Hello Reader,

I’m planning a series of short-term movie discussion groups based around a theme in the coming months. Below are the three themes with the movies I plan to offer.

Please take a look and let me know which ones you’re interested in. These will run every two weeks on Sundays from 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET. However, depending on who signs up, the timing can be changed to accommodate participants. The cost is $150 USD/movie group. Each group meets three times via Zoom and is limited to 25 participants.

I’d appreciate your feedback.

Kindly please answer this quick survey (5-6 questions, will take four minutes) with your feedback on your interest in attending.

I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you for your continued support.
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The real pain of platonic male friendship (USA, Italy, Norway)

March-April - 3 meetings, every two weeks on Zoom, Sundays 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET, $150 USD

Before Jesse Eisenberg’s Oscar-nominated A Real Pain, there were already superlative films about tenderness and power in platonic male friendships.

The group will watch three films about platonic male friendship from 2006 to 2022, from the US to Italy to Norway, from the urban to the rural, including two films directed by women.

Old Joy (2006, Kelly Reichardt, USA) - Kelly Reichardt’s low-budget story of a weekend camping trip between old friends is the template for Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, both gentler and more emotionally violent.

The Eight Mountains (2022, Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch, Italy/Belgium) - This Cannes Jury Prize winner chronicles a friendship between silent men spanning decades that only makes sense during the summers in the Italian mountains.

Reprise (2007, Joachim Trier, Norway) - A more youthful story set in Oslo about a friendship dissolving between two twentysomethings who refuse to let go but can’t figure out how to talk to each other.

Radical adaptations: Reimagining the novel for the screen

April-May, 3 meetings, every two weeks on Zoom, Sundays 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET, $150 USD

It’s an old adage that the film is never as good as the book.

But what if the film completely reimagines the novel for a contemporary film audience?

We'll watch three films from Europe, from 2011 to 2023, that bring inspired new storytelling approaches that expand upon the novels on which they're based.

Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, Norway, 2011): A story of a heroin addict in 1930s Paris gets transported to Oslo in 2011 and becomes the story of an entire generation in that city at that time. Based on the book Le feu follet.

All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, UK, 2023): A conventional 1980s ghost story about a man in Tokyo becomes a queer coming-out story in contemporary London minus the overt horror elements. Based on the book Strangers.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs (Dominik Graf, Germany, 2021): A short novel written and set in 1930s Berlin and thought to be unfilmable becomes one of the most inventive movies of this decade, ambiguously set on the border between past and present. Based on the book Fabian: The Story of a Moralist.

Animated Documentaries: What is “truth” in nonfiction when you need a screenplay?

May - June - 3 meetings, every two weeks on Zoom, Sundays 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET, $150 USD

Even though all nonfiction is, to some degree, staged and curated, this fact is never more on your mind than when what you’re watching couldn’t be produced by just setting up a camera and observing what happens. It needs a screenplay, animators, and sometimes even actors.

From motion capture to rotoscope to 3D computer animation, from the USA to New Zealand to Denmark, we’ll watch three animated documentaries – two directed by women – that reinvent what it even means to be a documentary.

NUTS! (Penny Lane, 2016, USA) - This 3D animated laugh-out-loud film about a historical trickster plays a few tricks on the audience and won the Best Editing prize at Sundance.

‘25 April (Leanne Pooley, 2015, New Zealand) – This heart-wrenching film about WWI’s Gallipoli, mixes motion-captured actors in “interviews” – based on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of six people who were actually there – with graphic-novelesque imaginings of the events to tell a story of war, friendship, and loss.

Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021, Denmark) – This multi-Oscar-nominated documentary about a gay Afghan refugee who fled to Denmark mixes rotoscope animation of the present with more stylized imaginings of its protagonist’s memories.

I want your feedback!

Please answer this quick survey (5-6 questions, it will take four minutes) with your feedback on your interest in attending.

I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you for your continued support.
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