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.

FALL 2024: Harpur Cinema Program - A quick tour:

23 Mile (Mitch McCabe, 2024, 78 mins)

Fri 9/27 - Sun 9/29

In Person! Mitch McCabe’s hyperlocal, verité look at the complex, often contradictory political views that make up their home state of Michigan leading up to and following the 2020 election may feel too soon for some. But you shouldn’t look away from their detailed film diary, in which they capture the distinct voices who make up the electorate of the consequential swing state. McCabe takes the temperature from an objective standpoint, engaging representatives from lesser-known groups like “Michigan Militia of Love” and “Black Guns Matter” to explain their nuanced, often baffling philosophies. The film continuously catches you off guard, offering an unfiltered look at a state as it navigates COVID, threats to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Stop the Steal rallies in the wake of Biden’s win. -- Susannah Gruder

Skip Norman: Here and There (Program 1: The DFFB Years 1966-1969)

Fri 10/18 - Sun 10/20

Curated by Jesse Cumming, 105 mins American filmmaker, cinematographer, photographer, visual anthropologist, and educator Skip Norman (aka Wilbert Reuben Norman Jr.) remains a significant, yet often ignored force in the history of African-American cinema. In 1966 – following five years in Germany and Denmark, where he developed an interest in acting and directing alongside his studies dedicated to the German language and literature – he was accepted into the inaugural cohort of students at Berlin’s DFFB Film School. Collaborating with luminaries like Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander, and later, Haile Gerima. This program of early works, titled The DFFB Years, was produced between 1966 and 1969, with films ranging from deconstructed narratives and deceptive agit-prop to experimental essays, revealing not only the protean, multifaceted style of the young Norman, but an incendiary conceptual throughline that would inform later self-authored projects and collaborations, including a commitment to social justice and critiques of hypocritical liberalism.

Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988, 105 mins)

Fri 10/25 - Sun 10/27

Claire Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her multilayered, languorously absorbing feature debut, which explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds.

Union (Brett Story and Stephen Maing, 2024, 102 mins)

Fri 11/1 - Sun 11/3 

A Common Sequence (Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibbiser, 2023, 78 mins)

Fri 11/8 - Sun 11/10

In Person!  Within the human struggle to live and work on a changing planet, questions of value, extraction, and adaptation echo across seemingly disparate worlds. A Common Sequence examines shifts of life and labor through a critically-endangered salamander and plant patents in the apple industry. Weaving the stories of Dominican nuns running a conservation lab, a group of fisherman attempting to live off of a depleting lake, engineers developing AI-driven harvesting machines, and an indigenous biomedical researcher resisting the commodification of human DNA, the film becomes a meditation on the shifting border between the natural and unnatural world, and the dynamics of power at play.

In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2023, 84 mins)

Fri 11/15 - Sun 11/17

Sangwon (Kim Minhee) an actress recently returned to South Korea, is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a visitor: Sangwon is visited by her cousin, Jisoo (Park Miso) and Uiju, by a young actor, Jaewon (Ha Seongguk). Each of them wants to learn about a career in the arts. But they also have bigger questions. Both Sangwon and Uiju have ramyun noodles for lunch and they both add hot pepper paste to their ramyun noodles, not a very common thing to do. As our friends talk and drink the day away, similarities between these encounters multiply and we begin to realize they may be more than just mere coincidence.

Landfall (Cecilia Aldarondo, 2020, 94 mins)

Fri 11/22 - Sun 11/24

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony's governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72- billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. Landfall examines the kinship of these two storms-one environmental, the other economic-juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, Landfall reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?