Emory will be the only venue in the Southeast to host a Universal Pictures film series of free 35mm screenings to celebrate the studio’s 100 years of history.
The Emory Cinematheque Film Series will take place every Wednesday from now until Apr. 24 at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall 205.
UCLA Film and Television Archive and American Express approached Emory’s Film and Media Studies department for the series.
The screenings feature iconic titles such as “Dracula”, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, “Back to the Future” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin.” To compile the list of films, the department pooled many genres – including technicolor fantasies, melodramas, horror, science fiction, comedies and westerns.
Emory started hosting such special Wednesday night screenings about a decade ago at the suggestion and with the support of former College Dean Steve Sanderson.
They are “a chance to take stock of what one studio has produced in a century,” Matthew Bernstein, department of film and media studies chair, wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel. “It allows us … to learn more about the innately rich nature of film history and film art.”
Bernstein believes that screenings like these create a sense of community, similar to that of a theater or music concert.
“Our department believes firmly in the value of screenings that bring the Emory campus community, and even the Atlanta cinephile community, together to experience great movies on a big screen in the traditional commercial format of 35mm,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein calls himself and other faculty in Film and Media Studies “cinephiles.”
Bernstein, for example, travels to Bologna, Italy every June to attend a weeklong film festival that features old, restored and rediscovered films from major archives around the world.
“With the Emory Cinematheque, we want to kindle and share that passion with our students, colleagues and neighbors,” Bernstein explained.
Along with the Universal Picture series, Emory will also be showing “Under African Skies,” a documentary about Paul Simon’s return to South Africa 25 years after making the Graceland album on Feb. 6.
“It is a fascinating look at … how he created that landmark album, and the many difficulties, practical and political of doing so before the end of the apartheid regime,” Bernstein said.
Akira Kurosawa’s adventure film “The Hidden Fortress,” which is the basis for the first “Star Wars” film, will also be shown on Feb. 20.
University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie suggested this viewing.
A week later, Rushdie’s adaptation of his novel, Midnight’s Children, will be shown off-campus with its Oscar-nominated director Deepa Mehta in attendance.
Next year, the department plans to organize a film comedy series to introduce another flavor of the entertainment industry.
– By Shivangi Singh
shivangi.singh@emory.edu
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