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
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Introduction to Film Language plus Avant-Garde Shorts

    Wednesday, January 22 3:10PM
    Lecture by Emily Carpenter. Several short avant-garde films demonstrate the creative potential of film as an expressive medium. Plus an introduction film terminology.
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  • The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

    Wednesday, January 29 3:10PM
    Alfred 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)
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  • M

    Wednesday, February 5 3:10PM
    Fritz 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)
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  • Singin' In the Rain

    Wednesday, February 12 3:10PM
    Stanley 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)
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  • Citizen Kane

    Wednesday, February 19 3:10PM
    Orson 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)
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  • There's Always Tomorrow

    Wednesday, February 26 3:10PM
    Douglas 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)
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  • Early Summer

    Wednesday, March 5 3:10PM
    Yasujiro 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)
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  • Umberto D.

    Wednesday, March 12 3:10PM
    Vittorio 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)
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  • Los olvidados

    Wednesday, March 19 3:10PM
    Luis 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)
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  • La Pointe Courte

    Wednesday, April 2 3:10PM
    Agnès 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)
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  • Il posto

    Wednesday, April 9 3:10PM
    Ermanno 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)
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  • Contempt

    Wednesday, April 16 3:10PM
    Jean-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)
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  • My Own Private Idaho

    Wednesday, April 23 3:10PM
    Gus 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).
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  • After Life

    Wednesday, April 30 3:10PM
    Hirokazu 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)
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  • The Five Obstructions

    Wednesday, May 7 3:10PM
    Lars 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)
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