ALSO TONIGHT : Bridge starts Spring Film Series

TONIGHT! The Bridge is kicking off its Spring Film Series.
As I mentioned in a previous post, the title of tonight's screening is Underground Music and Noise

The Synopsis of tonight's events on The Bridge's site:
The series will start with an explosion of psychedelic sounds and sights brought to you by local filmmaker Meghan Eckman. Part 1 of the program introduces an on-the-road documentary following the band Animental (pictured above) on their tour across the US as they meet the most far-our freaks in the country. Part 2 continues the wild ride with experimental animations and shorts by members of bands such as Neon Hunk, Wolf Eyes, Smegma, and Nautical Almanac. The evening will also feature a live musical performance by Charlottesville’s own ruckus-makers Grand Banks.

This screening should be totally awesome, and I'm sad I will be missing it.
The screening begins at 8PM
Tickets are $5.00

The Spring Film Series will continue with films every other Thursday night. Also, look forward to info on the Lost Film Series that The Bridge is bringing in early April with a little help from OFFscreen et. al.

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BAMAKO to show tonight at Vinegar Hill with Director

The UVA French Dept. presents a special screening of
Bamako
with a Q&A Forum following the film with
Dir. Abderrahmane Sissako
The film was shot in Mali, the USA, & France, 2006 - 115 minutes.

To get a good idea of the content of the film here's an excerpt from Michael Phillips's review in the Chicago Tribune

Much of BAMAKO unfolds as a trial, held in the courtyard of a neighborhood in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. This African nation, as well as others, has seen its basic social services cut and cut again while massive debts are repaid to other countries. Witness after witness takes the stand, recounting tales of poverty, homelessness and bone-deep resentment about jobs and lives lost.

If a poke in the eye of the IMF was all BAMAKO had in mind, the film would cancel itself out in 10 minutes. But Sissako brings to life the surrounding neighborhood, as its inhabitants listen in on the trial broadcast while they go about their daily tasks. The film features a cast of non-actors playing roles very close to their experiences. A singer struggles to keep her marriage to an unemployed man together under duress. A freelance cameraman talks of filming weddings and murder sites alike; it is his documentary footage, soundless but fully expressive, that concludes BAMAKO.

Sissako has an unusual camera eye, patient and alert to the ebb and flow of both the courtroom sequences and the outside scenes. The music is wonderful as well, no more meaningful than when one elder witness, called to speak, utters not a word. Instead he sings a lament, and it's riveting. No subtitle accompanies this scene, and none is needed.

Click here to read Phillips's full review.
Also, check out A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times which also features a short video clip about the film.
And click here for Bamako's official site.

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Bishop Allen, Tonight At Satellite Ballroom

BISHOP ALLEN will be playing tonight at the Satellite Ballroom with +/- and SAY HI TO YOUR MOM.
Doors open at 8pm and tickets are $8.

Bishop Allen is a great Brooklyn band, whose mellow tunes take the current stream of indie rock and bring it back to its roots, where basic creativity with drums, vocals, and guitars takes precedence over synthetic pop.

Now you might ask why OFFScreen is advertising this specific show...and the answer is quite simple. You might recognize the mug of one Justin Rice in the image shown above (front left). Rice played the protagonist, who ironically is named "Alan," in Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation, which OFFScreen showed a few months back. In fact, if you came to see the film, you've already heard quite a few of Bishop Allen's tunes, as "Alan" plays them as his own in the film.

Also, if you liked Mutual Appreciation, or are just really into Bishop Allen, also check out Andrew Bujalski's freshman film Funny Ha Ha, which features Bishop Allen's other lead singer Christian Rudder(front right in above image)in one of the lead roles. Both titles are available on DVD at Sneak Reviews.

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OLD JOY cosponsored by The Declaration

OFFScreen Presents
OLD JOY
Dir. Kelly Reichardt - USA, 2006 - 76 mins.
Sunday, March 25th - 7 & 9:30 PM

Two friends in their 30s, played by alt-country singer/songwriter Will Oldham and Daniel London, embark on a camping trip in the majestic Cascade Mountains near Portland, Oregon. One is on the verge of fatherhood, while the other has no strings attached. The trajectory of their relationship, surrounded by gorgeous wilderness, makes for a minimalist yet powerful tale of friendship and alienation in Bush-era America. An original soundtrack by Yo La Tengo complements sublime cinematography in this "elusive and haunting meditation on the passing of a friendship. Against a radiant backdrop of decay and rebirth, nothing needs to be said; everything in this lovely film is crystalline." (David Edelstein, New York Magazine)

Michael Sragow of The Baltimore Sun wrote:

Anyone who has ever had an inspiring and infuriating friend will find something to love about Old Joy, a spare, trembling lyric poem of a movie that uses stillness and facial blips the way melodramas use showdowns and action films big bangs.

Click here to read Sragow's full review.

Click here to check out the film's official site.

Last, but certainly not least, this screening of Old Joy is co-sponsored by The Declaration, UVA's alternative weekly newsmagazine. Thanks again to everyone at the DEC for helping out.

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Spring Film Series at the Bridge

As many of you probably known, the Bridge has announced its Spring Film Series.
Expect week by week updates with more details, but for now here's the rundown:

Thursday, March 29: UNDERGROUND MUSIC AND NOISE
An explosion of psychedelic sounds and sights brought to you by local filmmaker Meghan Eckman. Part 1 of the program introduces an on-the-road documentary following the band Animental on their tour across the US as they meet the most far-our freaks in the country. Part 2 continues the wild ride with experimental animations and shorts by members of bands such as Neon Hunk, Wolf Eyes, Smegma, and Nautical Almanac. The evening will also feature a live musical performance by Charlottesville’s own ruckus-makers Grand Banks.

Thursday, April 12: THE AIA (American Institute of Architects) FILM FESTIVAL
As part of AIA Week in April, Dina Sorensen of VMDO Architects has organized a week-long film festival in Charlottesville to mark the 150th anniversary of the American Institute of Architecture. The Bridge is proud to host this screening, just one of many events around town during the week-long festival. The program will feature Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Sheds by Jane Crawford and Robert Fiore, and two Peter Greenaway shorts: Windows and H is for House.
OFFscreen has also worked with VMDO Architects in this week of events, and Our Daily Bread will be the final film that week. Day by day information will be coming at you all soon, but for more information on the week's schedule please visit the AIA's Central Virginia events site.
*As an architecture student and a giant nerd I could not be more excited about this event.*

Thursday, April 26: REMEMBERING ARTHUR — AN HOMAGE TO ARTHUR LIPSETT
Hosted by Richard Herskowitz, Remembering Arthur is an intimate portrait of a visionary collage filmmaker, his body of work and the troubled last years of his life. George Lucas has said: “In terms of understanding the power of sound and picture relationships, there’s no one better than Arthur Lipsett.” The honesty and access of the film is a result of director Martin Lavut’s friendship with Lipsett and those of his inner circle, including National Film Board of Canada producers Colin Low and Donald Brittain. This event is co-sponsored by the Virginia Film Society and will run as a part of their continuing spring series.

Thursday, May 10: GEOMETRIC HALLUCINATIONS
This program will showcase several abstract films, dealing with the movement of colored shapes across the screen, often designed to induce a transcendent experience within the viewer. The evening will feature the works of 1960’s computer animation pioneers John and James Whitney, including Experiments in Motion Graphics, an inspiring documentary by John Whitney which explains the complex and brilliant method of filmmaking he invented. Also included are several shorts by the New Zealand experimental animator Len Lye, more early films by Bridge fan-favorite Oskar Fischinger, and a single-channel work by contemporary filmmaker Sandra Gibson, who was last seen in Charlottesville performing live with Luis Recoder at an incredible Virginia Film Society event at Vinegar Hill this past February. More of Gibson+Recoder's work was then on display at the UVa Art Museum and has been travelling around the Netherlands and Belgium, and luckily graced Charlottesville with its presence.

Thursday, MAY 24: FLICKS BY CHICKS
Host Sarah Lawson continues her mini-series begun at DUST last month with Flicks By Chicks. Provocative and visionary, yet often under- or mis-represented, films by female directors have helped redefine modes of cinematic representation. This screening will include an assortment of short films by Martha Colburn, Sally Potter, Joyce Wieland, Lynne Ramsay, Janie Geiser, Shirley Clarke, Miranda July and others.

More information will follow as I get it, but as always, tickets for these screenings are $4 and all events are held in the gallery space.
Thanks to nailgun for the heads up.

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The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others opened at Vinegar Hill Theatre last Friday and is sure to continue to show there for the next few weeks.

This is the debut feature length film from German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and the winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Set in East Germany in 1984, The Lives of Others captures the atmosphere of tension in the East German government near the end of the Cold War. The film revolves around the loyal, stone-faced Stasi agent Capt. Wiesler as he bugs an apartment shared by a prominent playwright and his actress girlfriend - two people about whom the Party harbors suspicions.

From A.O. Scott's February 9th review in the New York Times:

There is a bracing, old-fashioned quality to Mr. von Donnersmarck’s film, which supplies us with good guys to root for and villains to despise. But it also shows, with excruciating precision, the cruelty with which a totalitarian state can exploit the weakness and confusion of its citizens. And even as they are, to some extent, enacting a morality play, the actors also seem like real, vulnerable people forced into impossible choices.

Click here to read the full review.

Showtimes for the film are as follows:
Tuesday, March 20 at 4:00 and 9:35 only,
otherwise Daily at 4:10, 7:00, 9:35 plus
Saturday and Sunday at 1:20.follows:

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The High Lonesome Sound and Dancing With the Incas

TONIGHT at Vinegar Hill Theatre, the Virginia Film Society is featuring a screening of John Cohen's The High Lonesome Sound and Dancing With the Incas.


John Cohen, the photographer (Young Bob: John Cohen's Early Photographs of Bob Dylan) and musician (The New Lost City Ramblers), started to make films in 1962. Filmmaking provided a way to present traditional musicians in their home setting, to reveal the environment in which music happens, and suggest how music functions within its community. Tonight, Cohen will exhibit his first and last films: The High Lonesome Sound (1963, 30 min.) explores how the music of church-goers, miners, and farmers of eastern Kentucky express the joys and sorrows of life among the rural poor; Dancing with the Incas (1992, 58 min.) documents the most popular music of the Andes -- Huayno music -- and explores the lives of three Huayno musicians in a contemporary Peru torn between the military and the Shining Path guerrillas.

The event is cosponsored by the McIntire Department of Art, and a corresponding exhibit will be going on at the UVA Art Museum in the video gallery titled Q'Eros The Shape of Survival The exhibit will run March 20-April 9.

Once again that's
The High Lonesome Sound and Dancing With the Incas
With guest artist John Cohen
Vinegar Hill Theatre, 7pm
TONIGHT
March 20th
at Vinegar Hill Theatre
7pm
Tickets $8

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A Week of Matthew Barney

TONIGHT at the Vinegar Hill Theatre, The Virginia Film Society will be screening a documentary on the Matthew Barney's film Drawing Restraint 9.

Matthew Barney: No Restraint
a film by Alison Chernick
Screens at 7pm
Tickets are $8

We at OFFScreen will be featuring Drawing Restraint 9 this Sunday.

Drawing Restraint 9
Dir. Matthew Barney - USA/Japan, 2005 - 135 mins.
Sunday, March 18th - 7 & 9:30 PM
Newcomb Hall Theatre
Tickets $3

Director Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) co-stars with his partner Bjork, who also composed the score of the film. Barney transforms Japan's Nagasaki Bay into an alien landscape in Drawing Restraint 9, his mystical vision of a plundered sea. Combining images of modern industrialization and archaic traditions, Barney creates a mystifying world where metal submarine walls, Japanese marriage ceremonies, and giant mounds of Vaseline converge in an epic symphony of mood and visual texture. "Its rhythms are solemn but never static; the color glowing; the largely ambient score evocative. Even the most enigmatic images, shot from many different angles, are arresting." (Stephen Holden, New York Times)

Click here to read the rest of Stephen Holden's review of this film.

Click here to check out the official website.

Click here to check out the trailer.

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The Sporting Life: Last Night of Winter Film Series

Winter is finally coming to a close, as is the Bridge's Winter Film Series, so if you haven't made it out to one of their many night of film, be sure to check it out tonight:

THE SPORTING LIFE
Films on the Theme of Sports
Thursday, March 8th
Show starts at 7pm
Entry is $4


Hosted by Jordan Taylor, this night includes Werner Herzog’s THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER and a documentary film about French soccer player Zinedine Zidane.

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First Fridays

As you all probably know today is another First Friday. here are some highlights of what's going on around town tonight:

Satellite Ballroom:
SCREENING: "Live From...the Hook"
with live music from Alligator
Doors at 7, movie at 7:30 / $15-$40
livefromthehook.com
"Live from...the Hook" is a small, compelling film about the history and camaraderie of the Charlottesville music scene, a story about a community of musicians and music fans who share a co-dependent passion for live music. Our story is seen through the eyes of many local musicians, from members of the Charlottesville Blues All-Stars to the Dave Mathews Band. At the center of the song and story circle are Bob Girard and Charlie Pastorfield, two local rock n roll guys who met in Probability class at UVA many moons ago and have since played together live on the same stage more than 2000 times. What are the odds? In their time, these two friends have flirted with stardom, taken the day jobs, nurtured families, loved and lost friends. They have experienced night after night onstage and day after day on the road, the agony of near death on the streets of Rome, and the ecstasy of resurrection back home...all for the music. LFTH is a rip-roaring regional film about the wide-open Virginia music scene in the 70s and 80s. The college circuit, country parties, and, of course, Easters. So many great bands, so much fun. Inside stories of off-the-wall parties and glimpses of long-lost archival live performances, plus a live performance, following the screening by Charlottesville’s own Alligator.

Charlottesville Community Design Center:
Student and Faculty Art and Design Auction.
7pm-9pm.
Come and place a silent bet on outstanding work from the students and faculty at the UVA School of Architecture. All procedes go towards funding the ecoMOD project, which involves an annual design process of a Ecological Modular home that is also economical. Once designed these houses are constructed annuallly by the student at UVA.

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