We’re happy to announce the continuation of CCA’s popular film and conversation series!
CCA began Closer Looks in January 2023 as a year-long, in-depth cinema series curated by the award-winning filmmaker and editor Paul Barnes, film critic and writer David N. Meyer, and founder/programmer of local microcinema No Name Cinema, Justin Clifford Rhody. The series showcases a broad range of eras, regions, and subjects, all unified by their integral contribution to the history of cinema as an art form. Each film screening is followed by an in-depth overview and audience conversation by the presenters to contextualize and explore the importance of the evening’s film.
Here’s the schedule for the rest of the year:
Closer Looks: Cinema + Conversation Schedule
Vertigo
(USA, 1958) | May 11, 2023 | Selected by Paul Barnes
–Paul Barnes“Considered by many to be director Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest achievement, it was also his own personal favorite. James Stewart is brilliant as Scottie Ferguson, an acrophobic detective hired to shadow a friend’s oddly behaving wife, Madelaine. Scotty falls deeply in love with her, played by the stunning and mysterious Kim Novak. During his investigation/courtship, Madelaine accidentally dies; Scotty has a nervous breakdown; and while recovering, he happens upon a woman he swears is Madelaine and—you’ll have to come see the film to find out what happens. Made in spectacular widescreen color, VERTIGO is gorgeous to look at, highly entertaining and with one of the greatest music scores by Bernard Herrmann that raises the emotional temperature of the film to fever pitch. Made in classic 1950’s Hollywood style, Hitchcock creates a hallucinatory puzzle of a thriller intertwined with the personal perverse poetry of obsessive love.”
Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire) Not For Not Against (Quite the Contrary)
(France, 2003) | June 8, 2023 | Selected by David N. Meyer
–David N. Meyer“In this perverse, witty French thriller—a heist movie unlike any other—director Klapish mixes crime capers with class/race consciousness to create a seductive, feminist Noir. Marie Gillain gets a glimpse of her dark side and really likes it. She embraces—revels in—crime, seduction, luxury and gunplay. For the first time ever in Noir, the femme fatale is the lead character. And unlike every femme fatale before her, the film never defines Gillain by her relationships with men—and neither does she. Klapish presents the Paris underworld in rich, dark colors, fueled by an irresistible dance soundtrack. He also showcases, as all French Noir must, one of the coolest bars on Earth. Gripping, intelligent and mad fun.”
Love Streams
(USA, 1984) | July 13, 2023 | Selected by Justin Clifford Rhody
In this final directorial effort from maverick independent filmmaker, John Cassavetes, two closely bound, emotionally wounded souls reunite after years apart.
Persona
(Sweden, 1966) | Aug. 10, 2023 | Selected by Paul Barnes
Paul Barnes“By the mid-1960’s, Ingmar Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with the radical PERSONA, he attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women undergo a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference. Performed with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the influential PERSONA is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.”
Two-Lane Blacktop
(USA, 1971) | Sept. 14, 2023 | Selected by David N. Meyer
David N. Meyer“The joys of the Road Movie are the joys of the road; the point’s not the getting there but the going. This poetic hotrod masterpiece is a touchstone of American cinema celebrating the romance of the American road. Singer/songwriter James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, madman drummer of The Beach Boys, are wandering outlaw drag racers. Instead of shootouts, they street race for cash. Warren Oates appears, driving a bitchin’ GTO, and races Taylor and Wilson cross-country. It’s like a European art film about a subject no European can understand, starring archetypal Americans. The roaring drag races, profound silences and brilliant cinematography form only a fraction of the film’s enduring, spellbinding power. And TWO-LANE BLACKTOP ends like no other movie in cinema history…no other movie.”
Touki Bouki
(Senegal, 1973) | Oct. 12, 2023 | Selected by Justin Clifford Rhody
Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind. Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty.
The Rules of the Game
(France, 1939) | Nov. 9, 2023 | Selected by Paul Barnes
Paul Barnes“Considered one of the greatest films ever made, THE RULES OF THE GAME, by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society on the brink of WWII. Renoir said he wanted to tell a “light” story about a world dancing on a volcano. The film is cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’ country château lays bare some underlying ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the premiere audience in 1939, and the original negative was lost during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1956. The restored film premiered in 1957 at the Venice Film Festival and THE RULES OF THE GAME was finally recognized for what it was – one of the 20th century’s undisputed masterworks.”
La Haine
(France, 1995) | Dec. 14, 2023 | Selected by David N. Meyer
David N. Meyer“Winner of the Palm d’Or and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and of the César – France’s Oscars – for Best Picture, this is where the revolution begins. Teenage best friends – one African, one Arab, one Jew – live bored, desperate lives in the banlieue, the high-rise ghetto encircling Paris. During an anti-police riot, one of the friends steals a cop’s gun – death incarnate. LA HAINE follows the trio’s dire and hilarious adventures around Paris – a city on a knife-edge as police battle the banlieue kids. Director Kassovitz’s groundbreaking, thrilling B/W camera movement, street dialogue and gritty realism is a lightning bolt, a youthquake, a cry of rage.”
Good Morning
(Japan, 1959) | Jan. 11, 2024 | Selected by Justin Clifford Rhody
Two boys begin a silent strike to press their parents into buying them a television set. Directed by Yasujirô Ozu.
