Special Admission Applies
General admission: $13.50; BAMPFA members: $9.50; UC Berkeley students: $7.50; 65+, disabled persons, UC Berkeley faculty and staff, non-UC Berkeley students, and 18 & under: $10.50


In Focus: The Poetics of Cinema



In Focus lecture/screening, special admission applies

  • In Person
    Robert Beavers
  • Judith Rosenberg
    Live Music
    Judith Rosenberg

    Judith Rosenberg on piano

In a talk on the poetics of cinema, Robert Beavers will discuss some of the influences he has drawn from film and the other arts. He will introduce an excerpt from Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, and address aesthetic concerns in two of his films: Work Done, in which images of old-world customs are juxtaposed with the male form and urban scenes; and Ruskin, which foregrounds Beavers’s love of literature, architecture, and landscape—much of the film is shot in the environs of Venice, London, and the Swiss Alps.

Films in this Screening

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
(Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed)

Lotte Reiniger, Germany, 1926

One of the world’s first animated feature films, Lotte Reiniger’s enchanting work uses intricate silhouettes made from cutout cardboard and thin sheets of lead, an animation technique she invented, to enact a tale from The Arabian Nights. The film tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse. What follows is a series of wondrous adventures. “It impresses for its exquisite craftsmanship, balletic movement, expressive romanticism, and moments of potent sensuousness and poetry” (Wally Hammond, Time Out).

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Hand-tinted
  • Digital
  • Silent
  • 16 mins
source
  • Milestone Film & Video

Early Monthly Segments (excerpt)

Greece, 1968–70/2002

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • Silent
  • 6 mins
source
  • Temenos Archive

Work Done

Robert Beavers, Italy, Switzerland, 1972/1999

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 22 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Ruskin

Robert Beavers, Italy, Switzerland, 1975/1997

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W/Color
  • 35mm
  • 45 mins
source
  • Temenos Archive