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Last Friday, the College hosted author and associate professor of english and women and gender studies at the University of Delaware Peter X. Feng, who delivered a talk about challenges facing Asian American representation in media.
Silence was a topic of passionate discussion at the Maine Jewish Film Festival’s (MJFF) screening in Mills Hall this past Monday. The festival is celebrating its 25th year this week with the motto “Great Films Unite Us,” proven true by a full room of people gathered to watch “The Art of Silence” and “The Peacock That Passed Over.” The Cinema Studies Program at the College partnered with MJFF to bring these films to Brunswick and to make the screenings available at no cost to students and area residents.
Just in time for the height of spooky season, last Friday marked the launch of the book “Labors of Fear: The Modern Horror Film Goes to Work,” the first study of horror’s critique of labor, edited by Edward Little Professor of English and Cinema Studies Aviva Briefel and Associate Professor of English and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester Jason Middleton.
Growing up, while other children were watching Sesame Street, Ben Model was watching Charlie Chaplin features. By the time he arrived at film school, he had already watched most of Chaplin’s films, as well as most Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd films.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program (LACLaS) at Bowdoin, the department hosted a film series this fall titled “Cine Hoy: A Fresh Look at Contemporary Latin Films,” featuring screenings of six films throughout September and October.
When movies were just minutes long and seeing them cost only a nickel, theaters often named themselves after the French word for jewel: bijou (early cinemas often resembled the luxurious inside of a jewel box). As films evolved, large, multiplex theaters became king, leaving many of these intimate theaters behind.
Yesterday, students, faculty and community members gathered on the Ladd House patio for No Man’s Land Film Festival’s return to campus, marking the second consecutive year the organization has held a screening at Bowdoin. The event, co-hosted by the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) and the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center (SWAG), consisted of a series of short films that focused on “un-defining the feminine” in athletics and outdoor adventure.
The screening of the 2023 film “Past Lives” at Brunswick’s Eveningstar Cinema drew a large crowd of students and town residents alike this past Sunday. Some hopeful moviegoers were even turned away at the door due to a lack of seating availability, a far cry from initial concerns of low turnout.
I feel like I’ve been having some real difficulties in saying goodbye to people in the past couple months. There’s a heftiness, a profound weight to goodbyes, that I haven’t really felt before. Nothing permanent, but these goodbyes are the type that just float in the air, intangibly.
Although it’s not his first film that has screened at Bowdoin, “Palisadia” is Henry Spritz’s ’23 last before he graduates. The film, which premiered in Sills Hall last Friday, tells the story of an actress living in New York City as she navigates both the acting in a movie and her life outside her work, as the experiences begin to increasingly mirror one another.
The Francophone Film Festival is back at Bowdoin. After showing three films over three weeks last fall, the festival returned on Tuesday, screening the first film of Francois Truffaut’s beloved Antoine Doinel series, “400 Blows,” to an audience of Brunswick residents, students and faculty in Searles Hall.
This contains spoilers for “Eighth Grade.” “Can you help me burn something in the backyard?” “…Yes.” Kayla (Elsie Fisher) and her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) sit in lawn chairs before a campfire. Kayla sets a time capsule with the fire, an old shoebox her fifth-grade self had stuffed with little mementos and trinkets, upon which she wrote with multicolor foam letters “TO THE COOLEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.” There’s a blankness on Kayla’s face as her father asks her if there was anything inside.
My family owns a small Mexican bakery and restaurant and has run the place since 2008. It was a consolation after scrambling from the recession, a way to build back up—home lost, business bought. Growing up there I met a lot of strangers over the years, some of whom became good family friends.
Kde je kino? After studying abroad in Prague last fall, Ben Allen ’23 and Eduarado Mendoza ’24 have more than a handful of memorized Czech phrases to show for their time; the two students have films, too.
This contains major spoilers for “Aftersun.” Before I started writing this, I rewatched the ending of “Aftersun.” I’m shocked it was only five minutes that made me smile (again) and laugh at the brilliance of the artistry, of the command of the form, to see that here is a director (Charlotte Wells) who is moving the medium forward and will help keep film alive—only to then burst out into uncontrollable sobbing.
“Whisper of the Heart” isn’t a Ghibli movie on a grand scale. Unlike the epic nature of “Spirited Away” or “Princess Mononoke,” this one is small, intimate and down-to-earth. Director Yoshifumi Kondo is interested in the moments between breaths and frames scenes with more interest in subtlety rather than monumental motions.
The walls of Smith Auditorium faded away as the short film “Noche’’ by Miguel Pavon ’25 flooded the screen. From the first few moments, the audience was immersed in atmospheric twilight shots as they drifted through scenes of Houston nightlife.
When explaining her current art style, Katherine Page ’23 described it as “preschool-classroom-esque,” a modest label for work characterized by joyful explosions of color and themes that draw upon scientific discovery, music and social commentary. For Page, the process is just as exuberating as the final product.
On Wednesday, Edward Little Professor of the English Language and Literature and Cinema Studies Aviva Briefel gave the inaugural professorship’s lecture titled “‘We Want to Take Our Time:’ The Hard Work of Leisure in Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’”.
Over the weekend of April 2, the Bowdoin Film Society hosted its annual 48 Hour Film Festival in which teams were tasked with writing, shooting and editing a 3-10 minute film over the span of two days.
After watching six hours of footage expanded from what was previously one two-hour movie, I can say that “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is vastly better than the original theatrical release of “Justice League.” A film that was meant to make millions was fumbled so badly by those involved that it took four years before the intended cut was seen by fans.
Come Oscar Sunday, it should not be a surprise if (and when) Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” wins the coveted Best Picture prize. It was clearly an early favorite, even in a year full of many impressive films.
The Bowdoin Film Society looks forward to re-engaging the College community with cinema through the inaugural launch of Bowdoin Journal of Cinema in May. The Journal is an extension of the Bowdoin Film Society, and came about after Society member Kate McKee ’22 reached out to Finn McGannon ’23, one of the Society’s officers late last fall.
When Associate Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen first heard about the opportunity to act in an episode of the Smithsonian’s “America’s Hidden Stories,” she did not realize that she was auditioning for a starring role. Earlier this month—almost a year after that audition—she made her debut as Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy who fought for the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.
The biographical film has been a staple of Hollywood since its creation. Look at Oscar winners in all four of the acting categories from the past 10 years, and you will see that 17 awards have been earned for portrayals of actual people—seven of those being in the Lead Actor category.
It’s safe to say that the majority of present-day moviegoers steer clear of stage-to-screen adaptations. There are films in this subgenre that would be considered classics, like Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but there is something about the intimacy of watching the film version of a work originally performed as a stage play that turns many audiences off.
With hopes to unite the Bowdoin community through film, the Cinema Studies Program has partnered with the Maine Jewish Film Festival (MJFF), a Portland-based nonprofit, to bring the Festival’s virtual lineup to the screens of students, staff and faculty at no cost.
For years, one of my holiday traditions has been watching movies all throughout Thanksgiving break with friends and family. As we approach the end of this unusual year, this tradition of seeing, at times, five movies in the theater is something that I am especially missing.
Over the past few weeks, I have constantly been thinking about the movies that studios are putting on the backburner to release when theaters are completely reopened. I am excited to see Cary Joji Fukunaga’s “No Time To Die,” Edgar Wright’s “Late Night in Soho,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” and, honestly, I am curious about Malcolm D.
Not long ago, it was assumed that two types of film could make studios a significant profit: Disney remakes and Christopher Nolan films. Disney has been churning out remakes of animated classics yearly since Rober Stromberg’s “Maleficent” in 2014.
In July 2018, I prepared to go to the 75th Annual Florida Boys State Delegation, sponsored by the American Legion. This event is held all over the nation, with 1,000 rising high school senior boys in each state participating in mock state government.
Brunswick has been home to a local cinema since 1908. The name and location of this theater have changed over the past century, but today, Eveningstar Cinema on Maine Street carries on the tradition as Brunswick’s go-to specialty box office.
Fruit always ripe, gentle chords on the guitar, dancing to The Psychedelic Furs and teenage bodies glistening under the Mediterranean sun—vivid colors and ’80s music set the scene for the sensual gay romance of “Call Me by Your Name.” However, in his Monday night lecture, Associate Professor of Italian and Cinema Studies at University of Oregon Sergio Rigoletto unearthed the hidden symbolism beneath the film’s beautiful imagery, haunting the picture-perfect love story.
Welcome to the second week of On PolarFlix, a column meant to do exactly what it sounds like—review films on Bowdoin Student Government (BSG)’s movie streaming service, PolarFlix. This week, we are going with Oscar contender “I, Tonya,” a biopic about the American ice skater Tonya Harding.
Welcome to On PolarFlix, a column that will review a movie a week that can be found on Bowdoin’s very own, BSG-sponsored “PolarFlix” network. We are starting with Cameron Crowe’s cult classic “Almost Famous” (2000). Plot summary (no spoilers!): “Almost Famous” is a contained movie about colossal subjects: coming of age, the changing nature of rock ’n’ roll, first love and the ultimate disappointment of meeting one’s heroes.
Peter Staley was working as a bond trader at JP Morgan when he was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex in 1985. The country was in the midst of an AIDS crisis, and homophobic sentiment was at an all-time high.
Filmmaker Raoul Peck now uses cinema as a platform for social activism. On Monday, the award-winning filmmaker and director of the world-renowned documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” came to campus to participate in a Q&A following a screening of his film.
