Filmmaker in Conversation: Bill Morrison
“I think, if the future is endless, so is the past.” —Bill Morrison
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s work is centered on the fleeting nature of cinema. He is known for using damaged archival film to create new narratives, revealing imagery that may have been lost forever without his intervention. Morrison often collaborates with composers and musicians to create original soundtracks for works that meditate on love, loss, destruction, and the onward march of time.
Dawson City: Frozen Time
*In Person: Director Bill Morrison
Friday, March 9, 7pm & Saturday, March 10, 2pm
Walker Cinema, $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
A “sprawling, hypnotic rumination on a long-forgotten past.” —The Guardian, UK
“Wondrous, almost indescribable. A complete astonishment from beginning to end.” —Los Angeles Times
In 1978, a bulldozer struck a treasure trove of film cans buried under an ice rink in Dawson City, Canada, revealing over a thousand nitrate reels preserved by dirt and permafrost. Filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) weaves a spellbinding tale using found footage from the once lost collection, including the tragic displacement of indigenous people by the Klondike gold rush, a wide array of world events captured by newsreels, and ghost-like scenes from Hollywood cinema’s earliest era. With an epic and ethereal score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. 2016, US, DCP, 120 minutes.
Both screenings will be introduced by the director. A post-screening conversation with Morrison follows Saturday’s screening.
Stop by the Bentson Mediatheque for additional screenings and a playlist of Morrison’s works.
View Trailer
New York Times Review
IndieWire Review
CBS News: Top 10 Movies of 2017
Light Is Calling: Short Films by Bill Morrison
Thursday, March 8, 7pm
Bentson Mediatheque, Free
A presentation and discussion of short films by Bill Morrison from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. The program features Light Is Calling (2004); Release (2010); and Outerborough (2012). The playlist will be available in the Bentson Mediatheque throughout the month of March.
Animatedly Yours
Thursday, March 22, 7pm
Bentson Mediatheque, Free
In the 1970s, artists pushed the boundaries of traditional animation, exploring everything from the everyday to the out of this world. Sexuality, the human body, death, and desire are expressed as extensions of the animators’ innermost fears and dreams. Featuring works by local filmmakers and rare 16mm prints from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. Be advised: this is not your average children’s animation program.
Félicité
*Area Premiere, Directed by Alain Gomis
Friday, March 23, 7pm & Saturday, March 24, 2pm
Walker Cinema, $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
“Alain Gomis’ character study of a struggling single mother in Kinshasa evolves into something far more sensually complex than it initially seems.” —Variety
Félicité is an engrossing portrait of a proud, free-willed singer with a reputation for being too tough for her own good. Alain Gomis, a French director of Bissau-Guinean and Senegalese descent, sets this film in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu) is on mission to save her son, singing to raise money for his medical care in an electric, hypnotic world of music and dreams. With music from the Kasai Allstars and Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste, Kinshasa’s symphony orchestra. In French with English subtitles. 2017, France/Senegal/Belgium/Germany/Lebanon, DCP, 123 minutes.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and Senegal’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Academy Awards.
The Friday screening features Congolese musician Siama Matuzungidi performing onstage from 6:30–7 pm.
View Trailer
Hollywood Reporter Review
Los Angeles Times Review
Until the Birds Return (En Attendant Les Hirondelles)
Area Premiere, directed by Karim Moussaoui
Wednesday, March 28, 7pm
Walker Cinema, $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)
“By hopping from one tale to the next, including a fourth tale that’s just beginning, he emphasizes how many stories his country has yet to tell.” —The Hollywood Reporter
Karim Moussaoui’s brilliant debut tells three loosely related stories set in a contemporary Algeria of abandoned construction sites, desert roads, and hospitals. Weaving these Chekovian tales together in a seamless three-part structure, Moussaoui reflects upon his country’s past, present, and future, sketching in the challenges faced by several generations of Algerians while evoking universal moral dilemmas and disappointment. Through his carefully controlled vision of the happenstance of everyday life, Moussaoui recalls the understated rigor of masters such as Krzysztof Kieslowski and Abbas Kiarostami, yet also allows himself exhilarating flights of fancy such as an impromptu song and dance number on the side of a desert highway. Such formally ambitious, insightful films rarely come along, let alone in the hands of a first-time director. In a single feature, Karim Moussaoui has established himself as a major new voice on the international film scene.
Until the Birds Return plays once at the Walker as a part of the director’s U.S. tour organized by the French Cultural Services in Chicago and UniFrance in conjunction with Moussaoui’s participation in the New Directors/New Films in New York. Premiered at 2017 Cannes (Un Certain Regard).
View Trailer
Hollywood Reporter review
ScreenDaily review
Self-Select Cinema
Daily, Tuesdays–Sundays, 12pm–building close
Bentson Mediatheque, Free
The Bentson Mediatheque offers a unique and personalized cinema experience. Choose from more than 300 titles from the collection or select a curated playlist to watch on the big screen.
Major support to preserve, digitize, and present the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection is generously provided by the Bentson Foundation.
Cinema programs are made possible by generous support from the Bentson Foundation and Elizabeth Redleaf.