Buoyed by the success of a recent series of screenings that showcased the work of directors like Akiro Kurosawa and John Carpenter, the Lone Star Film Society will honor two more master filmmakers this August: Hayao Miyazaki and Alfred Hitchcock.
In a partnership with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which has the only theater in Fort Worth capable of showing archival film prints, the LSFS will screen five Miyazaki and six Hitchcock films over the course of the month.
The five Miyazaki films — Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke — will be shown over four consecutive weekends starting on August 2. Several screenings will include either introductions from or discussions with UT Dallas film professors. For purists, Spirited Away will be shown both in Japanese with English subtitles and in dubbed English.
August 28-31 will belong to Hitchcock. The LSFS will present four of his classics — The 39 Steps, Psycho, Notorious and Rear Window — as well as two of his early silent films, Blackmail and The Lodger. The two silent films, introduced by film professors from TCU and SMU, will be accompanied by live music courtesy of pianist Robert Edwards and film composer Curtis Heath.
Tickets for each film, which are now on sale, range from $5-$9, with Lone Star Film Society and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth members receiving discounts.
Psycho is one of six Alfred Hitchcock films the Lone Star Film Society will show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Photo courtesy of Lone Star Film Society
Psycho is one of six Alfred Hitchcock films the Lone Star Film Society will show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
The war between Israel and Hamas that has been going on since October 2023 has had far-reaching effects, especially for the people in the region. While there are many perspectives on the political and military conflict, a new film presents the resulting humanitarian crisis from a specific point of view: that of Palestinian filmmakers inside Gaza.
From Ground Zero: Stories from Gazais an anthology of 22 separate short films, each 3-6 minutes long, from Palestinian directors living in Gaza during the war. The film has been short-listed for an Oscar for Best International Feature.
Some of the shorts feel like documentaries, others feel like created stories, but all show the brutal impacts - both physical and psychological - inside Palestine during the war. Almost all of the films have their subjects navigating the rubble of bombed-out buildings, and many of them depict the vast tent cities that have popped up to house the displaced citizens, while war drones buzz overhead.
The stories of the shorts vary from simple to relatively complex. Multiple films feature an individual person describing his or her daily life, although the filmmakers use different techniques to embellish the relatively basic idea. Some pack in a lot of narrative into a small amount of time; one titled “School Day,” which shows a young boy preparing himself for a version of school, has a gut punch of an ending.
The most memorable segment is “Soft Skin,” in which a woman helps a group of children compose stop motion animations using characters created from construction paper. It contains a haunting detail of kids showing that their mothers have written their names on their arms to be able to identify them if they become victims of a bombing. The animated sequences depicting such a scenario are both beautiful and tragic at the same time.
The films are about evenly split between those that focus solely on adults and those that use children. Naturally, those that do feature kids have heightened emotions. But that innocence cuts both ways, as some of the films show the kids still finding a way to have fun, a small measure of joy in otherwise joyless surroundings.
In fact, despite all of the devastation, some hope remains among a handful of filmmakers. One depicts a comedian continuing to perform so that he can bring some laughter to people’s days. Another has a director actively seeking out stories about happy things, which she finds in a group of people who play music together. One lyric from a song they sing - “It’s certain the happy days will return” - indicates that they refuse to let the war take away their expectation that life will be normal again someday.
All of the films combine for a crucial, if excruciating, account of this period of time in the war-torn region. As a viewer, you don’t want there to be more stories, but you also can’t look away as each of the filmmakers lay out intensely personal narratives. If nothing else, it gives people with little other means a chance to have their voices be exposed to the world at large.
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From Ground Zero: Stories of Gaza is now playing in select theaters.
