CCA’s Lost Classics Roundtables presents an in-depth discussion on the final film of seminal director, Larisa Shepitko, The Ascent. Winner of the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival, The Ascent is highly regarded as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema.
About the film: In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory.
Speakers
Paul Barnes works as editor include WASN’T THAT A TIME (1982, Best Documentary Editing Award from the American Cinema Editors), SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY (winner, Best Documentary, Boston Film Critics) and THE THIN BLUE LINE (1988 Best Documentary Award, New York Film Critics). Paul was editor of Ken Burns’s Oscar-nominated STATUE OF LIBERTY, beginning a 25-year collaboration that resulted in THE CIVIL WAR (1990, highest rated series in public TV history and winner of 40 awards); BASEBALL; EMPIRE OF THE AIR: THE MEN WHO MADE RADIO; THOMAS JEFFERSON; the ten-part JAZZ series; THE ROOSEVELTS: AN INTIMATE HISTORY and THE VIETNAM WAR.
Born in Mexico City, Mara Fortes is a researcher and a curator. She holds a B.A. in Film and Media Studies from Swarthmore College and is currently a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago (Dissertation: Cinema Atmospherics and the Spatial Uncanny). She works as a curator for the Telluride Film Festival, programs for the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival (Mexico), and is former head curator at the audiovisual department “Cine más allá” of the Center for Digital Culture (Mexico). She has curated programs for Museo Reina Sofia (Spain) La Otra Bienal (Colombia), and London MexFest (UK).
