News of Athens' Cinema Scene
1 day ago
Ciné Hosts Discussion of Michael Haneke's Films
Ciné will host the second installment in its Director Spotlight Series Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 6 p.m. when Dr. Christine Haase gives a talk entitled "Violent Visions: The Dystopian Cinema of Michael Haneke." The Austrian Haneke is one of the most prominent and controversial figures on the European scene, having written and directed such films as Funny Games (both the Austrian and U.S. versions), Code Unknown, Caché and, most recently, The White Ribbon, winner of the Palm d'Or award for best film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Haneke's films are notable for their preoccupation with shocking and often baffling acts of violence. The White Ribbon is scheduled to open at Ciné later this month.
Haase is a professor in UGA's Germanic and Slavic Studies department who teaches a very popular (and rightly so) German film class connected with the university's Film Studies department. The Director Spotlight Series got off to a rousing start last month with Richard Neupert's talk on Pedro Almodóvar, which was attended by about 100 people. Cinéclub UGA is involved in the series; the campus society has done a terrific job getting students interested in film happenings outside the multiplexes. Haase's talk will be followed by an open discussion. This series is a great development in the Athens film scene, and something we should all be proud and happy to support.
13 days ago
Openers: It's only proper to start this week's column by acknowledging the death on Jan. 11 of Eric Rohmer, the great dramatist and moralist of the French New Wave. I'd hoped to watch what turned out to be his final film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, in time for the writing of this column, but I got sidetracked and it didn't happen. So, while that tribute will have to wait for another week, it's worth taking this opportunity to remember that just as Rohmer had, many of his contemporaries—Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, Jacques Rivette—remain extremely relevant artists more than 50 years after the New Wave broke. Further evidence of that should arrive whenever Sony Pictures Classics decides to release Resnais' Wild Grass in the U.S.: there was nothing else in last year's Cannes Film Festival I was more excited to see, and that, unfortunately, remains the case.
The last thing I saw was Frank Capra's 1933 drama The Bitter Tea of General Yen, with 25-year-old Barbara Stanwyck and Nils Asther, a Swedish actor (Warner Oland, presumably, was unavailable) playing the Chinese warlord of the title. The film, which is unavailable on DVD, had been near the top of my "most wanted" list for some time when it popped up on the Turner Classic Movies schedule a couple of weeks ago. It's deeply atmospheric and deadly serious in a way that's unusual for Capra, whose sometimes heavy earnestness was almost always leavened with deftly observant comic touches. Those are unneeded here, as the director brings sensitivity and a welcome ambiguity to the story of an American missionary (Stanwyck, wonderful even without full command of the irresistible swagger she would soon cultivate) who becomes the "guest" of the sophisticated yet ruthless Yen in the midst of China's late-1920s civil war. Those of you who are interested in this kind of thing—and I hope there are a lot of you—have an opportunity to catch this rare film when it airs again on TCM Mar. 28. Hint: tcm.com has a little feature called "Remind Me" that I'm very fond of.
Education: UGA's Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies is hosting a six-part Friday afternoon "brown bag film and discussion series" to accompany its exhibition "Measuring Deliberate Speed: Georgians Face School Desegregation." The series began Jan. 22, and continues with Hoxie: The First Stand Jan. 29 and A Tale of Two Cities (1961) Feb. 5. The noon screenings in the Russell Auditorium at the Main Library are only an hour long, including introductions from Peabody Awards Archivist Mary Miller and audience discussions following each film. Go to www.libs.uga.edu/russell and click on "Events Calendar" for more info.
The Found Footage Festival returns to Ciné on Friday, Feb. 5.
Ciné: The wildly popular Found Footage Festival returns to Athens Friday, Feb. 5 with an 8 p.m. screening at Ciné. Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, the festival's hosts and curators, promise an all-new selection of always hilarious, sometimes awful cultural flotsam will be projected before the tearing eyes of 100 or so students and townie idiots like me. Come early… Lone Scherfig's An Education and Tom Ford's A Single Man, each a high-profile indie with an acclaimed star performance at its heart (by Carey Mulligan and Colin Firth, respectively), finally have been confirmed dates at Ciné. Both are scheduled to open Feb. 5… In case you've missed this information elsewhere in Flagpole, the 20th Annual Mental Health Benefit is hosting two screenings of A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story at Ciné Tuesday, Jan. 26 (in case you pick this up very early) and Thursday, Jan. 28… For more on all of the above, go to www.athenscine.com.
Series: Three UGA campus organizations, including Speak Out for Species, are sponsoring the Animal Voices Film Festival, a five-film series on animal rights issues that begins Feb. 1 with Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History. The free screenings are Monday evenings at 7:30 in Room 102 of the Miller Learning Center. Check it out at www.uga.edu/sos/filmfest… The ACC Public Library presents free iFilms screenings Thursdays at 7 p.m. in the library auditorium at 2025 Baxter St. Showing Jan. 28 is Trouble the Water, a 2008 documentary that features amazing and personal video footage shot by New Orleans rapper Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband, Scott, in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina. Feb. 4 is The Eyes of Me, a 2009 documentary by Scott Maitland about four teens attending the Texas School for the Blind. And iFilms now has a group on Facebook—if that is one of the websites you occasionally visit, I suggest seeking it out.
27 days ago
Darius Goes West a Finalist for $1,000,000 Award
There's exciting news from the folks at Darius Goes West, the local nonprofit that sprang from the eponymous 2007 documentary about Darius Weems, then a high school student in Athens, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The foundation is one of 100 finalists—and the only one from Georgia—in the Chase Community Giving Challenge, which will reward a winning organization with $1,000,000 and five runners-up with $100,000 each. The winners will be determined by voting on Facebook—I repeat, the winners will be determined by a public vote on Facebook—so please, everyone, take a moment to lend your support to this amazing local cause.
The link DGW has set up for voting is www.dariusgoeswest.org/athensvote. It's the easiest thing in the world to click on those blue letters and contribute to this effort, so please do so (I just did). While you're at it, take another 30 seconds and share the link with anyone you know who might be interested. The Facebook voting cycle begins Friday, Jan. 15, and runs through the following Friday, Jan. 22. The winners will be announced Jan. 23.
By making it to the final 100 in the competition (out of 500,000 initial entrants, according to the film's director and foundation "boss" Logan Smalley!), DGW has already won $25,000 to help fund muscular dystrophy research. But $100,000 is a lot more, and $1,000,000 is a heck of a lot more. Go to work, Athens.
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