Monday, December 3, 2007

Friday, December 7

Conference / Symposium
From Magna Carta to Sky Trust: The Historical Arc of the Commons
10am - 4pm
Hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies
American Geographical Library
3rd floor, east wing of UWM Golda Meir Library

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UWM Union Theater
7pm
Sansho the Bailiff
(Sansho Dayu, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 123 min., 1954)



In eleventh-century Japan , a family is dispersed: the father is exiled by a cruel governor, the mother is sold as a courtesan, and the children are sent to a remote province as slaves. Rarely did Mizoguchi achieve the balance between barbaric violence and formal beauty that he did here. Miyagawa's cinematography, with its awe-inspiring long takes and complex use of background and offscreen space, lends even the most harrowing sequences an extraordinary eloquence. “The last scene of SANSHO DAYU is one of the most affecting in the history of cinema… SANSHO DAYU is one of those films for whose sake the cinema exists” - Gilbert Adair.

9h30pm
Sisters of Gion
(Gion no shimai, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 69 min, 1936)



Often considered the best Japanese film prior to the war, Sisters of Gion presents a portrait of two sisters working as geisha – one conservative and traditional, the other cynical and rebellious. Their opposing views put them in conflict with each other and their work in a Kyoto teahouse causes various sexual humiliations. The film inevitably leaves its audiences in stunned silence. Sisters of Gion was the only Mizoguchi film that ever won the Japanese award for best film of the year. "The style is sublime; the camera glides through poetic sets as emotions delicately unwind" - Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE