Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
Many Tuesdays before the film screening I sit outside the theater with Dana Baker, the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema Coordinator, and greet patrons as he tears their tickets. This past Tuesday, we were awaiting the start of A Quiet Passion, a Terence Davies film about the life of Emily Dickinson. As we stood by the…
NOTE: The discussion of Norman below contains some plot spoilers. Joseph Cedar’s Norman, the Israeli director’s first American production, is a film that can easily take you by surprise. Its trailer suggests a playful look at a charming conniver who is out of his depth. Although there is truth to that description, it doesn’t quite encompass…
I’ve enjoyed leading discussions of so many brilliant and entertaining films at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas through the years, but the anticipation for the May 16th screening of Jordan Peele’s horror film Get Out was positively electric. It’s not that the crowd was particularly large, not for a film that was one week away…
Whenever I introduce my undergraduate students to the classic maternal melodrama, Stella Dallas, I always feel a little sad that they don’t like the protagonist as much as I do. Stella, played by the brilliant Barbara Stanwyck, is a young, working-class woman, who marries a much wealthier man named Stephen after some practical, strategic wooing….
In my April 4th talkback on Niki Caro’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, the audience and I considered the film’s use of history to comment on the present. Just as significant, however, was the film’s sustained animal motif in its commentary on the Holocaust. The film tells the true story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who operate…
In the most recent Tuesday Talkback, the SteelStacks audience and I considered Niki Caro’s 2017 Holocaust film, The Zookeeper’s Wife. Based on real events, this movie tells the story of a Polish woman and her husband (Antonina and Jan Zabinski), who run a Warsaw zoo at the dawn of World War II. When the Nazis…
Since 2016, The Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative at Lehigh University has offered an annual free film series at the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas that brings community members together to discuss innovative and timely cinematic works. This year’s spring series focuses on the theme of migration and gives attendees the opportunity to engage with important issues…
For the past five years, I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the Cinema Committee and hosting a weekly film discussion series at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks. Our weekly film discussions are called the Tuesday Talkback and provide a unique opportunity to share stimulating conversation with audiences about a wide range of movies, from…
On Tuesday, March 21st, South Side Bethlehem residents packed the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas to view the documentary After Spring. The documentary portrays the five-year odyssey of Syrian refugees settled in and around one of the world’s largest refugee camps in Zaatari, Jordan. Organized through Lehigh University’s MDHI-funded Communities Film Series 2017 with its exigent focus on…
You enter a dimly lit theater. The stage sits dark, minimally dressed. Scattered papers outline the borders of the floor and a labyrinth is projected centerstage. Upstage, four flat panels connect on the wall to create a large screen. The sole actress enters stage left, dressed presumably as a tourist. A recorded voice both orients…