Spotlight Film & Video is curated by Gregg Perkins, an artist, writer, and assistant professor of film studies at the University of Tampa, Florida, and is organized by MMoCA’s education department.
Friday, September 26 • 7 pm
Quiet City • Aaron Katz • 2007 • 78 minutes • Video
According to critic Stephen Holden, “Aaron Katz’s film Quiet City is punctuated with images of New York at twilight that cast a mood of reflective melancholy reminiscent of the loneliness at the heart of Edward Hopper paintings. Silhouettes of television aerials against a glowing orange and purple sky; yellow traffic lights on a nearly deserted avenue; a silvery subway train in the middle distance slipping through the dusky, blue-gray light; an industrial landscape at sunset: These and other beautiful images, photographed by Andrew Reed, resonate with the characters’ lives.”
Friday, October 10 • 7 pm
Shadows • John Cassavetes • 1959 • 81 minutes • 35 mm
Shot in Manhattan, Cassavetes’ ground-breaking film follows the lives of three African-American siblings as they confront racial discrimination and their own desires and limitations. Made largely with a cast of amateurs, Shadows presents a vivid depiction of life in New York City in the late 1950s. Shadows is widely acknowledged as the forerunner of the American independent film movement and launched Cassavetes’ influential directorial career.
Friday, October 24 • 7 pm
The Cool World • Shirley Clarke • 1964 • 105 minutes • 16 mm
In this semi-documentary film, Clarke presents a neo-realistic depiction of the culture of drugs, violence, and the effects of prejudice in Harlem in the early 1960s. The Cool World follows Duke, a fifteen-years-old boy, in his attempts to buy a gun and become leader of his gang.
Friday, November 7 • 7 pm
Films and Videos by Stephanie Barber • 1996-2008 • approximately 90 minutes • 16 mm/video
Stephanie Barber’s films “....can feel like highly formal exercises in film language made by a profoundly restless mind, playing image and sound off each other and forcing you to locate implied meanings on your own. Others are both silly and oddly engaging, involving puppets mundanely discussing pressing metaphysical concerns. And others calmly and almost imperceptibly sweep you up in the genuine breadth of their emotional wake.” —Brett McCabe, Baltimore City Paper
Spotlight Film & Video is free for MMoCA members and $5 per screening for the general public. Tickets are sold at the lobby reception desk beginning at 6:30 pm. Lecture hall.
Spotlight Film & Video is part of the Lussier Family Film Series and is a program of the MMoCA education department.
