentary makers and documentary scholars changed?

To address these questions, the symposium will comprise panels and workshops, allowing for both substantive scholar or artist presentations and wider dialogue. Contexts and Institutions will ask in workshop format how have documentary institutions evolved, particularly in the contemporary mediascape. Documentary Studies: Traditions and New Directions will explore new methodologies and research agendas in the discipline and weigh them against an impressive body of scholarship already existing. Non-Griersonian Genres will theorize nonfiction filmmaking that departs from the Griersonian documentary model: experimental documentaries, essay films, etc.

DRAFT SCHEDULE

10:30 – 12:00
Contexts/Institutions
Workshop-Discussion

D.B Jones (Drexel University), on film policy and the National Film Board of
Canada

Patricia White (Swarthmore College), on distribution and Women Make Movies

María Teresa Rodriguez (University of the Arts) on public broadcasting and
community video

Ben Kalina (Temple University) on environmental production practices

1:30 – 3:15
Documentary Studies: Traditions and New Directions
Panel

Jane Gaines (Columbia University), on documentary cinephilia

Jonathan Kahana (New York University), on reenactment

Warren Bass (Temple University), on fictionalization and Leacock

Chris Cagle (Temple University), on documentary reception studies and Grey
Gardens

3:30 - 5:15
Non-Griersonian Genres
Panel

Nora Alter (University of Florida) , on the essay film

Elisabeth Subrin (Temple University), on conceptualism and experimental
appropriations of documentary

Rod Coover (Temple University), on the artifact and the found footage film

Jason Zuzga (University of Pennsylvania), on the nature documentary

Temple University Cinematheque presents

Dead Alive
dir. Peter Jackson, 1992, New Zealand, color, 97 min

One of the goriest--and most hilarious--horror movies ever produced, this early entry from Oscar winning director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong) is a cult favorite about young love, domineering parents, greedy heirs and outrageously creative methods for killing zombies. For the sober minded academic a film like this presents ample opportunity to meditate on notions of the grotesque body or the premise that horror and humor both depend on cognitive dissonance for their respective effects. For the rest of us, it's just a rollicking good time. Whichever category you fall under, we hope you'll join us. **First 20 attendees receive a complimentary barf bag keepsake! Hosted by TU Cinematheque's resident gorehound Michael Benedict.

Thusday, March 26, 5:30PM
Tuttleman Learning Center, Room 101
13th St between Montgomery and Berks

Presented on DVD projected onto a big screen.

--
Michael Hartig

Now Available from Paley Library, the latest in the popular Treasures series from the National Film Preservation Foundation...
"Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 presents 26 films by artists who helped to redefine cinema. It is the first anthology of the period available on DVD. The new 5-1/4 hour, 2-disc anthology, released on March 3, 2009 by Image Entertainment, samples an array of film types and styles, from abstract animation to documentary and balances acknowledged classics with rediscoveries. The films are drawn from the preservation work of five of America's foremost avant-garde archives—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Pacific Film Archive. None of the titles has been available before on good-quality video in the United States."

* Bruce Baillie, Here I Am (1962)
* Wallace Berman, Aleph (1956-66?)
* Stan Brakhage, The Riddle of Lumen (1972)
* Robert Breer, Eyewash (1959)
* Shirley Clarke, Bridges-Go-Round (1958)
* Joseph Cornell, By Night with Torch and Spear (1940s?)
* Storm De Hirsch, Peyote Queen (1965)
* Hollis Frampton, (nostalgia) (1971)
* Larry Gottheim, Fog Line (1970)
* Ken Jacobs, Little Stabs at Happiness (1959-63)
* Lawrence Jordan, Hamfat Asar (1965)
* George Kuchar, I, An Actress (1977)
* Owen Land, New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976)
* Standish Lawder, Necrology (1969-70)
* Saul Levine, Note to Pati (1969)
* Christopher Maclaine, The End (1953)
* Jonas Mekas, Notes on the Circus (1966)
* Marie Menken, Go! Go! Go! (1962-64)
* Robert Nelson & William T. Wiley, The Off-Handed Jape...& How to Pull it Off (1967)
* Pat O'Neill, 7362 (1967)
* Ron Rice, Chumlum (1964)
* Paul Sharits, Bad Burns (1982)
* Jane Conger Belson Shimane, Odds & Ends (1959)
* Harry Smith, Film No. 3: Interwoven (1947-49)
* Chick Strand, Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
* Andy Warhol, Mario Banana (No. 1) (1964)

Tuesday, March 24, 2:30 PM, Paley Library Lecture Hall

Moskowitz exhumed the book Stones of Summer from obscurity and turned it into a full-length film highlighting the importance of creating a repository for books and information. His “re-discovery” of this book and eventual creation of the film emphasizes the relationship between new mediums and traditional print materials. Please join us as Moskowitz discusses filmmaking, his extraordinary journey into his Lost Book Club, and his current projects which tie together history and art.

Questions?
Contact Library Communications Manager
Phone: 215-204-2828

A photographic essay on the Forgotten Theater of America
- Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography -
(via The House Next Door)

From Yanik Ruiz-Ramon and Abhi Modi, Directors of the Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival:

We cordially invite you to the Awards Ceremony for the 2009 Greater
Philadelphia Student Film Festival on March 27th, 2009. After receiving
more than 130 submissions from colleges and universities around the
region, we will be screening our 25 finalist films - they represent some
of the finest student films produced in the region.

The event will be held at the Levitt Auditorium in Center City,
Philadelphia, and will feature FREE Qdoba Burritos, Honest Tea, and live
music from DJ Foxx Boogie. Winners will be selected in Comedy, Drama,
Experimental, Documentary, and Animation. All winners will screen their
films at the Philadelphia Film Festival, and an overall winner will also
receive $1750 towards film equipment rentals.
What: Awards Ceremony for GPSFF 2009. We will be screnning some of the
BEST student films in Philly.
When: Friday March 27th, 2009. Doors open at 6:15pm and show starts at 7pm
sharp
Where: Levitt Auditorium in Center City, Philadelphia (401 S. Broad
Street, just a few blocks south of City Hall)

Tickets are available online for $10 at www.gpsff.com, or $15 at the door.

To learn more about GPSFF and its mission to unite filmmakers across the
Philadelphia region, visit our website at www.gpsff.com. We hope to see
you at the awards ceremony!

Yanik Ruiz-Ramon and Abhi Modi
GPSFF Directors
www.gpsff.com

Temple University Cinematheque presents

Pier Paolo Pasolini Birthday Tribute

Thursday, March 5, 5:30 pm
Tuttleman Learning Center Room 101

TEOREMA
1968, 98 min, color, Italian with English subtitles
A seductive stranger insinuates himself into the life of a bourgeois family in this mysterious allegoric tale adapted from Pasolini's own novel. Starring Terence Stamp (Billy Budd, The Collector, The Limey) and Silvana Mangano (winner 1968 Venice Film Festival). With music by Ennio Morricone. Preceded by a brief introduction to the life and work of the writer-director who would have been 87 years old this Thursday.

**This film will be a DVD projected onto a big screen.