Public Screenings - December 2015

ORSON WELLES RETROSPECTIVE

Orson Welles began his career in New York City theater and radio in the 1930s, attracting national attention with his 1936 Harlem stage production of a voodoo-themed Macbeth and his 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, so inventive and realistic that it duped many into frenzied fear of a Martian attack. By 1941, at the age of 26, Welles had co-written, produced, directed, and starred in his first Hollywood feature film, Citizen Kane, regarded by many as the greatest motion picture ever made. Subsequent films and projects, while not always commercially successful, continued to exhibit his creative genius and independent sensibilities as he continued to struggle for funding and distribution. Today, he is regarded as one of the last true Renaissance men of the twentieth century and a maverick cinematic artist and his life and films continue to be extensively written about and discussed. Welles was the recipient of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1975, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award.

Thurs, December 3 -- 7 PM

ORSON WELLES RETROSPECTIVE

F for Fake (1974), 89 mins. 

In the free-form documentary essay film F for Fake, the self-described charlatan Welles gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illusion and truth, art and lies. With inventive charm, Welles takes us on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes and becomes a clever examination of the essential duplicity of cinema itself.

Thurs, December 10 -- 7 PM

ORSON WELLES RETROSPECTIVE

Special Orson Welles Event Screening