by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
If Hollywood’s new line of blockbusters just doesn’t tickle you film fancy, and the off-Hollywood indie films are a little too stark for you (or maybe you just like a denoument) than MOCA Jacksonville has just the thing you are looking for in their Film Series.
The education department and a committee of members select films that they hope will meet your expectations. Working with New Yorker Films, MOCA has gotten rights to show some great films. Many of them are classics and most of them are acceptable for mature children, but best of all: they are displayed on a big screen.
So never mind your Netflix and drive right past the line at Blockbuster to catch a film on a big screen in a really accommodating theatre that is almost like a private screening room, except the screen is 32 feet by 14 feet.
MOCA’s Film Series presents a new film every Wednesday at 7pm. So catch dinner and a movie downtown for a night out that provides a little something different. They have themed films to match the month. Right now they are doing their Red, White, Blue, and Black series celebrating African-American directors, and in March they are featuring independent female directors with their Film Fatales series.
Directed by Charles Burnett, USA, 102 minutes, Color, in English; 1990, PG
Danny Glover plays the mysterious Harry Mention, a charming trickster who invades the lives of a middle-class black family. The presence of Mention, who claims to have (and may very well have) a connection to dark powers, breeds dissent among the family patriarch (Paul Butler) and his offspring, who are less leery of the mystical wisdom Harry represents. Based on stories told in the griot tradition of superstition that he heard in his youth, writer-director Charles Burnett gives us a funny modern folktale that intersects dream-time and linear time and provides many memorable performances.
Directed by Spike Lee, USA, 120 minutes, Color, in English; 1996, R
Get on the Bus follows several black men on a cross-country bus trip from South-Central Los Angeles to the historic Million Man March in Washington DC. On the bus are an eclectic ensemble cast of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a former gangbanger, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All spend the journey discussing issues surrounding the March, manhood, religion, politics, and race. It’s stirring, heartfelt entertainment from the first frame to the last.
Directed by Susanne Bier, Denmark, 117 minutes, Color, in Danish with English subtitles; 2004, R
Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) has everything under control: a successful military career, a beautiful wife (Connie Nielsen) and two daughters. His younger brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is a drifter, living on the edge of the law. When Michael is sent to Afghanistan on a UN mission, the balance between the two brothers changes forever. Michael is missing in action – presumed dead – and Sarah is comforted by Jannik, who, against all odds, shows himself capable of taking responsibility for both himself and the family. It soon becomes clear that their feelings have developed beyond mutual sympathy. When Michael comes home, traumatized by being held prisoner in Afghanistan, nothing is the same. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Audience award for drama.
Directed by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni, Mongolia/Germany, 90 minutes, Color, in Mongolian with English subtitles; 2003, PG
Combining drama and documentary, The Story Of The Weeping Camel is a lovingly observed and fascinating journal of day-to-day survival in the Mongolian Gobi desert. For a family of herders who happily eke out their living in this remote dustbowl, crisis comes in the shape of an all-white newborn camel rejected by its mother after an agonizing birth. The family undertakes the rearing of the calf by hand, but the longer he’s denied his mother’s milk, the more likely it is the little camel will die.
Directed by Lisa Krueger, USA, 88 minutes, Color, in English; 1996, R
In her breakout film role, Scarlett Johansson plays Manny, a foster child who runs away from her adopted parents with her older sister Laurel. The two are constantly on the go, eating and sleeping whenever and wherever they can. But when Laurel becomes pregnant, they find they can’t make it through this crisis on their own. With nowhere else to turn, they decide to kidnap Elaine, a clerk in a local baby supply store. The girls soon realize, however, that Elaine might be just as needy as they are themselves. For this performance, 12-year old Scarlett was nominated for ‘Best Female Lead’ at the 1997 Independent Spirit Awards.
Directed by Sally Potter, Great Britain, 93 minutes, Color, in English; 1992, PG-13
Orlando is a bold unsentimental re-working of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel in which an innocent aristocrat journeys through 400 years of English history – first as a man, then as a woman. Orlando is a story of the quest for love, and it is also an ironic dance through English history. Addressing contemporary concerns about gender and identity, the film is remarkably true to the spirit of Virginia Woolf, but it also skillfully adapts the original story to give it a striking, cinematic form. The screenplay is a standard text taught in film schools as a radical and successful adaptation of a classic work.
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