Art of Cinema
We are excited to start a new matinee film initiative called Art of Cinema. We hope that you will enjoy these movies, documentaries, foreign films, classic cinema, and independent films. While the films have various ratings from Not Rated to R, this program is intended for mature audiences. Following the awards season, we will show an eclectic mix of movies that won or were nominated for the Academy Awards.
Sunday, March 22 – 2:30 pm
Ida (2013, Polish w/English subtitles, PG-13, 83 min)
18-year old Anna (stunning newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska), a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, is preparing to become a nun when the Mother Superior insists she first visit her sole living relative. Naive, innocent Anna soon finds herself in the presence of her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a worldly and cynical Communist Party insider, who shocks her with the declaration that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism.
2014 Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film. Winner of a BAFTA award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and the Cesar Awards.
Sunday, March 29 – 2:30 pm
A Place in the Sun (1951, NR, 122 min)
Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can’t forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George’s personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she’ll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George’s arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason Raymond Burr.
Winner of Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards, USA. Winner of Best Picture at the Golden Globes, USA.
Sunday, April 19 – 2:30 pm
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013, Swedish, English w/English subtitles, R, 115 min)
Powered by the antics of a mischievous centenarian on the run, comic fable The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundraaringen som klev ut genom fonstret och forsvann) abounds with irreverent charm.
After a long and colorful life working in munitions and getting entangled in the Spanish Civil War, the Manhattan Project, and other definitive events of the 20th century, Allan Karlsson finds himself stuck in a nursing home. Determined to escape on his 100th birthday, he leaps out of a window and onto the nearest bus, kicking off an unexpected journey involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash, some wicked criminals, and an elephant named Sonya.
Like an unruly Nordic cousin of Forrest Gump, Allan’s youthful escapades and current adventures weave together into an offbeat treat for anyone who’s young at heart. Starring beloved comedian Robert Gustafsson, this fanciful spin on world history is based on a best-selling novel and also the highest-grossing Swedish film of all time.
Winner of the Audience Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and Audience Favorite at the Mill Valley Film Festival
Nominated for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling at the Academy Awards
Sunday, April 26 – 2:30 pm
In Our Water (1982, NR, 62 min)
In this Oscar nominated documentary, a New Jersey family discovers their well is being poisoned by a landfill while local and state officials assure them their water is safe to drink. A 5-year saga of bureaucratic neglect and court inaction reveals the Kaler’s drinking water could have been bottled as paint remover. The landfill is later declared a Superfund site but as of 2018 has yet to be “cleaned up”.
As regulations protecting our water are again under attack, IN OUR WATER is both cautionary tale and map to activism. Educators, environmentalists, government bureaucrats, politicians, citizens and water drinkers everywhere can benefit from experiencing this exceptional movie.
Nominated for Best Documentary, Features at the Academy Awards. Nominated for Best Documentary at the Chicago International Film Festival. Winner of the Columbia DuPont Award for Journalistic Excellence.
