Welcome to November! We begin the month tonight with a FREE screening of The State of Texas vs. Melissa, sponsored by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. This documentary is about the first Hispanic woman to be sentenced to death in the state of Texas, documenting her last appeal. Following the screening, there will be a discussion with members from the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.
Our 50th Anniversary series continues this week with Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (Wed & Sat), a staple of Cornell Cinema’s programming over the past fifty years and truly one of the greatest movies ever made! We’ve also got the far-out animation Fantastic Planet (Thur & Sat), featuring a brilliant electronic music score by Alain Goraguer.
We also have two special filmmaker events this week! First up is North by Current (Thur), by filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax. We’ve had the pleasure of having Minax here in person, but this time around, we’ll be hosting him via Zoom with a post-screening discussion moderated by IC film professor Mitch McCabe. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown prepared to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment. The film was recently shortlisted by the International Documentary Association (IDA) for Best Feature of 2021 for the 37th Annual IDA Documentary Awards.
We’re also thrilled to host experimental filmmaker Daïchi Saïto in person, premiering his new film earthearthearth (Fri). Daïchi will present earthearthearth (pictured) on 35mm, and will also screen two previous 35mm experiments: Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis and Engram of Returning. We could go on and on about how incredible these films are, but we’ll let Artforum's description of earthearthearth speak for us: “an optical acid trip in which the boundaries between terra firma and yawning firmament dissolve in a hallucinatory explosion of color and light.”
Finally, we’re screening Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic The Birds! You’ve seen it parodied in so many things, but come check out the original! The Birds is, among other things, the granddaddy of the classic late 70s apocalyptic nature film, an early manifestation of the suppressed guilt about environmental devastation that would find its political voice in the following decade.
