August 12, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures Fall Cinema 2003
features 9 films from around the globe

Summary Facts:

• UCSB Arts & Lectures Fall Cinema 2003
• A series of 9 international films, including 5 Santa Barbara premieres
• Thursday, September 18 through Wednesday, November 19
• Screening of Derrida with filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman on October 7
• The Santa Barbara debut of Matthew Barney’s spectacular Cremaster 3 on November 19
• All screenings at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall
• General public: $6 / UCSB students: $5; except for Cremaster 3, for which admission is general public: $10 / UCSB students: $8
• Tickets may be purchased in advance at the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office and at the door, if available, beginning at 6:30 pm
• Charge by phone, (805) 893-3535, or by fax, (805) 893-8637
• For tickets and information, phone UCSB Arts & Lectures: (805) 893-3535

UCSB Arts & Lectures Fall Cinema 2003, a series of nine films, features five Santa Barbara area premieres and spans the globe. On Tuesday, October 7, filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman will introduce their documentary Derrida and answer questions after the screening. On Wednesday, November 19 we will present Cremaster 3, the culmination of sculptor-performance artist-filmmaker Matthew Barney’s magnum opus the Cremaster Cycle.

As complementary programming to the Evening with Michael Moore at the Arlington Theatre on October 26, Arts & Lectures will open the film series on Thursday, September 18 with a screening of his Academy Award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine. Moore’s exploration of the root causes of gun violence—the United States suffers over 11,000 gun-related deaths yearly—is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. Whether taking on NRA President Charlton Heston or bullet-selling Kmart, Moore provocatively explores America’s fears with his typical easygoing persona. The San Francisco Chronicle claims the documentary “reaches an exalted level of filmmaking. It explains the very fabric of American society.” (2002,119 minutes)

A look at the violence of nation against nation is the still powerful subject of Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 film The Battle of Algiers, which screens on Wednesday, September 24. Commissioned by the Algerian government after it achieved independence from France, but still remarkably even-handed in the way it unflinchingly presents the evils of war, this searing pseudo-documentary “is the work by which all other attempts at political cinema must be judged,” according to the Independent (London). A winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, the film is enriched immeasurably by Ennio Morricone’s brilliant score. In French with English subtitles. (1965, 123 minutes)

Spellbound, the Oscar-nominated documentary that follows eight youngsters vying for the title of champ at the National Spelling Bee, screens on Monday, September 29. As Ashley White, one of the young super-spellers, puts it: “My life is like a movie. I go through trials and tribulations and then I finally overcome.” This inspiring look at a true cross-section of American children was called “a work of art” by The New York Times. Critic A.O. Scott went on to say the film has “enough drama, humor and unfiltered nail-biting suspense to put all thrill-mongering screenwriters in Hollywood to shame.” (Jeff Blitz, 2002, 97 minutes)

Directors Amy Ziering Kofman and Kirby Dick will take part in a post-film Q&A at the presentation of Derrida on Tuesday, October 7. (Jacques Derrida himself will deliver the lecture Vivre “ensemble”—Living “together” at Campbell Hall in Thursday, October 23). Kofman, a former student of Derrida, started the film and was later joined by filmmaker Dick (Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist). A playful, personable portrait of the eminent French theorist Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of our era, Derrida maintains a careful balance: it neither oversimplifies Derrida and his theory of Deconstruction nor gives in to ideology by becoming over-erudite and aloof. The film is noted for its bold visual style and mesmerizing score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. In English and French with English subtitles as necessary. (2002, 85 minutes)

The series shifts gears to the poignant and funny road movie Marooned in Iraq on Wednesday, October 29. Directed by Bahman Ghobadi (Time for Drunken Horses), a Kurdish resident of Iran, Marooned in Iraq is set immediately after the Persian Gulf War. A family of Kurdish musicians, led by the elderly Mirza, leave Iran and head into the refugee camps of Iraq in search of Mirza’s wife. “The Kurds have undergone all this tyranny through the ages. To combat this, they seek refuge in humor and passionate music. This will get them through; this gives them hope for a destination that is other than bitter,” Ghobadi has explained in an interview. “They don’t know how to transcend it other than in this way. This merging of humor and tragedy is the essence of Kurdish life.” In Kurdish with English subtitles. (2002, 97 minutes)

A fascinating double bill of two ethnographic documentaries, Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei and Herdsmen, screens on Thursday, November 6. Some of the greatest athletes in the world, the “marathon monks” of Japan’s Mt. Hiei, proponents of Tendai Buddhism, figuratively circle the globe during their seven-year training period, suffering grueling tests of endurance to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Herdsmen follows a nomadic family of Kazakhs in westernmost China, showing us both a hardscrabble way of life and a remote, sublime, yet rarely seen region of the globe. Marathon Monks is in English and Japanese with English subtitles as necessary. Herdsmen is in Chinese and Kazakh with English subtitles. (Christopher J. Hayden, 1993, 57 minutes; Chen Jianjun, 2001, 88 minutes)

Whale Rider, a fictional work that nonetheless presents a rarely glimpsed culture, screens on Thursday, November 13. This crowd-pleasing film, based on a novel by Witi Ihimaera, is set against the striking coastal landscape of New Zealand. A young Maori girl, played magnificently by Keisha Castle-Hughes, believes she is fated to be a “whale rider” or village chief, despite the strong patriarchal traditions of her people and especially her grandfather. Her struggle is uplifting, eye-opening and highly emotional. The Washington Post says the film “evokes its spirituality with deft strokes and wonderful humor.” In English and Maori, with English subtitles, as necessary. (Niki Caro, 2002, 105 minutes)

The series finishes with Cremaster 3, one of the major art events of the past decade, on Wednesday, November 19. Matthew Barney concludes his legendary five-part Cremaster Cycle (shot out of order) with this spectacular fantasia filled with beautiful and mystifying images. A surreal meditation on art-making, myth-making, sexuality, architecture and autobiography, the film takes its name from the cremaster muscle that controls the testicles. Aesthetically thrilling and mind-expanding, Cremaster 3 brings together the New York Guggenheim Museum, the Chrysler Building, punk bands Murphy’s Law and Agnostic Front, the Rockettes, sculptor Richard Serra, the Order of the Masons, Celtic giants, and plenty of Barney’s trademark media, Vaseline, in a film truly unlike any other. Hailed as “an inspired benchmark of ambition, scope and forthright provocation” by The New York Times and as a “tour de force that is weird, wacky and wonderful” by the New York Post, Cremaster 3 is unforgettable. (2002, 177 minutes)

All film screenings begin at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Tickets for all films are available in advance at the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office (893-3535) and may be purchased in person or charged by phone. Tickets can also be bought at the door, if available, starting at 6:30 pm. Tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students, except for Cremaster 3, for which admission is $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students.

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, these films are sponsored by the Santa Barbara Independent, KCSB Radio 91.9 FM, Blue Agave and the UCSB Daily Nexus. Marooned in Iraq is co-presented by the UCSB MultiCultural Center.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.