Arts First

May 4, 2002

Now in its tenth year, Harvard’s annual Arts First festival celebrates the work of students and faculty in the university-wide arts community. The Harvard Film Archive is again pleased to present works by Harvard students and alumni who are actively engaged in the art of film.

May 4 (Saturday) 2 pm - Director Daniel Sussner in Person

The Hamlet Confessions

Directed by Daniel Sussner
US 2002, video, color, 30 min.
With Jeremy Funke, Uchenna Aguoji

Collapsing the space between fiction and documentary, this vibrant collage of tone poems and scholarly interviews weaves together an original, yet accessible, cinematic interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic tale of revenge and despair. A penetrating and dreamlike meditation on death and identity in both Shakespeare’s time and our own, The Hamlet Confessions, a work-in-progress by current Harvard undergraduate Daniel Sussner, supplements its vision with commentary by cast, crew, and professors, including Stanley Cavell, Stephen Greenblatt, and Marjorie Garber.

May 4 (Saturday) 7 pm - Director Jesse Peretz in Person

The Chateau

Directed by Jesse Peretz
US 2001, 35mm, color, 93 min.
With Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Didier Flamand
English and French with English subtitles

Inspired by writer-director (and Harvard alumni) Jesse Peretz’s experiences as an American abroad, The Chateau is a comedy about two brothers, Graham and Rex, who travel to the south of France after learning they’ve inherited a small castle from a long-lost relative, the Count d’Granville. The brothers attempt to sell their inheritance but run into trouble with the staff, who believe they have rightfully inherited the property. Improvised from an extensive but unscripted story outline by Peretz, The Chateau was shot on digital video in thirteen days and made according to the guidelines of the Danish Dogma 95 group. The resulting feature is a fresh, inventive, and often quite amusing look at a clash of cultures, technologies, and generations.