IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN

2002 | Austria/Czech Republic/Switzerland/Germany | Directed by Martina Kudlacek | 103 minutes

"With IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN, documentary filmmaker Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential artist, but a pitch-perfect introduction to her strikingly beautiful and poetic body of work. Crowned "Fellini and Bergman wrapped in one gloriously possessed body" by the L.A. Weekly, Maya Deren is arguably the most important and innovative avant-garde filmmaker in the history of American cinema. Using locations from the Hollywood hills to Haiti, Deren made such mesmerizing films as AT LAND, RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME and her masterpiece MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON"

From Zeitgeist Films

IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN will be screened on Wednesday, April 11th, at 7:00 pm, in Alumni Hall.


CHAOS

2001 | France | Directed by Coline Serreau | 109 minutes

"Once in a while an unlikely combination of style and substance that sounds impossible comes together to work to perfection on the screen.  In the hands of writer-director Coline Serreau (Three Men and a Cradle), CHAOS, the absorbing and by turns comedic thriller, lays bare the humiliating life of forced prostitution in the brutal Paris underworld of crime.  Serreau then layers and merges it seamlessly with biting satire about modern alienation among middlebrow folk."

-Shelley Cameron, Reel Movie Critic

CHAOS will be screened on Thursday, April 12th, at 7:00 pm, in Alumni Hall.


PERSONAL VELOCITY

2002 | USA | Directed by Rebecca Miller | 86 minutes

Personal Velocity is a handcrafted, low-budget film. It is written and directed by Rebecca Miller, daughter of playwright Arthur, and based on three of her self-consciously sensitive New Yorker-ish stories. Each lasts half an hour and focuses on women in flight from men, figuratively and literally, in the New York area. Blue-collar, trailer-trash Delia (Kyra Sedgwick) takes her kids away from their abusive father. Clever, Jewish Greta (Parker Posey), a successful editor at a Manhattan publisher living in the shadow of her lawyer father, contemplates walking out on her dull husband, a New York Times fact-checker whose literary style and tedious conversation no longer meet her exacting standards. Paula (Fairuza Balk), a disturbed 21-year-old, is driving upstate wondering whether to have an abortion.

-Phillip French, The Observer

PERSONAL VELOCITY will be screened on Wednesday, April 18th, at 7:00 pm, in Alumni Hall.


IN THE CUT

2003 | USA/UK/Australia | Directed by Jane Campion | 119 minutes

Jane Campion enters the world of suspense thrillers, as well as the landscape of American filmmaking…in In the Cut. An intensely sexual exploration of the nature of a woman's desire in the guise of a murder mystery, this high-strung adaptation of Susanna Moore's bestselling novel is beautifully crafted and is highlighted by an arresting change-of-pace performance by Meg Ryan as an English teacher erotically awakened by a homicide detective.

-Todd McCarthy, Variety

IN THE CUT will be screened on Thursday, April 19th, at 7:00 pm, in Alumni Hall.

Sponsored by University of Pittsburgh Film Studies Program, English Department, Women's Studies Program, and A&S Graduate Dean's Office