Gish Film Theater Spring 2012 Schedule
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Film Theater
Bowling Green State University
Spring Showings • 2012

Gish Film Theater and Gallery
Located in Hanna Hall, first floor, Bowling Green State University. Park in Lot A, corner of South College Drive and East Wooster Street.

Tuesdays at the Gish 

Sponsored by the Department of Theatre and Film and the Gish Film Theater Endowment.

All films are free and open to the public.

Tuesday, Jan. 31, 7:30 pm
Next Frame Film Festival
(2011) U.S. and International, 120 minutes
Award-winning student filmmakers
Recognized as one of the world’s premiere showcases for student work, the Next Frame Film Festival dedicates itself to connecting filmmakers from all backgrounds and to providing them with a chance to share their vision with audiences. After each year’s finalists are selected, the festival begins a yearlong international tour visiting university campuses, museums, media art centers, and independent theaters throughout the U.S. and around the globe. While about 50 percent of the festival entries are domestic, Next Frame receives work from students around the world, including countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. 

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 7:30 pm
Beau Geste
(1939) U.S., 112 minutes
Director: William A. Wellman
The three, orphaned Geste brothers, Digby, John and Beau, have been under the care of Lady Brandon and her absent husband, Sir Hector, since childhood. Sir Hector spends the family fortune and plans to literally sell the family jewel: a sapphire called Blue Water. Upon hearing the news, Beau asks to see it one last time. The whole family gathers to see the jewel, but the lights go out. When the lights return the family finds that the sapphire is missing. No one confesses to taking it, but both Beau and Digby leave in the night without saying goodbye. Searching for his brothers, John discovers they have joined the French Foreign Legion and he too enlists. What follows is a tale of best friends, loyalty and family commitment in the face of trouble. Stars Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, Ray Milland, and Brian Donlevy.

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 7:30 pm
Lying Lips
(1939) U.S., 80 minutes
Director: Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux’s thirty-seventh film, Lying Lips, uses murder and melodrama to explore issues of race, gender and labor in the United States. When nightclub singer, Elsie, refuses to date the customers at the white-owned club where she works, trouble ensues. Her aunt is murdered and Elsie is framed for the crime. Luckily, Elsie has Benjamin, a detective, as a friend and through his investigation finds a trail of jealousy, family drama and injustice. Made independently from the Hollywood spectacles of the time, the film features a predominantly African American cast, avoids the racial stereotypes relied upon by mainstream films, provides heavy criticism of predominant American ideologies attached to race, and reinforces the importance of independent production in American film.

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 7:30 pm
Super Fly
(1972) U.S., 93 minutes
Director: Gordon Parks Jr.
Priest Youngblood (Ron O’Neal) is a cocaine dealer looking to retire from a life of crime and start anew. Before he can do so, he must make a huge deal, get paid, avoid death and arrest, and maintain his “super fly” status. Controversial for its supposed glorified representation of cocaine and drug dealing, the film followed the enormous success of Shaft (directed by the director’s father who also helped finance this film) and helped usher in the Blaxploitation movement that firmly placed the stamp on American filmmaking and representation. With the help of a Curtis Mayfield soundtrack, Super Fly provides a fascinating look at life on the streets and in the criminal underworld.

Tuesday, Feb. 28, 7:30 pm
80 Blocks from Tiffany’s
(1979) U.S., 67 minutes
Director: Gary Weis
Prior to directing short films for Saturday Night Live and working with former Monty Python members, Gary Weis directed this short but revealing documentary about 1970s gangs in the Bronx. Allowing members of the Savage Skulls and Savage Nomads to share their experiences first-hand, viewers can piece together what life in the Bronx was like. Set against a backdrop of severe poverty, lack of opportunity and drug abuse, the documentary contextualizes gang life for audiences unfamiliar with this terrain. Released the same year as cult classic The Warriors (Hill, 1979), the documentary takes the play out of gang violence and survival on the decayed and dangerous streets of the New York City borough.

Tuesday, March 13, 7:30 pm
Cineposium
BGSU Department of Theatre and Film
Student Work in Recent Film Production Courses
The evening will feature short films and other material created in production courses such as Film I: Cinematography; Film II: Editing, Image, and Sound; Film III: Sync Sound Production; Acting/Directing for Film; and Digital Technology for Film. Screenings of individual and group projects by the department’s film majors will be accompanied by discussions that include feedback from members of the film faculty as well as question and answer periods between student filmmakers and audience members.  

Tuesday, March 20, 7:30 pm
Clockwatchers
(1997) U.S., 96 minutes
Director: Jill Sprecher
Being a temp isn’t easy: you don’t know the office politics; the full-time employees find you suspicious, and you might be let go at any time. Iris (Toni Collette), Margaret (Parker Posey), Paula (Lisa Kudrow), and Jane (Alanna Ubach) happen to be stationed in the same office and while they have very different expectations for the job and methods for passing the long hours at work, they end up bonding over their shared position at the bottom. When a series of thefts occur, the temps are assumed to be the culprits, and their tenuous relationship in this temporary space ends up cracking under the pressure.


Tuesday, March 27, 7:30 pm
Stepford Wives
(1975) U.S., 115 minutes
Director: Bryan Forbes
Something is not quite right in the Connecticut suburb of Stepford. After Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their two children move there, Joanna struggles to adjust to life outside New York City. She befriends some of the more active women in the community and they wonder at the Stepford housewives who may be beautiful, but seem very strange. Slowly, Joanna’s friends who wanted more than just a life in the home become complacent and blithely subservient like the other Stepford wives. A brilliant look at women struggling against culture’s expectations and their function in a patriarchal society - don’t let the recent comedy remake dissuade you from checking out the thrilling horror of the original Stepford Wives.

Tuesday, April 3, 7:30 pm
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
(1984) U.S., 103 minutes
Director: W.D. Richter
Finishing out the semester and the academic year, Tuesdays at the Gish offers a wacky and adventurous science fiction comedy about saving the world from alien attack. The hero? A physicist, neurosurgeon and rock musician, who forms a band of fellow scientist musicians known as The Hong Kong Cavaliers to take on the alien invaders. The film is comprised of an amazing cast featuring RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd and Jeff Goldblum cementing the film’s fantastical nature. The film is a definition of cult classic; come take a trip to absurdity with Dr. Buckaroo Banzai.

Thursday Nights: 
International Film Series

The International Film Series at the Gish Film Theater is organized by the Department of German, Russian and East Asian Languages. Major funding is generously provided by the BGSU Department of Theatre and Film and the Gish Film Theater Endowment. 

All films are free and open to the public.

Thursday, Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m.
The Third Man                                                                                 
(1949) U.K., 104 minutes                                                                
Director: Carol Reed
An out-of-work novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post-WWII Vienna that is divided into sectors by the allies. He learns that the school friend who has offered him a job has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. Martins sees inconsistencies in stories of the friend’s acquaintances and decides to find out what really happened to him. Screenplay by Graham Greene.

Thursday, Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m.
Krai (The Edge)                                                                                         
(2010) Russia, 124 minutes                                                
Director: Aleksei Uchitel
An engrossing adventure film set at the end of WWII in a gorgeous Siberia and featuring Russians and Germans still coming to terms with personal victories and defeats. The hero’s interests are divided between a strong Russian woman (with a child by a German soldier) and the locomotive he discovers in the forest. Starring Vladimir Mashkov, one of Russia’s leading stage and movie stars.

Thursday, Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m.                                              
L'ange Gardien de Mon Père (My Father’s Angel)                                           
(1999) Canada, 86 minutes                                                            
Director: Davor Marjanović
A Muslim family flees their war-torn Bosnian homeland. In Vancouver, they meet a Serbian who doubts the gravity of the violence in the former Yugoslavia. The storyline may be simple, but the film won many awards in North America and Europe.

Thursday, March 15, 7:30 p.m.                                                       
Incendies (Scorched)                                                                    
(2010) Canada, 130 minutes                                                          
Director: Denis Villeneuve
An excellent drama adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's well-known 2003 play, the film connects Lebanon and Quebec. At their deceased mother's behest, twins Jeanne and Simon travel to the Middle East to solve mysteries of their family’s past.

Thursday, March 22, 7:30 p.m.                                                                     
Nanjing! Nanjing! (City of Life and Death)                                          
(2009) China, 133 minutes                                                             
Director: Chuan Lu
This film is a dramatization of the fall of the (then) capital of China, Nanking, in the winter of 1937. The character focus of the film is a Japanese soldier named Kadokawa, who is torn by his involvement in the violence but able to conceal his doubts from his fellows. The film won the Asian Film Award (Hong Kong) in 2010 and LAFCA best foreign language film in 2011.

Thursday, March 29, 7:30 p.m. 
TBA

Thursday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.           
La Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins)                                   
(2001) Colombia, 101 minutes                                                                   
Director: Barbet Schroeder
A writer returns to Medellín, where he grew up. He meets a 16-year-old living in a boys brothel, and the two become close until tragedy intervenes. The film is about the extreme violence that overwhelmed Medellín, Colombia’s second city, in the 1990s. It is the most recent of a series of films using non-professional actors to depict the lives of marginalized people.

Thursday, April 19, 7:30 p.m.
Se, Jie (Lust, Caution)                                            
(2007) China, 157 minutes                                                             
Drector: Ang Lee
An espionage thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai, in which a young woman, Wang Jiazhi, becomes swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue with a powerful political figure, Mr. Yee.

Sunday Matinees at the Gish Film Theater, BGSU 

Sponsored by the Gish Film Theater Endowment.
All films are free and open to the public.

March 18, March 25, April 1, April 15
Program Series: Gentlemen of the Silent Screen
Featuring Douglas Fairbanks, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Lon Chaney, William S. Hart, Harry Carey and John Barrymore


Sunday, March 18, 3 p.m.
Don Q, Son of Zorro
(1925) U.S., with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp, Jean Hersholt, 100 minutes
Director: Donald Crisp
Douglas Fairbanks brought a new kind of fun to movies – for he was the first Zorro, D’Artagnan, first Robin Hood and Thief of Bagdad. He also made the first stupendous pirate epic, The Black Pirate.  He did all this in the Twenties; he was the swashbuckler of all time. He was 42 when he portrayed Cesar, son of Zorro, in a lush, superlative production which he called a “romantic melodrama.”  Fairbanks’ athletic skill was phenomenal; with his body it became ballet, not just acrobatics. He was slowing down a bit; however, he made up for it with spectacular grace and gusto.

Hosted by Dr. Jan Wahl

 

Sunday, March 25, 3 p.m.
Both features are in memory of Dorothy Gish, who was born in Dayton, Ohio, on March 11, 1898.

Feature 1: The Waiters’ Ball
(1916) U.S., with Fatty Arbuckle and Al St. John, 15 minutes
Director: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
The most important pioneer comic on the American screen was Fatty Arbuckle, who influenced Charlie Chaplin and was the teacher of Buster Keaton. Like both of these geniuses he was responsible for directing and totally creating his own films. Like Keaton and Fairbanks later on, Arbuckle had fabulous control of his body, despite its tremendous girth. He was unique, loved by everyone, and deserves our awe and admiration.
AND
Feature 2: Phantom of the Opera
(1925) U.S., with Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, 95 minutes
Director: Rupert Julian
Here is the Man of a Thousand Faces outdoing himself as eerie Erik in his most memorable role. Somehow he managed to give the effect of a dead man’s skull, with apparent absence of a nose – audiences were horrified. Chaney was a master of make-up and lighting, inventing his own effects. This ability to transform has never been equaled; his only rival was Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster in the Thirties. The Lloyd Webber musical version is a pale attempt to pay homage to an original nightmarish creation.

Hosted by Dr. Jan Wahl

Sunday, April 1, 3 p.m.
Feature 1: The Narrow Trail
(1917) U.S., with William S. Hart and Sylvia Bremer, 50 minutes
Director: Lambert Hillyer
William S. Hart’s Westerns, especially the early ones made for Thomas Ince, are among the most austerely beautiful – in their blend of outdoor realism and poetry – Westerns ever produced. Hart knew the true West from his childhood in the Dakota territory; he counted Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp among his personal friends. His favorite character was that of the good bad-man. His films were made before sentimentality insinuated its way into a genre that demanded harsh realism. And he had one of the great cameramen, Joe August.

Feature 2: Bucking Broadway
 (1917) U.S., with Harry Carey and Molly Malone, 58 minutes
Director: John Ford
If any filmmaker was influenced by Hart’s authentic Western atmosphere, it was John Ford, who from the very beginning of his career (in 1917) specialized in an exploration of frontier life. And he tried to match the splendor of Joe August’s photography. Ford’s most famous works such as Stagecoach and The Searchers would lie years ahead, yet in this, his fourth Western, he already found an actor who represented a kind of special rugged integrity – and that was “Cheyenne” Harry Carey.

Piano accompaniment by Michael Peslikis
Hosted by Dr. Jan Wahl


Sunday, April 15, 3 p.m.
The Beloved Rogue
(1927) U.S., with John Barrymore, Conrad Veidt, Marceline Day, 100 minutes Director: Alan Crosland
The noblest of the Barrymores (his sister was Ethel and his brother Lionel), John may have been our grandest Hamlet as well. He could be Svengali or Dr. Jekyll; he could be Captain Ahab and Don Juan. In his prime, John was supreme. As that rascal poet-revolutionary, Francois Villon, he is mesmerizing. Here he’s matched by the magnificent German actor Conrad Veidt as gullible French King Louis XI – and by monumental stylized sets from master designer William Cameron Menzies. Movies can’t do any better than this, no matter the decade!

Hosted by Dr. Jan Wahl