Bay Film Series Announces Fall 2019 Schedule

News

The Bay Film Series at Bay College celebrates the art of film-making, showing the best in international, documentary, and independent cinema. This year’s roster is filled with award-winning, critically-acclaimed movies. 

We start the school year on Thursday, September 12th with The Last Black Man in San Francisco.  Actor Jimmie Fails plays a character named Jimmie Fails, whose dream is to reclaim the Victorian house that his grandfather built decades earlier. Critic James Berardinelli quips, “It’s a rom-com where one of the participants is . . . a house.”  Located in what was San Francisco’s Harlem, 75 years ago, the neighborhood was once a community filled with families and small businesses.  Now, gentrification and the four million dollar asking price tag make Jamie’s dream, merely a dream.  Filled with “rapier-sharp wit” and “absurdist humor,” the film won Joe Talbot the Director’s Award earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

Our second film, on October 10th is The Souvenir, which Vanity Fair’s chief film critic Richard Lawson says is one of the best films released this year.  Director Joanna Hogg’s drama follows a young film student who gets drawn into a turbulent romance that forces her to examine herself as an artist and a human being.   Lawson says, “It’s a quietly devastating movie . . . what coming-of-age movies are supposed to be.”  The film stars Honor Swinton Byrne (daughter of Tilda) who gives a powerful “career- launching” performance.

We continue on November 14th with one of this year’s most important documentaries, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.  Linear yet artful, the film examines both the late author and her noted literary works, examining themes of race, history, and what it means to be an American.  The Chicago Sun Times’ Richard Roeper says that the film “stands tall as a valuable record of the life and times and work of an American treasure.” 

Our 2019 season ends on December 5th with Mexican director Hari Sama’s This is Not Berlin.  In the mid-80s, misfit Carlos (played by Xabiani Ponce deLeon) finds his métier in nightclubbing, punk music and partying, which leads to self-discovery and a love of art.  Says The New York Times, “The movie celebrates the thrill of performance art, the rush of drug trips and the melancholic cacophony of Joy Division.”  The movie is about being young and creative – and the pitfalls and glories of both.  Spanish with English subtitles.

All Film Series movies are shown in Bay College’s Besse Center Theater at 7 PM in Escanaba. General admission is only $5.00 or $2.00 for students with valid ID and may be purchased online by visiting the Bay College Ticket Sales web page. For more information about The Film Series and other events showing on the Bay College campus, please visit the Bay College Events web page.