What's Happening

January 25 to February 3, 2008

Noir City Film Festival

San Francisco, CA

The Film Noir Foundation, an organization led by chroniclers of the gutter such as James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane, has as its mission statement to "rescue and restore America's noir heritage," and to this end started the Noir City Film Festival six years ago. The festival is a celebration of all things dark and brooding, and this year has a line-up comprised of many classic Hollywood thrillers of the 40s and 50s not available on DVD, as well as special events. There are a number of tributes to noir luminaries, including blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, leading man Richard Widmark, and actresses Gail Russell and Joan Leslie (who will make a special appearance). In addition to double bills with titles like "Murderous Husbands!" and "Dames As Tough As Nails!", there is a special treat in the form of The Grand Inquisitor, a new short film starring legendary actress Marsha Hunt (now 90) and directed by noir historian and Film Noir Foundation board member Eddie Muller.

January 27 to February 11, 2008

Shakespeare's Actresses in America

Boston, MA

Part of the reason that Shakespeare's plays continue to be performed to enthralled audiences over 400 years after they were first written is that there is an openness the bard's work that can adapted to the mores of the times. As a result, the way in which actors and actresses have performed Shakespeare has differed just as much because of contemporary sensibilities as much as personal interpretation. In her one-woman show, Shakespeare's Actresses in America, American Repertory Theatre actress Rebekah Maggor brings to life Shakespeare's heroines through the interpretations of old stage legends of yesteryear such as Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt as well as showing how film stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Claire Danes played those same roles over a century later. The show is derived not only from Maggor's research and personal experiences of playing Shakespeare, but also draws on her expertise as a voice and speech specialist, a background which informs her powerful imitative skills.

January 25 to February 7, 2008

Rialto Series

Seattle, WA

Started in 1997 by Film Forum rep programmer Bruce Goldstein, Rialto Pictures has been responsible for saving countless classic arthouse films from obscurity and giving them a new lease of life by re-releasing them theatrically. The list of 40-odd films Rialto has released (in theaters and more recently on DVD) contains the best works by Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Resnais and Robert Bresson as well as non-European treasures like the original Godzilla, which Rialto released uncut in the U.S. for the first time. Following its initial run at the Museum of Modern Art, a series celebrating Rialto's 10-year anniversary is now playing at the Seattle International Film Festival Cinema, and if you have ever wanted to have a crash course in the very best in European cinema, from Pépé le Moko (1937) through to 2002's Murderous Maids, you should take this unique opportunity.

Until April 12, 2008

Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots

Chicago, IL

From a psychological perspective, police mugshots are a revealing insight that captures individuals — whether they are drunks, petty thieves or cold-blooded killers — at their lowest ebb. Indeed mugshots are so interesting to collector Mark Michaelson that he has over 10,000 of them, dating between the 1870s (still early in the development of the photographic process) and the 1960s. Michaelson's collection, which has been previously displayed in New York and at the House of Love & Dissent in Rome, Italy, now arrives in Chicago. Instead of pictures of shamed celebrities or prominent citizens, Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots is made up of pictures of those circulating in the lower social spectrum, people forgotten and uncared for, left to fend for themselves using whatever criminal means necessary. As well as the fascinating process of examining the face of each guilty (or wrongly apprehended) individual, the exhibition unconventionally chronicles the progressions and fluctuations of the American criminal world over the course of a hundred years.

Until June 19, 2008

Alfred Hitchcock Revival Series

Baltimore, MD

Alfred Hitchcock first came to moviegoers' attention in 1926 with The Lodger, a chiller influenced by German Expressionism, and in the next 15 years made a string of increasingly skilled and inspired movies. However, it was Hitchcock's arrival in Hollywood in 1940 that began a period of time during which he would make the classic films for he is now remembered, all the while establishing himself as the most iconic and instantly recognizable director in the world. Baltimore's Charles Theatre — a favorite haunt of another flamboyant director, John Waters — have dedicated the first half of 2008 to showing Hitch's Hollywood movies in their Alfred Hitchcock Revival Series, with three screenings a week of the master's best films. Starting with Rebecca (1940), the series takes in Suspicion, Spellbound, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and many more wonderful movies from the portly English gentleman. All movies are shown in 35mm, and one particularly eye-catching event in the series is the rare 3-D screening of Dial M for Murder.