4 Films on Screen Rochester’s Polish Film Festival once again kicks off at the Dryden Theatre with Part I of the festival. Featuring archival prints as well as one new release, these films represent six decades of Polish cinema.
Polish Films from the Harvard Film Archive Director Andrzei Munk died in a car crash before he could complete Passenger. Fellow director Witold Lesiewicz used the completed footage and still photography to assemble a version of the film that could be released.
Celebrating Rita Moreno The adaptation of the Broadway musical classic, an update of Romeo and Juliet, earned ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for its breakout star, Rita Moreno. The tale of a turf war between rival teenage gangs in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen and the two lovers who cross battle lines has captivated audiences for six decades. The Stephen Sondheim/Leonard Bernstein score is just one of the reasons.
17 Films on Screen It’s that time of year again when the silver screen turns to tinsel and we celebrate the end of the year with holiday classics on the big screen.
3 Film on Screen After selling out the 9th anniversary of the Nitrate Picture Show, the Dryden staff has fielded questions for months about when the next nitrate film screening will be. The wait is over. With three screenings over two days in November, a new tradition is born. Never before screened at the annual festival, these three prints from our own collection at the museum demonstrate the long-lasting vitality of well-maintained prints from a world-class archive.
Silent Tuesdays | From Rochester, With Love | Halloween One of cinema's early horror classics, this expressionistic silent film tells the melodramatic tale of Erik (Lon Chaney), the deformed outsider who dwells in the murky cellars beneath the Paris Opera House, haunting the theatre's patrons.
From Rochester, With Love Based on John Irving’s best seller, this eagerly anticipated screen adaptation did not disappoint. Robin Williams is a standout in the role of T. S. Garp, a serious writer with serious issues. But it is the performances of relative newcomers Glenn Close and Rochester-born John Lithgow that steal the film.
Silent Tuesdays Sam and Molly Thornhill (John Harron and Laura La Plante) are the platonic ideal of a married couple—ardently devoted to each other, but still quarreling in a playful way. On the eve of their wedding anniversary, Sam fails to notice a pair of stockings placed in his pocket by a client, which Molly discovers when he gets home.
Polish Film Festival | Polish Films from the Harvard Film Archive After his 1981 film, Hands Up!, was banned in his native Poland, writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski’s films produced in other countries took on themes of exile, alienation, and the struggles of the Polish diaspora.
Anomaly Film Festival Roger Corman’s New World Pictures distributed this cross-country car film produced by the Shaw Brothers, but shot in the United States. Based on the very real, but very illegal, Cannonball Run that began in 1971, the film is a wild car-lover’s chase and race with plenty of metal mangling and explosions to keep the biggest fan happy.
