George Eastman House has canceled the Dryden Theatre screening of The Price of Sugar on Saturday, March 21, due to ongoing litigation involving the film and its distributor. The cancellation of The Price of Sugar is due to a legal action commenced by certain persons featured in the film against the filmmakers. Upon resolution of such claims, the George Eastman House will review the court’s decision and, if such resolution is favorable for screening the film, Eastman House will give consideration to rescheduling the film as part of its Human Spirit Series, with a full panel discussion following the screening. The Human Spirit series will return in April, with screenings of Examined Life at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 11 and 5 p.m. Sunday, April 12.
Film Posters List
A-G
Addison’s Wall
Alexandra
Animation Show
Animation Show—Hertzfeldt and Judge
Apartment
Becket
Brand Upon the Brain
Bridesmaid, The
Bubble
Changing Times
Chinoise, La
Cienaga, La
Classe Tous Risques
Coat of Snow, A
Comedy of Power
Death of Mr. Lazerescu
Duma
Edge of Heaven
Encounters at the End of the World
Eros
Exiles
Fanfan la Tulipe
Fifty (50) Years of Janus Films Version 1
Fifty (50) Years of Janus Films Version 2
Flight of the Red Balloon
Flow: For Love of Water
Guatemalan Handshake, The
H-N
Hearts and Minds
Host, The
Intimate Stories
Into Great Silence
Jesus Camp
Jesus of Montreal
Ju-on
Keane
Killer of Sheep
Lake of Fire
Land of the Dead
Lemming
Lights in the Dusk
Lost Embrace
Louise Bourgeois
Man With the Screaming Brain
Monsieur Verdoux
My Brother’s Wedding
My Country
Nine Queens
Note by Note—Steinway
O-S
Old Boy-DAMAGED
Old Joy
Page Turner, The
Paranoid Park
Passenger, The
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Piano Tuner of Earthquakes-Quay Bros.
O-S Continued
Pineapple Express
Producers, The—Mel Brooks
Promotion
Red Balloon and White Mane
Rules of the Game
Shotgun Stories
Snow Angels
Starship Troopers
Straight Story, The
Strike
T-Z
Taste of Cherry
Three (3) Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Tiger and the Snow, The
Time of the Wolf
Two of Us, The
U-Carmen
Umberto D.
Unknown Woman, The
Van Gogh–DAMAGED
White Countess, The
Witches, The
World, The
Zoo
All posters are $10 and can only be bought in person at the Dryden Theatre.
The Rochester International Film Festival, sponsored by Movies on a Shoestring, Inc., is the longest running short film festival in the world. Started in 1959, this is the 50th year. The festival includes animation, comedies, documentaries, and narratives from across the country and around the world. Each program will contain seven to 8 different films. For complete program listings and showtimes, visit www.rochesterfilmfest.org
(Albert Lewin, US 1951, 122 min.)
Written and directed by one of Hollywood’s most unusual and distinctive talents, this is Albert Lewin’s romantic visualization of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The film pairs Ava Gardner as Pandora and James Mason as Hendrik, the 17th-century seaman eternally condemned to sail the seas. A brand new preservation print, supervised by George Eastman House, restores the rich palette of deep, sensuous colors utilized by renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff.
(PLEIN SOLEIL, René Clément, France/Italy 1960, 112 min., French/Italian/subtitles)
Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley was first adapted for this stylish European thriller starring the elegant Alain Delon as the sociopathic criminal Tom Ripley. Ripley assumes the identity of spoiled, wealthy playboy Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) after being hired by Greenleaf’s father to bring him home. Henri Decae’s color cinematography is dazzling, and the Italian and Mediterranean locations are sumptuous.
Program Notes
How could such a nice guy go so bad? The question begged to be answered is brought forth in director René Clément’s 1960 feature, Purple Noon; the story of two men, and one woman alone on a boat, and the peculiar triangle which evolves among them.
Released in France in 1960, as Plein Soleil, the film’s title was renamed Purple Noon for its American distribution, the following year. While “Purple Noon” alludes to the film’s lush color palette, the original French title is more accurately translated as “broad daylight,” a description which evokes the irony of the setting in which the story’s events take place. With its stunning color cinematography by Henri Decaë, and the evocative music score by Nino Rota, Clément’s film captures the audience’s attention with it’s memorable lead character and gorgeous location scenes in, and around the Amalfi Coast of Italy.
Clément was already a well-established filmmaker by the time he made Purple Noon, but he was not an especially well-known one, despite his impressive career. Though he began his early adult life as an architectural student, Clément ‘s passion was film, and he experimented with a variety of different styles, from animation to documentary short, before releasing his first feature film in 1946, at the age of 33. The film, La Bataille du Rail (Battle of the Rails), was a realistic depiction of the life of French railroad workers during wartime (the majority of the actors playing themselves). Appreciation for the film led director Jean Cocteau to hire Clément as technical director for his film La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast), and for Clément to go on to other successful projects, among them Au delà des grilles (The Walls of Malapaga), his first of several films (including Purple Noon) to be filmed in Italy, and Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games), 1952, which won him a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival as well as an honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Much of the praise Clément received for his films was often in regards to the realism and attention to details he displayed in his storytelling. Often using amateurs as his actors to heighten the authenticity, his films created great responses from his audience, on an emotional level. Purple Noon brought a departure of sorts to Clément’s repertoire, in that it was one of the few adaptations from a novel that he would film and for it, he selected moderately known actors, among them Alain Delon, in the starring role, who at the time was fresh from appearing in the Luchino Visconti film, Rocco and His Brothers.
Based on the 1955 book by Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Clément’s Purple Noon is the first feature film to be made about the title character of that novel. It was not, however, the first film to be adapted from a Highsmith story. In 1951, director Alfred Hitchcock took that honor, when he made the film Strangers on a Train, based on the Highsmith novel of the same title. Much like “Strangers,” Purple Noon uses some of the same thematic elements, among them a charming yet utterly deceitful anti-hero, wanting to carry out the “perfect crime.”
Highsmith frequently used homosexual overtones in her storytelling, and gained notoriety with the publication of her 1953 novel, The Price of Salt (credited under the name Claire Morgan); notable as one of the first fiction novels to offer a an optimistic ending for a gay/lesbian character. As with her male antagonist in Strangers on a Train, Highsmith’s character of Tom Ripley was written with a certain amount of sexual ambiguity, frequently suggested at, but ultimately left for the audience to ponder. While this element is downplayed in Purple Noon, it would be addressed more overtly in director Anthony Minghella’s 1999 remake The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon and Jude Law.
In addition to The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith wrote four additional novels with the Ripley character, among them, Ripley’s Game, which would also be filmed twice; first by Wim Wenders in 1977 (as The American Friend with Dennis Hopper in the Ripley role), and again in 2002 with John Malkovich playing the part. Despite the many screen versions of her famed character, Highsmith herself has said it is Alain Delon’s portrayal in Purple Noon that was her favorite.
~Stefano Boni, Student, The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation
For Further Reading
Please join us for Rochester’s International Home Movie Day, October 18th, 2008
Don’t throw your films away! Instead, bring them to the sixth annual International Home Movie Day. Co-sponsored this year by George Eastman House and Visual Studies Workshop, Home Movie Day is an international event taking place at the same time in cities across the U.S. and the world, dedicated to the viewing and the preservation of home movies shot on film. Though video and digital formats now dominate the market, none of these formats have the quality or longevity of the super-8, 8mm, and 16mm films you may have lying forgotten in your closets, attic, or basement. Home Movie Day is now celebrated in almost all fifty states, and internationally in Japan, The UK, Wales, and Mexico.
Rochester’s Home Movie Day will take place at Visual Studies Workshop on Saturday, October 18th. Screenings will be 6pm – 9pm. Early film drop-off is highly encouraged! Call for times.
Home Movie Day is a free event, and donations are accepted.
For questions and information regarding Home Movie Day, please visit the website at www.homemovieday.com/rochester or call at (585) 271-6631 x 240.
This film still is from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. The Holy Mountain, along with Jodorowsky’s El Topo, are among the Dryden’s most requested films. Both films screen by popular demand in June, click on the links for details and trailers.
Is there a film you would like to see at the Dryden? Voice your thoughts and suggestions here in the comments section. Or, is there a film you saw, but can’t remember the name? Post your clues here, and the Dryden staff will try and identify the film.
UPDATE: April 22, 2008
The latest:
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/328874.html
“Judge hears arguments for dismissing federal charges against UB art professor…”
See more at the original article in the The Buffalo News…
UPDATE: January 31, 2008
KURTZ LAWYERS PRESENT MOTIONS TO DISMISS CASE
Buffalo, NY — On Monday in Federal District Court, attorneys for SUNY Buffalo Professor Steven Kurtz presented motions to dismiss the charges against him. Defense attorney Paul Cambria was able to disassemble the government’s entire “case.”
The problems for the prosecution began when it was unable to produce the original material transfer agreement (MTA) on which it has based its entire allegation of “mail fraud” (charges now punishable under the USA PATRIOT Act by up to 20 years in prison). Cambria then went on to demonstrate that no crime was committed. For mail fraud to be prosecuted, there must be a clear representation by the parties involved of what cannot be done (in this case, according to the government, transferring material) which is then followed by willful misrepresentation to get around the rules by those intending to defraud. None of these conditions were demonstrated in the indictment against Dr. Kurtz. Cambria showed that even the ownership of the harmless bacteria samples—and thereby what could be done with them—was unknown, since the American Type Culture Collection MTA policy and the University of Pittsburgh purchase order contracts were in direct contradiction with one another. Steps to remedy this problem were taken in 2005 by Pitt and ATCC (one year after this case began) further showing the acknowledgement of these contradictions by the institutions involved.
U.S. Prosecutor William Hochul seemed flustered. While he did not admit that he had failed to provide adequate evidence, he could not provide the evidence. Judge Arcara repeatedly asked the prosecutor to explain how these requirements were fulfilled in the indictment, to which Hochul could only repeat that they were. After an hour, the frustrated judge gave up asking. Judge Arcara also asked Hochul if the cases he cited as precedents for the prosecution were in actuality to the benefit of the defense. Confirming the Judge’s concerns, Cambria went on to show that, indeed, the cases cited supported the argument of the defense rather than that of the prosecution.
The hearing ended with the judge granting Cambria’s request to submit a brief to the court summarizing his arguments – a request rarely granted in Judge Arcara’s court. All briefs are to be filed by March 7, and the judge’s ruling will follow within weeks of that date.
While it may have been clear to everyone in the courtroom that no crime was committed by Drs. Kurtz or Ferrell, and that this action by the Justice Department is a flagrant attempt to implode civil and criminal law, it is unlikely that a dismissal will be forthcoming. Grand Jury indictments are rarely dismissed, no matter how thin. While there is some room for hope for a dismissal that did not previously exist, hopes should not be built too high.
Should Judge Arcara rule in favor of the government, a trial will likely be scheduled for Summer 2008. Should the judge rule to dismiss the case, a potentially years-long appeal process by the prosecution will begin.
For more information about the case and how you can help, please visit:
http://caedefensefund.org
Now you can purchase Take-10 Tickets online. Take-10 tickets afford you 10 tickets for regular Dryden screenings at $45, or $35 if you’re a member. Take-10s make great Christmas gifts for your favorite film aficionados. Click on the link below to purchase a Take-10 pass.
