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Dean Otto currently serves as the Curator of Film. To learn more about Dean and the Speed Cinema, read the full press release here. Photo by Rafael Gamo.
Speed Cinema entrance update: Our South Cinema entrance has reopened for all Cinema guests! Follow the Speed Cinema signs while exiting the Museum garage to the entrance while enjoying a small part of the Art Park that is now open.
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OCEANIA: Journey to the Center
April 23
OCEANIA begins at the center of the planet on a coral atoll – predicted to become uninhabitable by 2030 due to rising sea levels and temperatures brought by climate change. We journey with a mother and her adult son as they struggle to maintain their culture, freedom and independence. In the wake of decades of colonizing encounters, we soon realize our seemingly disparate histories, experiences and fates—are all connected.
CINEMA+ with a post-screening discussion with director, producer, and co-writer Natalie Zimmerman and Justin Mog, PhD, Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability Initiatives, University of Louisville.
Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light
April 25 & 27
From her early years in the Midwest to her rise in New York’s vibrant art world, and finally to the remote deserts of New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light traces the evolution of an artist whose work blurred the line between abstraction and realism.
CINEMA+ with a post-screening conversation with director Paul Wagner and producer Ellen Casey Wagner.
Tall Tales
May 8
Fabled English record producer Mark Pritchard, luminary songwriter Thom Yorke (Radiohead), and groundbreaking visual artist Jonathan Zawada present Tall Tales—a debut collaborative visual and audio cinema experience a decade in the making.
Mogwai: If the Stars Had a Sound
May 9 & 10
Over 25 years and 10 studio albums—using brute sonic force mixed with subtlety and grace—Mogwai have defined their own musical genre and built a loyal following by staying true to their sound and true to their roots. The band’s guitar-based instrumental music flows like a current throughout the documentary: one that sooths and excites those touched by the music—including collaborators and loyal fans—emphasizing how Mogwai’s music has inspired them.
Harlan Jacobson's Talk Cinema | Ghost Trail (Les Fantômes)
May 10
Two years after being released from Syrian jail, Hamid (breakout star Adam Bessa) is making ends meet as a construction worker in the French city of Strasbourg, where, haunted by the memory of his imprisonment, the young man searches tirelessly for the man who tortured him, determined to get his revenge.
1-800-ON-HER-OWN
May 10 & 11
The fiery portrait, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN takes you on a wild cinematic road trip through Ani DiFranco’s punk-folk past to her life today as a passionate activist and groundbreaking indie rock star. Throughout the ride, she’s brutally honest, famously foul-mouthed and totally hilarious.
Dead Ringers
May 15
In Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg tells the chilling story of identical twin gynecologists—suave Elliot and sensitive Beverly, bipolar sides of one personality—who share the same practice, the same apartment, the same women. When a new patient, glamorous actress Claire Niveau, challenges their eerie bond, they descend into a whirlpool of sexual confusion, drugs, and madness.
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
May 16 & 17
Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is a wildly entertaining and fittingly unconventional documentary about convention-defying singer, songwriter and record producer Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, one of the great cult figures of 20th-century American music whose singular voice and ideas have shaped the history not merely of soul music, but of country, hip-hop and a dozen other genres.
The Great Gatsby
May 17
The Great Gatsby follows would-be writer Nick Carraway as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz, bootleg kings, and sky-rocketing stocks. Chasing his own American Dream, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby, and across the bay from his cousin, Daisy, and her philandering, blue-blooded husband, Tom Buchanan.
Withnail and I
May 17 & 18
London. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors—acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann)—drown their frustrations in booze, pills, and lighter fluid. When Withnail’s Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) offers his cottage, they escape the squalor of their flat for a week in the country. They soon realize they’ve gone on holiday by mistake when their wits—and friendship—are sorely tested by violent downpours, less than hospitable locals, and empty cupboards.
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
May 18
In 1949, Lithuanian writer and poet Jonas Mekas departed a war-ravaged Europe accompanied by his brother Adolfas. The two would ultimately settle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and shortly thereafter would come upon a Bolex camera. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania marks a high point in these explorations, tracing Jonas and Adolfas’s life as they first arrive in America, followed by a return to the Lithuanian village where they were born, and culminating with the town where the brothers spent a year in a forced labor camp.
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
May 23 & 24
Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel MAUS is a landmark in reckoning with the Holocaust and breakthrough in serious comic art — but his full achievements are more remarkable and eclectic. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC 2024, Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse provides intimate access to the man and mind who revolutionized the art form of comics.
Art for Everybody
May 24 & 25
You’ve seen his cozy cottages, idyllic gardens, and welcoming village streets on everything from canvas to commemorative plates. Both celebrated and disparaged for his kitschy signature settings, the “Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade rocketed to popularity in the ’90s by marketing himself to American evangelicals and pitting himself against the elite art establishment. Through the voices of skeptical critics, adoring fans, and Thomas Kinkade’s closest friends and family, Art for Everybody digs deep into Kinkade’s life and work to elucidate the real man behind the persona.
Princess Tam Tam
May 25
In the 1930s, black performers were forbidden to steal the spotlight from white actors on the American screen. To circumvent this unwritten law, singer/dancer/comedian Josephine Baker accepted the invitation to work in France. The resulting film—Princess Tam Tam—reveals what segregationist producers in the U.S. were afraid of: a confident, sexy, scene-stealing African American woman who spewed exuberance, expressiveness and raw charisma like an uncorked bottle of champagne.
Magic Farm
May 30 & 31
When a misguided American documentary crew in search of their next viral segment ends up in the wrong town in rural Argentina, chaos ensues. As they collaborate with locals to fake a new music trend, unexpected relationships form, and an unfolding health crisis becomes apparent.
Grand Tour
May 31 & June 1
From Miguel Gomes, the award-winning director of Tabu and Arabian Nights, comes a globe-trotting tale of unrequited love. Earning Gomes the Best Director prize at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Grand Tour blends melodrama and screwball comedy in this cat-and-mouse chase between lovers.
Michelangelo: Love and Death
May 31 & June 1
The spectacular sculptures and paintings of Michelangelo seem so familiar to us, but what do we really know about this Renaissance giant? Spanning his 88 years, Michelangelo: Love and Death take a cinematic journey through the print and drawing rooms of Europe through the great chapels and museums of Florence, Rome, and the Vatican to seek out a deeper understanding of this legendary figure’s tempestuous life, his relationship with his contemporaries, and his incredible legacy.
The Annihilation of Fish
June 6 & 7
In The Annihilation of Fish, Lynn Redgrave plays Poinsettia, a former housewife with an imagined lover in the form of 19th-century composer Giacomo Puccini. She moves into a Los Angeles boarding house with an energetic landlady (Margot Kidder) where she meets a Jamaican widower, Fish (James Earl Jones), who has recently been released from a mental institution despite his continued battles against unseen demons.
Killer of Sheep
June 7 & 8
Charles Burnett’s cinematic masterpiece Killer of Sheep, magnificently restored in 4K with sparkling picture and sound, is one of the crown jewels of the Black indie filmmaking movement known as the L.A. Rebellion. The film evokes the everyday trials, fragile pleasures, and tenacious humor of blue-collar African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1970s.
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
June 8
The film explores Giovanni’s Afrofuturist-feminist philosophical outlook as well as her poignant relationship with her family, her political audacity, and her poetic eloquence, all knit together with a constant eye and ear for its subject’s own aesthetic verve.
CINEMA+ With a post-screening discussion led by Dr. David Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Louisville.
Pavements
June 13 & 14
A prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid, the film intimately shows the band preparing for their sold-out 2022 reunion tour while simultaneously tracking the preparations for a musical based on their songs, a museum devoted to their history and a big-budget Hollywood biopic inspired by their saga as the most important band of a generation.
We Are Fugazi from Washington, D.C.
June 14 & 15
Created to commemorate the 20 years that have passed since DC-based post-hardcore band Fugazi’s last live appearance (November 4, 2002, at The Forum in London), We Are Fugazi from Washington, D.C. is a 96-minute movie comprising crowd sourced, fan recorded live shows and rare archive footage of Fugazi curated by Joe Gross, Joseph Pattisall and Jeff Krulik.