Wexner Center Celebrates 200Columbus with “Cinema 614: A Bicentennial Celebration”
Cinema 614: A Bicentennial Celebration
By: David Filipi, Director of Film/Video at Wexner Center for the Arts
As the city celebrates its bicentennial with a host of events, historical highlights, and an abundance of community spirit, we at the Wex are excited to offer our contribution to festivities via Cinema 614, a series that calls attention to a handful of the city’s connections to the film world, covers everything from Hollywood classics to groundbreaking and genre-busting experimental films.
To get you ready for the series, here’s a bit of background and trivia on a few of the films (take notes, and impress your friends before the screenings!):
–The Arena District was once the site of the Ohio State Penitentiary, and two of the Pen’s most famous residents just happened to become two of America’s most distinguished 20th-century writers: O. Henry and Chester Himes, who survived the worst prison fire in American history in 1930. We’ve included films based on their work—O Henry’s Full House and Cotton Comes to Harlem, respectively—to call attention to this wonderful nugget of our city’s history.
--42nd Street’s Warner Baxter might not be a household name today, but the Columbus native enjoyed a nearly 40-year career in Hollywood and won the second Academy Award for Best Actor for In Old Arizona (1929). (Baxter also has a cameo, of sorts, in O. Henry’s Full House in a clip from The Cisco Kid.)
–Based on the book by Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt begins in Columbus but leaves it behind when our heroine flees her shameful circumstances. But there is a fleeting moment near the beginning of the film when we see a rack display of the Columbus Evening Dispatch, perhaps the only time “Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper” has appeared in a Hollywood film.
–With a writer’s center bearing his name located in his former home (and a bobble head day in his honor at Huntington Park in April 2012), James Thurber still looms large in the city. Though not specifically identified, Thurber’s choice of university, Ohio State (on the weekend of the big Michigan game, no less), serves as the backdrop for The Male Animal, starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.
–As celebrated as Thurber was as America’s preeminent humorist of the 20th century, no artist with Columbus ties comes close to the immeasurable influence of Jack Smith (born here in 1932), the father of American performance art, and a key influence on artists such as Andy Warhol, John Waters, David Lynch, and Cindy Sherman.
This is just a sampling of the wide array of films that we’ll be screening this June (all of them presented on prints, not from a DVD or online stream), you can find out more and plan your movie going here. We can’t wait to see you here as we can’t wait to keep the bicentennial celebration going.
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Cinema 614: A Bicentennial Celebration
–Six Screenings, June 7 to June 28, 2012
–Complete schedule at: http://www.wexarts.org/fv/index.php?seriesid=315
–All screenings (including double features) are $7 general public and $5 students, senior citizens, and Wexner Center members. Tickets available at the Wexner Center Ticket Office or online at http://tickets.wexarts.org
–View the brochure here: http://www.wexarts.org/fv/pdfs/Cinema614brochure_WEB.pdf