Fall 2009
Projectorhead Film/Lecture Series Fall ‘09
Sponsored by the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures in collaboration with the University of Michigan Museum of Art
All events will take place in the U-M Museum of Art’s Helmut Stern Auditorium, lower level of the museum--525 S. State St.
All events are Free
Starting time 7:00 pm except when noted
Contact: Philip Hallman, Film Librarian, Dept of Screen Arts & Cultures/Hatcher Graduate Library, 734/615-0445 or phallman@umich.edu
Thursday, Sept 17
7:30 PM
Night at the Museum
(Shawn Levy, 2006)
Part of the U-M’s Museum theme semester series.
Funnyman Ben Stiller stars in this action-adventure-comedy about a museum that comes to life at night. Good-hearted dreamer Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), despite being perpetually down on his luck, thinks he's destined for something big. But even he could never have imagined how "big," when he accepts what appears to be a menial job as a graveyard-shift security guard at New York's Museum of Natural History. During Larry's watch, extraordinary things begin to occur: Mayans, Roman Gladiators, and cowboys emerge from their diorama to wage epic battles; in his quest for fire, a Neanderthal burns down his own display; Attila the Hun pillages his neighboring exhibits, and a T-Rex reminds everyone why he's history's fiercest predator. Amidst the chaos, the only person Larry can turn to for advice is a wax figure of President Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), who helps our hero harness the bedlam, stop a nefarious plot, and save the museum. Also showing--Will Vinton's Academy Award-winning animated short "Closed Mondays." (120 min. total)
Thursday, Sept 24
7:00 PM
The Betrayal
(Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, 2008)
Academy Award nominee, Best Documentary Feature. The collateral impact of America’s secret war in Laos is reflected in the extraordinary story of one family’s struggle for survival – in Laos and later in the U.S. Filmed over the course of 23 years, The Betrayal is the directorial debut of famed cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 4 Little Girls) in collaboration with the film’s subject and co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. clandestinely operated in the neighboring country of Laos. By 1973 a secret air campaign had dropped more bombs on Laos than were used during WWI and WWII combined. Recruited by the CIA to work intelligence along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Thavisouk’s father is exposed after America’s retreat and is imprisoned by the ruling Communist government. The entire family comes under suspicion and their mother is forced to raise Thavi and his nine younger siblings alone. At the age thirteen, Thavi escapes across the Mekong River to Thailand, and is joined two years later by his mother and seven of his siblings. After living in a refugee camp the family seeks asylum in America, and is soon deposited in a crowded tenement in Brooklyn. Left to their own means by the government, the family struggles to survive and stay together, pulled by two different cultures, terrorized by local gangs, and haunted by memories.
A lyrical melding of memoir, cinema verité and historical inquiry, The Betrayal is an exquisitely crafted tale of a country and a family torn asunder, and the long and painful process of repair. (96 min.)
Friday, Sept. 25
3:30 PM
Professor Emeritus Frank Beaver Teaching Career Celebration!
Please join us to celebrate the teaching career of Frank Beaver, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emeritus of Screen Arts & Cultures and Communication Studies at the U-M. Frank taught for nearly 40 years and was the film critic for Michigan’s NPR radio statios WUOM-WFUM-WVGR for 25 years. The influence he has had on students is vast and varied. Four former students will lead a panel to pay tribute to Frank and explain how he helped to guide them into careers in the film and television industry. Panelists include: producer Bonny Dore, screenwriter Eric Champnella, and filmmakers Christopher Cook and Fran Victor.
Thursday, Oct. 1
7:00 PM
Film & Video Student Association (FVSA)'s First Thursday: Screen Arts & Cultures Student Honor's Projects (various, 2000-2009)
The Screen Arts & Cultures Department and the Film Video Student Association (FVSA) present a selection of Screen Arts student honors projects. Honors in SAC is a highly competitive program in which students work closely with SAC faculty to create original, advanced level work, either a production project or written thesis. This curated program showcases film, television, and digital honors projects from the past decade.
Thursday, Oct. 8
7:00 PM
How Ohio Pulled It Off (Charla Barker, Matthew Kraus, Mariana Quiroga, 2008)
How Ohio Pulled It Off, a provocative new documentary, offers sobering evidence of election fraud in the United States, and highlights the potential for future abuses.
On election night 2004, across the United States and the world, citizens were glued to their
televisions, waiting to discover who would win the greatest power position on the planet. The
presidential decision came down to one state among fifty: Ohio. What really happened in Ohio,
on that fateful day in November? How Ohio Pulled It Off takes to the streets and polling places,
uncovering an alarming pattern of disenfranchisement among Ohio’s urban minorities.
How Ohio Pulled It Off chronicles the theft of the presidency, and the public outcry that
followed. Infuriated by official malfeasance and partisan indifference, citizens took swift action.
Multitudes protested in the streets, the voting rights movement was revitalized, and the powers that be were forced to pay attention.
Thursday, Oct. 15
7:00 PM
What the Hell Was That? (various, 1980-present)
Experimental film is an often misunderstood art form within the world of movies. Have you ever attended a screening at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and left thinking—what the hell did I just see? Join us for an educational screening and discussion in partnership with the Ann Arbor Film Festival and Executive Director Donald Harrison as he curates an evening of four challenging, short experimental films from the AAFF's archives which will be presented and screened by participating panelists, followed by discussion with the audience.
Thursday, Oct. 22
7:00 PM
Join us for a tribute reading of
Ageless, Ohio
Screenplay by Matthew Reichl
U-M/SAC alumnus Matthew Reichl passed away from cancer in May 2009. This event is a celebration of Matthew as screenwriter and artist.
The screenplay story concerns a father and son crime team on the run from even badder criminals who stumble upon a fantasy town permanently stuck in the 1950's, where they must decide whether to stay or leave before "Paradise" vanishes forever.
After the reading there will a discussion lead by Jim Burnstein, U-M Screen Arts & Cultures Screenwriting Coordinator and classmates of Matthew, screenwriters V. Prasad, Dan Shere, and Craig & Laurie Silverstein to honor Matthew Reichl’s memory.
Matthew Reichl, BA from Film & Video Studies at the University of Michigan and Hopwood Award recipient for his script Ageless, Ohio. He, also, received an MFA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.
Thursday, Oct. 29
7:00 PM
The 2nd Annual Hubert Cohen Film Criticism and Film Scholarship Series Lecture
Dennis Harvey, University of Michigan alum and film critic for VARIETY will return to campus to deliver the 2nd Annual Hubert Cohen Film Criticism and Film Scholarship Series lecture. Harvey will discuss the current state of film criticism in this country as well as pay tribute to his former instructor, Hugh Cohen, the much beloved Professor of Film Studies here at the U-M in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures and Residential College. Cohen created and taught the introduction to film studies course, SAC/RC 236, for more than thirty years and introduced thousands of students to an understanding of film as an important and powerful art form.
Thursday, November 5
7:00 pm
FVSA “First Thursday” - “ Lightworks Redux”
The Screen Arts and Cultures Department and the Film Video Student Association (FVSA) present a selection of student film, video, and digital works, This program presents a curated selection from past “Lightworks” Festivals, the student-run festival which showcases SAC student production projects, held at the end of each academic term.
Thursday, November 12
7:00 pm
A Colloquium on Abusive Subtitling with Abé Mark Nornes and a Film by Sato Makoto
Film Screening: Sato Makoto's Memories of Agano
After the screening, Nornes will discuss his collaboration with director Sato in which they subjected his film to experimental, “abusive” subtitles: Subtitling Can be ‘Disturbing’: Memories of Agano and its Abusive Translation.
In 1992, director Sato Makoto released Living on the River Agano, a documentary closely examining the impact of Minamata Disease on a rural community in the mountains of Niigata. It was the result of several years spent living with the old farmers in the area. Ten years later, Sato and his cameraman returned to Niigata to renew their friendships with the farmers—at least those that had survived in the intervening years, and on this occasion, they made another film Memories of Agano (2004).
These two films posed a range of challenges to the subtitler, beginning with the remarkably thick dialect of Niigata, so incomprehensible to most Japanese that it is usually subtitled in Japanese. Sato wanted his sequel to steadfastly resist the reduction of these people to the Disease, deciding that his goals could be best served by forcing spectators to listen to how people spoke rather than simply what they were saying. So he chose not to subtitle it in Japanese. The result was a beautiful film that almost no one could “understand.” This posed a novel challenge to Nornes, the English subtitler. Nornes used Memories of Agano as an opportunity to bring his theorization of an "abusive subtitling" into thorough practice.
Abé Markus Nornes, Professor in Screen Arts & Cultures/Asian Languages & Cultures, is the author of Cinema Babel (Minnesota UP), a theoretical and historical look at the role of translation in film history. He also wrote Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary and Japanese Documentary Film: From the Meiji Era to Hiroshima (both Minnesota UP). He co-edited Japan-American Film Wars (Routledge), In Praise of Film Studies (Kinema Club), and many film festival retrospective catalogs. He is on the editorial boards of Documentary Box (Japan), International Studies in Documentary, and Mechadamia and has been co-owner of the internet newsgroup KineJapan since its inception.
This event is sponsored by Screen Arts & Cultures, Comparative Literature's Year of Translation and the Center for Japanese Studies.
Thursday, November 19
7:00 pm
24 City (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008, 107 minutes)
A masterful new documentary from Jia Zhang-ke – "Not only is the 38-year-old director the most prominent Chinese filmmaker of his generation, he also has come to assume the role of witness and conscience in a society characterized by rapid modernization and a growing amnesia." (Dennis Lim, LA Times, 2008) – 24 City recounts the dramatic and thunderous fall of the state-owned Factory 420, exploring both its physical demolition and its powerful symbolic echo of a half-century of communist rule.
Given the name Factory 420 as an internal military security code, the Chengdu Engine Group was founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, and saw years of prosperous activity. Now abandoned, the factory awaits its destiny. Sold for millions to real-estate developers, it will be transformed into an emblem of market economy: a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City.
Constructed around eight dramatic interviews, punctuated by snippets of pop songs and poetry, along with beautifully-shot footage of the demolition, 24 City excavates the debris of collective memory and emphasizes the thin boundary between fact and fiction in post-revolutionary Chinese history. It does so by weaving into this oral history three fictional monologues delivered by professional actors. The interviewees represent three generations with ties to the factory: former factory workers, contemporary workers, and their children.
An absolutely mesmerizing experience, 24 City attempts to understand the complexity of the social changes sweeping across China by observing the impact a half-century of Socialism has had on the Chinese people.
* Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival, 2008
* Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival, 2008
* Official Selection, New York Film Festival, 2008
“One of the most original filmmakers working today. Without nostalgia but with sensitivity and depth of feeling, Mr. Jia is documenting a country and several generations that are disappearing before the world’s eyes.” - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“The most important filmmaker in the world.” - Stuart Klawans, The Nation
“Poignant and charming. Eloquent testimony to a China that is vanishing with each swing of the wrecking ball…. The memories of the workers in their factory microcosm, and telling documentaries like these, keep the past alive, so that later generations will know what once was, and what’s been lost.” - Mary Corliss, Time Magazine
“24 City brings huge stretches of long-repressed history to life on an intimate scale. Jia, filming with a calm, probing ruefulness, quietly unlocks the floodgates of memory as a crucial first step toward personal and political liberation.” - Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Thursday, December 3
7:00 pm
FVSA “First Thursday” - “ Southeast Michigan Salon”
The Screen Arts and Cultures Department and the Film Video Student Association (FVSA) present a selection of student video and digital works from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor. This program is part of a “screening exchange” between students in the Entertainment Arts Program at CCS and the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures here at UM, Ann Arbor.
Thursday, December 10
7:00 pm
The Beaches of Agnes, (Agnes Varda, 2008, 100 minutes)
A reflection on art, life and the movies, The Beaches of Agnes is a magnificent new film from the great Agnes Varda, director of Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave.
When one thinks of the major figures of postwar cinema, the name Agnès Varda immediately springs to mind. Her body of work in both fiction and documentary is defined by a wealth of innovation and imagination. Irrepressible and enquiring, she is a force of nature, and even at eighty shows no signs of slowing down. Her new film is a reminder that there are few artists capable of such eloquence in cinema.
Varda takes beaches as her point of departure. Though she was not born near the ocean, she would travel to the seaside every Easter and summer during her childhood, and her memories of these trips act as a springboard for the film's meditation on her early life. She recalls her wartime exile to the coastal village of Sète as a period of endless fun and life jackets. While a young adult, Varda began her career as a photographer before raising a family with her husband, Jacques Demy (best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and eventually turning to filmmaking. Returning to Sète over a decade after the end of the war, she used the locale and its fishermen as the backdrop for her remarkable first feature film, La Pointe Courte.
Varda weaves photographs, vintage footage, film clips, and present-day sequences into a memorable voyage through her life, during which she confronts the joy of creation and the pain of personal loss, death and aging. It is a singular trip played out against the exciting context of the postwar explosion of cultural expression in France. She knew everyone: her colleagues in the French New Wave, the Black Panthers in California and even Jim Morrison, who would visit when in Paris. Idiosyncratic, engaging and deeply moving, The Beaches of Agnes is a journey through an extraordinary artistic life.
* Winner, Best Documentary, Cesar Awards, 2009
* Winner, Best Film, French Critics Union, 2009
* Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival, 2008
* Official Selection, Venice Film Festival, 2008
Four Stars! “A great, loving, uplifting film.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Glorious... A remarkable history, rich in comedy and occasionally heartbreaking, filled with wise reflections and strange digressions about the wonders of life.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“A work of art in its own right, one of her best—a poignant, rapturously emotional tribute to life itself.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Exhilarating. A lively, visually stunning autobiographical essay… Will no doubt enchant newcomers to her work just as thoroughly as it will captivate her longtime fans. The Beaches of Agnes might be the best film yet from a director who for half a century has managed to inspire, astonish and endure.”
– Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
“Extraordinary. Breathtaking. It's difficult not to leave the theater giddy at being swept up in Ms. Vardas’ embrace.”
– Betsy Sharkey, LA Times
“An artist of undiminished vigor, curiosity and intelligence.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times
“A masterpiece.”
– Stuart Klawans, The Nation
FREE and open to all University of Michigan students, faculty and staff and the general public.
