Event Details
Date & Time:
Thu February 2, 2012 - Thu February 23, 2012
Location:
The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Audience:
Open to the public
Details:
Join us on three Thursday evenings this February for free screenings of avant-garde films, a romantic classic, and an eye-opening new documentary.
On February 2, we’ll present a selection of experimental film and video from the Bay Area (Radical Light: Stories Untold); the timeless classic Casablanca unspools on February 9; and on February 23 we’ll screen a fascinating new documentary about one of the most influential people you’ve probably never heard of–author, activist, poet and visionary Paul Goodman (Paul Goodman Changed My Life).
Radical Light: Stories Untold
Thursday, February 2, 2012 7:00 PM FREE
(Various directors, 1968–99, USA, 16mm and video, Approx. 100 min.)
This shorts program is part of a touring series curated by the Pacific Film Archive to accompany the release of the book Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000. Stories Untold features creative approaches to storytelling that cleverly integrate form and content. James Broughton’s The Bed is a playful exploration of amorous activities on and around the titular piece of furniture; Scott Stark’s I’ll Walk With God employs images from flight safety pamphlets to illustrate a rapturous climb into the heavens; and the late, great George Kuchar offers an homage to melodrama and meteors in A Reason to Live. This program also includes work by Max Almy, Chip Lord, Curt McDowell, and Anne McGuire.
The Bed (James Broughton, 1968, 16mm, 19 min.)
A Visit to Indiana (Curt McDowell, 1970, 16mm, 10 min.)
A Reason to Live (George Kuchar, 1976, 16mm, 26 min.)
Deadline (Max Almy, 1981, Video, 4 min.)
Easy Living (Chip Lord and Mickey McGowan, 1984, Video, 19 min.)
I’ll Walk with God (Scott Stark, 1994, 16mm, 8 min.)
All Smiles and Sadness (Anne McGuire, 1999, Video, 8 min.)
Selected programs from the Radical Light film series are being presented at Block Cinema (02/02), Conversations at the Edge (CATE) at the Gene Siskel Film Center (2/16), and Chicago Filmmakers (2/24).
Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area: Book, Film, and Video Tour was curated by Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, Film and Video Curators at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Steve Anker, Dean of the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. The tour is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the William H. Donner Foundation.
A&O Films Presents Casablanca
Thursday, February 9, 2012 7:00 PM FREE
(Michael Curtiz, 1942, USA, 35mm, 102 min.)
Voted best romantic film of all time by the American Film Institute, Casablanca stars movie legends Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as two former lovers who must choose between love and virtue. Set during WWII in Vichy-controlled Morocco, Rick (Bogart) is an American expatriate who claims neutrality while profiting from the war via his popular café. Trouble arises with the unexpected arrival of his ex-lover, Ilsa (Bergman), and her husband, a Resistance leader who is being pursued by the Nazis. A surprise hit for Warner Bros., this enduring classic has become one of the most quoted and admired films of all time.
Paul Goodman Changed My Life
Thursday, February 23, 2012 7:00 PM FREE
(Jonathan Lee, 2011, USA, video, 89 min.)
Paul Goodman was once so ubiquitous in the American zeitgeist that he merited a cameo in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Author of the legendary bestseller Growing Up Absurd (1960), Goodman was also a poet, out bisexual (in the 1940s), family man, pacifist, visionary, co-founder of Gestalt therapy—and a hero for many in the burgeoning counterculture of the 1960s. Using a treasure trove of new and archival multimedia—selections from Goodman’s poetry (read by Garrison Keillor and Edmund White); quotes from Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Noam Chomsky; plentiful footage of Goodman himself; plus interviews with his family, peers and activists—the filmmakers have woven together a rich portrait of an intellectual heavyweight whose ideas are long overdue for rediscovery.
This screening is sponsored by the Department of History.
Introduced by Michael J. Kramer, History & American Studies, Northwestern University.
Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu