Film club at Clark starts 9/25

Here I'm just going to copy a press release I wrote for the start of my film club at the Clark next week. As a point of information, I reconsidered showing Rossellini's Open City when I discovered that the Criterion Collection will issue it in November, in a boxed dvd set with Paisan and Germany Year Zero, so there was no point in showing it in its unrestored condition. Criterion did Flowers of Saint Francis several years ago, so I substituted that in my series, in a demonstration of the nimbleness and open-endedness I intend for the film club. So here's the news:

Independent film scholar Steve Satullo will initiate the Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark on Friday, September 25, at 4:00 pm in the Clark auditorium. Offered without charge and conceived on the model of book clubs that have become popular over the years, the Film Club will meet on alternate Fridays, with Satullo offering an extended introduction and moderating a discussion after screening the film.

The opening series will explore the theme of “Triumphs and Tragedies of Italian Neorealism” and begin on the 25th with a personal favorite of Satullo’s, intended to serve as a touchstone for those who might be interested in what he will be showing and talking about. The first film is Ermanno Olmi’s Il Posto (1961), about a young man leaving his village for Milan and “The Job” of the title, definitely from the lighter side of Neorealism.

On October 9 the club will return to the fathers of Neorealism with Roberto Rossellini’s The Flowers of Saint Francis (1950), and continue on October 23 with Vittoria De Sica’s Umberto D. (1955). Subsequent screenings will be determined by the film club collectively, with a Luchino Visconti film to be picked for November 6 and an open choice on November 20, after which the club will break for the holidays.

Satullo, formerly proprietor of Either/Or Bookstore and Video Archive on North Street in in Pittsfield, has been programming films at the Clark for a dozen years, and for the past five has been writing film commentary on his personal website, Cinema Salon, which will become interactive with the film club.

Satullo thanks the Clark for providing a venue for taking Cinema Salon live, to offer serious engagement with film art and audience, an approach he has been working toward for decades, since he was student and friend of Charles Thomas Samuels, distinguished film scholar at Williams College in the early 70s. The opening film choice is a bit of an homage to Professor Samuels, since Ermanno Olmi was the unexpected selection in his eye-opening collection of interviews, Encountering Directors.

In hosting the film club, Satullo hopes to cultivate a collective approach, with members stepping forward to suggest films to watch and discuss, and to lead future sessions. Old-fashioned cinephilia is the only prerequisite. If you approach films as art more than entertainment, and enjoy sharing observations and opinions with other engaged viewers, then Cinema Salon might be just the club for you.

For more information, contact: Steve Satullo; (413) 458-0415; ssatullo@clarkart.edu.