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Mondays
October 5 - November 9
7-10 pm

Please note that due to the length of Eyes Wide Shut, the first class (Oct. 5th)
will begin at 6:30 pm.

The word "taboo" can mean "sacred" and "holy" as well as "forbidden" and "under prohibition." In this course, we'll examine how dramatic and documentary films explore the sexual taboo. In particular, we will consider how these films frame the sacred and ritualistic elements of forbidden sexual activity alongside the potential dangers and pleasures of transgressing social and sexual norms. In his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick explores stereotypes of gendered sexual fantasy and the tensions between the psychological and the embodied taboo. In The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke captures a new kind of sadomasochistic ritual and depicts a radical form of masochistic passivity that invites the viewer to think of sex as a site of failure and unbecoming conduct. In Fire, the first of Deepta Mehta's "Elements" trilogy, Hinduism and traditional family structures collide with the portrayal of two Indian women, the provocatively named Sita and Radha, and their physical, emotional, and spiritual love for one another. In the documentary Jihad of Love, Parvez Sharma captures the difficult negotiations of queer Muslims in multiple countries. Reappropriating the term from its misuse in the West, Sharma's title refers to the Islamic concept of jihad, or a religious struggle, as well as the personal struggle of reconciling homosexuality and Islam. In Andrew Jarecki's documentary Capturing the Friedmans, we shift our attention to the volatility of dealing with potential cases of sexual abuse and pedophilia. Robinson Devor's documentary, Zoo, centers around a man who dies of peritonitis after engaging in sexual activity with a horse. Defying expectations, Zoo is neither graphic nor exploitative, but rather a thoughtful and meditative exploration of ritualistic sexual activity.

Jennifer Tyburczy is a teacher, a writer, and a performer. Recently she completed her Ph.D. at Northwestern University in the Department of Performance Studies with an expertise in gender and sexuality studies. Her articles on sexuality, visual culture, and the exhibition of sexual artifacts in museums have appeared in numerous journals, encyclopedias, and newsletters. She has performed at academic conferences, in modern art museums, and on the burlesque and vaudeville stage for the local Chicago troupe, the Girlie Q Variety Hour. Currently, she is performing in the film Porcelain's Dolls and teaching a course on women's art, literature, and music at Columbia College.

Tuesdays
October 6 - November 10
7-10 pm

It is often taken for granted that the desperation and corruption central to the film noir originate in the city. But in several classic noirs we experience these oppressive elements not in the urban labyrinth, but in the open spaces of the American west. In this course we will look at this genre in non-urban locations and what that says about the importance of space to the aesthetic and metaphor of the noir film. In The Big Heat, the city is both a literal environment and also a source of hopelessness. However, in the classic noirs Detour and Kiss Me Deadly, despair lingers outside the city as in Kiss Me Deadly happens mostly in Los Angeles, but the story begins on a desert highway into the city, and comes to its apocalyptic end at an isolated beach house –- at the edge of the world. The ill-fated road trip to LA in Detour never even reaches the city and in Touch of Evil, not only is corruption dislocated from the big city, it floats in a morally ambiguous space between two remote US/Mexico border towns. We will also screen and discuss Night of the Hunter and the neo-noir Red Rock West, both of which capture the noir mood without entering the city.

Anthony Stagliano is a filmmaker whose feature film, Fade, had its Chicago premiere at the Facets Cinémathèque. Stagliano has worked on a variety of productions including features, shorts and a documentary artist profile for a museum in California. He is a graduate student at DePaul, Stagliano's work there currently focuses on 20th century American literature and film, especially noir and gender in Hitchcock's Hollywood films.

Wednesdays
October 7 - November 11
7-10 pm

With the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934, movie studios were restricted in their depicting of certain "unacceptable" activities on screen. Prior to the code, the studios produced a string of provocative films that, for the time, were quite sexually explicit. Once the self-censorship began, the major studios had to come up with clever ways to entertain audiences without going outside the boundaries of the code. Out of these new constraints came the screwball comedy. The use of snappy dialogue filled with double entendres substituted for more straightforward "sex talk," with the female lead becoming the dominant sex talker if you will. Professor and film historian, Maria DiBattista calls these women "fast-talking dames", and their dialogue is used not only to get laughs, which it most certainly does, but also to transform the male into a new man of her own creation. This reverse Pygmalion scenario, as noted by DiBattista and others, is at the heart of the screwball comedy and places women in the primary role. This genre produced many of the our most noted and familiar female screen icons, including Irene Dunne, Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck. This class will examine the screwball comedy, in the context of the female protagonist and her very important place in the canon of American cinema.

Stephen Reginald is a freelance writer and editor, who has worked at various positions within the publishing industry for over 25 years. Most recently he was executive editor for McGraw-Hill's The Learning Group Division. A long-time student of film, Mr. Reginald hosts a "Meet Me at the Movies" program which convenes once a month at the Sherwood Conservatory of Music (Columbia College, Chicago).

Thursdays
October 8 - November 12
7-10 pm

Breaking the polished studio mold with a dynamic mix of angst, toughness, and sensitivity, John Garfield (1913-1952) created defiant urban outsiders in performances so naturalistic they feel contemporary. Born Jacob Julius Garfinkle on the Lower East Side of New York City, Garfield was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He acted with the Group Theater during the Great Depression but decided to leave Broadway and try his luck in Hollywood. At Warner Bros. Garfield broke the traditional leading man image but became typecast as the angry young man from the wrong side of the tracks with a chip on his shoulder. He embodied a fatalistic sense of cool long before Marlon Brando or James Dean, and was Hollywood's first smoldering anti-hero: sexy, up from the streets, brash and dangerous -- but always displayed a certain kind of subtlety in his performances. Long involved in liberal causes, Garfield got caught up in the McCarthy "red scare" and when he testified before Congress that althought he had never been a Communist, he was not going to "name names." After he was blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood, John Garfield died of a heart attack in 1952 at age 39.

Doug Deuchler is a playwright, historian, long-time educator, and theater critic for Oak Park's Wednesday Journal. He has written five books for the Arcadia Images of America series on the history of Oak Park, Cicero, Berwyn, Maywood, and the Brookfield Zoo. He teaches Film Appreciation at Moraine Valley College and Film History at Oakton Community College. He has previously taught classes at the Facets Film School, including High Heels on Wet Pavement: Femme Fatales in '40s Film Noir and John Garfield: Hollywood's First Rebel Hero.