Film

Based on a major exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford, Tokyo Stories spans 400 years of incredibly dynamic art – ranging from the delicate woodblock prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, to Pop Art posters, contemporary photography, Manga, film, and brand-new artworks that were created on the streets. The exhibition was a smash-hit five-star success and brought a younger and more diverse audience to the museum. The film uses the exhibition as a launchpad to travel to Tokyo itself, and explore the art and artists of the city more fully. A beautifully illustrated and richly detailed film, looking at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renewal over its 400-year history, resulting in one of the most vibrant and interesting cities on the planet…

Based in Miami, Third Horizon celebrates cinema from the Caribbean, its Diaspora, and other spaces of the Global South, including through the annual Third Horizon Film Festival (THFF). Third Horizon is pleased to collaborate with White Elephant Group to present a programme highlighting who we are and what we do. The programme features a block of short films, all previous THFF selections, and will be followed by a conversation with Third Horizon’s Romola Lucas, Executive Director, and Robert Colom, Programmer.

EARTH MONTH PRESENTATION Back by popular demand! D​​rawn in by the haunting specter of the Florida panther, a wildlife photographer, veterinarians, ranchers, conservationists, and indigenous people find themselves on the front lines of an accelerating battle between forces of renewal and destruction that have pushed the Everglades to the brink of ecological collapse. In a struggle resonating across the globe, the panther’s habitat has become an island. Its lush territory transformed into subdivisions. A paradise vanishing into thin air. Perched on the edge of extinction, the panther is an emblem of our once connected world. A vision of what could be again. Or else a harbinger of what could befall our planet if the "Path of the Panther" becomes a dead end. Presented in partnership with Keep Coral Gables Beautiful, a local affiliate of the Keep America Beautiful and Keep Florida Beautiful organizations.

In February 2023, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam opened its doors to the largest Vermeer exhibition in history. With loans from across the world, this major retrospective will bring together Vermeer’s most famous masterpieces including Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Geographer, The Milkmaid, The Little Street, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, Woman Holding a Balance and Includes for the first time the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window. This new Exhibition on Screen film invites audiences to a private view of the exhibition, accompanied by the director of the Rijksmuseum and the curator of the show. A truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! As well as bringing Vermeer’s works together, both the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis in the Hague have conducted research into Vermeer’s artistry, his artistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as the creative process behind his paintings.

Join us at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 25 for a special screening and conversation with Miami filmmakers and scholars about the history and future of Miami in a Francophone Caribbean context of anticolonialism, poetry, and radical film. The conversation will be moderated by UM School of Communications Professor and Associate Dean of Inclusion and Outreach Terri Francis (she/her). This event will be followed by a reception on the plaza. In "Aimé Césaire: The Mask of Words" (“Le masque des mots”), director Sarah Maldoror depicts a foundational figure of the Négritude movement against the backdrop of 1987 Miami. Maldoror makes the city of Miami a protagonist in her homage to the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, as her footage shuttles from FIU to the Everglades to the recently-opened Metrorail. Through her juxtaposition of Martinique and Miami, Maldoror raises important questions about the endurance of colonial legacies in both locations. And by linking Black Miami to Aimé Césaire’s poetry and politics, the film makes an urgent case for a Pan-Caribbean coalition of all those “without whom the earth would not be the earth.” The post-film conversation will explore storytelling, surrealism, Négritude, Black Miami history, and filmmaking with Donette Francis (she/her), director for the Center for Global Black Studies at the University of Miami, Marina Magloire (she/her), a Martinican-American scholar and an Assistant Professor of English at University of Miami, Helen Peña (they/them), Dominican-American child of the Atlantic, filmmaker, and community organizer from Miami, FL, and Monica Sorelle (she/they), a Haitian-American filmmaker and artist born and based in Miami. The event includes a reception by Paradis Books and Bread with music by Akia Dorsainvil, aka DJ Pressure Point (he/they). Set list to feature zouk and kompa.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT With this film, Camille Billops completes her family's trilogy—three documentaries that cover more than thirty years: Suzanne Suzanne, shown in the New Director's series at the Museum of Modern Art in 1982 revealed how abuse of Suzanne by her father led to her drug addiction. Finding Christa, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1992, told how Camille's unwanted pregnancy led her to put Christa up for adoption and how Christa returned twenty years later to confront her mother. Now, A String of Pearls turns the camera to four generations of men in Camille's family and considers why their fathers died so young. The camera turns to the grandsons, Michael and Peter. Both are handsome, winsome and in jeopardy. Both are without education, jobs or skills to earn a living, and both have children they cannot support. We want them to live, but two doctors from the local hospital trauma ward describe the streets of Los Angeles as a war zone, where the US military sends its doctors to learn about gunshot wounds. In A String of Pearls, Camille takes a hard look into the hearts of the black men in her family. In this film, love blooms.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT This startlingly personal documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her birth mother twenty years after being given up for adoption. The reunion is between filmmaker Camille Billops and her own daughter, Christa. Facing the re-encounter with mixed emotions, Billops interrogates her family and friends as well as her own motivations. The result is an original and daring work that challenges social biases about adoption and offers new insight into mother-daughter relationships.

FILM + CONVERSATION EVENT This screening includes a conversation with Stephen Charbonneau moderated by Dr Terri Francis. Camille Billops and James Hatch trace the ways in which Americans have tried to ignore, deny, suppress, contain, tolerate, legislate, mock, and exploit racial discrimination within the United States. Like a modern-day Virgil and Dante, they drive, cajole, and lead their cast through a tour of the contemporary landscape of racism. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Stephen Charbonneau is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Florida Atlantic University, where he’s taught courses in film history and film criticism for fifteen years. His books include Projecting Race: Postwar America, Civil Rights, and Documentary Film and InsUrgent Media from the Front (co-edited with Chris Robé).

Pink Floyd’s seminal double album received the film treatment in 1982 with "Pink Floyd – The Wall", featuring a script written by Roger Waters himself and directed by Alan Parker with animated segments by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Floyd “Pink” Pinkerton is a depressed and emotionally detached rock star. Over the years, Pink has built a metaphorical (and sometimes physical) wall to guard his psyche, which has endured a number of beatings, including the death of his father at a young age, an oppressively overprotective mother, and a humiliating school system. The soundtrack, featuring all but two of the original album’s songs, is accompanied by disturbing surreal imagery that includes goose-stepping Nazi hammers and a judge drawn as a pair of wig-wearing buttocks. A singular cult classic, "Pink Floyd – The Wall" is an anthem against non-conformity and institutional corruption that still speaks to us 40 years later. Playing at Gables Cinema to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Pink Floyd's historic album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Martial arts student Leroy Green (Taimak) is on a quest to obtain the elusive all-powerful force known as “The Glow.” Along the way, he must battle the evil, self-proclaimed “Shogun of Harlem” – a kung fu warrior known as Sho’nuff (Julius J. Carry III) – and rescue a beautiful singer (Prince protégée Vanity) from an obsessed record promoter. Combining pulsating music, cutting-edge dancing and the best in non-stop action, Berry Gordy’s "The Last Dragon" is kickin’ good fun featuring an amazing Motown soundtrack, including music by Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Vanity and DeBarge performing their smash hit “Rhythm of the Night .”