The Religious Imagination in Cinema
Lecturer: Jeffrey Skoller
From Sept. 6 through Dec. 13, the Gene Siskel Film Center offers a series of fourteen programs of films entitled The Religious Imagination in Cinema: Altered States & Sacred Blasphemies, with weekly lectures by Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor of Film, Video and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of Shadows Specters Shards: Making History in Avant-Grade Film.
The series is made possible in part through the sponsorship of American Airlines, the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Educational Underwriter, and is presented in cooperation with the School of the Art Institute’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism. Please note that, for the convenience of our audience, films are sometimes shown on both Friday and Tuesday; however, Jeffrey Skoller’s lectures accompany only the Tuesday screenings. Admission to all Religious Imagination programs is $4 to Film Center members; usual admission prices apply for non-members.
-- Martin Rubin
film descriptions
Introductory Program
1962-79, Various directors, USA/Italy, Total 75 min.
To introduce the concepts of the series, four short films will be screened. The program will begin with three works from the American avant-garde: Bruce Baillie’s ALL MY LIFE (1966, USA, 3 min.), Bruce Conner’s VALSE TRISTE (1979, USA, 5 min.), and Will Hindle’s WATERSMITH (1968, USA, 32 min). They will be followed by “La Ricotta,” directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Orson Welles, a 35-min. episode from the 1963 compilation film ROGOPAG. 16mm.
Tuesday, September 6, 6:00 pm
EARTH
(ZEMLYA)
1930, Alexander Dovzhenko, USSR, 62 min.
Dovzhenko’s undisputed masterpiece, EARTH is a rumination on nature’s cycles of death and rebirth. That this primeval meta-myth, like most of the director’s work, grew out of a banal Agitprop assignment only makes it more of a wonder. The serenity reaches truly mystic levels when the culprit in a murder, ostensibly crucial for the narrative, confesses the deed yet hardly anyone seems to care or bothers to notice. Not to worry: the earth will do its own healing, and mete out its own punishment. Silent film with music track. 35mm print courtesy of Harvard Film Archive. (Description courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.)
Tuesday, September 13, 6:00 pm
L’AGE D’OR
(THE GOLDEN AGE)
1930, Luis Bu�uel, France, 63 min.
With Gaston Modot, Lya Lys
Bu�uel’s legendary surrealist masterpiece (co-scripted by Salvador Dal�) centers on a lusty young couple’s attempts to consummate their raging desire in the face of social, religious, and psychological obstacles. Their comic-erotic quest is embellished with surrealist asides involving scorpions, the founding of Imperial Rome, toe-sucking, bad manners, brutal murder, decaying clergymen, cows in bedrooms, and the aftermath of a Sadean orgy hosted by a well-known deity. In French with English subtitles. 35mm.
Friday show: Accompanied by Bu�uel and Dal�’s celebrated exercise in surreal slapstick, UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929, France, 16 min., 35mm). Tuesday show: Accompanied by Luther Price’s SODOM (1989, USA, 21 min.). (MR)
Friday, September 16, 6:00 pm;
Tuesday, September 20, 6:00 pm
THE VILNA TOWN CANTOR
(a.k.a. OVERTURE TO GLORY)
(DER VILNER BALEBESL)
1940, Max Nosseck, USA, 77 min.
With Moishe Oysher, Helen Beverly
Beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending on Yom Kippur, this story of a Vilna cantor seduced by the opera resonates with the voice of Moishe Oysher, one of the best-known cantors of his day. Carefully lit cinematography, well-shaped dialogue and Alexander Olshanetsky’s musical score steer the film clear of melodramatic excess. In Yiddish with English subtitles. 35mm. (Description courtesy of National Center for Jewish Film)
