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Monday, March 25, 2013

April Film Club

Hey there folks, hope everybody had a great weekend!  A special thanks to everyone who was able to make it to our showing of The Quiet Man, we had about 22 people, let's keep up those numbers!
Now, on to business.  Last year, in April, we watched the film Baraka (click link for trailer), a non-narrative, cinematic adventure that explores nature, mankind and the essence of life, using only moving images and music.  That film came out in 1992.  10 years later (2012), Fricke directed something of a spiritual sequel to Baraka, entitled Samsara.  This will be our film club film for the month of April, which will meet Thursday the 18th.

Samsara is directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson.  The pair had collaborated on Baraka and reunited in 2006 to plan Samsara.  They researched locations that would fit the conceptual imagery of samsara, to them meaning "birth, death and rebirth, or impermanence."  They gathered research from people's works and photo books as well as the Internet and YouTube, resources not available at the time of planning Baraka.  They considered using digital cameras but decided to film in 70 mm instead, considering its quality superior.  Filming lasted for more than four years and took place in 25 countries across five continents.  Fricke and Magidson emphasized avoiding a particular political view in assembling the film.  Frick said, "We just try to keep it in the middle and then we form little blocks of content and then we set them aside until we had enough.  We did all of this without music or sound effects.  We just let the image guide the flow and then we started stringing the blocks together."

Expanding on the themes explored in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man's spirituality and the human experience.  Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a non-verbal, guided meditation.

Samsara is one of the most moving, most visually breathtaking films you will every experience.  You will not want to miss this film, hope to see you there! (If you are ever unable to make it to one of our showings, all the films shown are available for rental at the library!)

Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp967YAAdNk


Monday, March 4, 2013

March Film Club

Hey folks, thanks to everyone for bearing with the slight technical problems we had a few weeks back.  Despite the uncertainty we ended up having a good turnout for "Manhattan", so thank you again.
Well, March is here and that means a new film.  For the month of March, and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I've decided to show John Ford's Irish classic "The Quiet Man."

"The Quiet Man" is a 1952 Irish-American Technicolor romantic comedy-drama film.  It was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald.  It was based on a 1933 Saturday Evening Post short story by Maurice Walsh.  The film is notable for its lush photography of the Irish countryside and was an official selection of the 1952 Venice Film Festival.  In the 1920s, Sean Thornton (John Wayne), an Irish-born American from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, travels to Ireland to reclaim his family's farm in Innisfree.  He meets and falls in love with the firery Mary Kate Danagher (Maureen O'Hara), the spinster sister of the bullying, loud-mouthed landowner Squire "Red" Will Danagher (Victor McLaglen).  The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, of which it won 2 for Best Director (John Ford) and Best Cinematography (Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout).  The film holds an 89% Certified Fresh rating on the aggregate review site Rottentomatoes.com out of 37 critical reviews.

Come and join us for this wonderful film.  We will be meeting Thursday, Mar. 21st at 6:15pm, hope to see you there!

Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4OFXlvzKA