Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No. 3   September 20, 1999

‘Cinema on the Edge’ Starts September 27 Cinema on the Edge, a series of six fall film screenings, has something completely different to offer. "One of our goals in presenting this program is to introduce students and the general community to the world of film culture that lies outside multiplex commercial cinema," says Patricia Zimmermann, professor of cinema and photography. "The aim is to take a form that can offer lightweight and silly entertainment — much of which I enjoy — and show people that deeper visions can be expressed with this medium, that cinema can be a serious international activity that takes on the artistic and political issues of the day." The screenings are the program component of the Introduction to Film Aesthetics and Analysis course, but all the films are free and open to the general public. Zimmermann and associate professor of cinema and photography Gina Marchetti are the program’s curators; guest artists and critics will be on hand to give lectures, lead discussions, and screen their work. "There are 25 sites in the country showing the touring program of this year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival; Ithaca College is one of them," Zimmermann says. "There are developments going on right now in Iranian cinema that parallel the French "new wave" in the 1960s. We live in an expanding world of great complexity, and introducing people to this greater community isn’t something you can do in a commercial cinema or watching a video at home. What we’re doing benefits the entire College and its surrounding community and puts us on the map as a player in the national film scene." The Cinema on the Edge series screenings will be held on Mondays at 7:00 p.m., with the exception of Gabbeh, which is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. All screenings take place in Park Hall Auditorium. SEPTEMBER 27 — "Lethal Lesbians" Film critic B. Ruby Rich gives a lecture and screens films that show the homosexual imagery latent in mainstream film. Rich, a member of the Sundance Film Festival selection committee and former director of film/media for the New York State Council on the Arts, is the author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. OCTOBER 4 — "Histories of Memories" Internationally acclaimed Hungarian video artist Péter Forgács screens a selection of his films. These poetic, powerful documentaries filter the histories of European nations through the eyes of amateur filmmakers, with electronic music by Tibor Szembo. OCTOBER 26 — Gabbeh This special program — in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity as part of its discussion series on Islam — focuses on Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s breathtaking 1996 feature. A young woman tells her tale to a memory-haunted old man in as multilayered and modernist a creation as a novel by Rushdie. A panel of scholars — including Asma Barlas, associate professor of politics and director of the center; Aida Hozic, assistant professor of politics; Christina Lane, the James B. Pendleton Fellow in Cinema Studies; and Patricia Zimmermann — will explore the intersection between new Iranian cinema and Islam. Gina Marchetti will moderate. NOVEMBER 1 — "Creative Exhibition and Cinema 16" Chief ambassador for the avant-garde, film scholar, and curator Scott MacDonald re-creates Amos Vogel’s legendary New York City film exhibition venue, Cinema 16, with a screening of classic experimental works. MacDonald, the author of A Critical Cinema 1, 2, 3, Avant-Garde Film, and Screen Writings, will also speak on the significance of noncommercial film exhibition for the survival of film culture. NOVEMBER 8 — "Imaging Islam" Cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, this program screens two dynamic recent films on Muslim women’s lives: Pakistani filmmaker Meena Nanji’s 15-minute visual experimentation, Voices of the Morning, and Moroccan filmmaker Fatima Jebli Ouazzani’s debut feature, In My Father’s House, which explores the status of women in Islamic marriage customs and the continuing importance of virginity. An interdisciplinary panel of scholars — including Barlas, Hozic, Lane, and Marchetti — will discuss the film. Patricia Zimmermann will moderate. NOVEMBER 29 — Ann Arbor Film Festival The touring program of this year’s Ann Arbor Film Festival, one of the oldest independent filmfests in the country, will be followed by a panel of faculty filmmakers talking about filmmakers. Featured will be Ann Curran, Pierre Desir, David Gatten, and Rob Hahn from the Department of Cinema and Photography. Christina Lane will moderate. Cinema on the Edge is supported by the James B. Pendleton Endowment of the Roy H. Park School of Communications, with additional support from the Ithaca College Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, the Central New York Programmers Group, and the New York State Council on the Arts.