Multicultural Film Series
Presented by the Webster University Multicultural Committee

A Constant Forge - The Life and Art of John Cassavetes
July 9, 16 & 23 at 8 pm
(Charles Kiselyak, 2000, USA, 200 min.)

A detailed journey through the career of one of film’s greatest pioneers and iconoclasts, Kiselyak’s film is assembled from candid interviews with Cassavetes’ collaborators and friends, rare photographs, archival footage, and the director’s own words. The film paints a revealing portrait of a man whose fierce love, courage, and dedication changed the face of cinema forever.

---

Shadows
July 10 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1959, USA, 81 min.)


John Cassavetes’ directorial debut revolves around an interracial romance between Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light-skinned black woman living in New York City with her two brothers, and Tony (Anthony Ray), a white man. The relationship crumbles when Tony meets Lelia’s brother Hugh (Hugh Hurd), a talented dark-skinned jazz singer struggling to find work, and discovers the truth about Lelia’s racial heritage. Shot on location in Manhattan with a cast and crew made up primarily of amateurs, Cassavetes’ Shadows is a visionary work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement.

---

Faces
July 11 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1968, USA, 130 min.)


The disintegration of a marriage is dissected in John Cassavetes’ searing film. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty marriage in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly powerful, nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts suburban alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema.

---

Husbands
July 12 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1970, USA, 131 min.)



Three friends, Harry, Archie and Gus, (Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes) embark on a cleansing weekend of the soul after the sudden death of their friend and contemporary Stuart. On a whim these middle-aged New Yorkers decide to flee to London to gamble, party and test the boundaries of life. A beautifully observed and outrageously unsentimental study of sentiment, Husbands explores the desires, loves and losses of a generation constantly running away from their lives through three men who actually do it.

---

Minnie and Moskowitz
July 17 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1971, USA, 114 min.)



Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel) is a nutty parking lot attendant who decides to head for California. Minnie (Gena Rowlands) is a museum curator whose relationship with a married man hits a dead end, thereby forcing her back into the dating world. When Moskowitz protects Minnie from a desperate suitor, a relationship forms that is at first raucous and bitter; eventually, however, the pair begins to realize that their differences pale in comparison to their inexplicable need to be together.

---

A Woman Under the Influence
July 18 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1974, USA, 155 min.)



John Cassavetes’ devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple deeply in love yet unable to express that love in terms the other can understand, the film is an uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil. One of the benchmark films of American independent cinema — A Woman Under the Influence is a heroic document from a true maverick director.

---

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
July 19 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1976, USA, 135 min.)



Cassavetes engages film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen’s club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to pretenses of composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime in a last-ditch effort to save his beloved club and his way of life. Suspenseful, mesmerizing, and idiosyncratic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a thought-provoking examination of desperation and masculine identity.

---

Opening Night
July 24 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1976, USA, 144 min)

Broadway actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) rehearses for her latest play, about a woman unable to admit that she is aging. When she witnesses the accidental death of an adoring young fan, she begins to confront the personal and professional turmoil she faces in her own life. Featuring a moving performance by Rowlands (and with some scenes shot on stages with live audiences reacting freely to the writing and performing), Opening Night exposes the drama of an actress who at great personal cost makes a part her own.

---

Gloria
July 25 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1980, USA, 123 min.)

Jack Dawn (Buck Henry) and his family are eliminated by the mob, because he was their accountant and was keeping a personal copy of their records. However his six-year-old Puerto Rican son, Phil (John Adames) escapes with Gloria Swenson (Gena Rowlands), a neighbor who was a former girlfriend of one of the gangsters. The mob pursues Gloria and Phil throughout New York City looking for a black book containing the info on their accounts.

---

Love Streams
July 26 at 8 pm
(John Cassavetes, 1984, USA, 141 min.)

---