What's Happening

January 11 to February 16, 2008

The Medieval Remake

Berkeley, CA

Remember when horses were steeds, women were damsels, and clothes were made of steel and clanged when you walked? Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive showcases a series of films under the title The Medieval Remake that explore the cinematic landscape of our notion of what it was like back in the Middle Ages. Inspired by an exhibit The Contagious Middle Ages in Post - Communist East Central Europe, the film series offers thirteen films, ranging from early silent gems (like Fritz Lang's 1924 operatic The Nibelungen, Part I: Siegfried's Death and Dreyer's 1928 classic The Passion of Joan of Arc) to late Russian and Eastern European allegorical works (like Lech Majewski's 1980 The Knight and Sergei Paradjanov's 1985 The Legend of Suram Fortress). And of course no medieval survey would be complete with Bergman's The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring (which was remade for Americans as The Last House on the Left). Most interesting in this film series is how our attempts to visualize a time we know so very little about ends up saying so much about our own time.

Until February 10, 2008

Hollywood, Colorado

Aurora, CO

Hollywood, Colorado, a new film series being hosted by Aurora History Museum redefines regional filmmaking. The series is not so much about an organic filmmaking community that has grown up in the Rockies as it is about the multiple ways Colorado (with its mountains and high plains, drifters and ski bums) has been cast in films. Admission is free for such highlights as Elliot Silverstein's raunchy western Cat Ballou (filmed in Canon City with Jane Fonda), Anthony Mann's cowboy drama The Naked Spur (filmed in Durango and the Rocky Mountains with James Stewart) and, of course, a ski extravaganza, Storm by ski-film auteur Warren Miller. In addition, there is a museum exhibit that pays tribute to the over 500 films that have been made in Colorado since 1898. Indeed so prodigious has been the cinematic efforts in that state, that they even have a Ten Worst list as well, with the number one worst film made in Colorado falling to 1984 horror flick The Jar.

Until February 17, 2008

Great American Musicals

Tampa, FL

Having just finished their Holiday Classics season, the Tampa Theatre rings in the new year with a look back at Great American Musicals. Interestingly, all the movies still to screen in this series are from the latter period of the Hollywood musical era (which began with the explosion of sound in 1927's The Jazz Singer) and look abroad to stories from Europe. First there's Bob Fosse's octuple Oscar winner Cabaret (1972), possibly the last great studio musical, which casts an eye on decadent Weimar Germany as Nazism starts to cast its shadow. It features a barnstorming, Oscar-winning performance from Liza Minelli as the inimitable Sally Bowles, and there is another great female lead performance in My Fair Lady (1964), featuring Audrey Hepburn as cockney sparrow Eliza Doolittle who is turned into a society princess by curmudgeonly Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison, also in Oscar-winning form). After Berlin and London, the series concludes its whistle-stop of major European cities with An American in Paris (1952), in which ex-GI Gene Kelly travels to the City of Love to work as a painter, gets into complicated romantic situations, and then caps off proceedings with a stunning 17-minute dance sequence (which apparently took close to a month to shoot).

January 17 to 31, 2008

Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King

Los Angeles, CA

Though the idea of making "independent" films within Hollywood is an idea which is predominantly first associated with the New Hollywood generation of the 1970s, Otto Preminger had been flying solo in the studio system decades before. Preminger, an Austrian Jew who played Nazis onscreen, was one of the most prolific and talented directors in Hollywood, an audacious taboo-breaker who was feared for his on-set tantrums. Following its run at NYC's Film Forum, the Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King season arrives in L.A. at the Egyptian Theater and showcases the remarkable skill and variety in Preminger's directorial work. While his breakthrough was with the film noir Laura (1944), Preminger worked in almost every genre, from romantic comedy (The Moon is Blue) to courtroom drama (Anatomy of a Murder), from musical (Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones) to historical movie (Exodus). The season is tied in with Foster Hirsh's biography of the same name, and Hirsh will be present at screenings sometimes alongside actors from the films being shown.

January 18 to 27, 2008

Danish Filmfestival Atlanta

Atlanta, GA

Through the work of directors like Lars von Trier, Susanne Bier, Kristian Levring, Lone Scherfig and Christoffer Boe, Danish cinema has provided some of the most inventive and exciting cinema of the past decade. Residents of Atlanta are therefore particularly fortunate to have an annual showcase of Danish cinema, Danish Filmfestival Atlanta, which unspools over the next two weekends. There are five films being screened, the most high profile of which are Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the most recent Academy Awards, and Christoffer Boe's poetic, metaphysical romance Allegro. Also showing are three other films, Pernille Fischer Christensen's award-winning tragicomedy A Soap, and two family-friendly titles, the 60s-set We Shall Overcome and adventure movie The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar.