Unapologetically Spoken examines how performance art allows individuals to explore and express the many facets of their identity. A Trew Story Production, this student made documentary follows 3 poets as they prepare for a performance art show and highlights what it takes to give a performance and the affects those performances have on the audience.
Director: Malik Bendjelloul
Writer(s): Malik Bendjelloul
Awards: Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
The Athena Cinema and Nelsonville Music Festival present a one night only screening of the Academy Award winning film: Searching for Sugar Man.
Searching for Sugar Man tells the incredible true story of Rodriguez, the greatest ’70s rock icon who never was. Discovered in a Detroit bar in the late ’60s by two celebrated producers struck by his soulful melodies and prophetic lyrics, they recorded an album which they believed would secure his reputation as the greatest recording artist of his generation. In fact, the album bombed and the singer disappeared into obscurity amid rumors of a gruesome on-stage suicide. But a bootleg recording found its way into apartheid South Africa and, over the next two decades, he became a phenomenon. The film follows the story of two South African fans who set out to find out what really happened to their hero. Their investigation leads them to a story more extraordinary than any of the existing myths about the artist known as Rodriguez.
The legendary Rodriguez will play Nelsonville Music Festival this year on Friday, June 2nd! It seemed only fitting to screen the acclaimed documentary that led to the discovery of his amazing music by a whole new generation. This event is FREE! We will also have discounted tickets available for NMF and much more!
86 MIN
The Athena Cinema is proud to be a sponsor of the 2017 annual, Ratha Con. Ratha Con is Athens, Ohio’s only pop culture convention and it encourages community members to geek out and connect with other fans like them. In conjunction with ARTS/West the Athena will be showing two special film screenings by award winning director Russell Emanuel.
Occupants
Running Time: 81 minutes
Director: Russell Emanuel
Writer: Julia Camara
Cast: Robert Picardo, Briana White, Michael Pugliese
Occupants is a film about Annie, an award-winning documentarian and her husband Neil. Annie and Neil embark on a “30 Days of Clean Living” documentary, setting up cameras all over their house to document their new eating habits. By doing so, half of their cameras capture a parallel version of themselves – a version that isn’t what they expected, with horrific results.
“Occupants” is a tense and very eerie thriller that Emanuel and writer Julia Camara crafts in to an entertaining and absolutely compelling film — Felix Vasquez, Cinema Crazed
The Assassin’s Apprentice
Running Time: 12 minutes
Director: Russell Emanuel
Writer: Paul Hickman
Cast: Marina Sirtis, Robert Picardo, Tarah Paige
A master assassin (Robert Picardo) sends his rebellious apprentice (Tarah Paige) on her first solo hit – but things don’t go according to plan.
A talkback with director Russell Emanuel will follow the screenings.
Originally from San Francisco, Russ Emanuel grew up in both Japan and the United States, garnering an international viewpoint of the world throughout his childhood. After graduating from the University of Southern California to study Cinema-Television, International Relations and Japanese (and gaining more production experience at the UCLA Extension Program), he founded Russem Productions in 2002, in order to promote his short films including Her Knight (2003), the award-winning Girl With Gun (2005), and the documentary Restoration of Paradise (2014).
Sponsors for this event:
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Director: Otto Bell
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Aisholpan
The Eagle Huntress follows Aisholpan, a 13-year-old girl, as she trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter, and rises to the pinnacle of a tradition that has been handed down from father to son for centuries. Set against the breath-taking expanse of the Mongolian steppe, The Eagle Huntress features some of the most awe-inspiring cinematography ever captured in a documentary, giving this intimate tale of a young girl’s quest the dramatic force of an epic narrative film. After months of training her eagle with her father, Aisholpan is ready to test her abilities. She enters a renowned competition, the Golden Eagle Festival, and faces off against 70 of the greatest Kazakh eagle hunters in Mongolia. The most arduous challenge is yet to come, as the rite-of-passage for every young eagle hunter is to take part in a hunt. Aisholpan must ride with her father deep into the frigid mountains and endure 40 below zero temperatures and perilous landscapes to prove she is a true eagle huntress.
The Eagle Huntress is executive produced and narrated by Star Wars‘ Daisy Ridley.
“An enchanting tale of girl power.” — Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
87 MIN
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Director: Jeff Nichols
Writer(s): Jeff Nichols
Cast: Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton, Will Dalton
Awards: GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATIONS - Best Actor (Drama), Best Actress (Drama)
From acclaimed writer/director Jeff Nichols, Loving celebrates the real-life courage and commitment of an interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving (portrayed by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), who married and then spent the next nine years fighting for the right to live as a family in their hometown. Their civil rights case, Loving v. Virginia, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1967 reaffirmed the very foundation of the right to marry – and their love story has become an inspiration to couples ever since.
“The real artistry of Loving… is in the quiet grace Negga and Edgerton bring to one of recent history’s most important romances.” -USA Today
“It doesn’t trumpet its importance obnoxiously, and it’s packed with performances of quiet power, with Negga as the breakout.” -BuzzFeed News
123 MIN
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Director: Theodore Melfi
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe
Science on Screen℠ is a project of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The Coolidge Corner Theater. The Science on Screen program pairs with a short talk with a scientist or technology expert. The free Science on Screen events are fun and engaging and offer dynamic speakers an unexpected jumping point to teach their field of expertise in a way that is accessible to a diverse audience.
Dr. Sarah Wyatt is a professor in Environmental and Plant Biology at Ohio University and a long time space enthusiast. Her research focuses on plant responses to gravity, and in 2015, she was fortunate enough to fly one of her experiments aboard the International Space Station.
Dr. Sarah Wyatt will speak at the Science on Screen event with “Hidden Figures”
127 MIN
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Director: Mike Judge
Writer(s): Mike Judge
Cast: Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews
Private Joe Bowers (Wilson), the definition of “average American”, is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program, set 545 years in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.
“There’s a good chance that Judge’s smartly lowbrow Idiocracy will be mistaken for what it’s satirizing, but good satire always runs the risk — of being misunderestimated.”-The A.V. Club, Nathan Rabin
84 MIN
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Director: Rajko Grlić
Writer(s): Ante Tomić, Rajko Grlić
Cast: Nebojša Glogovac, Dejan Aćimović, Ksenija Marinković
Awards: Winner of The Montreal World Film Festival’s Grand Prize of the Americas
Language: Croatian
Back by popular demand, please join us for a special three-day run of Rajko Grlić’s THE CONSTITUTION. Following a sold out premiere in November, the Athena has brought back the film for a limited engagement. The film could not be more timely.
Four very different people live in the same building but avoid each other because of differences in how they live their lives, what they believe in, and where they come from. They would probably never exchange a word, but misfortune pushes them towards each other. Their lives entangle in ways that profoundly challenge deep-held beliefs and prejudices surrounding material status, sexual orientation, nationality and religion.
Slowly, and even painfully, they begin to open up to each other and recognize the essential humanity each of them possesses.
Director Rajko Grlić, Ohio eminent scholar in film, was awarded The Montreal World Film Festival’s prestigious Grand Prize of the Americas, the top award of the festival, for his feature film The Constitution (Ustav Republike Hrvatske) which he directed and co-wrote with Ante Tomić.
“This immensely bold and brutally honest top-notch melodrama produced on a modest scale, which contains Grlic’s trademarks as dramatic conflict explored with intense emotional investment, seasoned with a refined sense of humor, skillfully deals with once again increasing intolerance in Croatia, yet its intelligent, deeply profound and insightful multilayered texture goes far beyond local, addressing an urgent global problem. Grlic’s polished and subtle directing evokes the best pieces of Douglas Sirk or Rainer Werner Fassbinder.” – FilmFestival.com
93 MIN
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Director: Jacques Tati France
Language: French
Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
“Jacques Tati’s 1967 masterpiece still holds up as a feast of subtle sight gags, playful noise and, above all, visual wonders.” – Dave Calhoun, Time Out
“Tati’s despair is modulated by a sense of wonder.” – Richard Brody, New Yorker
124 MIN
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Director: Matt Wechsler
America is facing a food crisis driven by profitability and a lack of consumer education. While the window to transforming our heartland continues to shrink, passionate individuals have emerged who provide hope that the health of our nation might still remain within our grasp. Sustainable is a documentary film that weaves together expert analysis of America’s food system with a powerful narrative of one extraordinary farmer who is determined to create a sustainable future for his community. In a region dominated by commodity crops, Marty Travis has managed to maintain a farming model that is both economically viable and environmentally safe. Through his example and various expert interviews, the film will explore options for reversing the issues facing America’s heartland.
96 MIN
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