Writers Institute Announces Fall 2016 Season!

The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces its Fall 2016 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).

Fall 2016 Visiting Writers Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html

Fall 2016 Classic Film Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html

The Writers Institute Fall 2016 schedule begins with an exciting new program collaboration "The Creative Life: A Conversation Series at UAlbany." Created and produced by the Writers Institute, University Art Museum, and UAlbany's Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with WAMC Public Radio, this new series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their crafts, and their careers. Joyce Carol Oates, prolific author of more than 160 books, will lead off the series on September 15 followed by Savion Glover, tap dancing legend and Tony award-winning choreographer on October 15.

A second series, "The New Americans: Recent Immigrant Experiences in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Film" examines the experiences of recent immigrant groups in the United States. Guests will include Imbolo Mbue, recipient of a million dollar advance, whose first novel Behold the Dreamers (2016) is a riveting story about a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York City just as the depression of the 2000s upends the economy; Anne Fadiman, author of the bestselling nonfiction book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), which explores the clash between Western medicine and the holistic healing traditions of a Hmong refugee family from Laos; and director Mary Mazzio, whose documentary film UNDERWATER DREAMS follows a group of high school students, sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants, who enter a sophisticated underwater robotics competition.

In addition to Joyce Carol Oates and Imbolo Mbue, the fall series includes an exciting lineup of fiction writers: Garth Risk Hallberg, author of the sweeping debut novel City on Fire, a national bestseller and recipient of the largest advance for a first novel in U.S. publishing history; Charles Baxter, who continues to show his mastery of the short story form with his collection There's Something I Want You to Do; James Lasdun, whose new novel is the psychological thriller The Fall Guy; and Howard Frank Mosher, author of 10 acclaimed novels set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

The genre of poetry is represented by Stephen Burt, the most influential poetry critic of his generation, who shares the breadth of his knowledge of American poetry today in his new book The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them.

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, the foremost expert on the biology of anxiety and fear, presents an accessible exploration of the nature of these emotions in his new book, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety.

Our conflicted relationship with the natural world will be the topic of two events sponsored in conjunction with the UAlbany Art Museum's exhibition Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene. Novelist Jennifer Haigh, whose new novel Heat and Light (2016) explores the allure of fracking for the residents of a ravaged coal town, and Jeff Goodell, author of the nonfiction book How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate will present a joint reading and discussion. As part of the Classic Film Series, screenwriter Kelly Masterson will offer film commentary following the screening of the cult film SNOWPIERCER, a science fiction thriller about the survivors of a failed climate-change experiment that inadvertently initiates an ice age.

Additional highlights of the Classic Film Series include screenings of ZOOT SUIT RIOTS, an episode in the PBS American Experience series with commentary by Joseph Tovares, the film's writer and director; a newly restored version of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965), directed by and starring Orson Welles; the 1924 French silent film L'INHUMAINE (THE INHUMAN WOMAN), with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer; SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, based on Kurt Vonnegut's powerful anti-war novel; and a 30th Anniversary screening of IRONWEED, adapted for the screen by William Kennedy from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Austin Bunn, Screenwriter of Kill Your Darlings, Friday

Austin Bunn, screenwriter of the 2013 hit film Kill Your Darlings starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) as Allen Ginsberg, visits the Writers Institute this Friday.

More:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/bunn_austin14.html

Here's an interview with Bunn, who teaches screenwriting at Cornell, in the Cornell Daily Sun:

The Sun: Tell me a little bit about your movie.

Prof. Austin Bunn: So, Kill Your Darlings is the story of the origins of the beat generation, so it’s about Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Bill Boroughs when they were young men, long before they became the people that you know them to be. So if most biopics are about like great men at the peak of their lives, this is about them at point zero of their lives when they’re just kids and they’re still figuring out who they are and trying to become artists.  One critics who reviewed the movie called it Beat Generation: First Class — these are these major American literary figures when they’re just punks, bad students, you know, dorm roommates, when they’re kids.

More in The Sun:  http://cornellsun.com/blog/2013/02/01/sex-drugs-and-beats-an-interview-with-prof-austin-bunn/

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Francesca Marciano in Lina Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties"

 

Friday's guest Francesca Marciano starred in a number of Italian films prior to achieving success as a fiction writer and screenwriter.

Her credits include the virgin Carolina [pictured here, billed as "Francesca Marciani"] in Lina Wertmüller's outrageous 1975 film Seven Beauties, which was nominated for four Oscars.

Other film roles include the second-billed "Francesca" in Pupi Avati's The House of the Laughing Windows (1976) and Tutti defunti... tranne i morti (1977); and the Italian TV miniseries, La riva di Charleston (1978).

More about Marciano:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/marciano_francesca14.html

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"Honey" film reviewed in the LA Times

Sheri Linden of the Los Angeles Times reviews the new Italian film Honey [Miele], coscripted by Francesca Marciano, who visits the Writers Institute to talk about the film (an official selection at Cannes) this coming Friday:

Whether she's trysting with her married lover or helping other people die, the title character of Honey is a fascinating and complex figure, and Jasmine Trinca inhabits the role with a detached intensity that's thoroughly compelling.

The Italian film — the assured feature-directing debut by actress Valeria Golino, still best known to American audiences for Rain Man — achieves the rare feat of addressing euthanasia head-on without devolving into a dramatized treatise or a button-pushing issue movie.

More in the L. A. Times:  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-honey-review-20140314,0,2797373.story#axzz2yPD5PNdZ

More about our events with Francesca Marciano:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/marciano_francesca14.html

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NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2014 Schedule of Events

E. L. Doctorow! Julia Glass! Walter Mosley! Christopher Durang! And many more….

The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces its Spring 2014 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).

Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html

Spring 2014 Classic Film Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html

"The Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series features old friends and new faces, always a good mix for literary events," said Institute Director Donald Faulkner. Highlighting the spring season are appearances by literary icon E. L. Doctorow, author of the new novel Andrew's Brain, which Booklist described as "an exquisitely disturbing, morally complex, tragic, yet darkly funny novel of the collective American unconscious;" poet and human rights activist Carolyn Forché, co-editor of the new anthology Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, featuring poems "composed at an extreme of human endurance;" a performance of American Place Theatre's adaptation of Richard Wright's classic autobiographical work Black Boy; Robert H. Patton, the grandson of legendary World War II General George S. Patton, and author of Hell Before Breakfast, a history of American War journalism; and Austin Bunn, who co-wrote the screenplay for the hit film KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

In addition to Doctorow, visiting fiction writers will include National Book Award winner (Three Junes) Julia Glass; novelist Walter Mosley, best known for his detective fiction, who will be reading with mystery writer and UAlbany's criminal justice scholar Frankie Y. Bailey; Dinaw Mengestu and Akhil Sharma, two distinguished young writers whose new work explores African and Asian immigrant experiences; and three authors with new short story collections-Albany Law School professor James D. Redwood; Italian novelist and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Francesca Marciano; and 2013 Man Booker International Prize winner Lydia Davis.

Nonfiction authors include investigative journalist Nick Turse, whose New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that Moves documents U. S. war crimes in Vietnam; and Walter Kirn, author of the new true crime nonfiction book Blood Will Out, about serial con artist Clark Rockefeller.

Playwright Christopher Durang, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for his comic Broadway hit Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will deliver the 18th Annual Burian Lecture on his career as a playwright. The Institute and UAlbany's English Department will also cosponsor a special celebration of the work of poet, translator, and former UAlbany professor Pierre Joris.

The Spring 2014 Classic Film Series features several film screenings that tie in with guests of the Visiting Writers Series, as well as appearances by three filmmakers. In addition to screening KILL YOUR DARLINGS followed by commentary by co-screenwriter Austin Bunn, the Institute will also be screening SWEET DREAMS, a documentary about a group of Rwandan women who form the first all-female drumming troupe and open the country's first ice cream parlor, with the film's director, Rob Fruchtman, providing commentary; and the Italian film MIELE (HONEY), with commentary by the film's screenwriter Francesca Marciano, who will also be visiting the Institute to read from her new story collection. Additional screenings of films with visiting writer tie-ins will include RAGTIME, based on E. L. Doctorow's award-winning novel, and UP IN THE AIR, based on the novel by Walter Kirn.

Rounding out the Classic Film Series will be screenings of the Vietnamese film CYCLO [XICH LO]; a Valentine's Day treat, the musical LOVELY TO LOOK AT; THE GRAPES OF WRATH, sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series; a St. Patrick's Day offering, THE QUIET MAN, starring John Wayne as a retired prizefighter; the Satyajit Ray film MAHANGAR [THE BIG CITY]; and the silent film THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer.

The complete listing of the Visiting Writers Series and Classic Film Series schedules follows.

VISITING WRITER SERIES

January 30 (Thursday): Carolyn Forché, poet and human rights activist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Carolyn Forché has written poetry about her firsthand experiences of political strife and violent conflict around the globe. Most recently, she is the co-editor with Duncan Wu of a new anthology, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001 (2014), featuring 300 poems "composed at an extreme of human endurance." The book is a companion to Forché's landmark 1993 anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Forché received the 2013 Academy of American Poets Fellowship for "distinguished poetic achievement."

February 4 (Tuesday): Walter Mosley, novelist, and Frankie Y. Bailey, mystery writer and criminal justice scholar

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Walter Mosley, bestselling author of more than 40 books, and "one of this nation's finest writers" (Boston Globe), is America's leading author of detective fiction in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Mosley is best-known for a series of mystery novels set in Los Angeles featuring African American private investigator Easy Rawlins. Mosley's twelfth Rawlins mystery, his first in six years, is Little Green (2013).

Frankie Y. Bailey, UAlbany Criminal Justice professor and novelist, is the author most recently of The Red Queen Dies (2013), the first novel in a "near-future" police procedural series set in Albany. She is also the author of five books in the Silver Dagger mystery series, featuring crime historian Lizzie Stuart.

February 12 (Wednesday): American Place Theatre performance of Black Boy

Performance - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Pre-performance discussion at 7 p.m.

Tickets: general public $15 in advance, $20 day of; students/seniors/UA faculty & staff $10 in advance, $15 day of

Box Office: (518) 442-3997; tickets@albany.edu

The "Literature to Life" program of American Place Theatre presents a verbatim one-man adaptation of the first half of Richard Wright's classic autobiographical work, Black Boy. The performance, in which the actor plays more than a dozen characters, dramatizes Wright's journey from childhood innocence to adulthood in the Jim Crow South.

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Writers Institute, with support provided by the Diversity Transformation Fund, administered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; and the Holiday Inn Express.

February 18 (Tuesday): James D. Redwood, short story writer

Reading - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

James D. Redwood, Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the author of a first collection of stories, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), inaugural winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize. The stories are based on Redwood's experiences as an English teacher and social worker in 1970s Vietnam.

February 19 (Wednesday): Nick Turse, investigative journalist and military historian

Reading and discussion - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Nick Turse, award-winning journalist specializing in national security and military issues, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (2013), an account of U.S. war crimes against Vietnamese civilians based on previously classified documents. His investigations of U.S. war crimes have earned him the Ridenhour Prize.

Cosponsored by Women Against War, and UAlbany's Journalism Program in conjunction with its 40th Anniversary

February 27 (Thursday): E. L. Doctorow, fiction writer

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

E. L. Doctorow, recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2013 Gold Medal, and the National Book Foundation's 2013 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, is "a writer of dazzling gifts and boundless, imaginative energy.... our great chronicler of American mythology" (Joyce Carol Oates). His novels include World's Fair (1985), winner of the National Book Award, and four other finalists for the same prize--The Book of Daniel (1971), Loon Lake (1980), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005). His newest novel is Andrew's Brain (2014), one man's reflections on his eventful life, loves, and tragedies, and a probing inquiry into the reliability of memory.

March 5 (Wednesday): A Celebration of Poet and Translator Pierre Joris

Panel discussion on the works of Pierre Joris - 2:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Moderated by Donald Faulkner, with poets and scholars Robert Kelly, Peter Cockelbergh, Belle Gironda, and Don Byrd

Conversation with Pierre Joris - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Moderated by Tomás Urayoán Noel

Reading by Pierre Joris - 8:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Pierre Joris, poet, translator, and scholar taught at UAlbany from 1992 to 2013. Joris's work bridges North American, European, and North African literary traditions and cultures. He is the author of more than 25 books and chapbooks of poetry, including Breccia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (1987), Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (2001), and Barzakh: Selected Poems 2000-2012 (forthcoming 2014). Other notable works include three volumes of the avant-garde anthology series, Poems for the Millennium. He received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Cosponsored by the Writers Institute and UAlbany's English Department, with additional support from University Auxiliary Services, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Fence, and Barzakh.

March 10 (Monday): The 18th Annual Burian Lecture presented by Christopher Durang, playwright

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

The Burian Lecture - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Christopher Durang is the author of the comic Broadway hit, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony Award, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Winner of three Obie Awards for playwriting, Durang was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his 2005 play, Miss Witherspoon.

Cosponsored by UAlbany's Theatre Department and funded by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment

March 13 (Thursday): Dinaw Mengestu, fiction writer and journalist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

Dinaw Mengestu received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and was named one of the New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" writers in 2010. Born in Ethiopia, and raised in Illinois, Mengestu is the author of the novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His newest novel is All Our Names (2014), about an African university student who attempts to escape his revolutionary past and invent a new identity for himself in America.

March 25 (Tuesday): Walter Kirn, journalist, and fiction and nonfiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Walter Kirn is the author of the new nonfiction book Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade (2014), about the author's 10-year "friendship" with Clark Rockefeller, the serial con artist and murderer, who is currently serving a life sentence. Kirn is the National Correspondent for the New Republic, where he covers "politics and culture and their convergence." His books include the memoir, My Mother's Bible (2013) and the novels, Up in the Air (2001), and Thumbsucker (1999) that were made into major films. (see Classic Film Series March 7 listing for screening of UP IN THE AIR)

April 3 (Thursday): Julia Glass, novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Downtown Albany

Julia Glass published her first novel, Three Junes (2002), at the age of 46. The book earned extraordinary praise from reviewers and received the National Book Award for Fiction. Her new novel, And the Dark Sacred Night (2014), set in the Vermont woods and on Cape Cod, tells the story of a middle-aged man who seeks to discover the identity of the father he never knew.

Cosponsored by the Friends of the New York State Library

April 11 (Friday): Francesca Marciano, novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter

Reading - 4:15 p.m., University Hall Room 110

Francesca Marciano is an acclaimed Italian novelist and short story writer who writes her fiction in English, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who writes her scripts in Italian. Her newest book is the story collection, The Other Language (2014), which Jhumpa Lahiri called "an astonishing collection.... a vision of geography as it grounds us, as it shatters us, as it transforms the soul." Her novels include The End of Manners (2008), and Casa Rossa (2002). (see Classic Film Series April 11 listing for the screening of MIELE [HONEY], written by Francesca Marciano)

April 16 (Wednesday): Lydia Davis, short story author and translator

Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Award Ceremony - 8:00 p.m., Biotech Auditorium, Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy

Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will read from her newest story collection, Can't and Won't (2014). Masterpieces in miniature, the stories feature complaint letters, reflections on dreams, and small dilemmas. Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), and "one of the best writers in America" (Oprah's O Magazine). Her previous collections include The Collected Stories (2009), Varieties of Disturbance (2007), and Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001).

Cosponsored in conjunction with Rensselaer's 72nd Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading and Vollmer W. Fries Lecture. For map and directions see: http://rpi.edu/tour/directions.html

April 22 (Tuesday): Akhil Sharma, Indian-American fiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Akhil Sharma, "a supernova in the galaxy of young, talented Indian writers" (Publishers Weekly), received the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Whiting Writers' Award for his first novel, An Obedient Father (2000). His much-anticipated second novel is Family Life (2014), the story of Indian-American immigrants who are forced to cope after one of the family's two sons suffers a dreadful accident.

April 29 (Tuesday): Robert H. Patton, novelist and historian

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Robert H. Patton, novelist, historian, and grandson of legendary World War II General George S. Patton (1885-1945), is the author most recently of Hell Before Breakfast (2014), a history of American war journalism between 1860 and 1910, from the Civil War and Spanish American War to conflicts in Europe and Asia. He is also the author of the bestselling memoir, The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family (1994), which Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post named one of the best books of the year.

CLASSIC FILM SERIES

January 31 (Friday): CYCLO [XICH LO]

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam, 1995, 123 minutes, color, in Vietnamese with English subtitles)

The first Vietnamese film to be nominated for an Oscar, and the winner of two top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, CYCLO tells the tale of a bicycle-taxi driver in Ho Chi Minh City who becomes entangled in a world of drugs and crime.

February 7 (Friday): RAGTIME

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Milos Forman (United States, 1981, 155 minutes, color)

RAGTIME is based on E. L. Doctorow's best-selling novel of sprawling plot lines, and fictional characters and historical figures whose lives intersect in New York City during the early 1900s. The film version focuses on the story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a black piano player who seeks justice for an incident involving a group of racists. The film was nominated for eight Oscars and seven Golden Globe awards. (see Visiting Writers Series February 27 listing for an appearance by E. L. Doctorow)

February 14 (Friday): LOVELY TO LOOK AT

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy and Vincente Minnelli; choreographer Hermes Pan (United States, 1952, 103 minutes, color)

A lush 1950s Technicolor remake of the 1935 Astaire and Rogers musical ROBERTA, this romantic comedy is among the most visually dazzling films of its era.

February 28 (Friday): THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Film screening - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Ford; cinematographer Gregg Toland (United States, 1940, 129 minutes, b/w)

Based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an Oklahoma family forced off their land during the Dust Bowl, THE GRAPES OF WRATH was widely considered the greatest American movie of its time. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won for Best Director. UAlbany history professor Kendra Smith-Howard will moderate a discussion immediately following the screening.

Sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series

March 7 (Friday): UP IN THE AIR

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Jason Reitman (United States, 2009, 109 minutes, color)

George Clooney portrays a corporate downsizing expert who travels around the globe restructuring companies and firing people in this acclaimed adaptation of the 2001 novel by Walter Kirn. The film received over 70 award nominations, winning Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor for George Clooney, and the American Film Institute's Movie of the Year. (see Visiting Writers Series March 25 listing for an appearance by Walter Kirn).

March 14 (Friday): THE QUIET MAN

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Ford (United States, 1952, 129 minutes, color)

Director John Ford called upon his friend and favorite actor, John Wayne, to play a former prizefighter who retires to the Irish village of his birth. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with a fiery red-head (Maureen O'Hara), but must negotiate his way around her disapproving brother (Victor McLaglen).

March 28 (Friday): MAHANAGAR [THE BIG CITY]

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Satyajit Ray (India, 1963, 122 minutes, b/w, in Bengali with English subtitles, and English)

In Calcutta during the 1960s, a young housewife takes a job as a salesperson to help support her family. That decision puts her in conflict with her children, her in-laws, and eventually her husband. Famed Indian director Satyajit Ray won the Best Director Award at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival for this celebrated landmark of world cinema.

April 4 (Friday): THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Josef von Sternberg (United States, 1928, 76 minutes, b/w, silent with live musical accompaniment by Mike Schiffer)

In this 1928 silent masterpiece directed by Josef von Sternberg, a steamboat stoker working on the New York City waterfront saves a woman who has jumped off a pier into the briny water below attempting to commit suicide. The selfless act changes his life forever.

April 11 (Friday): MIELE [HONEY]

Film screening of MIELE [HONEY] and discussion with screenwriter Francesca Marciano - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Valeria Golino (Italy, 2013, 96 minutes, color, in Italian with English subtitles)

An official selection at Cannes, HONEY is the story of Irene, an "assisted suicide activist" who performs illegal services to assist the terminally ill. She faces a painful dilemma when a healthy man requests her help in ending his life. The film's screenwriter, Francesca Marciano, will provide film commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening. Marciano's recent films as a co-screenwriter include A FIVE STAR LIFE (2013), Bernardo Bertolucci's ME AND YOU (2012), and the Oscar-nominated DON'T TELL (2005). (see Visiting Writers Series April 11 listing for an afternoon reading by Francesca Marciano)

April 25 (Friday): SWEET DREAMS

Film screening with commentary by producer/director Rob Fruchtman - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Rob and Lisa Fruchtman (Rwanda and United States, 2012, 84 minutes, color, in Kinyarwanda with English subtitles)

SWEET DREAMS is a documentary that follows the remarkable story of a group of Rwandan women who, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, form the country's first all-female drumming troupe, and open the country's first ice cream parlor, with the help of the Brooklyn-based Blue Marble Ice Cream Company. Rob Fruchtman, the film's producer/director will provide commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening.

Sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series

Seminar: Rob Fruchtman will hold an informal seminar on documentary filmmaking at 4:15 p.m. on Friday in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the UAlbany uptown campus. Fruchtman won the Documentary Director award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival for his HBO feature film SISTER HELEN. He has also won three Emmys for his work with PBS.

May 2 (Friday): KILL YOUR DARLINGS

Film screening and discussion with screenwriter Austin Bunn - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Krokidas (United States, 2013, 104 minutes, color)

Austin Bunn co-wrote the screenplay for the hit film KILL YOUR DARLINGS (2013) with his college roommate John Krokidas, the film's director. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the film stars Daniel Radcliffe as poet Allen Ginsberg and Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr in a story of murder and gay awakening set in New York City amid the nascent Beat poetry scene.

Seminar: Austin Bunn will hold an informal seminar on screenwriting at 4:15 p.m. in the Science Library, Room 340, on the UAlbany uptown campus.

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

 

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John Sayles: Good Guys Shouldn't Always Win

John Sayles, the "grandfather of indie cinema" who visits UAlbany on Monday 2/27, talks to the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

“The studios realize that most people don’t go to movies for complexity,” he says. “Most people want escapism, and white hats, and bad guys who are so bad you can cheer at the end when they get torn to pieces by wild dogs. Movies that are complex are rarer and they confuse audiences at first. Honestly, we figure it’s going to take the average moviegoer who doesn’t necessarily go to this sort of thing 10 or 15 minutes to decide if they’re going to stay or walk out. And maybe they’ll stay and say, well, that was interesting, that was cool. Or they say, what the hell was that? The good guys didn’t win.”

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John Sayles: The Script Doctor

John Sayles, who visits Monday, is best known as an independent filmmaker, but he also happens to be one of Hollywood's most sought-after script doctors, renowned for his ability to make characters come alive with just a few lines of dialogue.

Much of his script work is uncredited, especially if he decides he doesn't like the project. Films he has worked on include The Fugitive, Apollo 13, Mimic, The Quick and the Dead, Piranha 3-D, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

In 2004, Sayles was asked to do a rewrite of the as yet unreleased Jurassic Park IV.

Picture: The Spiderwick Chronicles.

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John Sayles School of Fine Arts

In case you didn't know, Schenectady High School has a School of Fine Arts named (since 1998) for its most famous filmmaking alum (who visits the Writers Institute on Monday 2/27).

The John Sayles School of Fine Arts

Awarded the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Schools of Distinction in Arts Education

The John Sayles School of Fine Arts (SSFA) is a smaller learning community of approximately 650 students at Schenectady High School. We carry the name of one of our famous district graduates internationally known filmmaker, John Sayles. The school provides an integrated Regents high school curriculum with an interdisciplinary focus in visual art, music, theatre, and dance. Schenectady High School, with an enrollment of approximately 2900 students, is divided into five communities, including the Sayles School. The Sayles School of Fine Arts provides unique arts opportunities in the region. The John Sayles School of Fine Arts was recently awarded the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Schools of Distinction in Arts Education and its students performed on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center.

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John Sayles: A Tornado of Voices

John Sayles, who visits Monday, is interviewed by Alec Michod of The Rumpus about his new historical novel, A Moment in the Sun.

The Rumpus: Your new novel, A Moment in the Sun, is written in—I wouldn’t say English, exactly, because you’ve taken and twisted the language to make it your own. It reads like a tornado of voices.

John Sayles: Every character has their own language, voices and styles. There’s a chapter from the point of view of a correspondent, and it’s written like the correspondence of that time. I read a bunch of those guys, Richard Harding Davis, and picked up on their locutions, which aren’t locutions we use anymore. More.

Picture: American writer Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916)

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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.

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An Old-Fashioned Narrative on Film

"Although John Sayles’s new film Amigo is set in what seems to be a remote time and place — a hamlet called San Isidro, in the Philippines, around 1900 — it bridges the gap in a hurry. This is not the kind of movie, and Mr. Sayles is not the type of director, to linger in the picturesque past, savoring antique details and restaging bygone conflicts."

Read A. O. Scott's New York Times review of Amigo by John Sayles, who visits Albany on Monday, 2/27. Amigo will be screened 2/24 at the Performing Arts Center uptown.

Honeydripper, another Sayles film will be screened tonight, PAC uptown, 7:30PM.

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A Character Walks Out of a Short Story

[Elston Gunn]: HONEYDRIPPER is based on your short story "Keeping Time," correct?

[John Sayles]: I consider HONEYDRIPPER to be an original screenplay, though it is inspired by a character who appears in "Keeping Time," just as MATEWAN was inspired by a character who appears (in about four pages) of my novel UNION DUES. The only time I've adapted a short story I've written into a movie was CASA DE LOS BABYS.

Elston Gunn of Ain't It Cool News interviews director/screenwriter John Sayles about the sources of inspiration for HONEYDRIPPER, his film about the birth of rock and roll in the American South.

HONEYDRIPPER will be screened this Friday, Feb. 17 at the Performing Arts Center uptown. John Sayles himself will visit on Feb. 27.

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Thinking in Pictures

John Sayles, who visits 2/27, wrote one of the bibles of independent filmmaking in 1987-- Thinking in Pictures after making the movie Matewan. Here's an excerpt:

"It's like there's this house you want to build and you know certain specifications you want, sometimes very specific, like the kitchen counter should be 45 inches high, and others more vague, like the living room should be comfortable and--you know--have a lot of light or something. You raise a certain amount of money to build this house and maybe you draw a picture of it or tell somebody who can draw what to put down, and then you hire people who know about plumbing and wiring and roofing and windows and all that. You know you want the tub here and the sink here and maybe the plumber tells you it would work much better here and here, and maybe you do it his way or maybe yours. When the house is finished you hope it feels like the one you imagined way back when, but of course the oak was too expensive and you had to go with yellow pine and they don't make kitchen counters that height and customizing was out of the question, but then the woman who put in the windows had this great idea--you never would have thought of it in a million years. The closet on the second floor is always going to be a problem and you try not to think about it when you think about the house. After a bit the house takes on its own character, and though you had a lot to do with how it is, it exists as this thing and it's hard to imagine it any other way." More.

Picture: A scene from Matewan.

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The Dawn of Rock and Roll

Check out the trailer for Honeydripper, starring Danny Glover and directed by John Sayles, to be screened 2/17 at the Performing Arts Center on the Uptown Campus.

John Sayles will visit the Writers Institute on 2/27.

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Slavery By Another Name on PBS Feb. 13th

Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, Slavery By Another Name will be broadcast nationally on PBS on February 13th.

It will also premiere locally tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 3rd at UAlbany, with a Q&A by book author Doug Blackmon and screenwriter Sheila Curran Bernard.

"For most Americans this is entirely new history. Slavery by Another Name gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today." Visit the film's PBS website here.

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A War No One Brags About

"Saturday marks the anniversary of a war America won — but doesn't care to crow about. When the memory only produces shame and regret, you can understand why."

"Such is the fate of the Philippine-American War, otherwise known as the Philippine Insurrection, which began on Feb. 4, 1899. It's a reminder of a time when America's dreams of imperial greatness got in the way of its democratic values."

Emil Guillermo writes about the war, and about John Sayles's film Amigo in a commentary piece in Tuesday's Times Union.

Sayles visits Monday, Feb. 27th. Amigo will be screened prior to his visit, Friday, Feb. 24 in the Performing Arts Center uptown.

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Writing for Documentary Film

The UAlbany website has an interview with Sheila Curran Bernard about writing for documentary films, and on being one of a handful of filmmakers among thousands selected for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about documentary writing. One is that documentaries aren’t written, because people tend to think of film writing in Hollywood terms, where a fictional screenplay is completed before the cameras start to roll. How do you script real life or real interviews? So there’s a notion that documentary filmmaking is about showing up and shooting, or perhaps finding visuals to go with information. If there’s a writing credit, people think it refers only to traditional narration."

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She speaks with Pulitzer winner Doug Blackmon about Slavery by Another Name, their new film, on Friday, 2/3.

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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.

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