UB's "Buffalo Film Seminars" Sets Fall Schedule

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- After a semester hiatus, Buffalo Film Seminars will return this fall with a lineup that includes such classics as Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver."

The 15-week series of screenings will take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, beginning on Aug. 26, in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St. in downtown Buffalo.

The series, sponsored by UB and the Market Arcade, is hosted by Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, and Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture, also in the English department.

Christian and Jackson will introduce each film. Following a short break at the end of each film, they will lead a discussion of the film.

The screenings are part of "Contemporary Cinema" (Eng 441), an undergraduate course being taught by the pair. The screenings also are open to the general public.

New digital projection equipment at the Market Arcade will allow for the screening and discussion of important films that now exist only on DVD or exist in far better versions on DVD than on celluloid, Jackson says, although the primary projection mode will continue to be film.

The series will open on Aug. 26 with "Our Hospitality" (1924), a silent film directed by Buster Keaton. Keaton also stars in this film about a man who travels south in 1830s America to claim an inheritance and finds himself in the middle of a longtime family feud. Pianist and organist Philip Carlie will perform live during the screening.

The series will continue on Sept. 2 with another silent masterpiece, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927). This tale of a futuristic city divided into working and elite classes remains a sci-fi classic. It will be screened with its original orchestral score by Gottfried Hupertz.

The remainder of the schedule:

• Sept. 9: "Scarface," 1932, directed by Howard Hawks. This film set the standard for decades for gangster films. Paul Muni was so charismatically terrifying that he never shed the gangster image.

• Sept. 16: "Tarzan and his Mate," 1934, directed by Cedric Gibbons. Considered the best of the "Tarzan" films, this movie portrayed the idyllic world where Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan frolicked nearly naked in the jungle.

• Sept. 23: "Great Expectations," 1946, directed by David Lean. John Mills, Alec Guinness and Valerie Hobson star in what is considered the quintessential film version of the Dickens novel about a mysterious benefactor who helps a young orphan become a gentleman of means.

• Sept. 30: "Out of the Past," 1947, directed by Jacques Tourneur. Remade in 1984 as "Against All Odds," this film features Robert Mitchum fighting a return to a life of crime when his ex-boss, Kirk Douglas, and girlfriend, Jane Greer, come back into his life.

• Oct. 7: "Ugetsu," 1953, directed by Kenji Misoguchi. This lyrical tale of two men in 16th-century Japan is considered a masterpiece of Japanese cinema.

• Oct. 14: "The Searchers," 1956, directed by John Ford. Ford's often-imitated Western has John Wayne searching for his niece, who was kidnapped by Indians. Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood and Vera Miles also star.

• Oct. 21: "Vertigo," 1958, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The line between illusion and reality is blurred in this mystery about obsessive love. Kim Novak stars as James Stewart's object of affection.

• Oct. 28: "Le Mépris/Contempt," 1963, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Jack Palance, Brigitte Bardot and director Fritz Lang star in a perversely funny and cynical look at movie making.

• Nov. 4: "Taxi Driver," 1976, directed by Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro is the lonely ex-Marine provoked to violence. Jodie Foster also stars.

• Nov. 11: "The Ruling Class," 1972, directed by Peter Medak. Peter O'Toole thinks he's Jesus Christ in this offbeat black comedy.

• Nov. 18: "Offret/The Sacrifice," 1986, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. A man offers himself as a sacrifice to God to save his son and redeem Earth after a nuclear holocaust. Tarkovsky's last film.

• Nov. 25: "Dead Man," 1995, directed by Jim Jarmusch. This avant-garde Western stars Johnny Depp as a Cleveland accountant who becomes a fugitive after murdering a man in self-defense.

• Dec. 2: "Habla con ella/Talk to Her," 2002, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. This critically acclaimed, yet highly disturbing, film focuses on two men in love with a comatose woman.

For further information about this fall's lineup, go to http://csac.buffalo.edu/bfsfall2003.html.