Liberty Theatre Foundation Film Series Brochure

Elite Criterion Film Series Presented by the Liberty Theatre Foundation

Welcome, You are taking part in a historical event. For the first time since its closure in 1959, the Liberty Theatre has an audience regularly watching movies on the big screen.

The magic of cinema at the Liberty never died, it was just dormant. We want to reawaken the sense of community and excitement that comes from watching a movie with others.

The rituals, the smells and the feeling of a movie theater is an experience that even the best home theaters cannot replace. It has been part of our culture for nearly 100 years.

Over the next ten months we will take a journey though films and documentaries that have been specially selected as part of the Criterion Collection.

Some films might be your favorite classics, others unfamiliar. I hope that your choice to experience them here, in the Liberty Theatre, will give you a new appreciation for these fantastic works of art.

Chantell Cosner Executive Director Liberty Theatre Foundation THE LIBERTY THEATRE

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) Jabez Stone is a hard-working farmer trying to make an honest living, but a streak of bad luck tempts him to do the unthinkable: bargain with the Devil himself. For seven years of good fortune, Stone promises “Mr. Scratch” his soul when the contract ends. When the troubled farmer begins to realize the error of his choice, he enlists the aid of the one man who might save him: the legendary orator and politician Daniel Webster.

For All Mankind (1989) Al Reinert’s documentary “For All Mankind” is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Forty years after the first moon landing, it remains the most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about this earthshaking event.

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Elephant Boy (1936) Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda shared best director honors at the Venice Film Festival for this charming translation of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book story “Toomai of the Elephants.” “Elephant Boy” also served as the breakthrough showcase for the thirteen-yearold Sabu, whose beaming performance as a young mahout leading the British on an expedition made him a major international star.

The Gold Rush (1925) Charlie Chaplin’s comedic masterwork—which charts a prospector’s search for fortune in the Klondike and his discovery of romance (with the beautiful Georgia Hale)—forever cemented the iconic status of Chaplin and his Little Tramp character. Shot partly on location in the Sierra Nevadas and featuring such timeless gags as the dance of the dinner rolls and the meal of boiled shoe leather, “The Gold Rush” is an indelible work of heartwarming hilarity.

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Lord of The Flies (1963) In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding’s legendary novel about the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot “Lord of the Flies” with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters’ ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world. The Oscar-winning “The Times of Harvey Milk”, directed by Robert Epstein and produced by Richard Schmiechen, was as groundbreaking as its subject.

One of the first feature documentaries to address gay life in America, it’s a work of advocacy itself, bringing Milk’s message of hope and equality to a wider audience.

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Pygmalion (1938) Cranky Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) takes a bet that he can turn Cockney guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) into a “proper lady” in a mere six months in this delightful comedy of bad manners, based on the play

by George Bernard Shaw. This Academy Award–winning inspiration for Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” was directed by Anthony Asquith and star Howard, edited by David Lean, and scripted by Shaw himself.

God’s Country (1985) In 1979, Louis Malle traveled into the heart of Minnesota to capture the everyday lives of the men and women in a prosperous farming community. Six years later, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, he returned to find drastic economic decline. Free of stereotypes about America’s heartland, “God’s Country”, commissioned for American public television, is a stunning work of emotional and political clarity.

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My Man Godfrey (1936) The definitive screwball comedy, “My Man Godfrey” follows the madcap antics of a wealthy and eccentric family when they hire a down-andout “forgotten man” as their butler. “My Man Godfrey” features brilliant performances

by Carole Lombard and William Powell, and was the first film to receive Academy Award nominations in all four acting categories.

A special thank you to our grantors Union County Cultural Coalition Union Co. Tax Discretionary Fund & The Wildhorse Foundation

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Liberty Theatre Foundation PO Box 3057 La Grande OR 97850 541.626.3051 info@libertyonadams.org