In this mysterious and beautiful examination of a broken family, acclaimed actors Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu play thinly disguised versions of themselves as a separated couple who journey to Death Valley after receiving a mysterious letter from their dead son in the expectations that he will appear to them at certain place and time in the desert.
When Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan stepped off the moon in 1972 he left his footprints and his daughter’s initials in the lunar dust. Only now, forty years later, is he ready to share his epic but deeply personal story.
Cernan’s burning ambition carried him to the spectacular and hazardous environment of space and to the moon. But there was a heavy price to pay for the fame and privilege that followed. As his wife famously remarked, ‘If you think going to the moon is hard, try staying at home.’
This documentary combines rare archive material, compelling visual effects and unprecedented access to present an iconic historical character on the big screen.
The setting is the often starkly beautiful Badlands of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; most of the key players are young Lakota Native Americans who attend Little Wound High School. Johnny and his preteen sister, Jashaun, spend time on horseback when they’re not selling illegal liquor or tattoo-designed apparel.
Director Chloe Zhao captures the subtleties of a marginalized existence in which the historic culture of a people can’t compete on a level playing field with the modern problems of poverty, alcoholism, and violence. Amazingly, she embroiders her tale with moments of breathtaking natural beauty that offset the despair her characters struggle against. SONGS is an auspicious debut feature from a director whose superb eye is informed by the sophisticated and nuanced compassion she brings to her story.
HELD OVER AGAIN! Just in time for election season, America’s favorite political provocateur, Michael Moore, is back with his new film, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. Honored by festivals and critics groups alike, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is an expansive, hilarious, and subversive comedy in which the Academy Award®-winning director confronts the most pressing issues facing America today and finds solutions in the most unlikely places.
The creator of FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE has returned with an epic movie that’s unlike anything he has done before—an eye-opening call to arms to capture the American Dream and restore it in, of all places, America. Turns out the solutions to America’s most entrenched problems already existed in the world – they’re just waiting to be co-opted.
In a series of interviews spanning four years, leftist social critic Noam Chomsky discusses how the concentration of wealth and power among a small elite has polarized American society and brought about the decline of the middle class.
It’s 1982, and Taeko (voice of Daisy Ridley, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) is 27 years old, unmarried, and has lived her whole life in Tokyo. She decides to visit her relatives in the countryside, and as the train travels through the night, memories flood back of her younger years: the first immature stirrings of romance, the onset of puberty, and the frustrations of math and boys.
At the station she is met by young farmer Toshio (voice of Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and the encounters with him begin to reconnect her to forgotten longings. In lyrical shifts between the present and the past, Taeko contemplates the arc of her life, and wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self.
From Academy Award®-nominated director Isao Takahata (The Tale of The Princess Kaguya) and general producer Hayao Miyazaki, Only Yesterday is a masterpiece of time and tone, rich with humor and stirring emotion, and beautifully animated by one of the world’s most revered animation studios.
Critically acclaimed but never before released in North America, the film is receiving a national theatrical release in a new, Studio Ghibli-produced, English-language version in celebration of its 25th anniversary.
Official Selection
2015 Toronto International Film Festival – International Premiere
Nestled in Norway’s Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly threatening to collapse into the fjord — it is also a place where cataclysm could strike at any moment.
After working for several years at Geiranger’s warning centre, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is moving on to a new position. But the very day he’s about to drive his family to their new life in the city, things take a turn. When the mountain begins to crumble, every soul in Geiranger has ten minutes to get to high ground before a tsunami hits, consuming everything in its path.
Those ten minutes are some of the most nerve-rattling you’ll experience in any movie this year, but as The Wave continues the stakes only get higher. Ace director Roar Uthaug keeps things hurtling forward in a state of high anxiety until the very end. Giving Hollywood a run for its money, the film’s canvas is broad, its effects eerily realistic, and its scale immense. Here comes the flood.
1990 | Drama | Persian with English subtitles | Dir. Abbas Kiarostami
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event–the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf–as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
In this classic of world cinema, a cinephile pretends to be well-known Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and is eventually caught. The film made Kiarostami’s reputation in the West. We’ll talk about the boundary between the real and the reenacted, the complexities of “playing yourself” onscreen, and “world cinema” culture.
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
1998 | Drama | Dir. Peter Weir
An insurance salesman/adjuster discovers his entire life is actually a T.V. show.
A man who has unknowingly lived his entire life as the star of a television show wants to break out of his sheltered existence. We’ll discuss the dawn of reality TV and the reality star and the star’s relationship to an artificial world. We’ll also return to the ways movies tell “the truth” of television.
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
1973 | Comedy, Drama, Romance | French with English subtitles | Dir. François Truffaut
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
A delightful look at the microsociety of a movie shoot on location, where offscreen psychology and scandal are filtered through an “on-screen” melodrama. The film ended the friendship between Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. We’ll discuss why Godard thought the film was a “lie,” how it fits into the history of the New Wave, and what it can tell us about moviemaking as something that takes place in a particular place.
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
March 24, 11:30AM – 2PM
1957 | Drama | Dir. Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire)
An Arkansas hobo becomes an overnight media sensation. But as he becomes drunk with fame and power, will he ever be exposed as the fraud he has become?
A small-town radio producer (Patricia “discovers” a drifter with a gift for homespun philosophizin’ (Andy Griffith in a superb role) and they rise to the top of the television industry. We’ll discuss the ways movies tell the truth about radio, television, and themselves. We’ll also consider film as part of a broad “media ecosystem” in the 1950s and what that might tell us about contemporary politics.
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
1933 | Comedy/Drama, Black and white | Dir. Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz)
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
Jean Harlow stars in this screwball comedy about a star who wants to get away from it all, only to find herself even deeper in a world of acting and pretense. We’ll discuss the classical Hollywood studio system of star power and film technique as well as the eternal allure of the behind-the-scenes. We’ll also consider Production Code censorship and the problem of genre and type-casting.
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
100% Positive on Rotten Tomatoes!
Landfill harmonic follows the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a paraguayan musical youth group of kids that live next to one of South America’s largest landfills.
“As CLR James put it, every cook can govern. So can every child play Mozart as long as they have the talent to do so.” – Louis Proyect
– SXSW 2015, WINNER! 24 Beats Per Second Audience Award
– Mountainfilm Festival 2015, WINNER! Indomitable Spirit & Moving Mountains Award
– San Francisco Green Film Festival 2015, WINNER! Inspiring Lives Award and Audience Award
– Maui Film Festival 2015, WINNER! Best Family Friendly Feature Award
– Sedona International Film Festival 2016, WINNER! Best Documentary Feature
– Environmental Film Festival at Yale 2016, WINNER! Audience Choice Award
The world generates about a billion tons of garbage a year. Those who live with it and from it are the poor – like the people of Cateura, Paraguay. And here they are transforming it into beauty. This documentary follows the Orchestra as it takes its inspiring spectacle of trash-into-music around the world.
Follow the lives of a garbage picker, a music teacher and a group of children that out of necessity started creating instruments entirely out of garbage. This film is a beautiful story about the transformative power of music, which also highlights two vital issues of our times: poverty and waste pollution.
When their story goes viral, the orchestra is catapulted into the global spotlight. With the guidance of their music director, they must navigate this new world of arenas and sold out concerts.
When a natural disaster devastates their community, the orchestra provides a source of hope for the town. The film is a testament to the transformative power of music and the resilience of the human spirit.
Learn more about the movie, the filmmakers and the orchestra here.
In a remote Icelandic farming valley, two brothers who haven’t spoken in 40 years have to come together in order to save what’s dearest to them – their sheep.
In a secluded valley in Iceland, Gummi and Kiddi live side by side, tending to their sheep. Their ancestral sheep-stock is considered one of the country’s best and the two brothers are repeatedly awarded for their prized rams who carry an ancient lineage.
Although they share the land and a way of life, Gummi and Kiddi have not spoken to each other in four decades. When a lethal disease suddenly infects Kiddi’s sheep, the entire valley comes under threat. The brothers will need to come together to save the special breed passed down for generations, and themselves, from extinction.
This poignant, dryly funny Icelandic drama is the winner of the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Saxophone and flute master Thomas Chapin died at the age of 40 in 1998. Though his death was untimely, Chapin left his mark on jazz in the ’80’s and ’90’s, pushing the music and bending genres. His passionate life and incandescent music are unforgettable to fans who knew him and musicians who played with him.
Hartford, Connecticut is where it all started for Thomas Chapin – growing up in nearby Manchester, playing in clubs as a teenager and throughout his career, studying at Phillips Academy Andover where he discovered the sax, and attending the Hartt School of Music. Chapin played his final performance in Manchester, twelve days before his death on February 13, 1998.
THOMAS CHAPIN, NIGHT BIRD SONG is a testament to Chapin’s accomplishments and legacy.
There will be an intermission, and The Whey Station food truck will be parked outside for a quick dinner.
Then, hear a concert of music composed by the man himself, performed by musicians with whom Chapin spent his career playing and performing.
DAVE BALLOU will conduct an hour-long concert, featuring Mario Pavone, Michael Sarin, Peter McEachern, Marty Ehrlich, Tony Malaby, Art Baron, Ben Stapp, and Nick Roseboro.
The concert begins at 6:15 PM on Sunday March 6. Please note that admission to the concert is separate from tickets to the film. Purchase tickets to the concert here.
Stephanie Castillo is a former Hawaii newspaper journalist and an Emmy Award-Winning independent filmmaker. She has been developing television documentaries full-time since 1989, and Thomas Chapin, Night Bird Song is her 10th documentary film. Thomas Chapin was Castillo’s brother-in-law.
A WAR explores how societies react when reasonable decisions lead to unacceptable results, and how the ambiguities of combat play out for soldiers and their families.
Company commander Claus M. Pedersen and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a split-second decision that threatens grave consequences for him, his wife Maria, and their three small children.
Director Tobias Lindholm strives for the utmost authenticity, using actual Danish and Afghani veterans to play all but the key roles. A WAR conveys the emotional strain and the “on-the-ground maelstrom of combat as vividly as any film on the subject.” (Variety)
Ever watch the Oscars and wonder where you can see some of those under-the-radar films?
Every year Real Art Ways brings the Oscar Nominated Short Films to its cinema so you can catch some of the finest, but least talked about film making of the year. It’s a perennial hit with audiences!
Dekalb Elementary USA/20 minutes
Director: Reed Van Dyk
Writer: Reed Van Dyk
Producers: Reed Van Dyk, Cory Desrosiers, Christopher Leavins, Enrique Diaz, Morgan Peterson and Ricardo Ramirez
Synopsis: Inspired by a 911 call placed during a school shooting incident in Atlanta, Georgia.
My Nephew Emmett USA/20 minutes
Director: Kevin Wilson, JR.
Producer: Kevin Wilson, JR.
Synopsis: In 1955, a Mississippi preacher tries to protect his 14-year-old nephew, Emmett Till from two racist killers out for blood.
Based on true events.
The Eleven O’Clock – Australia/13 minutes
Director: Derin Seale
Producers: Josh Lawson and Karen Bryson
Synopsis: The delusional patient of a psychiatrist believes he is actually the psychiatrist. As they each attempt to treat each other the session gets out of control.
The Silent Child – UK/20 minutes
Director: Chris Overton
Writer: Rachel Shenton
Producers: Rebecca Harris, Danny Ormerod and Julie Foy
Synopsis: THE SILENT CHILD centres around a profoundly deaf four year old girl named Libby who is born into a middle class family and lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her the gift of communication.
Watu Wote/All Of Us – Germany & Kenya/23 minutes
Director: Katja Benrath
Producers: Tobias Rosen, Bramwel Iro and Matrid Nyagah
Synopsis: For almost a decade Kenya has been targeted by terrorist attacks of the Al-Shabaab. An atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust
between Muslims and Christians is growing. Until in December 2015, muslim bus passengers showed that solidarity can prevail.
Love games! Lawmen! Old songs! Folklore! The Evil Eye! Puppets! Aferim!
Old ways are rendered anew in this darkly funny, ribald comedy/period piece/Western from director Radu Jude. The “Wallachian Western” is a new kind of classic, featuring all the standard elements – but set in 1835 Romania, where the Roma people are held as slaves, noblemen wield tyrannical power, and foreign occupiers terrorize the populace.
A lawman and his son are dispatched to find a runaway slave. Their encounters reveal a cross-section of society tinged with ignorance and sedimented hatreds passed down through generations.
The result is a “current of informed anger” mingled with sardonic humor, in a film that sharply points a finger at bigotry all while poking fun.
Werner Herzog meets Heart of Darkness in the latest film from Colombian newcomer Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys).
Meshing the lyrical majesty of the Amazon with the devastating consequences of western colonialism, Embrace of the Serpent encompasses no fewer than nine languages and four decades in its depiction of dual treks through the jungle, as two men in different eras embark on the same search for a legendary herbal cure for their grave illnesses.
This atmospheric, evocative film – inspired by true accounts from 20th century explorers – is “stunning…At once blistering and poetic.”
A beautiful, haunting, and uplifting film about five free-spirited sisters in rural Turkey asserting their identities in the face of crushing patriarchal tradition.
The “singularly excellent” debut of director Deniz Ergüven is narrated by Lale, youngest and most defiant of the sisters, as she watches her older siblings married off one by one by their fretful grandmother. As the restrictions on the sisters tighten, the fierce love between them empowers them to rebel and chase a future where they can determine their own lives in this unapologetic portrait of female empowerment.
Nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the Official Selection of France for the 2016 Academy Awards, MUSTANG is an exhilarating, fresh-spirited moviemaking debut.
