L. A. Times critic Kenneth Turan reviews Let the Fire Burn (2013), by Jason Osder who visits UAlbany for a screening and Q&A tomorrow, Friday 2/6 at 7PM in Page Hall.
"Let the Fire Burn" is a brooding, disturbing documentary about an inferno that becomes an enigma. It earns its considerable impact by telling an unnerving story and leaving it, in ways both daring and effective, fundamentally unresolved.
The events detailed here are some of the most unsettling in modern American urban history. On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia police, stymied in a standoff that stemmed from a bitter conflict with a radical group called MOVE that had sputtered on and off for more than a decade, dropped an incendiary device on the row house that was the group's headquarters.
More in the L. A. Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/17/entertainment/la-et-mn-let-fire-burn-review
More about our event with Jason Osder: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/osder_jason15.html
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Let the Fire Burn reviewed in the L. A. Times
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
400 People at Page Hall for Central Park Five Event
Film director Sarah Burns (daughter of leading filmmaker Ken Burns) and her husband and
codirector David McMahon met with an Albany audience of approximately 400 at Page Hall last Friday following a screening of their award-winning documentary, Central Park Five.
Picture: Sarah and David talk with the audience at Page Hall.
Special thanks to our cosponsors, the UAlbany School of Criminal Justice, and PBS station WMHT.
The documentary tells the story of five Harlem teenagers falsely convicted of the rape and attempted murder of a female jogger in Central Park in the 1980s.
Sarah and David has such a great time that they expressed a wish to come back to Albany with the "five," who are seeking damages from the City of New York.
More about the film: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Films About the Holocaust at UAlbany
The Center for Jewish Studies and the Documentary Studies Center are collaborating on a film series about life during the Nazi Holocaust.
Films include A Film Unfinished (Yael Harsonski, 2010, b/w, 90 mins) on Tuesday, March 20; Respite (Harun Farocki, 2007, b/w, 40 mins) on Tuesday, March 27; and About a Village (John C. Swanson, 2010, color, 69 mins) on Tuesday, April 3.
Screenings are at 7:00pm
UAlbany Standish RoomScience Library 3rd Floor
Free & open to the public
Thursday, February 23, 2012
John Sayles: Filmmaker for the Environment
John Sayles, who visits UAlbany this coming Monday, Feb. 27, is this year's recipient of Duke University's LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement.
"Nicholas School Dean Bill Chameides said the LEAF Award does not necessarily go to artists whose work is explicitly environmental, but goes to those who explore environmental themes on a profound level."
"'[Sayles examines] the theme of our connection to land, to the earth and to the difficulties we have in trying to balance the various needs and desires for the resources of that land,' Chameides said." More.
Picture: Water buffalo in Amigo, to be screened Friday, Feb. 24 in the Performing Arts Center uptown.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Raising Renee Premieres Tonight on HBO 2/22/2012
If you missed our screening of Raising Renee back in October 2011 (and the talkback with Oscar-nominated filmmakers Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan), you can still catch the premiere on HBO 2 tonight at 8PM.
The story of acclaimed artist Beverly McIver and her promise to take her sister Renee (who is mentally disabled) when their mother dies — a promise that comes due just as Beverly's career is taking off.
"In a notable fusion of subject and film, the same themes that fuel the artist’s distinguished body of work—race, class, family, disability—propel this cinematic portrait. Both are a testament to the transformative power of art. " -- Full Frame
More.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
New Film About AIDS in Africa
Sheila Curran Bernard, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, and UAlbany Assistant Professor of History and Documentary Studies, is the cowriter of a new film about AIDS in Africa, Inside Story: The Science of HIV/AIDS.
The film premiered in South Africa on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2011 and premieres in the U.S. and Nigeria in 2012. It will be broadcast to nearly 300 million viewers throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and will reach millions more through a public/private distribution network.
Curran Bernard is also the script writer for SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME, based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the abuse of black laborers in the United States from the end of the Civil War through the middle of the 20th century. As part of the New York State Writers Institute Classic Film Series, Blackmon and Curran Bernard will answer questions immediately following the screening of SLAVERY on Friday, Feb. 3rd.