June 12 (Saturday) 10 pm
Directed by Kaylyn Thornal
USA 1998, 16mm, color, 79 min.
with
Trynin, Geltman, Nash
Filmmaker Kaylyn Thornal follows three prominent Boston female rockers (Jen Trynin, Laurie Geltman, Juliana Nash) through several hazardous, up-and-down years in the music business. The musicians are as personable as they are talented, but that doesn’t save them from endless calamities, some of which are still tied to the marginality of women performers in rock. Thornal expands her film to bring in other smart, brash women’s voices from the music scene, including the sardonic Jules Verdone, Fuzzy’s no-nonsense Chris Toppin, Letters to Cleo’s brilliantly outspoken Kay Hanley.
Tickets will be $8 for this
special HFA event.
Kaylyn Thornal and Singer Kay Hanley will speak.
Directed by
Kaylyn Thornal
USA 1998, 16mm, color, 12 min.
with Hanley, Jack Richards, and Jaclyn Lafer
On the eve of splitting her podunk town for fame and fortune in New York city, Dottie (Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo) encounters a suspicious billiard hustler who may change her life forever.
June 19 (Saturday) 10 pm
Tickets are $8 for this
special HFA event.
Filmmaker Steven M. Martin
will appear at the screening.
Directed by Steven M. Martin
USA 1993 (color, 16mm)(104 min)
The hypnotic life and times of Leo Theremin, the Russian genius who invented the first electronic instrument, which became a staple of the soundtracks of sci-fi movies (The Day The Earth Stood Still), and was used by experimental musicians such as the Beach Boys’ Brian Wison for Good Vibrations. The musical history of the unique instrument, the Theremin, is juxtaposed with its creator’s personal saga: his strange politics and relation to Stalinism, his poignant love story.
June 26 (Saturday) 10 pm
Filmmaker Mann will speak
at the screening.
Directed by Ron Mann
Canada 1992, color, 16mm, 78 min.
The sensational cultural history of the Kennedy-era dance song, with on-camera interviews with the two musicians (Hank Ballard, Chubby Checker) who each claim to have recorded the authentic version, and talks with nice-guy Joey Dee whose "Peppermint Twist" was the signature song of the Peppermint Lounge, the Studio 54 of its day.
July 10 (Saturday) 10 pm
USA, 70 min.
A non-comprehensive collection of some of the best videos and the best groups with Boston ties. Among the represented: Letters to Cleo, Helium, Tracy Bonham, Lars Vegas, Kustomized, the Cars.
July 17 (Saturday) 10 pm
Tickets are $8 for this special HFA event
For this screening of a restored print
from the National Center For Jewish Film, we have special accompanying live music: pianist
Yakov Gubanov and violinist Mimi Radson combining on an original score by Gubanov.
Directed by Alexis Granovsky
USSR 1926, b/w, 35mm, 100 min.
With
Schlomo Mikhoels, Tamara Adelheim
Silent with English intertitles
Based on stories by the Yiddish master, Shalom Aleichem, the movie tells of Menakhem Mendl (Mikhoels), who drifts from one failed get-rich-quick scheme to the next, reminding of the difficult Jewish plight under the Czars. J. Hoberman: "Affectionate but unsentimental. . . shot mainly in exteriors, Jewish Luck is almost semi-documentary in its representation of a tumbledown section of . . . the Ukraine’s archetypal Jewish town."
July 24 (Saturday) 10 pm
Tickets are $8 for this special HFA event
Program to be announced.
90 min.
DuoTone (DJ Flack and DJ C from Boston’s art and electronic music collective Toneburst) will be performing a live soundtrack to experimental silent films. By mixing and scratching snippets of sound effects and melodies to hip-hop and jungle rhythms, DuoTone put a modern spin on silent classics such as Georges Méliès’ Conquest of the North Pole. For more information, contact the HFA or Toneburst at www.toneburst.com.
July 31 (Saturday) 9 pm
Directed by Taylor Hackford
USA 1987, color,
35mm, 120 min.
Quickly forgotten, this movie is a veritable feast of rock and blues artists (Etta James, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Julian Lennon, Linda Ronstadt) performing at the time of Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday. Berry is as volatile as ever, and there is a great scene in which he lectures condescendingly to Richards on how to play guitar.
Harvard Film Archive is a division of Fine Arts Library of the Harvard College Library.
Copyright © 2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College.