Hank Okazaki has spent a lot of time watching movies. He remembers his parents taking him along to university film series when he was a kid in California, to see movies ranging from art-house to samurai.
Now the programmer for Duke's Screen/Society film series, he puts his childhood experience to use. "I remember going in and sitting on little fold-up chairs in the library basement, and seeing the whole Thin Man series, a Bogey series, a Kurosawa series. All these kind of classics," Okazaki says.
With the help of Screen/Society and the student-run Freewater Presentations and other campus movie series, film culture has moved out of the basement at Duke. There are enough cinematic attractions to fill the calendar — and possibly, mint a few new cinephiles. Students, faculty, staff and community members can enjoy a range of movies with prices ranging from free to cheap.
Meeting Frederick Wiseman
Privacy in the age of the digital revolution is of concern to everyone, but for documentary filmmakers and photographers, it poses specific copyright issues. If your film shows someone humming a popular song, do you have to pay royalties? If a television in a background shows a politician, do you have to get permission to use the image? Frederick Wiseman, one of the most significant names in documentary filmmaking for more than four decades, will discuss legal and ethical issues in documentary films at 5 p.m. March 26 in the Levine Science Research Center's Love Auditorium. Wiseman is a lawyer who turned to filmmaking in 1967. The talk is part of the year-long Provost's Lecture Series on "Privacy at Risk."
The Wiseman retrospective will include:
"Law and Order," 7 p.m., Friday, March 19.
"Titicut Follies," 2 p.m. Wednesday, March 21.
"Model," 7 p.m. Saturday, March 24.
"Near Death," 1-7:30 p.m., Sunday, March 25.
All films will be shown at the Nasher Museum.
Screen/Society, which is coordinated by Duke's Film/Video/Digital Program, schedules 40-odd movies a semester, all of which are open to the public.
"There are all these little tricks that you pick up. I always think about checking the basketball schedule," Okazaki says. "I had to learn the first semester but I've gotten a lot better over time, especially tracking down films that are more difficult to find."
The other half of Okazaki's job is co-organizing with departmental sponsors who bring ideas and funding to the table. Collaborators include Russian, African, Canadian, International and Women's Studies, among others.
He also has tied film showings to special events such as the Chinese photography exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art and an upcoming visit to campus by legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman (see accompanying story).
Now in its ninth consecutive semester, the CineEast Asian film series is Screen/Society's longest running series. In April, the video-game-based anime film "Final Fantasy VII" promises to push the visual envelope, while "Godzilla" returns to the big screen with 40 minutes of restored footage. (The Raymond Burr subplot, added in 1954 for American viewers, has been removed in honor of the radioactive reptile's 50th anniversary.)
A series on the morality of power, on Wednesdays in Griffith, is co-sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics. "Munich" and "Crash" will be shown in March, and the series winds up in April with "The Contender" and "The Battle of Algiers."
A highlight event this month will be the March 19-26 retrospective of Wiseman's documentaries, culminating in the filmmaker's visit to campus as part of the Provost's Lecture Series.
For almost 40 years, Wiseman has chronicled American life through its institutions, beginning with the groundbreaking exposé "Titicut Follies" about a hospital for the criminally insane. The once-banned film, and three others about police, the fashion industry and a hospital, will all be screened in 16 mm at the Nasher. "Near Death," a 6-hour film about life and death decisions in a critical care ward, will be shown in marathon fashion, with two 15-minute intermissions, on March 25. Wiseman, considered a master of the cinema verité style of direct cinema, will discuss the legal and ethical aspects of documentary filmmaking at a lecture on March 26.
For those who prefer more mainstream fare, Freewater Presentations has a packed lineup of popcorn movies and first-run flicks, from "Home Alone" and "South Park" to the Oscar-nominated "Babel" and "The Last King of Scotland."
Rahul Lalmalani chairs the student-run organization, a committee of the Union.
"I was always into film," says the senior engineering and economics major from Bombay, home of India's prodigious "Bollywood" film industry. When he came to Duke, he was delighted to discover Freewater movies. "I figured I really wanted to get in on this."
The group runs four film series. Most of the films play in the Bryan Center's Griffith Theater. Prices range from free to $3, depending on the series, and an old-time vending cart outside Griffith offers popcorn. Some Freewater films also are shown on Duke's Coffeehouse on East Campus.
Depending on the night, moviegoers can see contemporary Hollywood blockbusters such as the upcoming "Blood Diamond" and "Dreamgirls"; independent, foreign and "dark horse" films such as "The Good Shepherd" and "Notes on a Scandal"; and lighter Friday-midnight fare such as "Tarzan" and "The Lion King."
And, though the organization is run by students, members hope Duke employees and Durham community members will come to the films as well.
"All the Disney movies are singalongs," Lalmalani says. "We have people from the Durham community who bring their kids. I remember once I had one of my professors show up with his grandkids. I thought it was really cool that he was taking them out on a Friday midnight. One thing we wouldn't mind would be more people on the staff or faculty using Duke as more than just their workplace."