Cinema highlights include visit by filmmaker, New York Video Festival

A scene from David Riker's film "The City."

Cornell Cinema welcomes filmmaker David Riker at a special screening of his recent film "The City (La Ciudad)," a powerful drama about the lives of Latino immigrants in New York City. Riker will present the film Friday, March 31, at 7:15 p.m. in Uris Auditorium. The event is co-sponsored with the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Union Days 2000. "The City" also will be shown Saturday, April 1, and Tuesday, April 4, both at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Admission to the screenings is $4.50 general/$4 students and seniors.

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, Riker has cast nonactors in four vignettes, developed through community workshops, depicting the struggles of recent Latino immigrants to construct new lives away from their families and homelands in a city where they are often either ignored or exploited. Shot over six years on location in New York City, with most of the dialogue in Spanish with English subtitles, Riker's film tells the stories of a homeless street puppeteer trying to enroll his daughter in school, a sweatshop worker trying to collect her back pay for her ailing daughter's care and the woes of others who are lost in a new and unfamiliar world.

Also in April Cornell Cinema presents highlights from the latest New York Video Festival, a touring package of five thematically arranged programs curated by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. These innovative, entertaining selections from the changing world of video art will be shown Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for Theatre Arts Film Forum as part of the Cinema Off-Center series. Admission to each program is $3.

The series begins April 4 with "Society of Spectacle," four videos about the glitz and pitfalls of popular culture: "Johnny Take a Dive" (Jennifer Reeder, 14 minutes), about an MTV songstress who embodies temptation and mystery, magnifying the hype of seduction and sexuality; "small lies, Big Truth" (Shelly Silver, 15 minutes), which uses fragments of testimony from President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to explore issues of morality and voyeurism; "Evil and Pop Culture" (Cane CapoVolto, 16 minutes), which hints at the gruesome side of the sexy allure of pop music sensations; and "The History of Glamour" (Theresa Duncan, 40 minutes), an animated story of the rise of the fabulously outrageous Charles Valentine, who comes to the big city to find fame and fortune by any means necessary.

Other themes that will be explored are: April 11, "Outer and Inner Space," five videos about time, space and memory; April 18, "Family Matters," six videos about domestic life; April 25, "They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To," five videos reflecting on the nature of the medium and narrative suspense; and May 2, two films that go behind the scenes of corporate America.

Cinema Off-Center is cosponsored with the Cornell Council for the Arts. Additional funding for this series is provided by the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance.