Film series: Arrr, Matey: Pirates and Piracy September 6, 2006

Wednesday nights in September and October:

ARRR, MATEY: PIRATES AND PIRACY
WED SEP 6 2006 - WED OCT 25 2006

Avast, me hearties! We have charted dangerous waters to bring you this flotilla of films, from classic swashbucklers the likes of Michael Curtiz's The Sea Hawk, Jacques Tourneur's Anne of the Indies, and Alexander Mackendrick's A High Wind in Jamaica, to a strange brew of post-piratical features like Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate, Ulrike Ottinger's Madame X, and E. R. Nelson's The Pirates of the Great Salt Lake, each a broadside to the hull of the USS Hollywood. The recent rise of Pirates of the Caribbean has left us questioning just what kind of rogues these pirates be—are they ruthless renegades of the seven seas, gallant privateers swinging gracefully from mast to deck, or rouged and dandy buccaneers, drunk on the grog of grandiosity? And with the galley of pirate fanciers growing daily, between seafaring supply stores, fathomless blogs, and Blackbeard impersonators, we wonder what could be the course of this barbarous affection. While we divine what might a pirate be, we add a new member to the crew, the cultural scrounger who burns booty to fashion into artful trinkets of commerce and commentary. Craig Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws and He Jian-jun's Pirated Copy sail under these new colors, pirates to their dying day. Join us as we set to see.

Special thanks to Carl Martin, who has put his prodigious piratical trailer collection at our disposal throughout the series. Thanks also to Ol' Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy, the Pirate Guys, who invented International Talk Like a Pirate Day, September 19.

Steve Seid
Video Curator

Click titles to view full film notes

WED SEP 6 2006
7:30 The Sea Hawk
Avast, ye Flynn fans! This is Errol at his swashbuckling best, a commanding and athletic presence, in a 1940 classic directed by Michael Curtiz with anti-Hitler overtones. Preceded by a short film with a long title, The Artwork in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as Told to Keith Sanborn.

WED SEP 13 2006
7:30 The Pirate
Judy Garland and Gene Kelly star in Vincente Minnelli's sly parody of the swashbuckler, an ode to illusion set to Cole Porter songs and played out against the director's always marvelous color schemes and visual choreography. With Negativland short Gimme the Mermaid.

WED SEP 20 2006
7:30 Anne of the Indies
In 1951, Jacques Tourneur (Cat People) gave the infamous female pirate Anne Bonny her own film, and her own proto-feminist reasons to pillage the British fleet around Jamaica, along with many a male ego. Jean Peters and Louis Jourdan star.

WED SEP 27 2006
7:30 Sonic Outlaws
Local artist Craig Baldwin's avant-garde classic practices and preaches piracy: it is a charged montage of movie lifts, quirky quotation, and prankster pastiche drawn from his legendary archive of cultural hand-me-downs. With short Uso Justo (Fair Practice).

WED OCT 4 2006
7:30 A High Wind in Jamaica
“Alexander Mackendrick's yarn of pirate-captured children adrift between primitivism and Victorianism is pure cinema and pure entertainment, with comedy and tragedy ironically balanced in the combination of childhood dreams and adult dread.”—Time Out. With Negativland short No Business.

WED OCT 11 2006
7:30 Madame X, An Absolute Ruler
Ulrike Ottinger's adventure in female piracy is brilliantly costumed and playful in its swashbuckling earnestness. It is also a unique discourse on women and power, as seven women dare to forfeit the boredom and safety of their everyday lives and set sail aboard the ship Orlando, where the timid hold no course.

WED OCT 18 2006
7:30 The Pirates of the Great Salt Lake
“An intelligent, satirical, character-driven, laugh-out-loud funny comedy-action hybrid of Cervantes' Don Quixote and Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean-with ghosts, heroes, villains, the plank, [and] plenty of eyeliner.”—SF Indiefest 2006. With Rodney Graham short Vexation Island.

WED OCT 25 2006
7:30 Pirated Copy
In this drama set on the streets of Beijing, where the black market in pirated DVDs thrives, China's “Sixth Generation” director He Jian-jun creates fiction from a stark reality: a society where fantasy thrives as an illicit marketplace of images. With short Abuse of Power.

Official Website: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfa_programs/pirates/index.html