This month I will concentrate on promoting three upcoming community screenings. We hope to see you at one or more of these shows!

The following screenings are the second half of our “Fresh Cuts: New World Films” series and will be held at 6:30pm at The Cube at 8371 Northfield Blvd. For tickets, go to the Central Park MCA website: https://www.mca80238.com/mca-calendar

Saturday 10/5: The Boy and The Heron (2023)

This latest from Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki may be his last film. A co- founder of Studio Ghibli in 1985, Miyazaki is a master animator, storyteller, and filmmaker. His films are popular and well-known, transforming animation from children’s cartoons into cinematic masterpieces for all. A few of his films include My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Spirited Away (2001). His process is to hand-draw and hand-paint all of his films, with very little technology involved. The results are beautiful, transcendent works of art for all ages.

The Boy and the Heron is another in the great works of this master. The story concerns 12-year-old Mahito, who after his mother’s death, seeks solace in a strange world that straddles the living and the dead. Led along by a mysterious gray heron, Mahito then takes a wonderful, fantastical, and eventful journey that leads to self-reflection, self-awareness, and, like most Miyazaki films, has a lot to say about our physical world as much as it does our interior world.

This screening is appropriate for all ages.

Friday 10/11: Origin (2023)

This wonderful film from director Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th) is one of the better, and certainly underrated, films from 2023. It is a biographical drama based on the book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, and starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Jon Bernthal. The sprawling and inquisitive story is too complicated to summarize in a paragraph, but I will say that it weaves the past and the present, the personal and the political, and racial and other bigotries into a tapestry of intellect and logic that we rarely see in films. It is also important and timely, dealing with the history of racism, the Holocaust, the caste system, and how we got to where we are now in our country.

About that history, DuVernay says: “So the hope is that you keep talking about what happened and you allow it to inform what’s going on now. Hopefully we get to a place where we are a little more involved. I think that’s the only way.”

The screening will include a post-film discussion with Chandra Thomas Whitfield from Colorado Public Radio.

Saturday 10/12: To Kill a Tiger

See the review in the June 2024 Front Porch edition. Appropriate for ages 16+.

Vincent Piturro, PhD, is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at MSU Denver. Contact him directly at vpiturro@msudenver.com or follow him on Twitter. For more reviews, search The Indie Prof at FrontPorchNE.com.