Harpur Cinema

Refund Policy: When we experience technical issues, the projectionist will get contact information of the attendees. The attendees will be contacted by the department, and they would need to come to the Cinema Department office (CW-B41, basement of Classroom Wing) within 4 weeks from receiving notice to get a refund.

SPRING 2025: Harpur Cinema Program - A quick tour:

A Bruddah’s Mind (Cabeça de Nêgo) (Déo Cardoso, 2020, 86 mins)

Fri 2/7 - Sun 2/9 – with Zoom intro presentation on Friday evening @ 7:30. Co-Presented with LACAS Binghamton Dept.

 
Based on real events, this political drama fuses Brazilian history with international anti-racist movement. Echoing events from around the world, A Bruddah’s Mind effectively calls out racism, misogyny, and militarism. It reminds us about the importance of activism, political engagement, and the sacrifices that come with it. With an introduction by Ben Hur Nogueira, an Afro-Brazilian writer, columnist, and film critic in moderation with Juliana Góes an Afro-Brazilian assistant professor of Sociology at Binghamton University. She researches political resistance in collaboration with grassroots movements, especially Black organizations, sex workers' groups, urban settlements, and anti-prison movements in Brazil.

Two new films from Deborah Stratman: Last Things and Otherhood (Deborah Stratman, 2023, 53 mins)

Fri 2/21 - Sun 2/23

Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work that investigates issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, raptors, comets, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood, and faith. Last Things (2023, 50 mins) looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us, offering a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center. This film is preceded by the film Otherhood (2023, 3mins) in which mother and child confront the other. Meanwhile, some ladies are thinking. 

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2023, 147 mins)

Fri 2/28 - Sun 3/2

The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely “erase” their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent “retribution.” Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent, Nocturama) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn- of-the-century novella, The Beast in the Jungle, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, The Beast poignantly conveys humanity’s struggle against dissociative identity and emotionless existence.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Three Films (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 81 mins)

Fri 3/21 - Sun 3/23

The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, 1977, 109 mins)

Fri 3/28 - Sun 3/30

Shepitko’s emotionally overwhelming final film won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and has been hailed around the world as the finest Soviet film of its decade. Set during World War II's darkest days, The Ascent follows the path of two peasant soldiers, cut off from their troop, who trudge through the snowy backwoods of Belarus seeking refuge among villagers. Their harrowing trek leads them on a journey of betrayal, heroism, and ultimate transcendence.

Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023, 106 min)

Fri 4/4 - Sun 4/6

In the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, Takumi and his daughter, Hana, lead a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for the local udon restaurant. Increasingly, the townsfolk become aware of a talent agency’s plan to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable “escape” to the snowy wilderness. When two company representatives arrive and ask for local guidance, Takumi becomes conflicted in his involvement, as it becomes clear that the project will have a pernicious impact on the community. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to his Academy Award®-winning DRIVE MY CAR is a foreboding fable on humanity's mysterious, mystical relationship with nature. As sinister gunshots echo from the forest, both the locals and representatives confront their life choices and the haunting consequences they have.

Sarraounia (Med Hondo, 1986, 122 mins)

Fri 4/25 - Sun 4/27

Director Med Hondo unflinchingly depicts the horrors of colonial occupation and conflict with a realistic, epic style, to adapt Abdoulaye Mamani’s Sarraounia, a historical novel about the West African Battle of Lougou. With an incisive eye toward the psychology of warfare, Hondo charts the brutal arrogance of French commanders Captain Paul Voulet and Lieutenant Julien Chanoine, as well as the fierce determination of Sarraounia, the titular Azna queen, a revered leader who inspires her people to fight the French army when most of the surrounding tribes have made deals with the invaders or joined their forces. Ready to meet her adversaries on the battlefield to defend her tribe and its way of life, native oral history claims she was a witch who could hurl fire at the invaders and any crops that were blazed to ash regrew overnight with more than enough food to keep the warriors going. Rarely screened today, Sarraounia remains one of the greatest experiments in historical-surrealism to come from Africa.