EVENTS
UMASS AMHERST |
FIVE COLLEGES |
LOCAL AREA |
2012 Michael S. Roif AwardFriday 4 May 2012 Join us for the Twelfth Annual Michael S. Roif Award in Film Studies for Exceptional Creativity and Accomplishment. Nominees for the 2012 Michael S. Roif Award: Elyssa Budd ('14) Edwin Cabrera ('13) Eva Saltus ('13) Sarah Deane Croog ('13) Tye Stratford Whipple ('12) Michael Stewart ('12) Geoff King ('12) Awards will be presented by Shawn Shimpach (Communication), Chair of the 2012 Roif Selection Committee. [More...] Graduate Certificate and Paper PrizeFri 5/4 at 2:30pm Join us for the Graduate Certificate and Paper Prize ceremony and reception following the Roif Awards.
19th Annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film FestivalWeds at 7:30pm The 19th Annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, “Intersections: fiction/non-fiction,” headlines award-winning narrative features and documentaries from France, Iran, Germany, Mexico, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Finland, Guatemala, Palestinian Territory, and the USA. Our lineup showcases several New England premieres and hosts five acclaimed women filmmakers and video artists who will be present for discussion. This season explores the hybrid interconnections and boundaries between documentary and fiction, beyond and across borders and genres—geopolitical, transnational, generational, artistic, cultural and historical—offering a wealth of visual pleasure for every taste. [More...] A Conversation with WERNER HERZOGTues 4/24 at 4:00pm As part of 19th Annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, “Intersections: fiction/non-fiction,” and a series of events at Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog will speak about his recent work and respond to questions from the audience. One of the leaders, with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff, of the influential postwar New German Cinema in the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany, Herzog studied history, literature and music in Munich and at the University of Pittsburgh. Herzog's films – whether dramas, or as most of his recent work, documentaries – are noted for both their deeply felt mystical foundations and their surreal exoticism. Sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies, the 19th Annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival; the Amherst College Lamont Fund, Department of German, English Department, Film and Media Studies Program at Amherst College; and the Program in Film, Photo and Video at Hampshire College. [Event poster] VIDEO: See Werner Herzog's talk at Amherst College 4/24 at 8:00pm. Screening: The Cantor's SonThurs 4/17 at 5:30pm Have you heard of the first talkie The Jazz Singer? Did you know it had a Yiddish cousin? Come see how The Jazz Singer was remade for a Yiddish-speaking audience! Introduced by Dr. Rachel Rubinstein, Associate Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies at Hampshire College. This Yiddish feature film musical drama, The Cantor's Son, first released in 1937, marks the screen debut of singer and cantor Moishe Oysher. The film features Oysher in the title role of a wayward Jewish boy who makes his way from his Polish shtetl to New York's Lower East Side. While washing floors in a nightclub several years later he is "discovered" and becomes a well-known singer. Torn between Old World tradition and New World expression, he returns home to Eastern Europe to join his parents and childhood sweetheart, amidst new choices and challenges. [More...] IV Catalan Film Festival: Gay & Lesbian CinemaTuesdays at 6:30pm The IV Catalan Film Festival invites you to participate in this film series running throughout spring semester 2012. In this edition, the festival will be devoted to the gay and lesbian Catalan cinema. Films will be subtitled in English and there will be pizza and drinks for everyone attending. [More...]
Screening Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist with Introduction by Denis KitchenTues, 3/6 at 7:00pm A public lecture by N. C. Christopher Couch of the Program in Comparative Literature, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and a showing of rare short films and the documentary, Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, introduced by publisher and comics historian Denis Kitchen, award-winning cartoonist and founder of Kitchen Sink Press, will mark the observance of "Will Eisner Week," a national event honoring the foremost American comic book artist and writer and graphic novelist of the twentieth century at UMass Amherst. Eisner created the comic book series The Spirit, which Alan Moore (Watchmen) said “gave comic books its brains,” and created the modern graphic novel with his famous series of books on Jewish secular life in America. [More...] The Legacy of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: a Family Perspective Mon 3/5, 2012 3:30pm-6:30pm In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg became the first U.S. citizens to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. The family's memory of that event and its consequences have been documented by two generations, first by Michael and Robert Meeropol, in their co-authored memoir We Are Your Sons: the Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975, 1986), then in Robert Meeropol's memoir An Execution in the Family (2003), and finally by granddaughter Ivy Meeropol in her acclaimed documentary Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter's Story (2004). Following a brief introduction and a screening of the film Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter's Story, Michael and Ivy Meeropol will be available to discuss any and all issues raised by the case and the documentary that members of the audience are interested in pursuing. Sponsored by the Department of Judaic And Near Eastern Studies. This event is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. For more information, email judaic@judnea.umass.edu or call 413-545-2550. [More...] |
Arabic Music FestivalThurs 4/26 at 6:30pm Join us for an evening of traditional Arabic food, desserts, drinks and wonderful music! Featuring perfomances by the Montreal-based band Sokoun Trio. Sponsored by the Betty Hamady Sams '57 and James F. Sams Fund, Theatre Dept., Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese at Smith College; and the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst. [Event poster.]
Screening: Meek's CutoffThurs 4/12 at 7:00pm The Tashmoo Lecture Series welcomes award-winning filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, who will present her film Meek's Cutoff. Reception and discussion with filmmaker to follow. Reichardt is a recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Los Angeles Film Critics Award. She teaches at Bard College. [More...] Lewis Klahr at Amherst CollegeTues 4/10 at 7:00pm Prolix Satori by Lewis Klahr (2009-10, Digital Video, 60 minutes) "I have often worked in series before, Picture Books For Adults, Tales of the Forgotten Future, Engram Sepals, The Two Minutes to Zero Trilogy, but never quite like this. The main difference is that Prolix Satori is both open ended and ongoing with a variety of thematic focuses instead of a single, centralized one. As the series title suggests, it will include films that are very very short (under a minute) and films that are feature length. Prolix Satori will also contain various sub-series: this program offers several films from The Couplets (Wednesday Morning Two A.M., Sugar Slim Says and all three Nimbus films). The Couplet will generally, but not exclusively, organize themselves around the pairing of various pop songs and just as in the songs lyrics, the theme of romantic love." - Lewis Klahr . Screening followed by a Q&A with Klahr. [Event poster.]
German Film SeriesThursdays 4:00pm & 7:30 pm The 2012 German Film Series at Amherst College runs from Feb 2 to April 19. [More...]
Symposium: Women, Social Justice, Documentary March 31 and April 1, 2012 The Film Studies Program at Smith College will hold a two-day symposium focused on women, social justice, and documentary film. The symposium will bring together some of the major women practitioners of documentary whose aim is social justice for a weekend of panel discussions, talks, and screenings. Panelists and speakers include Lourdes Portillo (keynote speaker), Cynthia Wade, Su Friedrich, Rea Tajiri, Barbara Hammer, Liza Johnson, Sonali Gulati, Joan Braderman, and Debra Zimmerman, among others. For more information, contact Bernadine Mellis: bmellis@smith.edu. or see the event listing on Facebook. [More...] Five College Student Film & Video FestivalFri 2/24 at 7:00pm Films selected for this year's Five College Student Film & Video Festival will be screened Friday, 2/24 and winners will be awarded prizes afterward. This festival is an annual event featuring original films and videos by Five College students. Founded in 1994, the festival has become an important venue for film students to meet, collaborate, and share their productions with their peers and with the college film community. Selected works are shown at the festival and awards are given for the best works in designated categories. [More...]
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Ventura PonsTues 4/17 at 7:30pm Renowned Catalan filmmaker Ventura Pons will introduce his movie Food of Love (2001) and discuss his work after the screening. After a decade as a theatre director, Ventura Pons directed his first film in 1977, Ocaña, an intermittent portrait, which was officially selected by the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. With twenty two feature films, twenty produced by his own company Els Films de la Rambla, S.A., founded in 1985, he has become one of the best-known Catalan film directors. His films are continuously programmed in the most prominent international festivals, with a main interest from the Berlinale, where he has been officially selected during five consecutive years, and distributed around the world. Food of Love (2001). Acclaimed Catalan Director Ventura Pons' first English language film is a beautiful and faithful adaptation of David Leavitt's novel The Page Turner. Paul is a promising young pianist, who is hired to be a page turner for his idol, Richard Kennington, and his boyish good looks don't go unnoticed. They meet again while Paul is on vacation with his mother in Barcelona. Thus begins a love affair that moves from Spain to New York, complicated by Paul's mother and Richard's agent/lover, Mansourian. Both Paul and mother, Pamela, learn though their separate disappointments how to build deeper relationships while awakening to the harsh realities life bestows. The film is free and open to the public. Tickets must be picked up at the Amherst Cinema box office. Seating is limited. [Event poster.] SCMS Attendees 2012Over two dozen faculty and grad students presented papers at the 2012 convention of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Boston last month. The DEFA Film Library and the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at UMass co-sponsored a booth in the exhibit hall (pictured). The SCMS had selected the DEFA Film Library release Dove on the Roof for a conference screening, and the Five Colleges (including UMass Amherst) also co-sponsored the reception at the convention (21 - 24 March at the Park Plaza Hotel and Towers). The Boston convention was the largest in the society's history, with over 1,600 in attendance. Pictured from left are: Victoria Rizo Lenshyn, Evan Torner, Anne Ciecko, Barton Byg, Cathy Portuges, Hiltrud Schulz and Jonathan Skolnik. [Photo.]
National Theatre LiveAmherst Cinema See high definition, digital cinema exhibitions of Britain’s National Theatre live stage presentations. National Theatre Live offers a series of events broadcast from the UK, in high definition to movie theaters around the world, including plays and performances at all three theatres of the National Theatre. [More...] Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2012Boston, MA Film and media scholarship by current and former UMass Amherst faculty and graduate students will have strong representation at the 2012 conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) in Boston next month (compiled by Catherine Portuges, Director, Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies): Barton Byg: panel Chair: "Occupied Cinemas, a Transnational Perspective"; presenter, "Landscapes of Redemption: Late Works of Patricio Guzman, Terence Malik and Jean-Marie Straub" Mari Castaneda: presenter, "Contested Notions of Citizenship & Public Service in Translocal Spanish-language Television" Anne Ciecko: panel chair, The Avant- garde, Art & the Internet; presenter, "Moving Images and Trademarks: the 'Cinemagraph' as Retrofashionable Reinvention of Old/New Media" Lisa Henderson: chair, "Gay Expectations: Popular Culture Hails its Queer Unconscious"; presenter, "Plausible Optimism" panel Queer Theory/Queer Readings: Negotiating Normativity" Anita Mannur: presenter, "Curry's Currency: the Palatable Multiculturalism of South Asian Diasporic Romantic Comedy" Madalina Meirosu: presenter, "Constructing the Woman in the late 50s in Die Windrose" Catherine Portuges: presenter, "The Kordas in Hollywood" (panel, Emigre Directors in Hollywood: New Perspectives on "Mutual" Influence); respondent, "The Banality of Existence: Poetics & Politics in Béla Tarr's Films" TreAndrea Russworm: workshop, "Teaching the Negative Representation: Blackness & Disreputable Media" Jonathan Skolnik: presenter, "Imitation of Life: Mimesis, Race and Exile in Film"" (panel, Emigré Directors in Hollywood: New Perspectives on "Mutual" Influence) Rachel Thibault: presenter, "Criticism, Controversy & Cultural Authority: Pauline Kael & Penelope Gilliatt at the New Yorker" Evan Torner: presenter, "DEFA and the Third World: a Taxonomy of Transnationalisms" Scott Vangel: presenter, "Post-68 Paris and the Spirit of Dostoevsky's Underground in Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer" Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival 2012The Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival presents 2 weeks of award-winning films from around the world, plus speakers and special events. Through collaborations with educational and cultural organizations as well as businesses, the Festival provides audiences a multifaceted exploration of contemporary Jewish culture, secular and religious life, history and politics.Films are screened across the Pioneer Valley – this year in Amherst, Chicopee, Greenfield, Longmeadow, Northampton, Shelburne Falls, Springfield, and West Springfield - in venues ranging from the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield to the Garden Cinemas in Greenfield with many stops in between. [More...]
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