The Great Transition:
World Cinema in the 1960s
Lecturer: Jonathan Rosenbaum
From Jan. 25 through May 7, we offer a series of fourteen programs entitled The Great Transition: World Cinema in the 1960s, with weekly lecture/discussions by Jonathan Rosenbaum, internationally renowned film critic and author of numerous books including Discovering Orson Welles. The series is made possible in part through the sponsorship of American Airlines, the 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. Additional screenings of the films on Friday do not include Jonathan Rosenbaum’s lecture. Admission to all Great Transition programs is $4 for Film Center members; usual admission prices apply for non-members.
Join Jonathan Rosenbaum again for our next lecture/screening series, The First Transition: World Cinema in the 1930s, to be presented in fall 2008.
PLAY TIME
1967, Jacques Tati, France, 124 min.
With Jacques Tati
“The most visually inventive film of the 60s is also one of the funniest... a masterpiece among masterpieces.”--Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Tati built a virtual city, known as Tativille, to stage this innovative comedy--a disaster in its day, now universally acknowledged as a masterpiece. Beginning in an airport and climaxing at a hilariously disastrous restaurant opening, the nearly plotless plot sets Tati’s recurring character M. Hulot wandering through a modern world of glass and steel, cubicles and corridors. The inventive use of widescreen and setting makes PLAY TIME a uniquely rich and democratic viewing experience, one which changes from viewer to viewer and from screening to screening. Our lecturer Jonathan Rosenbaum has named PLAY TIME as his favorite film of all time. 35mm widescreen. (MR)