Friday, June 26, 2020 - 6:00pm
CinemaLit Popcorn Pop-Up Salon: May British New Wave
Hello Film Lovers,
Welcome back to CinemaLit! We have missed our Friday night gatherings. Laura, Pam, and I are excited to launch this new format for CinemaLit as we Shelter at Home. We will be viewing films on Kanopy and gathering online for a Popcorn Pop-Up Salon!
We start up the summer with a month of Romance in Full Color with four films to carry us away: Summertime (1955), Black Orpheus (1959), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and the beautiful, heartbreaking The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).
All you will need is either a Mechanic’s Institute library card, or a San Francisco Public Library card, which will give you access to Kanopy and its treasure trove of movies. Make a reservation as usual via Eventbrite and watch the film on Kanopy at your leisure. You will receive a link to the Friday night CinemaLit salon on Zoom two days in advance. On the night of the salon click the Zoom link and join us.
If you do not receive a Zoom Link by the day of the event, contact Pam Troy at rsvp@milibrary.org.
KANOPY INSTRUCTIONS
Mechanics’ Institute members can now sign up for FREE access to Kanopy, a wonderful film streaming service. To sign up:
1. Click on THIS LINK.
2. Click on the large orange login button that reads, “Log in to milibrary.”
3. Enter the 14-digit bar code from your MI Library card
4. Set up your account following Kanopy’s instructions, including your email and a password.
5. Kanopy will send verification to your email address.
You’ll be able to choose from a wonderful selection of films, including classics, pre-code, foreign films, and documentaries, including the films we’ve scheduled this month for CinemaLit.
If you are not a Mechanics’ Institute member, consider membership and click HERE to join online:
Or, you can check with your public library to see if they are Kanopy members. If so, you may use your public library card to set up a Kanopy account.
Since we all might be going a bit stir crazy, for our second month of CinemaLit while sheltering, we're highlighting films shot on location far from North America. They are all classics exploring the various joys and heartaches of love and romance. Additionally, they are all brimming with color and music. Only one is in English. Two won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. All four are dedicated to matters of the heart.
Grab your popcorn and hankies and join us on Friday nights in June!
Matthew Kennedy, curator and host
CinemaLit Film Series
June 2020: Love and Romance in Faraway Places
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is not a musical. It's something far less common – a film operetta composed by Michel Legrand, the man behind the plush sounds of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1968), Summer of '42 (1971), and Yentl (1983). In Umbrellas, every word is sung. It takes some getting used to, but soon enough director Jacques Demy's fantastic world of love and heartbreak set against confectionary visuals will sweep you away. Handsome garage mechanic Nino Castelnuovo and supernaturally beautiful shopgirl Catherine Deneuve play out the arc of young love over several years. If the simple plot is a bit creaky, the film more than compensates through Demy's considerable filmmaking powers. He set out to create something fresh and original, and it remains so more than 50 years later.
Told in three parts, there's a symmetry to Umbrellas, its story and characters, that give it a quality of uncluttered elegance. While Demy was inspired by the designs of the MGM musicals, the film has its own look as captured by art director Bernard Evein and cinematographer Jean Rabier. And through it all Demy manages to reference the Algerian War and the Americanization of French popular culture without being gratuitous. How The Umbrellas of Cherbourg so fluidly combines fantasy backdrops and unending music with rapturous love, bitter truths, hard lessons, and social critique remains something of a film miracle.
Curated by Matthew Kennedy
Matthew Kennedy, CinemaLit’s curator, has written biographies of Marie Dressler, Joan Blondell, and Edmund Goulding. His book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, was the basis of a film series on Turner Classic Movies.
“I don't have a favorite film,” Matthew says. "I find that my relationships to films, actors, genres, and directors change as I change over the years. Some don't hold up. Some look more profound, as though I've caught up with their artistry. I feel that way about Garbo, Cary Grant, director John Cassavetes, and others."
“Classic films have historical context, something only time can provide,” Matt observes. “They become these great cultural artifacts, so revealing of tastes, attitudes, and assumptions.”
