Moving Images

Select Thursdays, 7 p.m. | Fath Auditorium

Moving Images celebrates the art of cinema with a monthly film screening at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Offering films spanning artists and genres, from classic to contemporary, we invite visitors to enjoy the shared experience of watching movies on a big screen. In conjunction with the screenings, the program includes introductions and post-film conversations with CAM curators and guests including local scholars, filmmakers and critics.

Moving Images, At Home.

At its heart Moving Images is about bringing communities together in the museum. We look forward to returning to monthly events with you in the CAM’s Fath Auditorium and to sharing the experience of discovering new films and reexamining old favorites in person.

Until then check here for a monthly selection of recommendations from CAM curators and friends in the local film community. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the moving image at home, whether you’re streaming via a subscription service, taking advantage of free library resources, or supporting your favorite local theater with a view-at-home ticket.

August is for indies! This month’s recommendations celebrate the creative vision of independent filmmakers.

Caroline

Written and directed by Celine Held and Logan George, 2018. Available to view here

In the middle of a Texas summer, plans for a babysitter fall through and six-year-old Caroline is left in charge of her two younger siblings. This film by Celine Held and Logan George exemplifies short filmmaking by accomplishing large character arcs and high-risk situations in a small space and amount of time.

— Allyson West, Executive Director/Founder, Cindependent Film Festival

Desperately Seeking Susan

Directed by Susan Seidelman, 1985. Rent or buy on major VOD services

1985 American comedy-drama Desperately Seeking Susan centers on the unlikely entanglement of bored housewife, Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) and punk drifter, Susan (Madonna). Set in New York, the plot is spurred by messages in the personal column of a newspaper. The film is both a comedy and an adventure story oriented toward women who are looking for new direction in their lives, not unlike the thrust of Thelma and Louise, though more comedic and gritty.

— Rachel Lyon, documentary filmmaker and board member, Women in Film Cincinnati

The Farewell

Written and directed by Lulu Wang, 2019. Rent or buy on major VOD Services

Lulu Wang’s The Farewell stars Awkwafina and Shuzhen Zhao and was released by indie studio A24. “Based on a real life lie,” the touching story explores one family’s decision to withhold telling their beloved matriarch of her fatal cancer diagnosis. For insight into the film’s making, check out Wang’s podcast version of the story on This American Life, as well as her insightful interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

— C. Jacqueline Wood, Founder and Director, The Mini Microcinema and Film Curator at Large, FotoFocus

Medicine for Melancholy

Written and directed by Barry Jenkins, 2008. Rent or buy on major VOD Services

The first feature film by acclaimed writer and director Barry Jenkins, Medicine for Melancholy sees twenty-four hours with freshly acquainted protagonists Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins). The city of San Francisco feels like a third main character, serving as both gorgeous backdrop and impetus for conversations spanning gentrification and identity politics. Cinematographer James Laxton portrays the city in entrancing desaturated hues, with occasional color seeping into not quite black-and-white scenes.

— Emily Bauman, Curatorial Assistant for Photography & Film Programmer for Moving Images

Upcoming Programs:

We look forward to returning to the theater with you! Moving Images events are FREE and open to the public, reservations not required. Seating is limited and is first come, first served

Cash bar available beginning at 6:00; beverages are permitted in the theater during screening. Please enter the museum through the DeWitt entrance – visitors will meet in the Fath Auditorium. 

LOSING GROUND

Date TBD

Directed by Kathleen Collins, 1982, 86 minutes

Presented in collaboration with Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival

Comic drama Losing Ground centers on the experiences of Sara (Seret Scott), a university professor whose artist husband Victor (Bill Gunn) rents a country house for a month to celebrate a recent museum sale. The couple’s summer idyll becomes complicated as Sara struggles to research the philosophical and religious meaning of ecstatic experience… and to discover it for herself. 

One of the first fictional features by an African American woman and a stunning and insightful work of cinema, Losing Ground received honors including first prize at the Figueroa International Film Festival, but the film was not released theatrically in the US.

Join us for this special screening, guest curated by tt stern-enzi, Festival Programmer for the OTR International Film Festival. stern-enzi will introduce the film and guide a post-film conversation.