Moving Pictures: A History Of Cinema In Four Acts

In conjunction with Antioch College’s course on the History of Cinema, professors Charles Fairbanks and Kelly Gallagher have curated four programs to lead viewers through the medium’s history, and (re-)introduce you to essential artworks from across the spectrum. Each film will be introduced and contextualized historically, in order to give attendees an understanding of its historical and artistic significance in cinematic history at The Little Art Theater in Yellow Springs. Each showing runs $5.

Charles Fairbanks

Charles Fairbanks is in the process of completing his first feature film, a hybrid documentary about a Mexican shaman who falls under the spell of a pyramid-scheme-marketed nutritional supplement. A Guggenheim fellow, Fairbanks teaches Media Arts at Antioch College.

Kelly Gallagher is an experimental animator and filmmaker interested in handcrafted filmmaking and exploring the ways that animation can be used to visualize stories of resistance. She currently resides in Ohio, where she is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Antioch College.

The program includes:

7pm Sun, Jan 24: Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)
preceded by a Buster Keaton short!

Once banned in many nations – including its native Soviet Union – Battleship Potemkin was long considered the greatest film ever made. As Eisenstein’s chef d’oeuvre, Potemkin manifests his influential theories about editing film to shock viewers into action.

7pm Sun, Feb 7: Gene Kelly in Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
preceded by a short film by Maya Deren!

Hollywood’s tongue-in-cheek, musical self-portrait of studio film production during the transition from ‘silent’ film to ‘talkies.’ Consistently ranked as one of the best films – and the top musical – of all time, “Singin’ in the Rain represents the musical genre at its most energetic and ambitious.

7pm Sun, Feb 21: John Cassevetes’s indie classic Woman Under the Influence (1974)
with a short film by Stan Brakhage

Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands in “two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s,” this “uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. This landmark American film is perhaps the most beloved work from the extraordinary John Cassavetes.” – Criterion Collection

7pm Sun, March 6: Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999)
with a short film TBD

“Loosely based on Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville, Beau travail focuses on an ex-Foreign Legion officer (Denis Lavant) as he recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in Africa.” – Mubi

“Denis and her team create a fixed, timeless world of mysterious, balletic rites, rippled with simmering homoerotic tensions. The intensity of mood and thematic resonance both derive almost entirely from the poetic juxtaposition of music and the stunning images of beauty and sustained, even surreal strangeness. Prepare to be blown away.” – TimeOut London