On Thursday, February 25 at 4 p.m. JCSM will screen the biographical drama, “Mr. Turner” in the auditorium. Run time is 150 min.

The film will be introduced by Leo Costello, associate professor of art history, Rice University. Costello has a background in 18^th and 19^thcentury British literature and art history, as well as a published book on Turner entitled, J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History.

Free admission thanks to our business partners, but advance ticket reservation is encouraged. A suggested donation of $5 is appreciated.

About the Film

English Romantic painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), known as “the painter of light,” instilled his own personality in to his fevered landscapes – brutal, mercurial, and imperfect. His oil and watercolor scenes record the violent, fleeting moods of nature while foretelling the arrival of Impressionism. Shipwrecks, fires, and fog occupy his canvases, every stroke as unpredictable and unforgiving as Turner himself. The British public, royalty, and artists celebrated the paintings yet reviled the behavior of the solitary painter. Turner’s innovations in atmospheric effects thrust once-scorned theme of landscape painting to the status of history paintings for the first time in the Royal Academy of Art’s history.

The critically acclaimed “Mr. Turner” (2014), directed by Mike Leigh, follows the last twenty-five years of the life of the eccentric J. M. W. Turner. Turner paints through the death of his close father, confused affair with his ill housekeeper, and incognito relationship with his Chelsea landlady over the course of the film. Leigh’s film undulates between chaos and stillness, relentlessly revealing an uncensored account of the late life of Turner. The biopic explores each gritty secret, frustration, and fear of the artist, never failing to expose the uncomfortable, intimate moments of one of the most famous British painters in all of art history. The lush settings where Turner paints encapsulate the audience in nineteenth-century England. The actors of “Mr. Turner” explore the spectrum of human emotions and motivations while outfitted in period costumes and thick accents. Timothy Spall’s performance as J. M. Turner is as wrought with tension and life, placing viewers in to Turner’s own reality.

Written by Shannon Bewley, Senior, Art History.

FILM@JCSM

FILM@JCSM stands for “Fostering Interdisciplinary Learning through Movies.” The 2016 spring semester selections are programmed in conjunction with the 2016 Auburn University Department of Art and Art History Studio Faculty Exhibition, and Face to Face: Artists’ Self-Portraits from the Collection of Jackye and Curtis Finch Jr.

Each FILM@JCSM begins at 4 p.m., and will be introduced by a guest scholar. After the screening, there is café service and live jazz from 5 to 8 p.m.

FILM@JCSM stands for “Fostering Interdisciplinary Learning through Movies.” This semester’s selections are programmed in conjunction with Along the Eastern Road: Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.

You can see “Throne of Blood” on Thursday, December 3 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium. Admission is free, advance ticket reservation is encouraged. Reserve your tickets.

Written by John Gulledge, program assistant

Premiering in Japan on January 15, 1957, “Throne of Blood” is writer-director Akira Kurosawa’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In keeping with the Bard’s exploration of human nature, the film follows Taketoki Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) as he wrestles with ambition and greed, murdering his way to the top. Set against the backdrop of sixteenth-century feudal Japan, the movie harkens back to the highly stylized performances of Noh, a historical genre of theatre that originated some time in the fourteenth century. Noh performances rely heavily on body language and facial expression, and Kurosawa uses this play-form to create the eerie, strange, and at times absurd atmosphere that characterizes Macbeth.

“Throne of Blood” takes the thriller and horror elements of its source and runs with them, creating a visually striking story with an even darker mood and tone. The high-contrast black and white cinematography is echoed in the film’s characters and setting: Taketoki is the hot-headed and aggressive foil to Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), his Lady Macbeth, who is presented as distanced and cold; the quiet and claustrophobic interior of Cobweb Castle is propped against the battlefield full of blood and rage; the shift between deathly stillness and explosions of violent action; to the absolute and pervasive fog that characterizes unyielding fate. In the end, Kurosawa gives us the bloody conclusion we expect, and the final image of the usurping Taketoki is visually ravishing as he clings on not to life, as one might think, but to a promise and prophecy of glory – what Macbeth calls, “my black and deep desires.”

FILM@JCSM stands for “Fostering Interdisciplinary Learning through Movies.” This semester’s selections are programmed in conjunction with Along the Eastern Road: Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.

You can see “Lost in Translation” on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium. Admission is free, but advance ticket reservation is encouraged. Reserve your tickets.

Chris Keirstead, Department of English, Auburn University, will introduce the film and guide discussion.

Contributed by John Gulledge, program assistant

“Lost in Translation” is director Sophia Coppola’s 2003 American drama that follows two characters as they travel to Tokyo, Japan. Touching on universal themes like loneliness and isolation, Coppola’s treatment of the two main characters, Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johanson), centers on the sometimes strange and unexpected bonds that tie.

Bob is a middle aged, washed up actor past his prime who has traveled to Tokyo to shoot a commercial, while Charlotte, the unhappy, young wife of a neglectful and possibly philandering husband, finds herself displaced from America as a tag along to her husband. What is striking is the often subtle third character of the city itself that interacts with Bob and Charlotte as they attempt to negotiate the unfamiliar world to which they journey. What the film does exceedingly well is to highlight a particular experience of “tourism” into the unknown; we have strangers in a strange land completely alien to them, longing for some kind of connection that has been lost as they constantly misread situations and Japanese culture. It’s that strangeness and isolation that serves as the catalyst to the deep bond they form over their shared loneliness in a land completely foreign to them.

Several American critics have hailed “Lost in Translation” a cinematic masterpiece and a master class in film acting. “The New York Times” points out Coppola’s directorial interest in “emotional way stations” not unlike the Inns along the “Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations of Tokaido.” Other critics, however, highlight the decidedly one-sided, American point of view on which the comedy hinges, using the vibrant city and its Japanese inhabitants as a final punch line. Like with most great films, the jury is still out on its nuanced treatment of the displaced characters and their new and unfamiliar locale, and so we welcome you to join us in finding your own translation.