Film 50: History of Cinema

Description

Lectures by Marilyn Fabe

A UC Berkeley course open to the public as space permits

In one way or another, each film we'll study in Film 50 this semester makes prominent use of another art form: theater, literature, painting, dance, music, architecture, photography. In film studies, we often ask, “To what extent is cinema a synthesis of all the other arts, and to what extent is it a separate art form, with its own unique and specific expressive possibilities?” "How are the art forms that preceded film transformed or modified once they are incorporated into the film medium?" We'll consider these questions as we look at movies in which another art form plays a starring role.

Special admission prices apply
General admission, $11.50; BAM/PFA members, $7.50; UC Berkeley students, $5.50; Seniors, disabled persons, UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non–UC Berkeley students, and youth 17 and under, $8.50. Programs often sell out, so we recommend purchasing advance tickets.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on December 22. Members at the Sponsor level and above will receive exclusive access to Film 50 tickets between December 15 and 22. Join or upgrade your membership to the Sponsor level—our best-value membership!


Wednesday, January 18, 2012
3:10 p.m. Course Introduction: The Language of Cinema
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe

Wednesday, January 25, 2012
3:10 p.m. Back to the Beginning: From the Cinema of Attractions to Narrative Illusionism
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Judith Rosenberg on Piano.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012
3:10 p.m. The Mystery of Picasso
Henri-Georges Clouzot (France, 1956). Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, this colorful documentary glimpse of the seventy-five-year-old Picasso captures the fecund nature of his creative process, a spontaneous revelation of form in continual transformation. “One of the most exciting and joyful movies ever made” (Pauline Kael). (78 mins)

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
3:10 p.m. Rope
Alfred Hitchcock (U.S., 1948). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Hitchcock’s tale of two young men who attempt the perfect murder was infamously shot to resemble one long, continuous take. “Not merely a stunt that is justified by the extraordinary career that contains it, but one of the movies that makes that career extraordinary” (New York Times). With Buster Keaton’s The Playhouse (1921). (80 mins)

Wednesday, February 15, 2012
3:10 p.m. Swing Time
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers swing their way through Manhattan in this, one of the most effervescent of all Hollywood musicals. Music by Jerome Kern. (105 mins)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012
3:10 p.m. The Red Shoes
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger (U.K., 1948) 35mm Restored Print! Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. A ballerina must choose between love and art in this ravishing Technicolor melodrama, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s story and considered by many to be the best ballet film ever made.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012
3:10 p.m. Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray (India, 1955). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Two classics of postwar cinema: Ray’s monumental Pather Panchali, which follows a young boy in rural Bengal, and features a score by Ravi Shankar, and Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, a “surrealist nightmare film” by the matriarch of American experimental cinema. (129 mins)

Wednesday, March 7, 2012
3:10 p.m. Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1957). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Kurosawa’s Noh-influenced version of Macbeth is “the most brilliant and original attempt ever made to put Shakespeare on screen.”—Time. The towering Toshiro Mifune is paired with the legendary Isuzu Yamada in “a partnership of titans” (Film Forum). (107 mins)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012
3:10 p.m. Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock (U.S., 1958). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Detective Jimmy Stewart combs the Bay Area looking for the secret behind Kim Novak’s beauty in Hitchcock’s sinister ode to voyeurism, death, and amorous fixation. “Perhaps the finest film starring San Francisco” (San Francisco Chronicle). (128 mins)

Wednesday, March 21, 2012
3:10 p.m. To Kill a Mockingbird
Robert Mulligan (U.S., 1962). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his portrayal of courageous lawyer Atticus Finch in this stirring adaptation of the Harper Lee novel. The struggle for civil rights in the American South is seen through the eyes of a child, as she watcher her father—a lawyer—defend a black man accused of rape in ‘30s Alabama. (125 mins)

Wednesday, April 4, 2012
3:10 p.m. Red Desert
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France, 1964) New 35mm Print! Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Antonioni’s first color film draws images of alarming beauty from environmental apocalypse as an industrialist’s wife (Monica Vitti) suffers a nervous breakdown. “Never has so bleak a vision of contemporary life been projected with more intensity” (Time). (113 min)


Wednesday, April 11, 2012
3:10 p.m. Playtime
Jacques Tati (France, 1967). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Tati’s vision of sixties Paris is “perhaps the most madly modernistic work of anti-modernism in the history of cinema”(New Yorker). (123 mins)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
3:10 p.m. Adaptation
Spike Jonze (U.S., 2002). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, the team behind Being John Malkovich, reunited for this meta-tale involving a repressed, shy screenwriter (“Charlie Kaufman”) stumped for ideas on adaptating the nonfiction book The Orchid Thief, until his swinging twin brother Donald comes along. Nicolas Cage stars, with Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (114 mins)

Wednesday, April 25, 2012
3:10 p.m. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary
Guy Maddin (Canada, 2002). Lecture by Marilyn Fabe. Yes, you heard right, it's a ballet—but you've never seen a dance film like this before. Both deliriously silly and earnestly beautiful, steeped in the aesthetics of silent cinema, this Dracula is thoroughly, deliciously Maddin. (75 mins)

More Info

Link

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries

Call

(510) 642-5249 (Box Office)