FLM 200: The MSU Film Collective
We are the professors, students, filmmakers, screenwriters, and cinéphiles at MSU who gather weekly in the course FLM 200 to watch and discuss good films. In the spirit of the Cinémathèque française and the generation of film critics and French New Wave directors it inspired, our collective abides by the principle that good film writing and good filmmaking (and just plain good living) begin with serious film watching.
Fall 2024: GLOBAL MELODRAMA
Melodrama has been a core mode of fiction film almost since cinema’s inception, and the genre gained renewed importance for feminist film theory in the 1970s and 80s. Whether it’s Douglas Sirk’s technicolor study of thwarted love, or Pedro Almodóvar’s queer take on classic maternal melodramas, there’s many citations, lineages, and stylizations to explore. From geographical disaffection in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses to amatory disaffection in Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together, melodrama offers a space for a renegotiation of the social focused through a heightened sense of individual predicament. Across art cinemas and popular cinemas, classical Hollywood to contemporary Bollywood, melodrama occurs in a wide range of global cinemas as the mode that makes us feel.
All screenings will take place in B122 Wells Hall at 7pm. The series is free and open to all. West doors to Wells Hall, nearest Spartan Stadium, stay open until 7pm.
8/29 – All that Heaven Allows (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Presented by Margo Sawaya
This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores by Douglas Sirk follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock Hudson). When their romance prompts the scorn of her children and country club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others.
9/5– About Dry Grasses (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2023)
Presented by Farzaneh Ebrahimzadeh Holasu
A young teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after four years of mandatory service in a remote village, but is accused of inappropriate contact by two students. After losing hope, a colleague offers him new perspectives on life.
9/12 – Shree 420 (dir. Raj Kapoor, 1955)
Presented by Swarnavel Pillai
When a young man from a small town decides to make it big in a city, he faces several challenges.
9/19 – Der Blaue Engel (dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
Presented by Pardis Dabashi
An elderly professor’s ordered life spins dangerously out of control when he falls for a nightclub singer.
9/26 – Distinto Amanecer (dir. Roberto Galvadón, 1952)
Presented by Cristóbal Martinez
The disaffected wife of a failed civil servant, is thrilled to re-encounter Octavio, a former lover who is now a union activist on the run from a corrupt politician. Hoping to help him, she descends into the Mexican underworld, where she finds a purpose—and a thrill—missing from her married life.
10/3 – La Novia de Cuba (dir. Kazuo Kuroki, 1969)
Presented by Pedro Doreste Rodríguez
A Japanese sailor arrives in Cuba eager to soak up the atmosphere of the country. He falls in love with a Cuban girl and soon love blossoms between the two. She tells him about the time before Fidel Castro, when Batista contributed to the disappearance of her family.
10/10 – Meghe Dhaka Tara (dir. Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
Presented by Ayana Dey
A selfless young woman (Supriya Choudhury) sacrifices her own happiness for her unappreciative family.
10/17 – Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-wai, 1997)
Presented by David Schwartz
A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.
10/24 – Daughter of Mine (dir. Laura Bispuri, 2018)
Presented by Josh Yumibe
A daughter torn between two mothers, one who raised her with love and her biological mother, who instinctively claims her back.
10/31 – All About my Mother (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
Presented by Bill Vincent
This Oscar-winning melodrama, one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most beloved films, provides a dizzying, moving exploration of the meaning of motherhood.
11/7 – This Ancient Law (dir. Ewald André Dupont, 1923)
This screening will take place at 7:30 at Cook Recital Hall in the MSU College of Music
silent cinema special presentation by Alicia Svigals
Baruch Mayr, son of an orthodox rabbi from a poor shtetl in Galizia, decides to break with the family tradition and leave the shtetl to become an actor. Due to this behaviour his father bans him from his family.
11/14 – Charulata (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1964)
Presented by Kuhu Tanvir
The lonely wife of a newspaper editor falls in love with her visiting cousin-in-law, who shares her love for literature.
11/21 – Purple Rain (dir. Albert Magnoli, 1984)
Presented by Jeff Wray and Tama Hamilton Wray
A young musician, tormented by an abusive situation at home, must contend with a rival singer, a burgeoning romance, and his own dissatisfied band, as his star begins to rise.
12/5 – Umbrellas of Cherbourg (dir. Jacque Demy, 1964)
Presented by Dan Smith
A young woman separated from her lover by war faces a life-altering decision.