Before the string of acclaimed 1990s dramas that he is best known for, director Jonathan Demme turned his humanist camera on the subjects of three quirky, stylish comedies. Combining a unique ear for music with intimate close-ups and empathy for outsiders, Demme brought life to losers, free spirits, and mobsters.
Screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted by Hollywood following his appearance in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in late 1947. Refusing to testify about his or anyone else’s involvement with Communist organizations, Trumbo was found in contempt of Congress and served eleven months in a federal prison. Following his release, and working through fronts and under pseudonyms, Trumbo embarked on a decade of high-quality work, often at low-budget studios.
The Polish Film Festival has been a fixture in Rochester since 1997 thanks, in part, to the area’s active Polish-American community. The annual festival presents classic Polish cinema as well as contemporary works produced by the newest generation of the country’s filmmakers.
Silent Tuesdays Nineteenth-century “chiller” author and Charles Dickens contemporary Wilkie Collins made a career out of combining social commentary and women in danger in his serialized novels. Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip C. Carli.
Palme d’Or Winners of the 1960s Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a race car test driver who lost his wife. Anne (Anouk Aimée) is a script supervisor and the widow of a stuntman. After a chance meeting, sparks fly.
Great American Songbook Director Vincente Minnelli reteams with Fred Astaire and gives Cyd Charisse one of her first starring roles as differently minded entertainers who need to come together to save their Broadway musical. Introduction by Michael Lasser.
Labor Film Series Based on an actual event in 2004, this controversial film looks at the plight of minimum wage workers and their susceptibility to manipulation. A fast food restaurant receives a call from someone claiming to be a police officer investigating theft at the restaurant.
Palme d’Or Winners of the 1960s A grand-scale epic, set in 1860s Sicily during the Risorgimento—the period that marked the end of Sicily’s existence as an independent monarchy and the emergence of an Italian state—The Leopard is a lavish, elegiac chronicle of the decline of an aristocratic family under the crushing weight of political change.
Silent Tuesdays Directed by Paul Leni—a German import who established Universal Studios’ atmospheric style with his 1927 Hollywood debut The Cat and the Canary—this chiller about a murder in an apparently cursed theater stands as one of the few true silent whodunits. Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip C. Carli.
Great American Songbook Vincente Minnelli brings Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse together to dance for the last time. Kelly’s performance of the songs “Almost Like Being in Love” and “The Heather on the Hill” is surpassed only by his dance with Charisse among the Highlands in a reprise of the latter song.
Labor Film Series In a near future of airtight international borders and militarized corporate warriors, an underground class of workers plug their nervous systems into a global computer network, becoming “cybraceros,” who manipulate robots from a distance.
Silent Tuesdays Before he was a founding member of United Artists, and before he was the swashbuckler remembered for The Black Pirate (1926) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Douglas Fairbanks was an agile, adept leading man, capable of both humor and romance, as seen in these two films. Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip C. Carli
Palme d’Or Winners of the 1960s This disturbing drama of repression and revolution at an English boarding school is director Lindsay Anderson's timely social satire on the student rebellion movements that were rocking the world (the film opened just months after the May 1968 French student uprisings).
Polish Film Festival A nail-biting behind-the-scenes drama about the intense physical and mental labor put into a sport that thrives on its beautiful aesthetics.
Rochester Premiere | The Polish Film Festival Returning to the Dryden for the third time, director Andreas Voigt brings his latest film, a follow-up, of sorts, to his 1992 film Borderland—A Charm. In this most recent film, he explores the lives of people living on or near the border between Germany and Poland.
Great American Songbook Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s classic musical is brought to the screen with Technicolor verve. The soundtrack is filled with memorable songs, including “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and “I Cain’t Say No,” while the cast shines with performances by Gordon MacRae, Gloria Grahame, Shirley Jones, Eddie Albert, and Rod Steiger.
Member Movie Night | Demme Comedies Melvin Dummar (Paul Le Mat), an employee at a Nevada magnesium plant, imagines he is destined for greater things. On his way home from work one night, he picks up an old man (Jason Robards) who has crashed his motorcycle riding through the desert.
Great American Songbook Frank Sinatra is in proto–Rat Pack form as womanizing nightclub singer Joey Evans in this adaptation of the stage production, with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Stumbling into San Francisco after being run out of his last town for romancing the mayor’s underage daughter, Joey runs into old friend and bandleader Ned Galvin, who wrangles him a job at the Barbary Coast Club.
