STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (A Matter of Life and Death)

Thursday, February 7 in Darwin 103
Sunday, February 10 at 4:00 in Warren Auditorium, Ives Hall

A stunning, subversive masterpiece from the creators of I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING and BLACK NARCISSUS. Powell and Pressburger's visually ravishing film, in which an elaborate stairway connects a Technicolor earth with a monochrome Heaven. David Niven plays a downed bomber pilot in WWII who senses that his having eluded a fiery death is arbitrary at best. On the operating table he finds himself suspended between Heaven (where he is summoned to argue his case in the celestial courts) and earth (where he has fallen in love with a heavenly WAC in the person of Kim Hunter). This is existential fantasy at its finest. (1946, 104 min.)



YELEEN (Brightness)

Thursday, February 14 at 7:00 in Darwin 103

Souleymane Cisse's YELEEN evokes the ancient Bambara culture of Mali well before its 16th century invasion by Morocco. In this luminous film that is equal parts creation myth and Oedipal reality, a young man arrives at the crossroads between childhood and adulthood. As he begins to fathom the mysteries of nature - or komo, the science of the gods - his father cruelly prevents the son from deciphering the elements of the Bambara sacred rites. (1987, 105 min., in Bambara w/English subtitles)



TILLIE OLSEN - A HEART IN ACTION

Friday, February 15 at 7:00 in Warren Auditorium
Filmmaker Ann Hershey in Person!

Widely regarded as one of the most important women writers of her generation, beloved Bay Area writer Tillie Olsen died 1/1/07 at the age of 94. Ann Hershey's lively documentary traces the development of her work and honors her activism. Tillie reads from her work, including passages from her searing novella published in 1961, TELL ME A RIDDLE. Conversations with Tillie's daughters and writers Alice Walker, Susan Griffin, Gloria Steinem and others, are interspersed with tales of her activism. Politically active, class conscious, deeply joined to the world, Tillie is filmed at age 90 at an anti-war demonstration as she tells us, "It1s people working together who make change. I have hope and belief in what people can achieve." (2007, 60 min.)



TEN CANOES

Thursday, February 21 at 7:00 in Darwin 103
Friday, February 22 in Warren Auditorium, Ives Hall

TEN CANOES - a big hit when we showed it last October - is the first film shot in an Australian aboriginal language and is set in the Northern Territories long before the coming of the white man. Winner of a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, director Rolf de Heer's weaves together a tale from the mystical past of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery and revenge gone wrong. It offers an unprecedented, and surprisingly funny, cinematic interpretation of the rich oral culture of the Ganalbingu people. (2006, 90 min.)



LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE (Como Agua Para Chocolate)

Thursday, February 28 at 7:00 in Darwin 103
Friday, February 29 at 7:00 in Warren Auditorium, Ives Hall
Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 in Warren Auditorium, Ives Hall

Alphonzo Arau's 1992 ode to the power of cooking adapted by Laura Esquival from her book. Young Tita is doomed to remain unmarried to take care of her aging mother. She magically transforms her sorrows and passions and longings into her cooking. The charmed food has a different effect on each family member, depending on his or her nature-an unstated quality of food, and film. Don't see this movie on an empty stomach. (123 min., in Spanish w/English subtitles)