December 2, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
UCSB Arts & Lectures Winter Cinema 2004
features 10 films from around the globe
Summary Facts:
- UCSB Arts & Lectures Winter Cinema 2004
- A series of 10 international films, including 8 Santa Barbara premieres
- Thursday, January 8 through Wednesday, March 10
- Screening of Charlie—The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin with filmmaker Richard Schickel on January 12
- A special Evening with Andre Gregory featuring the film My Dinner with Andre on January 15
- General public: $6 / UCSB students: $5; except for School of Rock, for which admission is general public: $6 / UCSB students: free; Charlie—The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin and An Evening with Andre Gregory, for which admission is general public: $10 / UCSB students: $8; The Agronomist and The Story of the Weeping Camel, for which all tickets are $8.50.
- Tickets may be purchased in advance at the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office and at the door, if available, beginning an hour before screening
- 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 Winter Cinema 2004, a series of ten international films, features eight Santa Barbara area premieres with a focus on non-fiction films. On Monday, January 12, filmmaker and Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel will introduce his documentary Charlie—The Life and Art of Charlie Chaplin and answer questions after the screening. On Thursday, January 15 theater director, actor and story-teller extraordinaire Andre Gregory will give a fascinating presentation and introduce the mesmerizing film classic My Dinner with Andre.
Arts & Lectures will open the film series on Thursday, January 8 with a screening of the crowd-pleasing comedy hit School of Rock. The talented trio of director Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Slacker), screenwriter Mike White (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl) and acting dynamo Jack Black (High Fidelity, Shallow Hal), created this laugh riot about a wannabe rockstar who channels his musical energies into tutoring 10-year-olds in the finer points of imitating the Ramones. A&L will welcome UCSB students for free to the two screenings of School of Rock as a way of saying thank you for their support. (2003, 108 minutes)
A much more subdued comic genius is examined in Charlie—The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, which screens on Monday, January 12. Directed by Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel, the documentary brings Chaplin to life with a brilliant cavalcade of clips, rare footage, and interviews with family members, film critics and admirers as diverse as Johnny Depp, Marcel Marceau and Martin Scorsese. The Times (London) called Charlie “an enormously rewarding, multi-faceted portrait of a cinematic genius.” Schickel will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions after the screening. (2003, 132 minutes)
Another exceptional visitor comes to Campbell Hall on Thursday, January 15 when we present An Evening with Andre Gregory. The wise and witty Gregory is sure to fascinate with tales of his career in the avant-garde and traditional theater and the making of a film like no other, My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981, 101 minutes), co-starring Wallace Shawn. The evening will conclude with a screening of the film that New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby called “very funny, extremely special, invigorating.”
Equally invigorating is My Architect, the unusual biography of the acclaimed architect Louis Kahn that screens on Wednesday, January 28. In 1997 Nathaniel Kahn, one of several illegitimate children of Louis, set off on a five-year odyssey to learn more about his father. The result of his quest is this riveting film about the haunting art and haunted personal life of Louis Kahn, about whom preeminent architect Philip Johnson claims, “All my buildings don’t add up to his three or four.” Variety calls My Architect “a quietly moving documentary that superbly balances personal reflection with career assessment....a fascinating portrait of an eccentric visionary and his chaotic triple family life.” (2003, 116 minutes)
The series shifts gears with a screening of The Agronomist, the latest non-fiction film from Academy Award-winning director Joanthan Demme, on Monday, February 2. Demme had many years of unparalleled access to Haitian national hero Jean Dominique, freedom fighter and owner-operator of his nation’s only free radio station, Radio Haiti Inter. The resulting footage and film is a portrait of a remarkable man, his extraordinary wife and partner Michèle Montas, and their uncompromising crusade for liberty and democracy in Haiti. Demme, director of Silence of the Lambs and Stop Making Sense, is an invited guest. The film will be followed by a panel discussion featuring UCSB faculty. In English, French and Creole, with English subtitles, as necessary. (2003, 91 minutes)
The series moves from tropical Haiti to the Gobi Desert for one of the surprise hits of the Toronto Film Festival The Story of the Weeping Camel, which screens on Thursday, February 5. The first-ever Mongolian entry for the foreign-language Oscar, this emotional powerhouse of a film follows the adventures of a family of camel herders who face a crisis when a mother camel rejects her newborn, a rare pure white calf. In Mongolian with English subtitles. (Byambasuren Davaa & Luigi Falorni, 2003, 93 minutes)
Tango—The Obsession, a film called “informative and beguiling, as seductive as the tango itself” by the Los Angeles Times, screens on Monday, February 9. Shot almost entirely in Argentina, this award-winning, lyrical journey into the power of tango offers spectacular modern and archival footage against a vivacious musical backdrop of over 20 songs. The Hollywood Reporter calls the film “a heady blend of history, romance and music that will thrill aficionados while providing an enticing introduction to newcomers.” The screening will be followed by a demonstration by dancers from Tango Santa Barbara. In English and Spanish, with English subtitles, as necessary. (Adam Boucher, 1998, 67 minutes)
The series continues on a more studious note with To Be and To Have (Être et Avoir) on Monday, March 1. Renowned documentarian Nicolas Philibert (In the Land of the Deaf) filmed a one-room école in pastoral Auvergne, France for a school year. What he captured is the magic of learning, as a dozen students, ages 3 to 11, study both lessons and life with their patient teacher Georges Lopez, who is in the last of his 20 years of teaching. Salon.com asserts, “This heart-wrenching documentary offers the comedy and pathos of great drama and the visual magnificence of painting.” In French with English subtitles. (2002, 104 minutes)
The placid French countryside is quite distant from the subject of The Weather Underground, which screens on Wednesday, March 3. The film presents a balanced look at the Waethermen, a 1960s and ‘70s radical student group—which splintered from the Students for a Democratic Society—that used any means necessary to oppose the Vietnam War, including violence. As one former member claims, “When you feel you have right on your side, you can do some pretty horrific things.” The Christian Science Monitor writes, “Along with its historical value, The Weather Underground is a terrific movie, energetic and articulate. It’s the don’t-miss documentary of the season.” (Sam Green & Bill Siegel, 2003, 92 minutes)
The series concludes with the award-winning Brazilian documentary Bus 174 on Wednesday, March 10. An engrossing dissection of the hijacking of a Rio de Janeiro commuter bus in 2000, full of alarming and up close footage, the film is both an indictment of the miserable poverty so many suffer in Brazil and a commentary on how the media inflamed the very event it sought to document. “Few documentaries are as relentlessly gripping,” claims Time Out New York. “If only the average Hollywood action flick were even half this exciting.” In Portuguese with English subtitles. (José Padilha, 2002, 122 minutes)
Arts & Lectures Winter Calendar includes two other film events so special that we will mail separate press releases to describe them in further detail. On Thursday, February 5 A&L and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival will present All about Docs—Documentary Filmmaker Panel with invited guests Jonathan Demme, George Hickenlooper and others at 7 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. On Thursday & Friday, February 26 and 27 A&L will present the Best of the 28th Annual Banff Mountain Film Festival at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall.
All film screenings begin at 7:30 pm, except for the additional showing of School of Rock at 9:30 pm and the screening of The Story of the Weeping Camel at 9 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 an hour before each screening. Tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students, except for School of Rock, for which admission is $6 for the general public and free for UCSB students; for Charlie—The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin and An Evening with Andre Gregory, which are $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students; and for The Agronomist and The Story of the Weeping Camel, for which all tickets are $8.50.
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. Charlie—The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin is co-presented by the UCSB Center for Film, Television and Media. The Agronomist is co-presented by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the UCSB Center for Black Studies and the UCSB Center for Chicano Studies. The Story of the Weeping Camel is co-presented by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Tango—The Obsession is co-presented as part of the Tango and Malambo Festival with the Ben-Dor Music Discovery Project.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.