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Establishing Shot Indiana University

Homemaking: Womanhouse, Wylie House, and Public Art in the Private Realm

Posted on by Establishing Shot

The front page of the exhibition catalog for Womanhouse
The front page of the exhibition catalog for Womanhouse

Guest post by Mary Figueroa, Graduate Assistant Projectionist at IU Cinema.

“On November 8, 1971, twenty-three women arrived at 533 Mariposa Street in downtown Hollywood armed with mops, brooms, paint buckets, rollers, sanding equipment, and wallpaper. For two months we scraped walls, replaced windows, built partitions, sanded floors, made furniture, installed lights, and renovated the seventy-five-year-old dilapidated structure. Our purpose was to remake the old house into a place of dreams and fantasies.” – Miriam Schapiro, 1987

Over the past year nearly 3 million U.S. women have dropped from the work force — many leaving frontline jobs to care for busy households that now simultaneously function as schools, daycares, offices, gyms, and TikTok dance studios. In this context, questioning and resisting the idiom “a woman’s place is in the home” feels as relevant as ever. In short, I chose to screen Womanhouse for my Staff Select as a means of further exploring the one thing that absolutely no one is sick of — home. (more…)

Physical Media Isn’t Dead, It Just Smells Funny: Blu-ray Reviews for February 2021

Posted on by Aja Essex

This month’s Blu-rays

 

Full transparency: all Blu-rays reviewed were provided by Kino Lorber. 

The unofficial title of this month’s batch of reviews will be called Oops! All Kino. Yes, February’s titles are all from Kino Lorber, and what a batch it is: a sizzlin’ Eartha Kitt vehicle, a Sammy Davis Jr. double feature, two crime pictures, a foundational piece of cinema and docs, Docs, DOCS! The highest quality documentaries in all honesty, including one that played in IU’s virtual cinema back in the height of lockdown, so if you loved it there, you now have the chance to own it in HD. Don’t even get me started on the title here that’s been restored and released to the public in its full form. It’s an exciting month for discoveries and I hope you’ll take the time to listen and maybe find something you would have otherwise passed on. I know I did! (more…)

Monthly Movie Round-Up: February

Posted on by Establishing Shot

Every month, A Place for Film brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited. (more…)

A Few of the Film-Related Things That Are Keeping Me Sane

Posted on by Michaela Owens

Clockwise from top left: Title card from Burt Reynolds' Conversations with...; still from I Married a Witch; Elaine May; Ellen Wu and Isabel Sandoval during Sandoval's Jorgensen Program in September 2020; The Queens of Animation book cover
Clockwise from top left: title card from Burt Reynolds’ Conversations with…; still from I Married a Witch; Elaine May; Ellen Wu and Isabel Sandoval during Sandoval’s Jorgensen Program in September 2020; The Queens of Animation book cover

Like so many others, the exhaustive weight of living and working in a pandemic has really been running me down, especially now that we’re close to the one-year mark of this tragic, seemingly endless moment in time. One of the most important pieces of advice that’s been said during this past year, however, is that in addition to taking care of each other, we need to take care of ourselves by focusing on our mental health and finding restorative, joyful things to help us keep pushing on. For me, those things are usually related to — surprise, surprise — film. Movies have always been a lifesaver for me, but it’s been particularly true these last 11 months (despite the IU Cinema-sized hole in my heart that I’ll continue to have while our doors remain closed).

While my tastes may be different than yours, I thought I’d share a handful of the most recent film-related things that have been making my life a little brighter lately in the hopes that they’ll bring a smile to your face, too — or at least encourage you to step away from reality for a minute and find something that makes you feel as good as this list makes me feel. (more…)

The Myth of the Lost Cause in Buster Keaton’s The General

Posted on by Laura Ivins

screenshot of Johnny Gray and his girlfriend Annabelle standing on the train
Johnnie (Buster Keaton) dressed in a Confederate uniform flags down a Confederate troop

By the time Buster Keaton made The General (co-directed by Clyde Bruckman) in 1926, Civil War melodramas were already old-fashioned. In the early silent era, the Civil War and the Antebellum South provided fodder for countless narrative films by U.S. studios, so that by the time Keaton made his film, this was well-worn territory.

The most notorious and widely viewed has of course been the overtly racist Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915), but Griffith was just one of many filmmakers who found inspiration in the Civil War period. (more…)

The Unmistakable Character of Grey Gardens (1976)

Posted on by Jesse Pasternack

Few documentaries have as rich a legacy as Grey Gardens. In addition to its own cult following, this film has inspired such illustrious adaptations as an HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as well as a Broadway musical that won three Tony Awards. Out of all of the documentaries directed by acclaimed filmmakers David and Albert Maysles, why is this the one that has struck such a chord with generations of audiences? 

This documentary is about Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale and Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale, respectively former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s cousin and aunt. They live in a deteriorating, decrepit estate in East Hampton, New York known as “Grey Gardens.” The Maysles film them going through old photos and rehashing old arguments, less interested in constructing a tight narrative than in letting the audience spend time with the distinctive personalities of two idiosyncratic women. (more…)

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