The Big Screen: Treasures from the UNCSA Moving Image Archive
2010 Schedule
All screenings in Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Tickets available at the door, $8 general public, $2 UNCSA students with ID
All ticket proceeds will support UNCSA Film School scholarships
KING: A FILMED RECORD…
MONTGOMERY TO MEMPHIS (1970) – 165 minutes (Not Rated – B&W)
Sunday, January 17, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA campus.
Directed by Sidney Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With Martin Luther King, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones, Clarence Williams III, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Harry Belafonte, Paul Winfield, Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier.
Incorporating newsreel and other period footage, this critically-acclaimed documentary serves as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King. Beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, when King was 27 years old, the film traces the life of the American Civil Rights icon – confrontations in Birmingham, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, the voter-registration marches in Selma, the Chicago housing protests – ending shortly after his assassination in 1968. Interspersed throughout are dramatic readings by friends and admirers. King: A Filmed Record originally received a one-night-only screening in about 600 theatres across the country in March of 1970 (with all proceeds being donated to the Dr. Martin Luther King Special Fund), and it was later shortened to 90 minutes for television broadcasts and video releases. Though the full-length documentary has recently been made available on DVD in a special commemorative edition, we will be screening an extremely rare 35mm print archival print, which has essentially been out of public circulation since that one-time event. The National Film Preservation Board added the film to the National Film Registry in 1999. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
TOMORROW (1972) – 103 minutes (Rated PG – B&W)
Saturday, January 30, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Directed by Joseph Anthony. With Robert Duvall, Olga Bellin, Sudie Bond, Richard McConnell, Peter Masterson, William Hawley, James Franks, Johnny Mask, Effie Green and Ken Lindley.
In the backwoods of Mississippi, a lonely farmer (Duvall) agrees to look after a pregnant woman (Bellin) who was abandoned by the father of her child. Tomorrow is based on the short story of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner. It was first published in the “Saturday Evening Post” in 1940 and later reappeared in the writer’s short story collection Knight’s Gambit. Though it’s considered one of Faulkner’s lesser-known stories, it has been dramatized in three different mediums – each time by the same writer, celebrated playwright Horton Foote. In 1960, he was hired to adapt the story into a teleplay for an episode of “Playhouse 90” for director Robert Mulligan, who would later direct To Kill a Mockingbird (which featured an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Foote). Eight years later, Foote rewrote it as an off-Broadway play starring Duvall and Bellin, and, finally, as the screenplay for this version of the film. Many critics believe this is the definitive adaptation of any of Faulkner’s work, and Duvall has cited it as his personal favorite of all the films he’s done. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
PINK FLOYD THE WALL (1982) - 95 minutes (Rated R – Color – 70mm Magnetic Six-Track Stereo)
Saturday, February 20, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Directed by Alan Parker. With Bob Geldof, Christine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David, Bob Hoskins, Kevin McKeon, Jenny Wright, David Bingham and Alex McAvoy.
A depressed rock star (Geldof) endures physical and social isolation as he sits in a Los Angeles hotel room and contemplates the disappointments of his life. Conceptually, Pink Floyd The Wall has its roots in a 1977 incident at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium where Roger Waters, lyricist and bassist for Pink Floyd, spat on a fan. Waters later deemed his own actions “fascist” and, compelled by that regrettable impulse, began developing material for what would become the band’s 1979 concept album, The Wall. Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was hired in 1980 to provide animated sequences for Pink Floyd’s tour, with the idea that the filmed version would be a mixture of live concert footage and Scarfe’s animations. When filming the concerts proved too impractical, director Alan Parker was brought aboard the project to translate the album into a hyperkinetic, surreal film. Parker decided to keep Scarfe’s work, but reconceived the live-action portions of the movie to be a much more metaphorical and symbolic experience. We will be screening a 70mm archival print. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
ONCE UPON A TIME…WHEN WE WERE COLORED (1996) – 115 minutes (Rated PG – Color – Widescreen – Dolby Stereo)
Saturday, March 6, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Directed by Tim Reid. With Al Freeman Jr., Phylicia Rashad, Leon, Paula Kelly, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Anna Maria Horsford, Bernie Casey, Isaac Hayes, Willis Norwood Jr.
In the segregated South, a tightly-knit African-American community finds strength in friends and family, even as it deals with the struggles of being black in the mid-20th century. Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored is based on the 1989 best-selling memoir by Clifton L. Taulbert. Actor Tim Reid, best known for playing Venus Flytrap on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” was so struck by the authenticity of Taulbert’s writing that he set out to adapt the book as his feature directorial debut. Reid envisioned the film as a sprawling, multi-generational ensemble piece (there are 83 speaking parts) that dramatized the old African proverb: It takes a village to raise a child. After the project was turned down by all of the major movie studios, Reid scraped together a shoestring budget of $2.5 million for a 28-day shoot in Wilmington, NC. Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored received a very limited theatrical release in early 1996, but still managed to garner plenty of acclaim; movie critic Roger Ebert showed the film at his annual Overlooked Film Festival in 2004. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957) – 125 minutes (Not Rated – B&W – Widescreen)
Saturday, April 3, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA campus
Directed by Elia Kazan. With Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick, Percy Waram, Paul McGrath, Rod Brasfield and Marshall Neilan.
A charismatic, folk-singing drifter (Griffith, in his feature film debut) is thrust into the national spotlight, becoming an overnight media sensation in the process, and only later revealing himself to be a power-hungry manipulator. A Face in the Crowd reunited director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg, their second collaboration after the successful and Academy Award-winning On the Waterfront in 1954. Working from Schulberg’s own short story, “Your Arkansas Traveler,” the filmmakers intended to examine the calculated ways in which the mass media influences public opinion. Kazan and Schulberg were thorough in their research, attending board meetings of Madison Avenue ad companies and visiting New York television stations. A Face in the Crowd was not a big hit when it was first released, perhaps due to the fact that its still-prescient message was years ahead of its time; it was one of the first movies to question television’s influence on our culture, coming nearly two decades before writer Paddy Chayeksfy excoriated the industry in Network. The National Film Preservation Board added the film to the National Film Registry in 2008. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
ONLY ONE NEW YORK (1964) – 75 minutes (Not Rated – B&W)
Saturday, May 8, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Directed by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau. Narrated by Norman Rose.
Over the course of seven years, explorer and documentarian Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau let his camera roll on New York’s many subcultures. Described as part travelogue and part “mondo film” (a sub-genre of documentary film popular in the 1960s and 1970s, known for its sensationalism), Only One New York offers glimpses of a Gypsy wedding celebration in Coney Island; Japanese Buddhists on Riverside Drive; a Haitian voodoo ceremony in the Bronx; and Playboy bunnies playing tackle football in Central Park. We will be screening an extremely rare 35mm archival print, virtually unseen since its original release – this film has never been issued on any home video format. Director Gaisseau is best known for his documentary Sky Above and Mud Beneath, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1962. Only One New York is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) – 200 minutes (Rated PG-13 – Color – Anamorphic – DTS)
Saturday, June 26, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA campus
Directed by David Lean. With Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Tom Courtenay, Siobhan McKenna, Ralph Richardson and Rita Tushingham.
Against the backdrop of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, poet-doctor Yuri Zhivago (Sharif) carries on an illicit love affair with his muse, Lara (Christie). Based on the Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, Doctor Zhivago ushered in a new kind of historical epic, one that embraced romance more than docudrama, and the result was one of the most popular love stories ever brought to the screen. Producer Carlo Ponti bought the film rights to Pasternak’s novel in 1963 with the intention of casting his wife, Sophia Loren, in the role of Lara. Motivated by the sheer scope of the subject matter, Ponti hired David Lean, who had recently proven himself adept at handling large-scale productions with Lawrence of Arabia, to direct the film. Though he eventually cast Julie Christie rather than Loren, Lean did convince Ponti to bring many of his collaborators from Lawrence onboard the film: screenwriter Robert Bolt, cinematographer Freddie Young, production designer John Box, and composer Maurice Jarre. While Doctor Zhivago took nearly two years to film and ultimately doubled its original production budget, the film was an enormous success with audiences. The box-office returns (as well as money made from a re-release of Gone with the Wind) actually saved its studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, from bankruptcy in the mid-1960s. In 1995, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the film’s release, newly restored prints of Doctor Zhivago were shown in over a dozen cities across the country. We will be screening one of those restored prints, which includes the film’s original overture and a brief intermission. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
BRINGING UP BABY (1938) – 102 minutes (Not Rated – B&W)
Saturday, July 10, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA Campus
Directed by Howard Hawks. With Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, Fritz Feld, Leona Roberts, George Irving and Virginia Walker.
A straitlaced paleontologist (Grant) gets caught up in the madcap affairs of an eccentric heiress (Hepburn) as he attempts to secure funding for his museum. Though today it is widely considered the quintessential screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby hasn’t always had such a positive reputation. As seems to be the case with so many now-classic films, it was not a commercial or critical success upon its initial release. In fact, the movie performed so poorly at the box office that Howard Hawks was fired from his next production at the studio and Katharine Hepburn was forced to buy out her contract to avoid being cast in less desirable roles. Perhaps in response to the film’s disappointing box-office numbers, Hawks claimed the movie was too wacky and, therefore, the audience couldn’t relate to what they were watching. These comments are especially surprising when read today given the fact that many critics cite Bringing Up Baby as the director’s best film. Hawks (whose output encompassed nearly all genres of films) has been called “the greatest American director who is not a household name” by film critic/historian Leonard Maltin. His no-nonsense style probably had a lot to do with his theory about what makes a good film director: “someone who doesn’t annoy you.” His other directing credits include the original Scarface, His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Rio Bravo. Though he only received one Academy Award nomination in his career (for Sergeant York; he lost to John Ford for How Green Was My Valley), he was given an honorary Oscar in 1974 for being “a master American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema.” The National Film Preservation Board added Bringing Up Baby to the National Film Registry in 1990. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
JAWS (1975) – 124 minutes (Rated PG – Technicolor – Anamorphic)
Saturday, August 28, 7:00 p.m.
Main Theatre, ACE Exhibition Complex, UNCSA campus
Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backline, Jonathan Filley and Lee Fierro.
The police chief of a small summer resort town must protect beachgoers from a great white shark. From that very simple premise, based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel of the same name, the modern-day blockbuster was born. The monumental success of Jaws (as well as Star Wars, released two years later) is often cited as being a major turning point in American cinema. Prior to its release, movies were distributed much more strategically. Films were unveiled at a few theatres in major cities first and would slowly make their way across the country based on their success or failure in the larger markets. Because Jaws performed so well in early test screenings, Universal Pictures took a gamble and released the film on 465 screens simultaneously, accompanied by a nation-wide marketing and advertising campaign. It was a gamble that paid off. Jaws quickly became the highest-grossing film up to that point and the first to earn over $100 million in box-office receipts. That seismic shift in the Hollywood business model has often – and somewhat unfairly – made Jaws a target of criticism, as studios, hungry for the next blockbuster, began focusing more time, energy, and production dollars on “high-concept” movies rather than the riskier adult fare of the era. Films like Taxi Driver, Nashville, or Network (just to name a few) were suddenly out of favor as studios attempted to emulate the mass-audience, wide-release paradigm set forth by Jaws. These criticisms, however, have done little to mar the otherwise stellar reputation Jaws has enjoyed over the years, as it’s regularly cited as one of the best films of the 1970s. The National Film Preservation Board added Jaws to the National Film Registry in 2001. This film is part of a series of public screenings sponsored by the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
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