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The joys and perils of building a superb film archive

When Bette Davis called in sick during her time as a contract player with Warner Bros., the studio was known to send their own physician to her house to make sure she wasn’t malingering. Haden Guest...

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Film Archive screening to fete works of Land

The Harvard Film Archive will host “Reverence: The Films of Owen Land” (formerly known as George Landow) — a touring exhibition celebrating the work of one of the most original and celebrated American...

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Redford and company visit HFA

Legendary film star and patron of the arts Robert Redford came to the Harvard Film Archive (HFA) last week (Oct. 11) for a sneak preview of “Lions for Lambs,” which Redford directed and which stars...

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Pauletta Washington honored

There was no debating the glamour of the Harvard Foundation’s black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “The Great Debaters,” starring and directed by Denzel Washington, at the Harvard Film Archive at the...

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Harvard Film Archive acquires Just Film Stills

As a film publicist based in Munich, Lothar Just for decades had a hand in promoting a vast majority of films exhibited in Germany. Behind the scenes, he was equally dedicated to the art of cinema....

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Cowboy’s tale

Although the cast is mainly a herd of sheep, a recent film delivers a profound portrait of struggling humanity — and a last glimpse of the American frontier. The documentary “Sweetgrass,” produced by...

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Looking back at Anger

For three days (Oct. 8-10), Harvard had a brush with Anger — as in Kenneth Anger, the iconic underground filmmaker who made his first visit to the University in a decade. The occasion was a screening...

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Cold War fever

On Christmas Day 1991, the hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union that had flown for 70 years was lowered at the Kremlin for the last time. And after 45 years of proxy wars, political rancor, and...

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Film Forum to host Gardner retrospective

The Film Forum in New York City will host a one-week retrospective of documentarian and ethnographer Robert Gardner’s influential films from Nov. 11 to Nov. 17. As a founder of the Harvard Film...

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Filmmaker who bore witness to Holocaust

Claude Lanzmann created “Shoah” (1985), that iconic act of cinematic witnessing that decades ago revised the way people view the Holocaust. Lanzmann, the film’s chain-smoking, tireless interviewer, is...

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Visions of doom

In the fall of 1833, an English nobleman and novelist by the name of Edward Bulwer-Lytton passed through Milan — part of a journey to both regain his health and escape a hectoring wife. (Yes, that...

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The art of saving art

In the movies, a rescue mission involves men in body armor rappelling out of a helicopter, carrying machine guns. At Harvard’s Weissman Preservation Center, the rescuers are men and women in white...

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Nothing but a breakthrough

In the summer of 1963, two Harvard graduates teamed up to shoot a landmark independent feature film about the Jim Crow South. “Nothing But a Man,” released in 1964, was among the first American movies...

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Every stitch of Hitch

What will provide you with vertigo, frenzy, suspicion, and a touch of blackmail — in 39 steps? The answer is rich and strange: “The Complete Alfred Hitchcock,” a summer series at the Harvard Film...

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Roles of a lifetime

In a movie career spanning six decades and 80-plus films, Burt Lancaster played Wyatt Earp, Moses, Jim Thorpe, a pirate, a bookie, a billionaire, a gangster, a rogue general, a Nazi, a French...

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Life of Lee

Acclaimed filmmaker Ang Lee came to Harvard Friday and told a rapt crowd that the visit would have pleased his dad. “I think my father would be very happy,” Lee said during an afternoon of discussions...

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An ancient tribe, and change

October marks the 50th anniversary of “Dead Birds,” the groundbreaking documentary of a Stone Age tribe that survived into the 20th century. Its creator was Robert Gardner ’47, the longtime director...

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Oh, the horror!

Boo! These days you can’t turn on the television without a zombie, a witch, or a vampire flashing or — in the case of the zombies — moving at a steady, 18-minute-mile pace across the screen. Horror...

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Big skies, dusty trails

There are many reasons to sink into a theater seat and sample “Fortunes of the Western,” a nontraditional series of movies from the fallen genre, now playing at the Harvard Film Archive (HFA). For...

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Filmmaker Robert Gardner, 88

Robert Gardner ’48, A.M. ’58, the noted anthropological filmmaker who founded the Peabody Museum’s Film Study Center, died of cardiac arrest at the age of 88. For several years, Gardner taught...

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Tracking Fritz Lang

For many, the name Fritz Lang is synonymous with the image of a futuristic female robot, the haunting poster child for his 1927 science fiction classic “Metropolis.” But the Austrian-born director was...

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Making ‘The Friedkin Connection’ at Harvard

Movie marathons are no longer the exclusive domain of Saturday matinees. In recent decades, scholars have recognized the value of films as texts across many disciplines. A recent gift to the Harvard...

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Ukraine comes into focus on film

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa focused the unflinching eye of the camera on a historic revolution in Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) last year, and in doing so created a visual...

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Lansbury returns to Harvard

In February of 1968, film actress and theater icon Angela Lansbury made her first visit to Harvard. “I’m so charmed,” she said, accepting the Hasty Pudding’s Woman of the Year award, “I’m absolutely...

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Angela Lansbury’s long run

Screen, stage, and television actress Angela Lansbury visited the Harvard Film Archive (HFA) this month for a screening of “All Fall Down,” a vibrantly dark and erotically charged family thriller...

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Vietnam, the ongoing memory

The United States will soon mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. A few images from the war’s last day — April 30, 1975 — remain embedded in American culture. They are largely...

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Flaherty retrospective to include Irish gem

Inuit hunter Nanook was dogsledding across a frozen expanse of northern Canada when he paused at a snow mound. To the viewer of the famed silent “Nanook of the North” (1922), the mound seemed like all...

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Dimensions of war, including peace

It was almost a decade ago that Harvard literary scholar Homi K. Bhabha took over as director of what is now the Mahindra Humanities Center. One vision he had was of a University-wide seminar to...

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In 10,000 years, we’ll know how it ends

On a recent afternoon at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Peter Galison did some quick math to make a monumental point. “Ten thousand years ago,” the Pellegrino University Professor...

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Pam Grier’s presence

Pam Grier burst onto the scene as a star of “blaxploitation” movies in the early 1970s. While drawing criticism for promoting racial stereotypes, the films were praised by some viewers as empowering...

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Bogie, Bergman, and the Brattle

In November 1942, a timeless story of love, loss, and redemption first appeared on the silver screen. Along with the hearts of audiences, “Casablanca” won Academy Awards for best picture, best...

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Director of ‘A Quiet Passion’ talks Emily Dickinson ahead of Houghton screening

Terence Davies comes to the Harvard Film Archive Monday for a screening of “A Quiet Passion,” his new biopic on Emily Dickinson. The 71-year-old British screenwriter and director, a careful craftsman...

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Harvard Film Archive plans ‘Night of the Vampire’

Want to put a little bite in your Labor Day weekend? Look no further than “Night of the Vampire,” a Harvard Film Archive movie marathon devoted to the blood-loving undead. But don’t expect your typical...

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Things to do this fall at Harvard

Learning is worth leaving the house for. Whether you’re interested in science, history, politics, philosophy, art, music, theater, film, technology, cooking, or sports, there’s something happening at...

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Student’s summer in Moscow started with a class and a film

At Harvard, small decisions can lead to big things. When I signed up for a class in Soviet Film, I had no idea that it would lead to my choice in concentrations — much less a trip to Moscow. I just...

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Harvard arts centers in ambitious, region-wide collaboration

A unique collaboration among 12 art organizations — including three from Harvard — will explore the relationship between art and technology during a winter collective beginning Feb. 7. Aligned with the...

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Frederick Wiseman discusses ‘Ex Libris’ ahead of Norton Lecture

Three filmmaking luminaries will give the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures this year, with legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman delivering the first of a two-part talk on Monday. Agnès Varda, whose...

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Remembering — and rereading — Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell

Stanley Cavell was no ordinary philosopher, especially when he wrote. “The quality of his writing was rigorous, but also personal. He addressed the reader quite directly and, at times, intimately,”...

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Harvard Film Archive celebrates the art of Ingmar Bergman

Autumnal explorations of mortality and desire, and the occasional light touch of summer, make up “Darkness Unto Light: The Cinema of Ingmar Bergman,” a retrospective showing at the Harvard Film...

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Summer arts — most no more than a train ride from Harvard’s campus

If you frequent the local music clubs, you may have heard about a great show at Once in Somerville last month by The Undertones, a new-wave band from Northern Ireland. Just in time for Memorial Day...

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Members of Harvard community reflect on favorite horror films

With All Hallows’ Eve approaching, the Gazette checked in with members of the Harvard community to find out which scary films they love, or love to avoid. Here are their unsettling choices: ‘The...

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Harvard Film Archive to screen Hitchcock’s silent-era films

His name is synonymous with titles such as “Psycho,” “Vertigo,” and “Rear Window,” just a few of the suspense-filled classics made by one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century. But...

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Exiled poet from 8 A.D. became Muhua Yang’s senior thesis

This is one in a series of profiles showcasing some of Harvard’s stellar graduates. In 8 A.D., Emperor Augustus mysteriously banished the poet Ovid from Rome to the shores of the Black Sea in what is...

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