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CSUN Cinematheque
The majority of the screenings sponsored by the CSUN Cinematheque support the academic mission of the Cinema and Television Arts Department. These are provided in conjunction with a class lecture or Q&A. Seating is reserved for those students enrolled in the course.
However, a number of screenings and events are open to the public. Those screenings are listed on the OPEN SCREENING SCHEDULE.
The Alan Armer Theater is located in Manzanita Hall. For DIRECTIONS, click on QUICKLINKS for a map of the campus. The University requires a parking permit to park in the University parking lots. Parking permits are available for purchase ($6) at the Information Booths located on Prairie Street on the west side of campus and Lindley Avenue on the south side of campus. Exact change is required.
To Reserve the Armer
The primary use of the Armer Theater is to support the teaching curriculum of the Department of Cinema and Television Arts. Other departments on campus may reserve the facility for screening events when it is available. There is a cost recovery fee for this service.
Contact Tim Halloran for information about reserving the theater for on-campus events.
Contact Dr. John Schultheiss to suggest a film or event for the CSUN Cinematheque.
Requests for use of the theater by off-campus clients must be submitted through University Licensing.
Welcome to the CSUN Cinematheque
Cinematheque (noun) |sin e mah tek|
a motion picture theater, often part of a university or private archive, showing experimental or historically important films.
The CSUN Cinematheque is an innovative year-round film screening program housed in the Alan and Elaine Armer Theater, a state-of-the-art 130 seat motion picture theater on the CSUN campus. The only venue of its kind in the San Fernando Valley, the Cinematheque presents thematically designed retrospectives of classic films, as well as aesthetically significant contemporary releases--in conjunction with the appearance of featured guest artists for lectures and panel discussions. Conceptual presentations are devoted to: filmographies of important directors, writers, actors, cinematographers; essential genre works; seminal documentaries; major literary, philosophical, narrative themes and traditions; defining technical and artistic models and styles. The Cinematheque is also intended as a regular venue for film organizations, student film competitions, and conferences. Collaboration is encouraged with local studios, guilds, and academies for screenings and related events.
The Alan Armer Theater
The theater is equipped with 35mm film projectors and a theatrical digital projection system with BluRay, DVD, DVCPRO, DVCAM, DV, and VHS sources
Thursday Nights at the Cinematheque
A Retrospective on the films of Michelangelo Antonioni
The following screenings are open to the campus community and to the general public. Admission is free. Screenings begin at 7 PM. Hosted by Professor Tim Halloran.
January
1/26/12
7 PM
|
Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un amore)
1950, 98 minutes.
Paola (Lucia Bosé) is a young, beautiful woman married to a wealthy entrepreneur (Ferdinando Sarmi). She meets her former lover Guido (Massimo Giroti) after seven years, but their relationship is marked by tragic events. Filled with stark, empty compositions, unpredictable camera movements, and static, self-obsessed characters, Story of a Love Affair is Antonioni’s first narrative feature and would establish many of the themes and techniques that would recur in all of his films that followed. |
February
2/2/12
7 PM |
I Vinti (The Vanquished)
1952, 110 minutes.
Antonioni’s unique triptych film tells three stories of well-off youth who commit murder. In the French episode a group of high school students kill one of their colleagues for his money. In the Italian episode a university student is involved in smuggling cigarettes. In the English episode a lazy poet finds the body of a woman and tries to sell his story to the press. A sober treatment of the widespread alienation affecting post-war youth, I Vinti cemented Antonioni’s reputation as a challenging and critical director. |
2/9/12
7 PM |
La Signora Senza Camelie (The Lady Without Camelias)
1953, 105 minutes.
The third feature film by Antonioni tells the story of Clara (Lucia Bosé) who becomes a movie starlet and eventually marries her producer (Gino Cervi). Overestimating her talent, the producer pushes his young wife into more serious artistic roles where she fails miserably. A riveting behind-the-scenes show business drama, La Signora Senza Camelie expanded the palette of contemporary Italian movies, demonstrating that Antonioni was a director who would answer to no-one but himself. |
2/16/12
7 PM |
Le Amiche (The Girlfriends)
1955, 104 minutes.
Clelia (Eleonora Rossi-Drago) leaves Rome to set up a fashion-salon in Torino. Shortly after arrival, she finds herself caught up in the unpleasant lives of a bourgeois circle of acquaintances (including the iconic Valentina Cortese), and their attendant attempts at suicide, their class prejudices, and romantic alliances. A key film of his middle-period, Le Amiche finds Antonioni expanding his range in the realm of traditional narrative cinema while continuing his devotion to expressing the emotional makeup of the modern woman. |
2/23/12
7 PM |
Il Grido (The Outcry)
1957, 116 minutes.
A refinery mechanic (American actor Steve Cochran in a career-best performance) finds his life suddenly overturned as his 7-year affair to a married woman (AlidaValli) ends. He embarks on an impulsive and aimless quest with his illegitimate daughter in tow seeking some way to reattach himself to the world. With a script conceived by Antonioni, exquisite cinematography, and a plaintive score, the award-winning Il Grido is an early key work that depicts a world of heartbreaking alienation and loss. |
March
3/1/12
7 PM |
L’Avventura (The Adventure)
1960, 145 minutes.
When a young socialite (Lea Massari) vanishes during a Mediterranean boating trip, her lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) search for her. But soon the woman's mysterious disappearance becomes only the background for L’Avventura’s striking examination of modern human relationships. The film that made both director and Vitti international superstars, Antonioni’s penetrating study of the idle upper class offers stinging observations on spiritual isolation and the many meanings of love. |
3/8/12
7 PM |
La Notte (The Night)
1961, 117 minutes.
Two giants of film-acting come together as a married couple in crisis living in Milan. Marcello Mastroianni is Giovanni, a distinguished, successful writer and Jeanne Moreau is his wife Lydia. Over the course of a day and the night which follows, the pair will come to reexamine their lives, love, and emotional bonds. Photographed in beautiful black-and-white, La Notte marked yet another development in Antonioni’s continuous stylistic evolution and remains one of the monuments of 1960s modernist cinema. |
3/15/12
7 PM |
L’eclisse (The Eclipse)
1962, 126 minutes.
The conclusion of Antonioni’s informal trilogy on modern malaise, L’eclisse tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) only to drift into an empty and unfulfilling relationship with another (Alain Delon). Using the architecture of Rome as a backdrop for the couple’s doomed affair, Antonioni reaches the apotheosis of his modernist style, returning to his favorite themes: alienation and the difficulty of finding connections in an increasingly mechanized world. |
3/22/12
7 PM |
Red Desert (Il deserto rosso)
1964, 120 minutes.
Giuliana (Monica Vitti) is a depressed and disaffected woman who has recently attempted suicide. She lives with her husband (Carlo Chionetti) and young son and spends her days wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins. Red Desert, Antonioni’s first color film, is filled with one startling painterly composition after another, evoking a nearly apocalyptic vision of its time and the spiritual desolation of the technological age. |
3/29/12
7 PM |
Blow-Up
1966, 111 minutes.
A London fashion photographer (David Hemmings), out on a stroll, takes some casual shots of people in a park. When he blows up his prints he realizes he's stumbled upon a murder. He begins to pursue the intriguing mystery that haunts him and eventually comes to some profound realizations. Antonioni’s first English-language production, his only mainstream commercial hit, and widely considered one of the seminal films of the 1960s, Blow-up is a puzzling, existential, and adroitly-assembled masterpiece. |
April
4/12/12
7 PM |
Zabriske Point
1970, 112 minutes.
Initially presented in quasi-documentary style, Antonioni's only American film begins with a group of college activists discussing key issues of their political agenda. One of the students, Mark (Mark Frechette), steals an airplane and flies over a desert where he meets Daria (Daria Halprin) and the two eventually fall in love. Misunderstood and dismissed upon its initial release, Zabriskie Point is a poetic chronicle of counterculture America and a visually stunning examination of youth rebellion against the Establishment. |
4/19/12
7 PM |
The Passenger
1975, 126 minutes.
The mutual admiration between actor Jack Nicholson and Antonioni resulted in the riveting psychological drama The Passenger. A melancholy and jaded television reporter (Nicholson) assumes the identity of a dead man while at a hotel in a north African country and sees the switch as a last desperate chance to leave his old life and start anew. Antonioni’s film, known for its remarkable camerawork, is a provocative and perceptive look at identity, alienation, and mankind's desire to escape oneself. |
4/26/12
7 PM |
The Mystery of Oberwald (Il mistero di Oberwald)
1981, 129 minutes
A queen (Monica Vitti) has placed herself in exile after the slaying of her husband. When an anarchist poet (Franco Branciaroli) seeks asylum with the Queen, the past again rears its ugly head. Due to his remarkable resemblance to the long-dead king of the land, the queen falls in love with the dissident. Shot on video and based on a play (and film) by Jean Cocteau, The Mystery of Oberwald is a compelling psychological period piece and reunites Antonioni with one of his favorite performers, Monica Vitti. |
May
5/3/12
7 PM |
Identification of a Woman (Identificazione di una donna)
1982, 130 minutes.
After his wife leaves him, a film director (Tomas Milian) finds himself drawn into affairs with two enigmatic women. At the same time, he searches for the right subject and actress for his next film. Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman is a body- and soul-baring voyage into one man’s artistic and erotic consciousness. This spellbinding antiromance was a late-career coup for the legendary Italian filmmaker, and is renowned for its sexual explicitness and visual metaphors of isolation and abandonment. |
5/10/12
7 PM |
Beyond the Clouds (Al di là delle nuvole)
1995, 112 minutes.
The many ways in which men are fascinated, compelled, and confused by their attraction to women are explored in this four part drama of love and illusion, co-directed by Wim Wenders. As a filmmaker (John Malkovich) tries to sort out his plans for his next film, he considers several stories about women and the men who love them. Beyond the Clouds was Antonioni's first film after a massive stroke derailed his directorial career and his last released feature, yet it remains one of his most beautiful and haunting films. |
