Calendar of Events Archives

Grand Opening Celebration!
Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend — November 27th – November 30th, 2009

Date: Friday, November 27, 2009
Event: Linda Lee's Laugh's on Us
FREE SHOWS!
Times: 12 Noon, 1 pm, 2 pm and 3 pm

Join us for a fun-filled afternoon for the kids with Linda Lee, loveable clown & magician.

Free half-hour shows will be held inside the theater beginning at noon, ending at 3:30.

In Search of Memory

A Film by Petra Seeger.
Icarus Films NY
November 28 – December 18, 2009

The life and work of one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century, Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel.

IN SEARCH OF MEMORY is a compelling blend of autobiography and history that recounts the life of one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century and illuminates scientific developments in our understanding of the brain's role in recording and preserving memory. In addition to archival footage and dramatic re-creations of Kandel's childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Vienna and his formative years as an emigrant in New York, the film features discussions with Kandel, friends and family, as well as his public lectures in Vienna and New York which explore both his professional and personal life, especially his emotional ties to Judaism.

If you cannot see the trailer for In Search of Memory above at right, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKg79cNCVzw

Mystic Independent Theater presents two films by Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella, dubbed “the legendary Spanish Surrealist and 78-year-old enfant terrible” by Film Forum. Portabella and his production company Films 59 have fostered some of the most emblematic films in the history of Spanish cinema for the last 50 years.

The Silence Before Bach and Warsaw Bridge both premiered at a retrospective of Portabella’s life’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. These films have rarely been shown in the USA, due to the filmmaker’s resistance to releasing his work on DVD. Shadow Distribution is America’s first to release Warsaw Bridge with the assistance of Jonathan Demme.

The Silence Before Bach (Die Stille vor Bach)

January 1 – 24, 2010

Directed by Pere Portabella
Unrated (as R: nudity)
In German, Italian, and Spanish, English subtitles

The long-awaited new film from former Bunuel producer and visionary director Pere Portabella, one of the world’s most distinctive and original film voices, The Silence Before Bach is a true wonder. “Bach’s music is the only thing that reminds us the world is not a failure,” says a character in the film. Portabella, taking Bach’s music as a theme and a starting place, but taking it on the road, both literally (two Spanish truck drivers discuss its fine points; a group of several dozen young cellists play rapturous Bach on a subway car they appear to have taken over) and otherwise (as Portabella recreates the composer’s life—sort of; the film opens with a player piano moving of seemingly its own accord through a bare art gallery, really dancing a pas de deux with Portabella’s camera.) The music is as glorious as the cinematic art; the film’s meanings open and perhaps even profound.

The Silence Before Bach premiered at MoMA in New York, as part of a retrospective
exhibit of Portabella’s work as a whole. Also previously at Film Forum NY and The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

2007 Barcelona Film Award Winner.

“THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH is a mélange of genres including narrative vignettes and documentary sequences on the theme of the transformational power of great music. At one moment his camera records a subway car packed with passionate cello-playing musicians; at another he is following a guide who gives tours of Leipzig dressed in full Bach regalia; and in a third he stages Felix Mendelssohn’s discovery of sheet music for the “St. Matthew Passion” used by a butcher to wrap meat. By turns funny and serious, poignant, sexy and refreshing, The Silence Before Bach is very nearly unclassifiable, like so much of Portabella’s oeuvre.” –Film Forum

The Silence Before Bach “brings Bach’s music to life with a mysterious, magnificent blend of drama, documentary, and quasi-surrealist whimsy. Beginning with a scene of a player piano rattling off the Goldberg Variations while rolling through a bright, bare loft, Portabella tickles the senses with a series of skits... From puckish humor and borderline kitsch, a great and serious notion emerges: the construction of modern Europe on the basis of classical music.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker     

“Haunting, elegiac and dazzling!” – New York Magazine

"Every moment alive with intelligence. The title derives from a comment by E. M. Cioran asserting that before Bach there was only stillness, and that his music justifies existence."
– Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

“One of the year’s major film events. The Catalan master hasn’t lost his cutting-edge instincts or the enigmatic meter that underlies his work… his writing like calligraphy, his treatment of space architectonic, and his narrative free-floating.”– Film Comment

“DELECTABLE! Gorgeous lensing and art direction and some of the world’s most beautiful music!” – V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“A meditation on the power of music to transcend geography and time and unite humanity in a kind of universal ecstasy. Evokes the spirit and legacy of this artist, shedding light on the lasting beauty of his work.”– S. James Snyder, The New York Sun

To View the Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SUhTp_ndw4

Warsaw Bridge (Pont de Varsovia)
January 29-February 13, 2010

Directed by Pere Portabella
Unrated (as R: nudity)
In Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles

Presented by Jonathan Demme and Shadow Distribution:

Synopsis
Warsaw Bridge is dated 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Beneath a sparkling surface of spectacular socio-cultural events and the frivolous life in a happy Europe, lies the tension of broken memories and personal and historical cataclysms. Warsaw Bridge shatters the plot into a thousand fragments in a European landscape broken by the return of History.

A Statement from Jonathan Demme
I was lucky enough to first see Warsaw Bridge at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Barcelona in the summer of 2000 as part of a “hometown boy makes good” retrospective the museum was presenting of Portabella’s work. I was literally freaked and said, “Who? Pere Portabella? Used to produce Bunuel films? Why haven’t I ever even heard of this guy? How could a rich and dazzling and sumptuous film such as this remain so utterly unknown in my country? The exquisite images, the superbly rendered music, the bravura style, this bold narrative, the great performances, the perfection of the totality of this unique and vibrant wonderland of a film --- How to get it seen in America?” The answer now, these few years later, is the intrepid and visionary tricksters at Shadow Distribution, to whom I am so deeply indebted for the work that they have put into making this American distribution a reality. The release here of Warsaw Bridge is a movie dream come true for me. And somehow appropriate, too. I’ve been taking inspiration and plundering ideas from Portabella’s great film ever since I saw it back there in Barcelona. Portabella comes to America! A lovely gift for outside-the-mall film-seekers.

“Visually, Warsaw Bridge is incredibly elegant, full of wonderfully sinuous camera movements and exquisite cinematography by Tomas Pladevall. And you have to love a film in which the credits suddenly pop up 20 minutes after it has begun, another sign of Portabella's devious, meta-cinematic humor. I'd be lying if I said I understood Warsaw Bridge; I suspect that will take several more viewings. But I certainly haven't enjoyed any other film as much so far this year.”

– George Robinson, CINE-JOURNAL.

“The New York premiere of Warsaw Bridge was a highlight of MoMA's September 2007 retrospective of the Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella. Portabella began the film after reading a curious newspaper item: “The body of a scuba diver was found in a burnt forest.” Taking this wonderfully strange headline as a point of departure, the director crafted a wondrous feature full of romance, music, theater, dramatic settings, fluid camera movements, and gorgeous nonsense. Somehow, quite magically, it all comes together, and a story of betrayal—sort of—emerges.”

– MoMA (http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/605)

“Whatever it all means, the whole thing is gorgeous."

– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
The Chicago Reader

“Supremely confident, audaciously experimental, intermittently comprehensible and never less than engrossing, WARSAW BRIDGE is
a collage of images and sounds, loosely held together by a handful of characters—a writer, a conductor and a marine biologist.
They hint at a plot but really function more as abstracts for introducing larger ideas about fate, chance and will before the backdrop of history, literature, art and music.
Arrestingly visceral set pieces abound, whether it be a reverie of Barcelonan architecture, an outdoor urban symphony performed by scattered musicians, an opera set inside a fish market or a water plane extinguishing a forest fire.
The effect is overwhelming and exhausting but
always transfixing.”

– Stephen Garrett,
Time Out New York

“You’re stifled by rather precarious aesthetics,” one character says to another in Pere Portabella’s Warsaw Bridge. Aren’t we all? For his part Mr. Portabella seems pretty comfortable with his aesthetic of narrative enigma, elegant camerawork and attractive people who speak in literary and intellectual riddles. A Catalan filmmaker whose recent work includes The Silence Before Bach, Mr. Portabella was for many years associated with Luis Buñuel. Warsaw Bridge, which takes place mostly in Barcelona (with a few scenes in Berlin), is not shy about declaring a debt to Buñuelian surrealism. This is especially true in several exquisite musical interludes, including one in which the members of an orchestra, housed in separate apartments, follow their conductor’s gestures on video monitors, and another set in a seragliolike bathhouse. Connecting these images is an elusive story, or rather a series of events and conversations organized around a central anecdote.”

— A. O. Scott,
The New York Times

Special Event
Skip McKinley & Friends
Celtic Music & Song Concert

Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 3 pm

Celtic flutist Michael “Skip” McKinley has invited an impressive group of musical friends to join him in concert at a very special event at the theater.

The musicians include: Sheila Falls Keohane, a three time North American Irish fiddle champion who won the All-Ireland championship at age 15.

Acoustic guitar player John Brennan whose credits include touring with POCO and Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Stonington native, singer Haley Plourde-Cole who trained at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and was a contestant on American Idol will be a special guest. She will perform several songs including an unforgettable version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

(Above) Skip McKinley

(Above) Haley Plourde-Cole

(Left) Sheila Falls Keohane

Get a Fresh Start for the New Year!

Banish the post-holiday blahs
with a 2-week Detox

Stonington Natural Health Center's
Naturopathic Doctor Stephanie Bethune
Date: Thursday January 28, 2010
Time: 6:30 pm
Website: www.snhc.com
This is a FREE event!

Join Naturopathic Doctor Stephanie Bethune, ND for a FREE TALK on safe and effective ways to:

Lose weight
Flush away toxins
Increase energy
Improve digestion
Clear your thoughts