Film 50: History of Cinema
Film 50: History of Cinema
1/22/14 to 5/7/14
BAM/PFA and the UC Berkeley Department of Film and Media copresent the film-lecture course Film 50, now celebrating its twenty-first year. This year's course, taught by Emily Carpenter, showcases an exciting lineup of world cinema classics. Open to the public as space permits.
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- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Introduction to Film Language plus Avant-Garde Shorts
Wednesday, January 22 3:10PMLecture by Emily Carpenter. Several short avant-garde films demonstrate the creative potential of film as an expressive medium. Plus an introduction film terminology.View DetailsThe Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Wednesday, January 29 3:10PMAlfred Hitchcock (U.K., 1926). Digital Restoration! Judith Rosenberg on piano. Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Hitchcock's first foray into the thriller genre, starring Ivor Novello as the eponymous lodger who just may be a serial killer. The director himself called it “the first true Hitchcock movie.” (90 mins)View DetailsM
Wednesday, February 5 3:10PMFritz Lang (Germany, 1931). Digital Restoration! Lecture by Emily Carpenter. A precursor to American film noir, Fritz Lang's masterpiece is a terrifying excursion into an urban underworld where it is difficult to distinguish morally between the activities of organized crime and law enforcement. With Peter Lorre. (99 mins)View DetailsSingin' In the Rain
Wednesday, February 12 3:10PMStanley Donen, Gene Kelly (U.S., 1952). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds dance their way across the screen in one of the greatest American musicals of all time, set during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound. (102 mins)View DetailsCitizen Kane
Wednesday, February 19 3:10PMOrson Welles (U.S., 1941). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. A childhood memory is the ultimate red herring in Welles's audacious debut, which still tops many critics' lists of the best films of all time. “Inventing modern cinema is a tough act to follow,” Welles remarked later in his career. (119 mins)View DetailsThere's Always Tomorrow
Wednesday, February 26 3:10PMDouglas Sirk (U.S., 1956). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray rekindle an old flame in Douglas Sirk's wonderful, melancholy melodrama that "demolishes the social fantasy of the 'happy home'” (Time Out). (84 mins)View DetailsEarly Summer
Wednesday, March 5 3:10PMYasujiro Ozu (Japan, 1951). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. "I was interested in getting much deeper than just the story itself; I wanted to depict the cycles of life, the transience of life" (Ozu). An exquisite, faintly melancholic portrait of a family, with the radiant Setsuko Hara as the daughter on whose marriage everything depends. (135 mins)View DetailsUmberto D.
Wednesday, March 12 3:10PMVittorio De Sica (Italy, 1952). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. De Sica's “simple, almost Chaplinesque story of a man fighting to preserve his dignity is even more moving for its firm grasp of everyday activities. . . . A truly great film” (Chicago Reader). (89 mins)View DetailsLos olvidados
Wednesday, March 19 3:10PMLuis Buñuel (Mexico, 1950). New 35mm Print! Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Luis Buñuel's unsentimental portrait of slum kids in Mexico City. “Its matter-of-fact brilliance continues to astonish” (BBC). (88 mins)View DetailsLa Pointe Courte
Wednesday, April 2 3:10PMAgnès Varda (France, 1954). New 35mm print! Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Made outside the French film industry on a shoestring budget, Varda's 1954 debut about two reunited lovers in a Mediterranean fishing port has been called “truly the first film of the nouvelle vague.” (90 mins)View DetailsIl posto
Wednesday, April 9 3:10PMErmanno Olmi (Italy, 1961). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Olmi's humane, funny, and heartbreaking portrait of a young man embarking on his first job in Milan captures the alienation and regimentation of the working world. (93 mins)View DetailsContempt
Wednesday, April 16 3:10PMJean-Luc Godard (France, 1963). New Digital Restoration! Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Godard's Homeric homage to Fritz Lang, “one of the defining moments of modernist filmmaking”(Film Comment). With Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang himself. (103 mins)View DetailsMy Own Private Idaho
Wednesday, April 23 3:10PMGus Van Sant (U.S., 1991). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Gus Van Sant's melancholic portrait of street hustlers in Portland follows a narcoleptic Mike (River Phoenix) and his best friend Scott (Keanu Reeves) as they embark on a journey to find Mike's mother. With “magnetic performances from Reeves and Phoenix" (Rolling Stone).View DetailsAfter Life
Wednesday, April 30 3:10PMHirokazu Kore-eda (Japan, 1999). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Welcome to the afterlife of Kore-eda's remarkable film, where a busy crew of angels reenacts the favorite memories of the recently deceased. Entwining documentary and reality, After Life is, as Kore-eda states, "a film about memory, and also a film about what it means to make films." (115 mins)View DetailsThe Five Obstructions
Wednesday, May 7 3:10PMLars Von Trier, Jørgen Leth (Denmark, 2003). Lecture by Emily Carpenter. In this playfully profound documentary, Dogme demon Lars von Trier challenges great Dane filmmaker Jørgen Leth to remake The Perfect Human, his 1968 masterpiece, according to devious rules that test the elder statesman's creative and ethical limits. (90 mins)View Details