JSU to Host First Film Conference, "Storytelling," on April 4

04/01/2014


Jacksonville State University and The Alabama Film Symposium are pleased to present JSU's first film conference, "Storytelling," on Friday, April 4 from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. at the Anders Round House on the JSU campus.

Speakers for the event are:

  • Bernadette Guthrie, Cornell University
  • Scott Angus, Maryville University
  • Matthew Jarvis, Jacksonville State University


Agenda

11 a.m.        Screen Winter Light, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1962

12:30 p.m.   Paper by Bernadette Guthrie and questions

1 p.m.          Lunch

2 p.m.          Screen White Dog, dir. Samuel Fuller, 1982

3:30 p.m.     Paper by Scott Angus and questions

4 p.m.          Screen The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1966 

6 p.m.          Paper by Matthew Jarvis and questions 

6:30 p.m.     Panel discussion and wrap-up


Winter Light 
With Winter Light, master craftsman Ingmar Bergman explores the search for redemption in a meaningless existence. In this stark depiction of spiritual crisis, small-town pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation. When he is asked to assist with a troubled parishioner’s (Max von Sydow) debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own uncertainty. Beautifully photographed by Sven Nykvist, Winter Light is an unsettling look at the human craving for personal validation in a world seemingly abandoned by God.

White Dog 
Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American racism was misunderstood and withheld from release when it was made in the early eighties; today, the notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German shepherd, only to discover through a series of horrifying incidents that the dog has been trained to attack black people, and Paul Winfield plays the animal trainer who tries to cure him. A snarling, uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait of the evil done by that most corruptible of animals: the human being.

The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Filmmaking legend Roberto Rossellini brings his passion for realism and unerring eye for the everyday to this portrait of the early years of the reign of France’s “Sun King,” and in the process reinvents the costume drama. The death of chief minister Cardinal Mazarin, the construction of the palace at Versailles, the extravagant meals of the royal court: all are recounted with the same meticulous quotidian detail that Rossellini brought to his contemporary portraits of postwar Italy. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV dares to place a larger-than-life figure at the level of mere mortal.