Entries associated with the tag "Charles Burnett":

Facet Film School's new six-week session of evening classes begins tonight with "The 'Religious' Films of Luis Bunuel," taught by Zoran Samardzija of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Scheduled for screening and discussion on Monday nights through August 25 are Susana (1951), Nazarin (1959), Viridiana (1961), Simon of the Desert (1965), The Milky Way (1969), and Tristana (1970).

Beginning Tuesday, novelist Aimee Laberge will lecture on the regional cinema of Quebec, screening Claude Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), Michel Brault's Les Ordres (1974), Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo (1992), and Phillippe Falardeau's Congorama (2006).

Charles Burnett and Haile Gerima are the focus of Brandon Linden's Wednesday-night course, "The LA Rebellion," which will include Killer of Sheep (1977), Bush Mama (1972), Ashes and Embers (1982), My Brother's Wedding (1983), To Sleep With Anger (1990), and Sankofa (1993).

Adam Jones of DePaul University will teach a David Mamet survey on Thursdays, screening House of Games (1987), Things Change (1988), Homicide (1991), Oleanna (1994), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), The Winslow Boy (1999), and Catastrophe (2000), Mamet's little-seen short adapted from the Samuel Beckett play.

Classes are $125, $80 for Facets members. To enroll call 773-281-9075 or click here. 

Tonight would be a good night to visit that old friend of yours who has premium cable: beginning at 7 PM Central, Turner Classic Movies will screen a four-and-a-half-hour block of early films by Los Angeles indie Charles Burnett. The schedule kicks off with his acclaimed debut feature, Killer of Sheep (1977), and includes the recently released director's cut of My Brother's Wedding (1983). Both of these have enjoyed Chicago runs recently, but harder to see are the three shorts also showing: Several Friends (1969), The Horse (1973), and When It Rains (1995). TCM host Robert Osborne will interview Burnett throughout the broadcast, which repeats in its entirety at 11:30 PM.

By the way, all these films are available as part of Milestone's new DVD release of Killer of Sheep. So when you're at your friend's house, remind him about that 40 bucks he owes you.

It's only when I stopped to count that I realized that this is my seventh trip to Argentina in eight years, something that started when the Buenos Aires branch of FIPRESCI, the international film critics organization, brought me there to give three lectures in the fall of 2000. The couple who became my host and hostess--critics Quintin and Flavia de la Fuentes, both of whom wrote for the monthly film magazine El Amante and would later review some films at the Chicago International Film Festival for the Reader--invited me back after Quintin became director of BAFICI, the Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Film, a remarkable event sponsored by the city every April. Quintin held the job for four years, and to my knowledge it was the only festival to be organized socially as well as intellectually around the principles of film criticism. Much of the programming centered on critical concepts, and a central meeting point--a cafe inside a huge shopping mall--served as the hub of discussions.

The event was also made delightful by certain unique forms of Argentinian hospitality, which are also evident at the Mar del Plata Film Festival: each guest is assigned an "angel," a young person assigned to serve as overall guide and assistant, procuring tickets and taking one around to the various cinemas, etc. A little more than a year after Quintin's lamentable departure from BAFICI, I was invited to Mar del Plata, which has been around (with a few interruptions) since the 50s. This year I've been invited back by Quintin to speak at a symposium panel titled "Cinema of Tomorrow." I'll be joined there by five colleagues: Alvaro Arroba (Spain), Emmanuel Burdeau (France), Cristina Nord (Germany), Mark Peranson (Canada), and Peter van Bueren (Netherlands).

Mar del Plata is a large resort and retirement community on the southern coast of Argentina. Currently it's late summer here, and though changing money is tedious--I had to walk about 20 blocks and then sign numerous documents--it's a delightful place and festival. My first order of business yesterday, for instance, was attending a master class given by U.S. director Charles Burnett, the focus of a retrospective here. (Burnett's films are also being showcased as part of the African-American Auteurs series at the Gene Siskel Film Center this month. To Sleep With Anger, his 1990 feature starring Danny Glover, screens tonight at 6 PM.) Burnett mainly showed clips from and discussed his current film, "Nujoma: Where Others Wavered," a period film set in Namibia, where he's been filming the last couple years or so; Glover and Carl Lumbly star. It seems regrettable but characteristic that one often has to go another country to find out about such a project.