The Cine con Cultura Film Festival continues this weekend with the Chilean stop-motion animation The Wolf House (pictured). It’s David Lynch meets Jan Švankmajer in this engrossing grim fairy tale, animated to appear as one continuous shot, about a young woman who finds refuge in a house in Southern Chile after escaping from a sect of German religious fanatics. ‘‘It’s an endless metamorphosis that unfolds like some kind of real-time art installation.” (Variety) Next week we wrap up the Festival with IC professor & filmmaker Cathy Lee Crane’s Crossing Columbus, a timely portrait of the border town Columbus, New Mexico, where an annual event featuring Mexican horseback riders commemorates Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid of the town. We’re hosting a live Q&A with Cathy Lee Crane on Wednesday, October 14th at 7:30pm, so be sure to mark that in your calendar now! Cornell alum Leah Shafer, Associate Professor in the Media and Society Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will join us for the discussion.
Tonight we also open Change of Life, the second film by Portuguese filmmaker Paulo Rocha, showing in a brand new restoration overseen by filmmaker Pedro Costa. It's a beautifully-told story of a young man who returns from abroad to his small fishing village to discover that much has changed: his former sweetheart has married, the sea has washed away houses and fish are no longer plentiful. Aspects of the film recall Luchino Visconti's epic La Terra Trema (1948), about Sicilian fishermen.
Also opening tonight is Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, a new documentary about the Swedish artist who was the subject of a recent smash-hit Guggenheim exhibition. The documentary offers a course-correcting look at the life and art of af Klint who was for years an all-but-forgotten figure in the art world, before her long-delayed rediscovery. This film is already SOLD-OUT. For those who do see it via Cornell Cinema or via other means, we recommend heading to The Odyssey Bookstore (115 W. Green St) where they’re selling two beautiful books of her work—Paintings for the Future and Notes and Methods.
And if you don’t want to miss out on future virtual cinema screenings, a reminder that you can RSVP for free tickets one week before a given film opens! That means starting today you can RSVP for the aforementioned Crossing Columbus, as well as the next entry in our Pioneers of Queer Cinema series, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Michael, and a new South Korean coming-of-age film, House of Hummingbird, “one of the most knowing cinematic takes from recent years on the pains and occasional pleasures of female adolescence.” (RogerEbert.com)
