F.I.L.M. Series

John Martoccia, in person, presents Critical Acclaim (2024)

Utica Indie filmmaker John Martoccia makes deeply religious Roman Catholic films about people in the throes of challenges to their faith, and to their senses of failure and success. His newest film, Critical Acclaim, is the third in a Trilogy that includes Vito Bonafacci (2011) and Death of a Tree (2015). It stars Robert Funaro (The Sopranos, The Irishman…), as “Johnny Boy,” once a struggling filmmaker, now in a relentless battle against...

Yi Cui, in person, presents To Alexandra (2024)

In her newest feature documentary, Yi Cui, who teaches film/filmmaking at Colgate University, intertwines two travelogues. The journey of researcher-writer Alexandra David-Néel across the Himalayas a century ago is evoked using David-Néel’s letters home. Yi Cui depicts her own experiences in eastern Tibet, using her camera to record and collaborate with the native Tibetan people she meets. Moving between image, sound and text—and between past and present—the film invites the viewers i...

Yi Cui returns to show Of Shadows (2016)

Centuries before the invention of cinema, people in various cultures were drawn to shadow play: forms of moving image and sound that told stories and provided audiovisual commentary on lived experience. As modern movie-making technologies evolved, these earlier premonitions of cinema struggled to survive. In Of Shadows, filmed in China's Loess Plateau where shadow plays have entertained people and deities for centuries, Yi Cui documents the struggles of one loyal group of shadow pla...

Zara Briski, in person, presents Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (2004) 

Briski’s collaboration with a group of young people living in a red-light district of Calcutta won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary in 2005. An inventive photographer and teacher, Briski engaged the group by teaching them how to photographically record their world. Briski’s visit to the current Wellin show, “Menagerie,” has provided an opportunity to bring her to Hamilton and to F.I.L.M. to present Born into Brothels.

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Jay Craven returns with a cut of Major Barbara, the newest Cinema Semester production.

For a decade, Jay Craven has worked with collaborative groups of film professionals and students from a range of colleges, including Hamilton, to produce feature films. He’s back with the newest production, an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. The story concerns an idealistic young woman who is engaged in helping the poor as a Major in the Salvation Army in London.

The following Hamilton Students contributed in signi...