Cornell Cinema’s Spring 2025 season will feature a dynamic mix of films selected to spark conversation, connect diverse communities, and explore the complex history of cinema. Screenings will begin on Thursday, January 23, with Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, a magnificent essay film from director Johan Grimonprez that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. More information about this film and our semester line-up is now available on our website: cinema.cornell.edu.
This spring, in recognition of the new Nosferatu (2024) by Robert Eggers, we are pleased to present “Nosferatu Afterlives”, an eclectic exploration of vampires in cinema. From the original silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror by the prolific F.W. Murnau to Jaromil Jireš's psychedelic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and atmospheric teen dramas like Twilight (2008), our series traces the ways that the Nosferatu story has continued to serve as generative fodder for filmmakers interested in exploring love, lust, gothic horror, and encounters with the occult. The series kicks off during our opening weekend with Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).
Next, we are excited to spotlight the dynamic British filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Arguably the most innovative and influential filmmaking duo of all time, Powell and Pressburger produced a remarkable catalogue of 24 films together between 1939 and 1972 — films which expanded the expressive potential of the medium and injected a much-needed sense of imagination into the British film industry. Our “Titans of Technicolor” series includes four of their newly restored Technicolor collaborations, including A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and Peeping Tom (1960). (Fun fact: the late Michael Powell was also married to the legendary film editor and Cornell alum Thelma Schoonmaker ’61.)
In addition to encountering the work of renowned filmmakers like Powell and Pressburger at Cornell Cinema, we hope you will also discover exciting new filmmaking voices through our annual “New Visions, New Voices” series, which highlights debut feature films from the past year. This semester, we are delighted to include one classic film in our line-up: the directorial debut of celebrated American filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood, Love & Basketball (2000), which was added to the National Film Registry in 2023 and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
In April, we will resume our examination of the technological history of cinema with a focus on VistaVision. VistaVision is a widescreen film format introduced by Paramount Studios in the 1950s to compete with 20th Century Fox’s Cinemascope. Though it was phased out by the 1960s, filmmakers have continued to return to the format for producing specialized, high-quality visual effects – most famously for the original Star Wars (1977) and most recently for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024). Both films will feature in our spring series along with John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959).
On Sunday afternoons, we are calling all animation fans to join us in exploring the remarkable art of stop-motion animation. This family-friendly series will highlight some of the leading studios in the world — including LAIKA and Aardman Animations — and the work of stop-motion auteurs like the legendary Henry Selick, Wes Anderson, and Claude Barras. It also includes what is thought to be the first-ever animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1932), which features luminous, paper cutouts animated by German artist Lotte Reiniger. We hope you will join us to experience these incredible worlds meticulously brought to life by human hands.
Also on Sunday afternoons, we are collaborating with Professor Carl Williams at Cornell Law School to showcase three compelling, courtroom dramas, including Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and The Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Each are notable for their opening or closing arguments and we hope will inspire the aspiring lawyers on campus. This mini-series is one of several exciting campus partnerships happening at Cornell Cinema this spring. Other partners include Student Disability Services, the Jewish Studies Program, the North Campus Faculty-in-Residence program, the East Asian and Southeast Asian Programs, and Cornell Outdoor Education. More information about these various series and special events is forthcoming on our website.
Our core programming strands are once again replete with compelling new fiction and non-fiction films, many highlighting urgent topics from around the world. We are pleased to be collaborating with the Rural Humanities Initiative to welcome filmmaker Robert Greene to discuss his acclaimed 2018 docu-fiction Bisbee ’17, which revisits the trauma of the 1917 Bisbee Deportation in which nearly two-thousand immigrant miners, on strike for better wages and safer working conditions, were violently rounded up by their armed neighbors. Our “Restorations & Rediscoveries” series continues a long tradition of showcasing rediscovered masterpieces and will feature 4K restorations of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, one of the most important films in Ukrainian film history; Wong Kar-Wai’s queer relationship drama Happy Together; Carol Reed’s enigmatic postwar noir The Third Man; and The Annihilation of Fish, a long-lost 1999 feature, which remained unreleased until 2024, from celebrated independent filmmaker Charles Burnett. In our “Doc Spots” series, we are also pleased to be presenting a unique Cornell version of filmmaker Gary Hustwit’s groundbreaking, generative documentary Eno (2024) for one night only on Saturday, March 8, at 8pm.
Finally, our annual “French Film Festival,” presented in collaboration with the Department of Romance Studies, will feature a compelling line-up of contemporary and classic films that explore questions of destiny, centering on protagonists whose lives are transformed by forces and circumstances beyond their control. The festival will kick off on Saturday, March 22, with a special double feature screening of Jacques Demy’s newly-restored The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016), which took Demy’s film as a key inspiration. The French Film Festival is supported by Albertine Cinémathèque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC/Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM/Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.
As always, additional films and collaborations will be announced throughout the semester, so please sign up for our email list and follow Cornell Cinema on social media to receive the latest updates.
The best way to take advantage of all that Cornell Cinema has to offer is to purchase an All-Access Pass. This annual membership program offers admission to all regular Cornell Cinema screenings plus a discount on special event for one low price. Prices are $40 for General Admission, $30 for Students (including all College and K-12 students), and $25 for Cornell Graduate & Professional Students and passes are valid through May 2025. Starting this year, we are excited to offer a new pass for Cornell Staff for $36. All-Access Passes are also a great resource for faculty aiming to incorporate Cornell Cinema screenings into their courses.
Established in 1970 from a university film society, Cornell Cinema is a long-standing and celebrated film exhibition program at Cornell University, dedicated to expanding access to and fostering deeper appreciation of moving image work by filmmakers from across the globe. Working in collaboration with partners on campus and beyond, we seek to spark conversation, inspire innovative thinking, and advance interdisciplinary teaching through collective encounters with the art of film. The cinema operates approximately five nights per week in the historic Willard Straight Theatre, which is centrally located on the campus of Cornell University and open to the general public.
For more information, please contact:
Molly Ryan (she/her)
Director of Cornell Cinema
cinema@cornell.edu
