Spring 2002 - Friday Film Festival  featuring films of love, passion, and obsession alternating with Italian films (these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive)

This series is being brought to you by the CUNY Ph.D. Program in Mathematics

All screenings will be held in the Film Screening Room on the "C" level (Rm. C419) of the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, NYC. There are 15 films in this series.  Each film will be shown on a Friday evening at 6pm, February 1st through May 17th (with the exception of Friday, March 29th, which is during the spring recess).  Doors open at 5:30pm.  Early arrival is suggested as seating is limited.  The running time of each film is indicated in the table below following the year in which the film was released. Click on each title for additional information within this website. Clicking on titles that are listed after the table will take you to further information on that particular film at IMDB [the Internet Movie Database], the web's premiere movie site.  Some of you may prefer, however, to wait until after you have seen the film to read about the plot and analyze the reviews.         The films to be shown this spring are as follows: [The upcoming film in the series is indicated by the moving red arrow.]

#	Screening Date [Starting Time: 6pm]	Film Title	Year	Running Time
1	Friday, Feb. 1st	Moby Dick	1956	1 hr. 56 min.
2	Friday, Feb. 8th	Amarcord	1974	2 hr. 7 min.
3	Friday, Feb. 15th	The Heiress	1949	1 hr. 55 min.
4	Friday, Feb. 22nd	We All Loved Each         Other So Much	1974	1 hr. 59 min.
5	Friday, March 1st	The Postman     Always Rings Twice	1946	1 hr. 53 min.
6	Friday, March 8th	Once Upon a Time           in the West	1969	2 hr. 45 min.
7	Friday, March 15th	The Man Who        Loved Women	1977	1 hr. 59 min.
8	Friday, March 22nd	Identification of            a Woman	1982	2 hr. 10 min.
- -	Friday, March 29th	[No Film: Spring Recess]	- - - -	- - - - - - - -
9	Friday, April 5th	The Passion of        Joan of Arc [+]	1928 [+]	2 hr. 15 min.
10	Friday, April 12th	Amadeus	1984	2 hr. 38 min
11	Friday, April 19th	The Conformist	1970	1 hr. 55 min.
12	Friday, April 26th	Flower of the        Arabian Nights	1974	2 hr. 11 min.
13	Friday, May 3rd	Another Woman	1988	1 hr. 21 min.
14	Friday, May 10th	Fiorile	1993	1 hr. 58 min.
15	Friday, May 17th	The Man Who         Would Be King	1975	2 hr. 9 min.

Note: The films in this series will be projected from video or DVD. Seating is limited; first-come, first-served. Admission is free.  Fresh, hot popcorn will be available for sale! [Click on image for larger view.]

——— The Spring 2002 Film Series ———

1) Moby Dick (‘56) Dir. by John Huston.  Starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, and Leo Genn. Genre: adventure drama /literary adaptation Based on Herman Melville's great American novel, the sole survivor of a lost whaling ship relates the tale of the captain's self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale, Moby Dick.

2) Amarcord ('74) Dir. by Federico Fellini. Starring Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali Noël, Ciccio Ingrassia, and Nando Orfei. Genre: comedy /drama Fellini's nostalgia trip to the Italy of his youth in the 1930s, the film contains warm, funny, poignant, and bawdy episodes about love, sex, politics, family life, and growing up.

3) The Heiress ('49) Dir. by William Wyler. Starring Olivia de Havilland, Ralph Richardson, Montgomery Clift, and Miriam Hopkins. Genre: romantic drama /literary adaptation Set in the mid 19th century, Catherine, the "plain" daughter of Dr. Austin Sloper, a respected and prosperous NYC physician, is courted by Morris, a handsome and charming but financially-challenged suitor. Can their relationship withstand Dr. Sloper's disapproval of the match? Based on the Broadway play Washington Square by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, from the novel by Henry James.

4) We All Loved Each Other So Much ('74) (a.k.a. C'eravamo tanto amati) Dir. by Ettore Scola.  Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefano Satta Flores. Genre: comedy Gianni, Nicola and Antonio become close friends in 1944 while fighting the Nazis. After the end of the war, full of illusions, they settle down. The movie is a the story of the life of these three idealists and how they deal with the inevitable disillusionments of life.

5) The Postman Always Rings Twice ('46) Dir. by Tay Garnett.  Starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, and Hume Cronyn. Genre: crime drama /romance /film noir A drifter, eating in an out-of-the-way diner, falls in love with the owner's beautiful wife; together, they plot the murder of her husband.

6) Once Upon a Time in the West ('69) (a.k.a. C'era una volta il West) Dir. by Sergio Leone. Starring Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Frank Wolff, Gabriele Ferzetti, Paolo Stoppa, Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Lionel Stander, and Keenan Wynn. Genre: spaghetti western A stranger with a harmonica joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad in this frontier epic.  Mysterious pasts and the strength of loyalties are explored amid lightning fast gun battles and stylish vistas.

7) The Man Who Loved Women ('77) (a.k.a. L' Homme qui aimait les femmes) Dir. by François Truffaut.  Starring Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, Nelly Borgeaud, Leslie Caron, and Geneviève Fontanel. Genre: comedy-drama A somber middle-aged laboratory worker spends all of his free time pursuing women.  He writes a memoir to try to understand his obsession with the fairer sex.

8) Identification of a Woman (‘82) (a.k.a. Identificazione di una donna) Dir. by Michelangelo Antonioni.  Starring Tomas Milian, Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson, Lara Wendel, and Veronica Lazar. Genre: drama Niccolo, a middle-aged film director, has just been left by his wife. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie, but also in his own life.

9) The Trial and Passion of Joan of Arc: Three Cinematic      Interpretations    The Program:    a) Trial Scenes from two 1999 films:     [ Luc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and Christian Duguay's       Joan of Arc. ]    — intermission —    b) The Passion of Joan of Arc [directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer ('28)],      featuring the Voices of Light oratorio composed by Richard Einhorn. Genre: historical drama In the early 15th century during the Hundred Years War, a devout young peasant girl from the French village of Domremy receives a vision that she is to free France from the English invaders.  After meeting and impressing the Dauphin (the future King Charles VII), she leads the French army into battle.  Later captured by her enemies, she is condemned by the Inquisition for witchcraft, heresy, and dressing in men's clothing.  Sentenced to death, "the Maid" is burned at the stake in the marketplace of Rouen at the age of nineteen. Note : Tonight's presentation focuses on several film versions of her trial(s) of condemnation held in the year 1431.

10) Amadeus ('84) Dir. by Milos Forman.  Starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, and Elizabeth Berridge. Genre: biographical drama The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — rude, arrogant and vulgar, yet in possession of a supreme musical gift — as told by his tortured, insanely-jealous rival, the court composer Antonio Salieri, a mediocrity who possessed a consuming passion to praise God through his music.  The film is a stunning musical and psychological drama based on the Broadway play by Peter Shaffer.

11) The Conformist ('70) (a.k.a. Il Conformista) Dir. by Bernardo Bertolucci.  Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, and Enzo Tarascio. Genre: drama The conformist is 1930s Italian Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a coward who has spent his life accomodating others so that he can "belong." Marcello agrees to kill a political refugee, on orders from the Fascist government, even though the victim-to-be is his college mentor. The film is a character study of the kind of person who willingly "conforms" to the ideological fashions of his day.

12) Flower of the Arabian Nights ('74) (a.k.a. Il Fiore delle mille e una notte)  Dir. by Pier Paolo Pasolini.  Starring Ines Pellegrini, Franco Merli, Ninetto Davoli, Tessa Bouché, Franco Citti. Genre: fantasy Several Thousand and One Nights tales are framed by the story of slave-girl Pellegrini, who becomes "king" of a great city.  Dreamlike, exotic; the last and best of Pasolini's medieval trilogy.

13) Another Woman ('88)   Dir. by Woody Allen.  Starring Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Blythe Danner, Gene Hackman, Martha Plimpton, John Houseman, Sandy Dennis, and Philip Bosco. Genre: drama A middle-aged professor of philosophy, while working on a book during a sabbatical in Manhattan, by chance overhears comments from a psychiatrist's office next door which lead her to re-examine her life and relationships.

 

14) Fiorile (‘93) Dir. by Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani.  Starring Claudio Bigagli, Galatea Ranzi, Michael Vartan, Lino Capolicchio, and Constanze Engelbrecht. Genre: drama While driving to visit his ailing, reclusive father, a man reveals to his two children the legend of their family's history, beginning with how their ancestors came into wealth dishonestly during the Napoleonic era. A complex, ironic tale of tarnished innocence, outside forces cruelly separating lovers, and how ill-gotten wealth will in one way or another taint the spirit.

 

15) The Man Who Would Be King ('75) Dir. by John Huston.  Starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Genre: advenure drama / literary adaptation Set in the 19th century, two British soldiers, lusting after wealth and power, head to a remote district of Afghanistan hoping to be installed as kings.  Based on the short story by Rudyard Kipling.

Note: The Mathematics Program will be running the "Summer Cinema Series - 2002"
every Tuesday and Thursday evening at 6pm between June 4th — July 25th.
For complete information, please visit the Summer Series WEBSITE.

GC Spring 2002 Film Series Return to the CUNY Ph.D. Program in Mathematics. This site was last updated on May 17, 2002 / comments. You are visitor #