Welcome back to Ithaca, everyone! Today is the start of Cornell Cinema’s “Spring” season, though it is very much winter outside. We’re still closed for in-person screenings this semester, but with weather like this, that’s a good thing! Stay inside and cozy up with some great films.
Opening Friday February 5 is the first film in our World of Wong Kar Wai series, Chungking Express (pictured)! We have a very limited amount of free tickets remaining for this screening, but we’ll be keeping a waitlist in case more tickets become available. Also opening today is The 21st Annual Animation Show of Shows, the very popular animated shorts program. We’re honored to be hosting the digital premiere of the latest showcase, which we were supposed to screen back in March 2020, but…y’know. This is a PAID screening, but if you RSVP with us, we’ll hook you up with a discount code that not only knocks a few bucks off the price (down to a $10 ticket), but will also send $5 of that back to Cornell Cinema to help offset the cost of all of the FREE screenings we’re hosting throughout the semester!
And speaking of free, reservations are now open for next week’s films, both of which are free! First up is Ikarie XB 1, a Czechoslovakian sci-fi film that was visual inspiration for both Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris! Not only is it a great movie, it’s guaranteed to have some new resonance in your quarantined life—we might as well be on an interstellar trip to Alpha Centauri!
Also available for RSVP is the soon-to-be-released new documentary M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity, about the Dutch graphic artist whose work has been incredibly influential and wound up on everyone’s dorm room walls a few decades back. “From Labyrinth to Inception and tattoos to YouTube make-up tutorials, the Dutchman’s optical illusions and tessellations have been captivating and inspiring future generations for a century now.” (The Film Stage) The film, which is filled with fantastic animations of his work, kicks off our Art in Motion series, as well as our Wish You Were Here travel series, as it features home movie footage of Escher visiting hillside villages in Tuscany and the Alhambra in Spain, trips that provided inspiration for his early work. An important note about this film: the viewing window is just 72 hours—from 7pm on Fri 2/12 to 7pm on Mon 2/15—so keep that in mind when making your reservation!
That’s all for now! Stay warm and masked up!
