The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson of the Packard Campus.
Friday, January 3 (7:30 p.m.)
Wild Strawberries (Svensk Filmindustri, 1957)
Traveling to accept an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg – masterfully played by veteran director Victor Sjöström – is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and make peace with the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries dramatizes one man’s remarkable voyage of self-discovery. This richly humane masterpiece, full of iconic imagery, is a treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema and one of the films that catapulted Ingmar Bergman to international acclaim. Wild Strawberries won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival. 35mm film print courtesy of Janus Films, 91 min.
Saturday, January 4 (7:30 p.m.)
Hugo (Paramount, 2011)
Renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese directed and produced his first (and so far only) family film with this adaptation of Brian Selznick’s imaginative New York Times best-seller, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Set in 1931 Paris, the fairytale fantasy follows Hugo (Asa Butterfield), an orphan living a secret existence in a busy railway station, as he dodges a predatory station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and learns from Isabelle, a kind girl he befriends (Chloë Grace Moretz), that her bad-tempered uncle (Ben Kingsley), who runs a toy shop in the station, is Georges Méliès, once a well-known filmmaker. Hugo is filled with visual splendor employed to tell a story that incorporates a history lesson about the building blocks of modern cinema, a subject very close to the director’s heart. The film was released to great critical acclaim and garnered 11 Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), more than any other film that year, winning five. Rated PG. 35mm archival film print, 126 min.
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