Buffalo Film Seminars XV, Fall 2007

Screening schedule

Tuesdays 7:00 p.m. Market Arcade Theater

Each Tuesday night session begins promply at 7:00 p.m. The two of us introduce the film, screen it, take a brief break and then discuss it with the 40 UB students who are the core of these events and anyone else who wishes to join us. Students registered for the class are admitted free; everyone else is admitted for the price of an ordinary Market Arcade ticket (adults $8, students with ID $6, seniors $5.50; discount series tickets available). Goldenrod Handouts--four to eight-page notes on each film--are available in the lobby of the Market Arcade thirty minutes before each screening, and subsequently online at the Buffalo Film Seminars website: http://buffalofilmseminars.com. Free parking in the lighted and fenced M&T lot across the street from the theater's Washington Street entrance (pay the attendant $2, give the parking stub to one of the ticket sellers or someone at the concession stand and get the $2 back).The Main Street entrance of the theater is a few paces from Metro Rail's Theater station.

We choose the media we use in this series on a print by print basis. As more and more classic films are being digitized, fewer and fewer of them are available in decent 35mm prints. The disadvantage of DVD projection in a large theater is that, even with the best projection equipment, the colors are never as vivid or the blacks as deep as they are on a newly-struck 35mm film print. But newly-struck 35mm prints of classic films are very rare these days, and recent DVD versions of classic films are often much better technically, even when projected in a large theater, than any available 16mm or 35mm film prints, and many DVDs include important scenes missing from all film versions. If, overall, a DVD version is, in our opinion, better than the available print versions, we'll use a DVD for our screening and discussions; if film is better, we'll either show the film version or wait until we can get one.

Our desiderata in the Buffalo Film Seminars remain unchanged: the best prints we can find of the best films there are, shown on a big screen with an excellent sound system in the company of a lot of other people who love good movies, just as they were meant to be experienced. In the list that follows, three films will exhibited in DVD—City Lights, The Letter and Closely Watch Trains—the others in 35mm.

Aug 28 Charlie Chaplin, City Lights 1931

Sept 4 Jean Vigo L’Atalante 1934

Sept 11 William Wyler The Letter 1940

Sept 18 Preston Sturges The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 1944

Sept 25 Kenji Mizoguchi Sansho the Baliff/Sanshô Dayû 1954

Oct  2 Jean-Pierre Melville Army of Shadows/L’Armée des ombres 1969

Oct 9 Akira Kurosawa Ikiru 1952

Oct 16 Jirí Menzel Closely Watched Trains 1966

Oct 23 Luis Buñuel That Obscure Object of Desire 1977

Oct 30 Werner Herzog Aguirre: the Wrath of God 1972

Nov 6 Charles Burnett Killer of Sheep 1977

Nov 13 Stanley Kubrick Full Metal Jacket 1987

Nov 20 Woody Allen Crimes and Misdemeanors 1989

Nov 27 Elia Suleiman Divine Intervention/Yadon Ilaheyya 2002

Dec 4 Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2000

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