Now in its ninth year, Harvard’s annual Arts First festival celebrates students and faculty in the university-wide arts community. The Harvard Film Archive is again pleased to present works by Harvard alumni who are actively engaged in the art of film. This year we add a special selection of animated shorts intended to engage the festival’s younger visitors.
May 5 (Saturday) 4 pm
Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present a series of award-winning animated shorts for the Arts First community. From Walt Disney’s early Steamboat Willie (1928) to last year’s puppet-and-clay animated film Snails, this program promises to delight both younger and older audiences with a lively survey of the animated film, organized by Harvard faculty member and Oscar-nominated animator Wendy
Tilby.
The Cat Came Back
Cordell Barker, Canada 1988
Otto
Jonas Odell and Stig Bergqvist, Sweden 1997
The Hedgehog in the Mist
Yuri Norstein, USSR 1975
The Magic of Anansi
Jamie Roy Mason, Canada 2001
Steamboat Willie
Disney, US 1928
The Street
Caroline Leaf, Canada 1976
My Favourite Things That I Love
Janet Perlman, US 1994
Housemoving
Derek Lamb, US 1969
Snails
Piotr Sapegin, Norway 1999
At the Ends of the Earth
Konstantin Bronzit, France 1999
May 6 (Sunday) 4 pm
Director Laura Colella in Person
US 1998, 16mm, color, 76 min.
With Kathleen Monteleone, Donna
Sorbello, Rose Giuliano
It’s April 15th. Paula and Irene, like most Americans, are off to the post office to mail their taxes to the U. S. government. Unlike most Americans, however, they are easily diverted from their task by the the vicissitudes of life and end up spending the afternoon on a canoe ride through the canals of downtown Providence. As they attempt to make their way back to the post offce, they encounter a colorful array of odd characters and street performers. This languid, well-paced film is really a “road movie” on foot. Harvard graduate Laura Colella’s first feature isn’t about action—nothing much happens to Paula and Irene during the film—but we do discover a great deal about the unconventional lives and opinions of two forty-something women and the city they inhabit.
May 6 (Sunday) 7 pm
Director Kate Davis in Person
US 2001, digital video, color, 90 min.
With Robert Eads, Lola Cola
Harvard alum Kate Davis finds a truly fascinating subject in Robert Eads, a transsexual, self-proclaimed hillbilly living in a trailer in the back hills of Georgia. Dying of ovarian cancer after being rejected by two dozen doctors who fear the harm a transsexual patient might bring to business, Robert begins a relationship with fellow transsexual Lola Cola and struggles to make it to another “Southern Comfort,” one of the nation’s largest annual gatherings of transgendered people. Treating its subject in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way and avoiding sensationalism, Southern Comfort stands out as one of the best films to broach the often uncomfortable subject of transsexuality.
Harvard Film Archive is a division of Fine Arts Library of the Harvard College Library.
Copyright © 2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College.