Harpur Cinema
Since 1965, Harpur Cinema has been seeking to bring to campus a range of significant films that in most cases would not be available to local audiences. Our program is international in scope, emphasizing foreign and independent films, as well as important films from the historical archive. All foreign films are shown in their original language with English subtitles.
Lecture Hall 6, unless otherwise noted
7:30pm on Friday and Sunday
$4 Single Admission
*Tickets will be for sale at the door from 7:00pm on the evening of the screening.
Free admission to students currently enrolled in CINE 121.
FALL 2022 Schedule
Programmed by Assistant Professor Kenneth White and Associate Professor Brian Wall
Friday, 30 Sep & Sunday, 2 Oct:
DOS ESTACIONES
Juan Pablo González, Mexico, 2022, 99 minutes
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Dos Estaciones follows
iron-willed businesswoman María García (Teresa Sánchez), the owner of Dos Estaciones,
a once-majestic tequila factory now struggling to stay afloat. The factory is the
final holdover from generations of Mexican-owned tequila plants in the highlands of
Jalisco, the rest having folded to foreign corporations. Once one of the wealthiest
people in town, María knows her current financial situation is untenable. When a persistent
plague and an unexpected flood cause irreversible damage, she is forced to do everything
she can to save her community's primary economy and source of pride.
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Friday, 14 Oct & Sunday, 16 Oct:
WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR
Jane Schoenbrun, United States, 2021, 86 min
Alone in her attic bedroom, teenager Casey becomes immersed in an online role-playing
horror game, wherein she begins to document the changes that may or may not be happening
to her.
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Friday, 28 Oct & Sunday, 30 Oct:
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER
Sara Gómez, Cuba, 1977, 73 min
The only feature from the radical Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez—who also worked
as an assistant director with Agnès Varda and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before her untimely
death at age thirty-one—is an extraordinary portrait of post-revolution Cuba. Blending
invaluable documentary footage with a loose narrative about the budding relationship
between an outspoken schoolteacher (Yolanda Cuellar) and a young worker (Mario Balmaseda)
facing a moral crisis, One Way or Another depicts revolution as an ongoing process
that takes place at the level of community—among friends, lovers, coworkers, teachers,
students, and parents, all of whom must work together to negotiate a new social order.
Above all, Gómez offers a trenchant intersectional critique of the lingering sexism
and machismo that, she argues, must be cleared away in order to create a truly just
society.
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Friday, 4 Nov & Sunday, 6 Nov:
COME AND SEE
Elem Klimov, Soviet Union, 1985, 142 min
This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering
plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small
village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the
screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc)
eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned,
what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with
a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic
sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve
its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar
film ever made.
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Friday, 11 Nov & Sunday, 13 Nov:
FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
Lynne Sachs, United States, 2020, 74 minutes
Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Lynne Sachs shot 8 and
16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant
and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her attempt
to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.
With a nod to the Cubist renderings of a face, Sachs' cinematic exploration of her
father offers simultaneous, sometimes contradictory, views of one seemingly unknowable
man who is publicly the uninhibited center of the frame yet privately ensconced in
secrets. With this meditation on fatherhood and masculinity, Sachs allows herself
and her audience to see beneath the surface of the skin, beyond the projected reality.
As the startling facts mount, she discovers more about her father than she had ever
hoped to reveal.
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Friday, 18 Nov & Sunday, 20 Nov:
BEYOND THE BOLEX
Alyssa Bolsey, United States, 2021, 91 min
In the 1920s immigrant inventor Jacques Bolsey aimed to disrupt the early film industry
with a motion picture camera for the masses: the iconic Bolex. Over 90 years later,
filmmaker Alyssa Bolsey pieces together the fragments of a forgotten family archive
to reveal the epic story of her great-grandfather in Beyond the Bolex. Interviewing
family members and renowned filmmakers, Alyssa travels to Switzerland, and delves
into Jacques’ personal diary, film reels and collected images in order to understand
the man and his impact on generations of filmmakers. Winner of Best Emerging Filmmaker
at Newport Beach Film Festival 2019, Winner of the Best Feature Documentary at Dallas
Videofest 2019, and Official Selection at Raindance Film Festival 2019.
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Friday, 2 Dec & Sunday, 4 Dec:
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, United States, 2006, 180 min
A WOMAN IN TROUBLE.
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