Still from “The Exterminating Angel”.
Doha: The “Watching the Classics,” an online workshop where filmmakers and cinephiles expand their knowledge of film history, returns in May.
Doha Film Institute (DFI) has announced that the first session of “Marking Movies Modern” will be on May 1 where the 1962 film “The Exterminating Angel” by Luis Buñuel will be tackled.
Renowned academic Richard Peña, Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University and Director Emeritus of the New York Film Festival, will deliver the talk.
“This nine-part series will explore this cinematic revolution, analyzing some of its major trends and tendencies as well as offering discussions of some of its most emblematic works. Among the artists whose works will be discussed are Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky,” explained DFI on its website.
Each lecture and discussion in this series is dedicated to a renowned global film classic. Selected photographs and video snippets will be featured for discussion during the lecture. And participants can submit Professor Peña questions in advance of the lecture, and he will respond to them at the conclusion of each session.
In a video message, Professor Peña said the series will “focus on the great transition that happened in international cinema beginning in the late 1950s, early 1960s where the new generation of filmmakers sought to challenge many of the rules, practices and conventions that had really established and redefined the classical cinema.”
“This time, we will be looking at the rule breakers, those people who in the 1960s who really established the cinema that sought to correspond what precisely to the very new world the filmmakers found themselves in. We will be looking at films from all over the world, from Europe, Latin America, Asia, all under the rubric of making movies modern.” The sessions will take place on the last Monday of every month and films to be featured will be announced at the beginning of the month. The nine-part session will conclude in January of next year.
Fee for the workshop is QR70, and QR56 for Qatar Museums’ Culture Pass member. Interested applicants may register at DFI’s website to be able to join the sessions.
