1976 was a year of great cinema and social unrest. Through the classic films: Network, News From Home, and Taxi Driver, this curated trilogy, We’re Mad As Hell, looks 50-year back into the past to examine the anger and alienation of the times.
Network, the quadruple-Oscar winning picture brings us to an already distrustful past brimming with political anger and its struggle against an increasingly sensationalized news media. News From Home, captures its filmmaker, through letters from her mother, freshly immigrated and alone in New York. Taxi Driver keeps us in the big apple and into the lives of neglected souls like Travis Bickle, a psychotic New York cabby driven to violence.
Tickets: $10 for members and $14 for non-members
Series Pass (all 3 films): $25 for members and $35 for non-members
by Sidney Lumet
1976 | USA | Drama | 121 min.
Saturday January 10th 7:00pm
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth”
Lightning has struck American news television!! Information is out, ratings are in. After his spontaneous tirade ignites the public, aged UBS anchor Howard Beale finds himself the celeb-du-jour. For UBS, Beale proselytizes to an apathetic and nihilistic America, speaking whatever comes to his ‘damn’ mind.
The comedy from Sydney Lumet went on to four academy awards and became a touchstone for transformation of news into spectacle.
by Chantal Akerman
1976 | France | French with English Subtitles | Documentary | 89 min.
Saturday January 17th 7:00pm
“The public must be made aware of all this suffering that you young people see so clearly.”
News From Home se présente comme des « lettres d’amour » à la réalisatrice à New York de sa mère en Europe. Ils brossent un tableau intime de la vie familiale, avec son catalogue de maladies mineures, de routines domestiques, de fiançailles et d’angoisses financières. Les lettres sont contrastées par la monotone plate de la récitation d’Akerman et des images de Manhattan de 1976 (préservées dans l’ambre du film) comme une ville fantôme urbaine, extraterrestre, ses rues étant étrangement vides.
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News From Home comes through as “love” letters to the filmmaker in New York from her mother in Europe. They paint an intimate picture of family life, with its catalogue of minor illnesses, domestic routines, betrothals and financial anxieties. The letters are contrasted by the flat monotone of Akerman’s recitation and images of 1976 Manhattan (preserved in the amber of film) as an alien, urban ghost-town, its streets preternaturally empty.
by Martin Scorsese
1976 | USA | Drama/Thriller | 114 min.
Saturday January 24th 7:00pm
“Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c***s, the dogs, the filth, the s***. Here is a man who stood up!”
Robert De Niro stars as a mentally unstable veteran who works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City. Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture in 1976 Taxi Driver co-stars Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks in the all-too-real story of a psychotic New York cabby who is driven to violence in an attempt to rescue a teenage prostitute.