Fort Wayne Cinema Center Movies for 9/12-9/18

For more info, visit cinemacenter.org or email movies@cinemacenter.org.

Wednesday 9/10 Winged Migration 5:15, La Tropical 7:00, Northfork 9:00 Thursday 9/11 Winged Migration 5:15, Northfork 7:00, La Tropical 9:00 Last Shows for La Tropical!

--Trembling Before G-d, Northfork, Winged Migration & Gentleman’s Agreement

Trembling Before G-d
5 Shows Only! Presented as part of our Lesbian-Gay Film Series “Trembling Before G-d is a fascinating examination of gay Orthodox Jews. These men and women find themselves in the grips of an impossible dilemma - unwilling to give up their sexual identities but at the same time unwilling to give up their faith, even though it disdains and rejects them. Its amazing that the filmmaker, Sandi Simcha DuBowski, got access to this hidden world - one he explores with lyricism and insight.” -- Newsweek. “A loving documentary that ably leavens its tears with the healing balm of humor: a consummately Jewish way to go. Stirring. Haunted. Eloquent. Devastating. A resonant, moving and often surprisingly funny swirl of testimonies." - Jan Stuart, Newsday. "...Trembling Before G-d, beginning with the title, is above all a work of reverence. DuBowski's sober, scrupulous documentary doesn’t lash out at an oppressive religious structure so much as offer a hopeful prayer—out of love and devotion—that it be made better." - The Village Voice
84 min., Not Rated. Saturday at 4:00, Sunday at 6:00, Monday at 7:00, Tuesday at 5:15, Thursday at 5:15

Gentleman’s Agreement
$2.00 Admission to this film. Sponsored by the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Elia Kazan directed this sometimes powerful study of anti-Semitism in nicer circles, based on Laura Z. Hobson's post-World War II novel. Gregory Peck is a hotshot magazine writer who has been blind to the problem; to ferret it out, he passes himself off as Jewish and watches the WASPs squirm. Seen a half-century later, the attitudes seem quaint and dated: Could it really have been like this? Yet the truth of the story comes through, in the wounded dignity of John Garfield, the upright indignation of Peck, and the hidden ways bigotry and hatred can poison relationships. That's particularly true in the Oscar-winning performance of Celeste Holm, who finds more layers than you'd expect in what seems like a stock character.
118 minutes. Not Rated Wednesday 7:00, One Show Only!

Winged Migration
"Winged Migration is a marvel.”—Los Angeles Times. “A movie of awesome beauty and innovation…”—Chicago Tribune. “Who wants to see a documentary about birds of every feather who migrate across forty countries and seven continents? You do. Winged Migration is a movie miracle; it soars.”—Rolling Stone. In a summer full of digitally enhanced machines ("The Matrix Reloaded") and mutants ("X2"), you won't see anything more amazing and electrifying than the soaring birds in this marvelous movie.”—L.A. Daily News.
90 min., Rated G. Friday at 8:30PM, Saturday at 2PM & 6:30PM, Sunday at 2PM Monday at 5:15PM Tuesday at 7PM, and Thursday at 9PM

Northfork
Opens Friday, August 29th “Four Stars! A masterpiece! A visionary epic! There has never been a movie quite like Northfork!”—Roger Ebert. “Dreamy and entrancing. At a moment when so many films strive to be as obvious and interchangeable as possible, it is gratifying to find one that is puzzling, subtle and handmade.”—The New York Times. “Magical! A thoroughly original accomplishment of a high artistic order! A provocatively bold stroke of imagination. Full of sly touches.”—Los Angeles Times. "A powerful, surreal fable, one that requires a small amount of patience from the viewer in exchange for a moving experience."—Dallas Morning News. "Like the best work of David Lynch, Northfork is that rare movie that draws you in more (rather than alienating you) at precisely those moments when you least understand it."—Variety.
94 minutes, Rated PG-13. Friday at 6:30PM Saturday at 8:30PM, Sunday at 4PM, Monday at 8:45PM, Tuesday at 8:45PM, Thursday at 7PM

Trembling Before G-d
Trembling Before G-d is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma - how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex individuals - some hidden, some out - from the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts. Many have been tragically rejected and their pain is raw, yet with irony, humor, and resilience, they love, care, struggle, and debate with a thousands-year old tradition. Ultimately, they are forced to question how they can pursue truth and faith in their lives. Vividly shot with a courageous few over five years in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, Trembling Before G-d is an international project with global implications that strikes at the meaning of religious identity and tradition in a modern world. For the first time, this issue has become a live, public debate in Orthodox circles, and the film is both witness and catalyst to this historic moment. What emerges is a loving and fearless testament to faith and survival and the universal struggle to belong. 84 min., Not Rated.

Northfork
One of the most hauntingly beautiful films ever made, the Polish brothers’ “Northfork” nimbly fuses history and fantasy in a ’50s-set fairy tale set in the titular Montana mining community. While the rest of the country is profiting from a postwar economic boom, this small town is about to vanish from the face of the earth under the waters of a river to be dammed up imminently. Three pairs of men in trench coats (James Woods and Mark Polish among them) glide across the flat plain, visiting the remaining holdouts who refuse to leave their homesteads. The men’s own futures are at stake, for they have been promised 1.5 acres of lakefront property in exchange for the secured evacuation of 65 properties. With 48 hours to go before the waters are reined in, time is running out. Meanwhile, sickly orphan Irwin (Duel Farnes) lies in a feverish coma under the care of a kindly priest (Nick Nolte). In his restless dreams, Irwin encounters an eccentric family--flamboyant Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs); wordless cowboy Cod (Ben Foster); androgynous Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah), in a black pixie haircut and ruffled shirt; and Happy (Anthony Edwards), an amputee with wooden hands and multi-lensed spectacles--who are in search of the Unknown Angel. Desperate to go with them when they leave, Irwin brings evidence--feathers, a tranquilizer gun, bodily scars--proving that he is the one for whom they are looking. In the end these two storylines converge in a wholly unexpected way. Not only is the story intensely moving, but also the imagery throughout “Northfork” is lovely. Drawing from a palette of flat grays and browns, helmer Michael Polish and cinematographer David Mullen have produced a look reminiscent of an old, faded, sepia-toned photograph. Particularly poetic are the visions of the surface of a lake, churning from a disturbance below until a casket pops to the surface, and a church with a missing fourth wall, a priest preaching his final Sunday sermon while cow’s graze serenely in the background. In addition, in the otherworldly characters and a wooden dog-giraffe hybrid creature that beckons to Irwin from across the plain, Michael Polish and his brother Mark, with whom he produced and crafted the script, exhibit wild, evocative imagination. Yet the film is subtly humorous as well, with the reconstruction of the Biblical ark by a particularly devout polygamist family; debates on the differences between people who drive Fords and people who drive Chevys; and, in a scene of comic brilliance, the protracted guessing game of what the local diner might have on the menu with a waitress whose features are profoundly, shall we say, unique. Here, too, are anachronisms such as a quip about fast food and the throwaway line, delivered just so, “What are you talking about, Willis?” The jokes do take one out of the film for a moment, yet somehow, in the context of this quirky piece, they work. The final movement in the Polish brothers’ trilogy that also includes “Twin Falls Idaho” and “Jackpot,” “Northfork” is a classic for all time. Rated PG-13 for brief sexuality. Running time: 94 min.

Winged Migration
You won't find any purer example of the power of cinema than Jacques Perrin's Oscar-nominated documentary "Winged Migration." Here's the long and short of it: "Winged Migration" is 90 minutes of footage of birds flying, though Perrin looks at the variety of natural and man-made hazards birds face in the course of their semi-annual instinctive trek across great expanses of globe. And yet, with only these images and sounds of birds, a musical score and a minimum of narration, Perrin's film speaks volumes about the way these animals live in nature and, occasionally, in spite of nature. There is something heroic and awe-inspiring about their indomitable struggle to follow the instincts they were born with. There undoubtedly will be people who find this notion boring: Birds? Flying? That's it? I can see that on the Nature Channel. But give this movie a chance. Perrin's film is profound – and profoundly entertaining. You will look at the world in a different way after seeing "Winged Migration." 90 min., Rated G.

Posted by Admin at September 10, 2003 02:06 PM