FILM 440: Film Study and Appreciation: Home

This documentary follows the stories of Harrison, Noel, and Chris as they return home from San Quentin State Prison. After spending most of their lives incarcerated, they are forced to reconcile their perception of themselves with a reality they are unprepared for. Each struggles to overcome personal demons and reconstruct their fractured lives.
Grappling with day-to-day challenges and striving for success, they work to reconnect with family and provide for themselves for the first time in their adult lives. Told in an unadorned verite style, we experience the truth of their heartaches and triumphs. As their stories unfold over weeks, months and years, the precarious nature of freedom after incarceration in America is revealed.

Oscar-winner for Best Picture, MOONLIGHT is a moving and transcendent look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to adulthood, as a shy outsider dealing with difficult circumstances, is guided by support, empathy and love from the most unexpected places.
Winner of multiple Oscars including Best Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Adapted Screenplay. Golden Globe winner for Best Motion Picture - Drama. Winner of Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Editing at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
"If you think art should challenge us, then you will embrace writer-director Barry Jenkins' exquisitely crafted drama "Moonlight." It's a true American masterpiece and one of the best films of the decade." - Tirdad Derakhshani, Philadelphia Inquirer

Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps, and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the towns most unsavory inhabitants. But when boy meets girl, an unusual love story begins to blossom...blood red.
The first Iranian Vampire Western, Ana Lily Amirpour's debut feature A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT basks in the sheer pleasure of pulp. A joyful mash-up of genre, archetype and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films, and the Iranian New Wave. Amped by a mix of Iranian rock, techno and Morricone-inspired riffs, its airy, anamorphic, black-and-white aesthetic and artfully drawn-out scenes combine the simmering tension of Sergio Leone with the surrealism of David Lynch.
Nominated for Best First Feature at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Nominated for Best of Next! at the Sundance Film Festival.

Named the best documentary film of all time by Sight and Sound, it is presented here in its entirety for the first time since its original premiere. Discovered and restored at EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam--with extensive digital treatment by Lobster Films--the 35mm print from which this edition is, in part, sourced is the only known complete version of the film.
The Man with the Movie Camera features musical accompaniment by The Alloy Orchestra.

Told by the activists and leaders who live and breathe this movement for justice, WHOSE STREETS? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson uprising. When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of St. Louis, Missouri. Grief, long-standing racial tensions and renewed anger bring residents together to hold vigil and protest this latest tragedy. Empowered parents, artists, and teachers from around the country come together as freedom fighters.
As the National Guard descends on Ferguson with military grade weaponry, these young community members become the torchbearers of a new resistance. Filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis know this story because they are the story. WHOSE STREETS? is a powerful battle cry from a generation fighting, not for their civil rights, but for the right to live.
Nominated for Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

In this undeniable gem of Hollywood's golden age, Walter, a hard-boiled newspaper editor, discovers that his ex-wife and former employee, Hildy, is set to marry a wet-blanket insurance salesman. Walter, certain that this is the wrong move for a strong-willed and ambitious woman such as Hildy, decides to sabotage her marital plans by enticing her with one last story--the execution of a convicted murderer.
A classic of the Screwball Rom-Com genre, HIS GIRL FRIDAY delivers the quick wit - and quicker dialogue - that only a pair like Hollywood legends Cary Grant and Rosalind Russel can!
Selected to be preserved at the National Film Preservation Board, USA.
"Perhaps the funniest, certainly the fastest talkie comedy ever made." - Geoff Andrew, Time Out
"...Hawks' willingness to sit back and let his lead actors' genius for comic timing carry the day that imbues HIS GIRL FRIDAY with its inexhaustible energy. Sixty years on it still makes 'When Harry Met Sally' look like 'Waiting For Godot.' In mime." - Simon Braud, Empire

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism. In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends--Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript.

In this funny, heartfelt story, Billi's (Awkwafina) family returns to China under the guise of a fake wedding to stealthily say goodbye to their beloved matriarch--the only person that doesn't know she only has a few weeks to live.

A former beauty queen and single mom prepares her rebellious teenage daughter for the "Miss Juneteenth" pageant.