Switzerland/2022—directed by Eva Vitija | 83 min. 

This revealing documentary about American author Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) is based on her notebooks and diaries—discovered posthumously—and the intimate reflections of friends, family and lovers. Like the protagonist of her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith led a double life.

She concealed her lesbianism from her family and her readers; her psychological thrillers, rooted in obsessive passion, grew from the complex life of a child coldly rejected by the mother she adored. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was adapted into the classic 1951 Hitchcock film. Her second, The Price of Salt (1952), dared to give a happy ending to a tale of lesbian lovers and was consequently shunned by publishers. Loving Highsmith elegantly weaves passages from the author’s diaries with rare footage to reveal a woman ahead of her time—one who paid dearly for her audacity. In English, German and French with English subtitles. 

“In centering the writer’s sexuality in her lively and captivating documentary, Eva Vitija does a great service... Highsmith’s life is brought sharply into focus.” -Jude Dry, IndieWire 
 

Chile/2022—directed by Patricio Guzmán | 83 min. 

Patricio Guzmán, known for his great 1976 documentary epic The Battle of Chile, turns his attention to the events that led to the election of Chile’s new president last year. In 2019, seemingly without warning, a revolution began in the streets of Santiago. It was the event that 80-year-old filmmaking legend Guzmán had been waiting for all his life: a million and a half people in the streets of the Chilean capital demanding a future based on justice, education, healthcare, and, above all, a constitution comprised of laws and rights to replace the rules of a military dictatorship.

Urgent and exciting, My Imaginary Country transports audiences to a specific place—and moment—in history. That moment—and the film’s release—preceded Chile’s election of September 2022, when events took a new turn. In Spanish with English subtitles.  

“Vivid and inspirational! Guzmán’s heart and soul investment in the film makes for an emotional and involving documentary.” -Allan Hunter, Screen International 

Brazil/2021—directed by Aly Muritiba | 120 min.

Daniel (Antonio Saboia), a teacher at a police academy in southern Brazil, is placed on unpaid leave because of a violent incident that’s dominating the news. The only thing holding him together is his online romance with Sara; though Daniel has yet to meet her in person, Sara’s sudden, unexplained disappearance is more than Daniel can bear.

After driving 2,000 miles across Brazil to find her, he posts Sara’s picture all over her small town, yet no one recognizes her—until a mysterious phone call sets him on a journey of the heart that will change both Sara and Daniel forever.

The remarkably involving Private Desert is both a swooning, suspenseful, sun-baked romance and a triumphant affirmation of love and commitment in an era when empathy seems imperiled everywhere. Brazil’s official submission for Best International Feature, 94th Academy Awards®. In Portuguese with English subtitles.  

“Achingly beautiful and incredibly erotic.” -Manuel Betancourt, Variety 

Canada/2015—directed by Joan Tosoni | 156 minutes

An aging monarch resolves to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, with consequences he little expects. His reason shattered in the storm of violent emotion that ensues, with his very life hanging in the balance, Lear loses everything that has defined him as a king – and thereby discovers the essence of his own humanity.

Four centuries after it was written, Shakespeare’s King Lear – starring the incomparable Colm Feore in the role of a lifetime – resonates brilliantly in this Stratford Festival on Film production, staged live at Stratford’s Festival Theatre by Antoni Cimolino and directed for film by Joan Tosoni. 

“This superb production is not only the Stratford Festival at its finest, it is Shakespeare at his finest.” -Robert Reid, The Record 

David Hinton is an American poet, and translator who specializes in Chinese literature and poetry. The arts were considered forms of Zen Buddhist practice in ancient China, and mountain landscapes were integral to that practice.  

Hinton’s new book, Wild Mind, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction explores how Zen is a path to reveal the kinship of mind and nature, one that must be re-animated to counter our modern ways of devaluing and exploiting our planet.  

Detroit Zen Center monks will offer a guided meditation as part of this program and facilitate a conversation with Hinton and audience members after his presentation. (75 min.) 

In celebration of the opening of a new performance space in Midtown Detroit’s Carr Center, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History will participate in New Standards Jazz Crawl, a series of performances by women composers curated by Terri Lyne Carrington.

Charenée Wade is a singer, composer, arranger, educator and professor at the Aaron Copland School at Queens College, and was just recently appointed to the Peabody Institute. Known for expert vocal improvisational ability and her seriously swinging groove, Wade evokes a classic jazz sound akin to Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan, two of her musical touchstones. While she has earned many accolades – first runner-up in New York’s Jazzmobile Vocal competition; a participant in Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead program and starring role in the off-Broadway show Café Society, her performances are always an authentic tour de force of jazz vocal performance traditions.

In celebration of the opening of a new performance space in Midtown Detroit’s Carr Center, the DIA will participate in New Standards Jazz Crawl, a series of performances by women composers curated by Terri Lyne Carrington.

When Grammy-nominated recording artist, composer, and bandleader Tia Fuller picks up her saxophone, amazing things happen. Blending technical brilliance, melodic creativity, and the performing precision drawn from both her academic and stage experience, Fuller is a force within the worlds of jazz, pop and R&B, and balances the roles of a touring and recording artist with that of a full-time professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

An accomplished solo artist, she has recorded five full-length projects with her quartet, and her most recent album Diamond Cut, produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, received a Grammy nomination in the Best Instrumental Jazz category.  Fuller can be seen touring regularly with several bands. She has appeared with Carrington to perform her Grammy-winning Mosaic Project and Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue; served as assistant musical director for Esperanza Spalding’s Radio Music Society tour, and recorded and toured with Dianne Reeves for her Grammy-winning Beautiful Life album.  
 

Music For Interesting Times is the sobering new pandemic-era program by bassist-composer Rick Robinson (Mr. CutTime), exploring existential themes of drastic collective and personal changes, newfound love, and the bittersweet challenge of enjoying life around increasing climate devastation.

Written for his soulful ensemble of strings and drums, CutTime Simfonica, the program includes deep insights into the lives of Sandy Hook shooting families, and a farewell from beloved WSU Ecumenical professor Dr. Percy Licardo Moore, who passed away in 2018.

This program will conclude with Chaconne: For Interesting Times, its own film by Kresge Artist, filmmaker Brandon Walley.

This program may not be suitable for children under 12. 

Internationally acclaimed artist Sean Scully will lecture on the legacy of painter Vincent Van Gogh, placing key paintings from the DIA’s exhibition Van Gogh in America into dialogue with his own artistic practice. As Scully will discuss, Van Gogh’s paintings were made in a time of great change not unlike our own, as artists were reeling from the onset of the twentieth century.

As Van Gogh faced the end of ruralism and the steady rise of industry, he worked to preserve the very idea of landscape. Revealing Van Gogh’s continued resonance for artists working today, Scully will ask what Van Gogh’s paintings might help us see about our own time. 

Sponsored by the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art 

France/1981—directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix | 117 min.

French postman Jules is on the run across Paris—including a hair-raising, unforgettable motorcycle-and-moped chase through the Métro—hotly pursued by a drug dealer’s hit team, ruthless music pirates, and outnumbered police. And why? Because Jules has a secretly pirated recording by opera diva Cynthia Hawkins, the woman of his dreams (played by real-life American soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) whose major eccentricity is her “live performances only” policy.

A surprise smash upon its 1982 American release—including sold-out performances at the DFT—Beineix’s dazzling directing debut was a worldwide phenomenon, and singlehandedly launched the cinéma du look, an explosion of visually stunning, punk-inspired, super-cool French movies in the early ’80s. Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Diva’s U.S. release with this special 35mm screening—just as originally presented. 

In French and English with English subtitles.

“It’s about the joy of making movies. Every shot seems designed to delight the audience.” -Pauline Kael, The New Yorker