Cornell Cinema premieres 'Tosca' and hosts videomaker Miso Suchy

Cornell Cinema presents the Ithaca premiere of Benoît Jacqout's "Tosca" tonight, July 24, at 7:15 p.m. A second screening is offered July 26 at 7:15 p.m. Courtesy of Cornell Cinema

This summer, Cornell Cinema presents an innovative treatment of Puccini's opera Tosca -- a fiery story of love, lust, murder and revenge -- directed by Benoît Jacqout. Featuring Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the film combines traditional staging with black-and-white documentary footage of the performers recording in street clothes. Two screenings of "Tosca" are offered: today, July 24, and Saturday, July 26, both at 7:15 p.m. Tickets are $6 general, $5 students and seniors and $4 for Cornell graduate students and kids 12 and under.

For more information on this and other summer screenings, call 255-3522 or visit the Cornell Cinema Web site at http://cinema.cornell.edu.

On Monday, July 28, at 7:15 p.m., Cornell Cinema presents a restored print of the Italian classic "Il Posto" as part of the Restored Foreign Classics series. An additional screening will take place Wednesday, July 30, at 9:45 p.m.

Then, on Tuesday, July 29, at 7:15 p.m., Cornell Cinema hosts videomaker Miso Suchy. Now a film professor at the department of Art Media Studies at Syracuse University, Suchy grew up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, before moving to the United States in 1988. His films have been screened at festivals around the world. He returns with new work that centers on the realities and complex experiences of émigrés, artists in exile and families divided by geography and mind.

The program will feature the U.S. premiere of "Home Movie: a Diary for my American-born Son," an overflowing album tying together the disparate cultures, languages and histories of one family. Beginning where most home movies end, this video explores the rhythm and ritual of families and generations coming together and moving apart. "Home Movie" recently was accepted as an official selection of the New England Film & Video Festival and will screen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston next March.

Also screening as part of the program will be the U.S. premiere of "A Short Film for Leda" (5 minutes, 2003); "Transmitting Baba" (19 minutes, 2001), a documentary experiment made from video letters that the artist exchanged with his mother in order to help his son, Myko, see his grandmother for the first time over a great distance; and "About Dogs and People -- Expedition Civilized Canine" (43 minutes, 1993), which won the 1994 Critic's Award for Best Short Film from the Association of Film Critics of Slovakia.