Holiday Film Series: THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Watch Trailer Director: Henry Selick , Tim Burton
Writer(s): Tim Burton , Caroline Thompson , Michael McDowell
Cast: Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara

Starting November 26th and running through December 17th, Ohio University’s Athena Cinema will be showing afternoon screenings of popular holiday family films every Saturday! The price of admission will be a minimum donation of one canned or non perishable food good per ticket. The food items will be donated to Athens city food pantries and other hunger relief programs.

Despite having recently presided over a very successful Halloween, Jack Skellington, aka the Pumpkin King, is bored with his job and feels that life in Halloweenland lacks meaning. Then he stumbles upon Christmastown and promptly decides to make the Yuletide his own.

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Running Time: 76 minutes76 MIN
PG Rated

Burton, the man who gave us Batman, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, is incapable of a conventional idea. His take on the holiday fairy tale is delightfully off the wall.

Desmond Ryan
Philadelphia Inquirer
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Holiday Film Series: SCROOGED

Watch Trailer Director: Richard Donner
Writer(s): Mitch Glazer, Michael O'Donoghue
Cast: Bill Murray, Karen Allen, John Forsythe

Apart from the rest of the afternoon family films, this is a special “grown-up” screening of Bill Murray’s Scrooged on the night of December 10th. The price of admission will be a minimum donation of one canned or non perishable food good per ticket. The food items will be donated to Athens city food pantries and other hunger relief programs.

In this modern take on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life, Claire Phillips (Karen Allen). But after firing a staff member, Eliot Loudermilk (Bobcat Goldthwait), on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

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Running Time: 101 minutes101 MIN
PG-13 Rated

Despite the juicy, on-the-edge craziness, Murray is able to layer his outrageous histrionics with an inner sensibility, making his ultimate transformation not only believable but Christmas-cheer uplifting.

Duane Byrge
Hollywood Reporter
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SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU: Last Day Thursday, September 15th

Watch Trailer Director: Richard Tanne
Writer(s): Richard Tanne
Cast: Tika Sumpter, Parker Sawyers, Vanessa Bell Calloway

*CaptiView® Closed Caption & Audio Description devices are available for this film. All showings on Mondays will feature Open Captions.*

One afternoon during the summer of 1989, two young lawyers named Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama go on their first date in the South Side of Chicago.

“Southside with You is a sweet, intelligent, well-crafted, wonderfully romantic, no-frills re-imagination of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson, when both were young stars on the rise but neither possibly could have imagined they’d one day take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for eight years.”- Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

“Tanne’s impressive accomplishment rests in not having been intimidated by his protagonists’ stature, thereby opening the door for him to create a living and breathing picture of two people spending a few hours together, offering select details about their lives and personalities, probing, questioning, pushing things a bit on his side and her pushing back on the other.” -Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

“Richard Tanne’s writing-directing debut deepens into a pointed, flowing conversation about the many challenges (and varieties) of African-American identity, the need for both idealism and compromise, and the importance of making peace with past disappointments in order to effect meaningful change in the future.”- Justin Chang, Variety

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Running Time: 84 mins. 84 MIN
PG-13 Rated

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Holiday Film Series: MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET

Watch Trailer Director: George Seaton
Writer(s): George Seaton, Valentine Davies
Cast: Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara, John Payne
Awards: WINNER - Academy Awards: Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Original Story

Starting November 26th and running through December 17th, Ohio University’s Athena Cinema will be showing afternoon screenings of popular holiday family films every Saturday! The price of admission will be a minimum donation of one canned or non perishable food good per ticket. The food items will be donated to Athens city food pantries and other hunger relief programs.

In this 1947 classic, a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus is institutionalized as insane, when a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing.

 

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Running Time: 96 minutes96 MIN

It is light, it is charming, it is delightfully funny and completely captivating. It is all that, and something more.

Kate Cameron
New York Daily News
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MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Watch Trailer Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Writer(s): Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler

In Manchester by the Sea, the latest film from award-winning writer and director Kenneth Lonergan, the life of a solitary Boston janitor is transformed when he returns to his hometown to take care of his teenage nephew. The story of the Chandlers, a working-class family living in a Massachusetts fishing village for generations, Manchester by the Sea is a deeply poignant, unexpectedly funny exploration of the power of familial love, community, sacrifice and hope. After the death of his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is shocked to learn that Joe has made him sole guardian of his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Taking leave of his job, Lee reluctantly returns to Manchester-by-the-Sea to care for Patrick, a spirited 16-year-old, and is forced to deal with a past that separated him from his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and the community where he was born and raised. Bonded by the man who held their family together, Lee and Patrick struggle to adjust to a world without him. In his first film since 2011’s acclaimed Margaret, Lonergan once again proves himself a powerful and visionary storyteller as he seamlessly weaves past and present together, crafting a tension-filled tale that deftly eschews sentimentality in favor of penetrating emotional insight and deeply affecting human relationships.

“A beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy anew.” – Justin Chang, Variety

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Running Time: 137 minutes137 MIN
R Rated

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AIFVF Artist in Residence: IKHBAYAR URCHUUD

Watch Trailer Director: Ikhbayar Urchuud

The Athens Center for Film + Video presents “The Will to Art,” an evening of films by Artist in Residence Ikhbayar Urchuud. Mongolian filmmaker Ikhbayar Urchuud addresses issues of contemporary Mongolian society through his cinematic vision. His recent feature documentary, “Uran Khas” (The Will to Art), is an observation of the lives and resurgent shamanist interests of featured contemporary Mongolian artists. Alongside this feature film, Urchuud will present two short films, including the world premiere of his newest work completed during his stay in Athens.

Urchuud came to the Athens International Film + Video Festival as part of the highly competitive CEC ArtsLink program, which promotes international communication and understanding through collaborative, innovative arts projects for mutual benefit.

A squarely 21st century Mongolian, Urchuud is a college educated genetic engineer, who worked in television and commercial video production and claims iconic American experimental filmmakers Stan Brahkage, Bruce Connor and Hollis Frampton as artistic influences. His increased connection to the international film community has played its part in his development, as much as his childhood watching films of all kinds with his father.

This ONE NIGHT ONLY, free event is sponsored by CEC Artslink and the Athens International Film + Video Festival.

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Déjà View: THE BIG LEBOWSKI

Watch Trailer Director: The Coen Brothers
Writer(s): The Coen Brothers
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

This fall, the Athena presents Déjà View: Cult Classics Film Series. Shock value may have put these films on the map but their lasting relevance is a testament to a deeper resonance. There is more to these films than sex, violence and potty humor. These films are about, by and for the outsiders. Each in its own way, these films celebrate the freak and delight in the different. And they do so with pride, triumph and joy, and a fair amount of filth and fun.

The eighth and final film in the series is The Big Lebowski. When the most righteous dude in Los Angeles is mistaken for a millionaire whose wife owes money to some very dangerous men, his carefree lifestyle is uprooted. Nihilists and a soiled rug, white Russians and bowling balls, this quotable classic is noted for being more enjoyable with every subsequent viewing.

“With their inspired, absurdist taste for weird, peculiar Americana-but a sort of neo-Americana that is entirely invented-the Coens have defined and mastered their own bizarre subgenre.”- Desson Thompson, Washington Post

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Running Time: 117 min117 MIN
R Rated
This Film is Wheelchair Accessible

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THE TRIALS OF SPRING

Watch Trailer Director: Gini Reticker
Awards: Winner of Best Socially Responsible Content at New Media Film Festival

When a young Egyptian woman travels from her village to Cairo to add her voice to the tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding an end to 60 years of military rule, she is arrested, beaten, and tortured by security forces and later punished and imprisoned by her family for daring to speak out. Unbreakable, she sets out in a search for freedom and social justice in a country in the grips of a power struggle, where there is little tolerance for the likes of her. Buoyed by the other activists she meets along the way, Hend Nafea’s story mirrors the trajectory of the Arab Spring—from the ecstasy of newfound courage to the agony of shattered dreams.In the end, despite crushing setbacks, it is resilience that sustains the hope for reform even in the darkest hours of repression.

“Amid the backdrop of countless stories about the oppression of women in the Middle East and North Africa, however, Nafea insists her story is about the strength of Egyptian women.”— Kia Makarechi, Vanity Fair

This ONE NIGHT event is being shown as part of International Education Week and the Kennedy Lecture Series and is sponsored by the Women’s Center, the Multicultural Center, and the Center for International Studies, International Student Union, the LGBT Center, Political Science Majors’ Association, Pi Sigma Alpha, the American Association of University Women – Student Affiliate Group, Campus Involvement Center, SAC, and BSCPB.

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Running Time: 90 minutes90 MIN

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DÉJÀ VIEW: Fall Cult Classics Series

Thursday nights at 7PM this fall!

PINK FLAMINGOS | Sept. 22

Notorious Baltimore criminal and underground figure Divine goes up against a sleazy married couple who make a passionate attempt to humiliate her and seize her tabloid-given title as “The Filthiest Person Alive”.

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE | Sept. 29

An unattractive seventh grader struggles to cope with inattentive parents, snobbish classmates, a smart older brother, an attractive younger sister, and her own insecurities in suburban New Jersey.

PULP FICTION | Oct. 6

The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

DONNIE DARKO | Oct. 13

A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS | Oct. 20

A gentle man, with scissors for hands, is brought into a new community after living in isolation.

ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW | Oct. 27

A newly engaged couple have a breakdown in an isolated area and must pay a call to the bizarre residence of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

WAYNE’S WORLD | Nov. 3

Two slacker friends try to promote their public-access cable show.

 

THE BIG LEBOWSKI | Nov. 10

“The Dude” Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

 

 

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ANOTHER KIND OF GIRL COLLECTIVE with Laura Doggett

Watch Trailer Director: Marah Al Hassan, Khaldiya Jibawi, Raghad Al Khatib, Walaa Al Alawi, Bushra Al Masri, Rafif Al Fadel, Muna Al Hariri

Only two years into the war, over 3,500 journalists had traveled through the Camp Za’atari to tell stories of the Syrian people who were forced out of their country to live in exile in Jordan. The stories told were somewhat black and white and largely tragic. In response to the mainstream media reporting of the refugee experience, two workshops were organized to give Syrian girls living as refugees in Jordan’s camps and urban areas cameras and the chance to tell their own stories.

The workshops, one in Jordan’s Za’atari Refugee Camp and the other in the city of Irbid in northern Jordan, engaged Syrian girls in artistic and technical training in photo and video to reflect on and tell their own stories in first person. With cameras, microphones and pens in hand, the girls set out to document their everyday lives – how it looks, feels and sounds from the ground, at the heart of their world.

For these girls, storytelling offers the possibility not just to change the trajectories of their own personal stories but to offer this possibility of change to other girls, and to give alternative ways of seeing to people in their communities and to the world beyond.

The workshops were developed and facilitated by documentary filmmaker/educator Laura Doggett with documentary animator/educator Tasneem Toghoj. Laura Doggett will be present during the screening and will participate in a talkback with the audience following the film.

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