Our Art Saturday programs are free and meet above the waterfall in Yerba Buena Gardens (Mission between 3rd and 4th Streets) between 10:45 and 11:15. No need to RSVP. Students tour downtown art galleries and museums to take in the very latest in contemporary art before they are treated to a picnic lunch. After lunch we go see a new release film. A cultural education unlike any other!

Cine/Club is free and is held on Friday nights. These events are free to students, their guests, mentors, parents and friends of Art & Film. No need to RSVP. Screenings are held at the Randall Museum (199 Museum Way) and at Dolby Labs (100 Potrero Avenue). Refreshments are served at 6:30 and the film begins at 7 unless otherwise noted.

Discussions are held after each film, led by Ronald Chase, director of Art & Film, and guest moderators such as Heather Woodward of SotA and Jeanne Finley of CCA.



Friday 13: Cine/Club: Dolby Labs

Shawn Meadow's THIS IS ENGLAND (2006, UK)

We start the year with a powerhouse of a film—and something different from our usual fare. This film takes us into the world of England's skinheads and neo-nazis to examine the way young people can be so easily influenced by their peers. This film has an authenticity about it that can’t be matched.

PARENTAL WARNING: Some nudity and mild sex scenes.

 
WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:

This film is blessed with powerful performances and an absolutely authentic atmosphere of the English Midlands, 1983. It can’t help but affect you. The hero, a teenage boy who is bullied at school and harassed at home, is befriended by a group of skin-heads who move to initiate him into their company. As some of the members are pulled in a darker direction, being a part of the group brings a lot more than he bargained for.
   
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Shawn Meadow’s is one of the finest directors in England. His films, With Dead Man’s Shoes, Twenty-Four Seven, and Somers Town are all sturdy achievements, but he is practically unknown in America, and that’s a real shame. His films have great moral character and concentrate on the ways that young people are badly influenced and damaged by the worse elements in their society. Meadows knows the world of This Is England well, having himself been involved in petty crime in his youth. He works with young actors especially well. No one else could have made this film

Saturday 14: Art Saturday

10:30 Meet on the balcony outside Metreon overlooking Yerba Buena Park (on Mission between 3rd & 4th)
11:00 We'll go see galleries, followed by a picnic lunch and see a film in the afternoon.
Friday 20: Cine/Club: Randall Museum

Sayajit Ray's PATHER PANCHALI (1955, India)

The debut film from India’s most famous director was made with few funds and loads of talent and faith. It takes two children in rural India through their childhoods and into adolescence, capturing the atmosphere and rhythms of daily life with exquisite detail. Another genuine masterpiece you'll be glad you didn't miss.

 
WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:

This is the first instalation of the famous Apu Trilogy, but it also holds up on its own, telling the story of two children growing up in rural India. The characters, mother, father, grandmother and neighbors, rich and poor, are brilliantly etched. You feel you are visiting India and are vividly a part of the images, the rituals, the texture of daily life and this bonds you to the the characters. It is an old fashioned “story film” as good as they come.
   
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Ray was born in India and studied painting and art history at the University of Calcutta. He started his career as an illustrator; one of the books he illustrated, Pather Panchali, left a deep impression on him. He dreamed of filming it but in 1940’s India being a film maker was an unattainable dream. In 1950 he visited London and while there saw a film by Vittorio De Sica called The Bicycle Thief. This classic neo-realist film was filmed on location with non-actors, and on a tiny budget. Ray was so moved and excited, he returned to India and tried to raise money for his film. Unsuccessful, he nonetheless began filming with friends on weekends with the encouragement of a French film maker, Jean Renoir, who was in India making a film. To fund the film, he spent his salary and sold all his possessions. He was in despair, almost at the point of abandoning the project, when the Bengal government stepped in and gave him money.
   
The story of the making of this film is an inspiration to all desperate young filmmakers. In 1955, Pather Panchali was shown at the Cannes Festival and caused a sensation. It introduced Indian cinema to the West and won the Jury prize. Encouraged, Ray went on to complete the trilogy with Aparajito and The World of Apu. He continued making masterful humanist films about India for the next thirty years, and was given an honorary Academy Award the year of his death in 1992.
Friday 27: Cine/Club: Dolby Labs

Francois Truffaut’s JULES AND JIM (1962, France)

A sturdy example of why the French “new wave” changed the face of films, this tale is of three friends whose relations are periled by love, jealousy and fortune. One of the great screen performances by actress Jean Moreau.

 
WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:

We show The 400 Blows frequently as it is a staple of new-wave filmmaking, but we thought it was time you got to see another Truffaut masterwork. Jules and Jim is especially famous for its realistic portrayal of middle class bohemian lives with a twist. Truffaut is a master at creating emotionally-complex female characters that audiences can empathize with, and this film has one of the most brilliant of the French actresses: Jean Moreau. We thought you should see an example of what made the 1960’s such an exciting decade in film.
   
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Truffaut‘s early life was filled with the same sort of unhappiness he shows in his first film, The 400 Blows: a broken home, misery at school, and a bout in jail. He was bailed out by a film critic, Jacques Barzin, who published a small but influential film journal called, Cahiers de Cinema. It was under the mentorship of Barzin that Truffaut developed his ideas about film, and it was his generation of young critics who worked for the magazine (Godard, Renais, Chabrol) who launched the phenomena we refer to as “the new wave”—films from the early sixties made on minimal budgets by men in their twenties which changed the world of film as much as “neo-realism” from Italy did. Truffaut continued to make many films throughout his life, but none had the critical and popular impact as The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim.