Cornell Cinema is offering film series this month on the Hollywood blacklist, women filmmakers and the city in film.
October marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the hearings by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, a series of public interrogations that lead to the persecution and blacklisting of numerous Hollywood writers, directors, producers and actors as suspected Communist sympathizers. In recognition of this period, Cornell Cinema's Monday Night Classic Cinema series provides moviegoers with the opportunity to see how blacklisted artists did manage to express their political beliefs on screen.
"The 50th anniversary was the real impetus for this series," said Mary Fessenden, director of Cornell Cinema, "and we felt [the series] would make viewers very curious about the blacklist era."
The series begins Monday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre with the Ithaca premiere of the documentary film Red Hollywood, which includes clips from over 50 films, followed at 9:30 p.m. by the 1954 western Johnny Guitar.
The series continues Monday nights at 7 p.m. in
Willard Straight Theatre with other films referenced in
Red Hollywood: Body and Soul (Oct.
13), Marked Woman (Oct. 20) and The Sound of Fury
(Oct. 27). The Boy With Green Hair will be shown Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. in Uris
Auditorium. Admission to all films is $4.50; $4 for students, seniors
and children under 12, with the exception of Johnny
Guitar, which is $2 with admission to Red
Hollywood.
To round out the series, two "sidebar" films, with blacklisted writers, that marked the beginning of the end of the blacklist era, Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia, will be shown Oct. 17 and 18, respectively, at 7 p.m. in Uris Auditorium.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Women Make Movies (WMM), an organization dedicated to supporting women filmmakers, Cornell Cinema and the Cornell Council for the Arts will present a four-part tribute to WMM's eclectic, provocative and groundbreaking work on Tuesday nights in October. The films will be screened at 7:30 in the Center for Theatre Arts Film Forum. Tickets are $2.
WMM was established in 1972 and today distributes over 400 documentary, dramatic and experimental films made by emerging and established women to museums, theaters and universities around the world.
"We chose to promote the films distributed by Women Make Movies because they are supportive of the work we do at Cornell, and we, in turn, are supportive of their work," Fessenden said.
The series will be introduced Oct. 7 by Debra Zimmerman, the executive director of WMM. Zimmerman will be joined by video artist Cecilia Barriga, who will discuss her work The Meeting of Two Queens. The program that night, "A Lesbian Perspective," features six short pieces, including Barriga's film, Susana Munoz's Susana and Cheryl Farthing's Rosebud.
"A Multicultural Perspective," the Oct. 14 program, begins with a short film, Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People, by Ayoka Chenzira. Hair Piece is an animated satire on the question of self-image for African-American women. It is followed by two more films with multicultural themes: Remembering Wei Yi-fang, Remember Myself: An Autobiography, about the filmmaker's experience as an African-American woman living in Taiwan, and Who's Going to Pay for These Donuts, Anyway?, which documents Japanese-American video artist Janice Tanaka's search for her father.
The third program in the series, "A Theoretical Perspective," on Oct. 21, features four experimental works from the 1970s through the 1990s that explore representations of women and feminist film theory.
The series concludes Oct. 28 with "A Body Perspective." This program will be introduced by Alice Maurice, associate producer of Judith Helfand's A Healthy Baby Girl, a film featured in the program.
On Wednesday evenings during October, Cornell Cinema presents a series dedicated to the cinematic representations of the modern city in both commercial and avant-garde films. Screenings will be 7 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Admission is $4.50; $4 for students, seniors and children 12 and under.
The series begins Oct. 1 with a program of works under the genre heading of "City Symphonies" and will be introduced by Professor Werner Goehner from the Department of Architecture. Included are impressionistic and montage aesthetic works on Manhattan, Berlin, Moscow and Odessa.
The series continues Oct. 8 with a beautiful new print of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: Song of Two Humans, which won some of the first Academy Awards.
Jacques Tati's comic masterpiece Playtime will be shown Oct. 15. On Oct. 22, the African film La vie est belle (Life is Rosy) takes the viewer inside Kinshasha, Zaire's exhilarating and exasperating capital.
The series concludes Oct. 29 with a New York City Shorts Program, introduced by Professor Mary Woods from the Department of Architecture. The shorts include a collection of experimental pieces from the '50s and '60s exploring New York City's unique architecture, people and social space.