FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Joyce Linehan for ArtsEmerson, 617-282-2510, [email protected] ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage PRESENTS FEBRUARY FILM PROGRAMMING High resolution photos available on request. (BOSTON) ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage continues its second season of adventurous, independent and repertory films with the continuation of Gotta Dance , a survey of the American film musical (through May 2012); Portraits of New Orleans, a series curated in advance of Ameriville on The Paramount Center Stage; the Boston premiere of Johnnie To’s Life Without Principle ; new prints of two noir classics, and family matinees . Films are screened at Emerson College’s Paramount Center (559 Washington St., Boston), in the Bright Family Screening Room. Tickets are $10, or $7.50 for members, and are available in advance at www.ArtsEmerson.org, or by calling 617-824-8400. Discounted tickets for seniors are $7.50, and $5 for all students with valid ID and children under 18. Discounted tickets are available in person at the Box Office only. For more information visit www.ArtsEmerson.org . GOTTA DANCE Our ongoing celebration of the beloved musical genre, running through May. Saturday, March 3, 2 p.m. Saturday, March 3, 8 p.m. Sunday, March 4, 2 p.m. Footlight Parade Directed by Lloyd Bacon With James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell. U.S. 1933, 35mm, Black and White, 104 minutes With silent pictures finished, it’s curtains for the stage musical, a crisis that inspires producer Cagney to create entertainment on an industrial scale; Blondell, as Cagney’s lovelorn secretary, flashes wisecracks and sidelong affection. “Fast-paced, knowing, and arguably the best of the Warner Bros. Depression musicals” (Matthew Kennedy), Footlight ’s Depression-era backstage saga culminates in a trio of Busby Berkeley’s most wildly elaborate numbers, including the legendary “By A Waterfall.” ------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, March 10, 2 p.m. Sunday, March 11, 2 p.m. Kid Millions Directed by Roy Del Ruth With Eddie Cantor, Ann Sothern, Ethel Merman U.S. 1934, 35mm, black and white and color, 90 minutes Goldywn’s elaborately produced Eddie Cantor vehicle sets the beloved entertainer in a Cinderella-esque story, as a naïve Brooklyn boy who inherits seventy-seven million dollars from his long-lost archaeologist father and sets off for Egypt to claim the fortune. After multiple madcap adventures Eddie returns to New York, where he realizes his dream to open an ice cream factory for children, portrayed in Kid Millions ’ wonderfully fanciful three-color Technicolor finale. ------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, March 17, 2 p.m. Bright Eyes Directed by David Butler With Shirley Temple, James Dunn, Jane Darwell U.S. 1934, 35mm, black and white, 85 minutes In Bright Eyes , the picture custom-crafted for Temple—and which brought her stardom—the six year old plays a suddenly orphaned child wanted for adoption by multiple suitors, and sings her delightful signature number “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” “At the peak of her popularity [Temple] was an American original, a folk heroine adored by movie audiences who saw in her the ideal child: bright, cheery, and self-reliant” (Ted Sennett). ------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, March 23, 6 p.m. Saturday, March 24, 2 p.m. Saturday, March 24, 8:30 p.m. Top Hat Directed by Mark Sandrich With Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton U.S. 1935, 35mm, black and white, 101 minutes Top Hat is the quintessential Astaire/Rogers film. The fourth of 10 movies the team made together, Top Hat ’s plot turns on the common romantic comedy device of mistaken identity (and Code-era circumstances of forbidden desire) and spins the battling screwball couple’s quarrelling antics into love, near-consummated in the picture’s iconic musical number. “Cheek to Cheek,” as described by Rick Altman, is “more than just a song, it is a hymn to pleasure.” Saturday, March 24, 6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, 2 p.m. American Matchmaker – Restored Print! Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer With Leo Fuchs, Judith Abarbanel, Judel Dubinksy U.S. 1940, 35mm, black and white, 87 minutes Yiddish with English subtitles Leo Fuchs, known on Second Avenue as “the Yiddish Fred Astaire,” plays a debonair bachelor who decides to open a matchmaking business in the Bronx after his eighth planned marriage fails on the way to the altar. Edgar G. Ulmer’s ( Detour ) fourth and last Yiddish movie was also his most modern, an art deco romantic comedy about male ambivalence and Jewish assimilation. Restored by The National Center for Jewish Film. ------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, March 31, 2 p.m. Sunday, April 1, 2 p.m. The Great Ziegfeld Directed by Robert Z. Leonard With William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer U.S. 1936, 35mm, black and white, 176 minutes MGM’s lavish, fictionalized portrait of the legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld was the studio’s most extravagant musical of the period, stocked with a star cast and production numbers of blockbuster magnificence. Charting the impresario’s ascent from sideshow promoter through his popular Broadway Follies to his inevitable financial and physical decline, The Great Ziegfeld was rewarded with the first best picture Oscar for a musical since The Broadway Melody of 1929 . ____________________________________________________________ PORTRAITS OF NEW ORLEANS A series curated in advance of Ameriville —a modern-day variety show that branches out from stories of post-Katrina New Orleans to the rest of the United States, taking place on the Paramount Center’s main stage March 13-18. Friday March 2, 6:30 p.m. Always For Pleasure – Preservation Print! Directed by Les Blank U.S. 1978, 16mm, color, 58 minutes Among American portraitist Les Blank’s masterworks, this glorious, soul-satisfying film is an intense insider's portrait of New Orleans' street celebrations and unique cultural gumbo. “Good- time film-making, ethnography with rhythm.” – Time Out (London) Followed by: The Florestine Collection Directed by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas U.S. 2010, 16mm, color, 31 minutes Upon discovering over 100 colorful dresses, handmade by a recently deceased New Orleans African-American seamstress named Florestine Kinchen, artist Helen Hill was inspired to make this portrait of the dressmaker—a project interrupted by Hurricane Katrina and Hill’s own untimely death. Combining Hill’s animated footage and flood damaged home movies of their lives in New Orleans, Gauliunas finished the artist’s last work, crafting a moving tribute to his wife and her love of New Orleans. Friday, March 2, 8:30 p.m. Saturday March 3, 6 p.m. Tootie’s Last Suit —Boston Premiere! Directed by Lisa Katzman U.S. 2007, Digital Video, color, 93 minutes While telling the story of “Tootie” Montana, former Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters and celebrated throughout New Orleans for the beauty of his elaborately beaded Mardi Gras costumes, Katzman explores not only the complex history of New Orleans’ vibrant Indian culture but also the father-son rivalry that erupts between Tootie and his son—a conflict which speaks to the issue of how traditional cultures are preserved. Winner of the Jean Rouch Award, Society of Visual Anthropology. ------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, March 9, 7 p.m. Friday, March 9, 9 p.m. Saturday, March 10, 7 p.m. Trouble the Water Directed by Tia Lessin, Carl Deal U.S. 2008, 35mm, color, 96 minutes The day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, 24-year-old Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, turned her video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors—and kept the camera rolling to record dramatic rescues and her harrowing retreat to higher ground. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote that Lessin and Deal “created an ingeniously fluid narrative structure that, when combined with Roberts's visuals, news material and their own original 16- millimeter film footage, ebbs and flows like great drama.” Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature. ____________________________________________________________ CRAZIE CULT CLASSICS The second installment of our new series, which takes its name from George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973). Saturday, March 10, 9 p.m. The Intruder Directed by Roger Corman With William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, Beverly Lunsford U.S. 1962, 35mm, black and white, 80 minutes A harrowing look at race relations, Corman’s stinging exposé was made just as school desegregation spread through the South. Shatner, an agent of the reactionary Patrick Henry Society, comes to Caxton, Missouri to spread unrest, ingratiating himself with the town’s influential citizens and turning the already wary whites against the coming integration of the local high school. Print courtesy of the Joe Dante and Jon Davison Collection at the Academy Film Archive. Friday, March 16, 6 p.m. Lumumba Directed by Raoul Peck With Eriq Ebouaney, Alex Descas, Maka Kotto France/Belgium/Haiti/Germany, 2000, 35mm, color, 115 minutes In French and Lingala with English subtitles Peck, Haitian-born and raised in the Congo, crafted this award-winning dramatization. Upsetting the chronology of history—in which Lumumba’s rise from beer salesman to leader of the Congolese National Movement and first Prime Minister of the newly independent Congo ended with his brutal assassination—Peck gives a breathless account of an extraordinary hero. Friday, March 16, 9 p.m. Saturday,