For years, film buff professors Diane Christian and Bruce Jackson have been curating a film series and discussion at the Market Arcade Cinema in Downtown Buffalo.
For those who enjoy seeing the finest films ever produced, while enhancing their film knowledge of directors, cast, sets, and contextual background, this is an informative and fun way to get the insider’s vantage point into the wold of cinematic greats.
Each week the husband and wife team sets up the anticipated film via a short introduction before commencing with the feature. When the film ends, viewers take a short break and then listen in as a University at Buffalo film class discusses the production. Guests are welcome to contribute their own input as well. It’s a great way to increase your film vocabulary and gather intimate knowledge of the people and the places that make each production so timeless.
Following is a Q&A with Bruce Jackson:
How many years have you been doing this?
This series will be our fifteenth year doing the Buffalo Film Seminars. When we started, we thought it would be fun to do it once or twice. Now we’ve done about 400 different films and enjoy it as much as the first time.
How do you go about choosing the line-up each season?
People in the audience suggest films to us all the time. We go through all the books of “Hundred Films You Must See Before Whatever.” We look at all of Criterion’s new releases. People we don’t know write us to suggest films. Basically, Diane and I spent a lot of time in our kitchen looking at DVDs and Blu-rays. If either of us dislikes a film, it’s out. (But that’s not permanent: ten years ago, we both rejected Network as over the top; now it’s what you get on tv, so we did it last season and it was, among the students, the most popular film.)
Which flick are you looking forward to the most? And Diane?
We don’t show any film we don’t both really like and think worth talking about. Every season we do one or two films we know will be hard on our audience, either because of style or content. But we know much of our audience trusts us and knows we would offer anything that was just trendy or crap. So they’re willing to engage sometimes difficult stuff. When that works, it’s a real high for us. We go home after the screenings and continue the conversation in our kitchen every Tuesday night. They’re all special and specific for us.
Which film do you think will attract the most interest from the public?
Beats me. We don’t think in those terms. We think, What films would we like to share with our students and friends? The interest part is our job: we have to present it in a way that lets them be open to a film they might otherwise not even encounter, and then, in the discussion afterward, encourage a discussion to help them, and us, talk about what we just experienced.
Anything else?
Yes. We’re both really sad that City Hall is trying to sell the Market Arcade to a suburban developer. The Market Arcade is used not only for this series and Road Less Traveled Productions, but a score of community groups. It is the only public movie theater between here an Rochester. It is the only community-owned eight-screen movie theater in the US. It makes both of us hugely sad that City Hall thinks such a wonderful community resource is worth nothing.
Buffalo Film Seminars | Tuesdays at 7:00 PM at the Market Arcade Cinema in Downtown Buffalo | Facebook
Tickets for the seminars are adults $9, students $7, seniors $6.50. Season tickets are available any time at a 15% reduction for the cost of the remaining films. Free parking is available in the M&T fenced lot opposite the theatre’s Washington Street entrance: pay the attendant $3, given the parking ticket to the ticket clerk in the theatre and get the $3 back.
Handouts with production details, anecdotes and critical comments about each week’s film on goldenrod paper are available in the Market Arcade lobby 45 minutes before each session. The Goldenrod handouts are posted online one day before the screening. (All previous handouts are also online.)
The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center and the University at Buffalo.
Here is the spring scheduled for the Buffalo Film Seminars, 7 p.m. Tuesdays:
January 28 Josef von Sternberg Underworld 1927 (accompanied on electronic piano by The Great Philip Carli)
February 4 Jean Cocteau Orpheus 1950
February11 Kenji Mizoguchi The Life of Oharu 1952
February 18 Satyajit Ray Charulata 1964
February 25 Metin Erksan Dry Summer 1964
March 4 Monte Hellman Two-Lane Blacktop 1971
March 11 John Cassavetes Killing of a Chinese Bookie 1976
March 25 Agnes Varda Vagabond 1985
April 1 Gabriel Axel Babette’s Feast 1987
April 8 Louis Malle Vanya on 42nd Street 1994
April 15 Wes Anderson The Royal Tenenbaums 2001
April 22 Tommy Lee Jones The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada 2005
April 29 José Padilha Elite Squad 2007
May 6 John Huston The Dead 1987