Wednesday, April 25th, 2018

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017) Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mercantile Library (414 Walnut Street, 11th Floor, Cincinnati, OH 45202)

Co-Presented by The Mini Microcinema and The Mercantile Library

In this, the 42nd documentary by Frederick Wiseman (recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2016), the legendary filmmaker brings his incisive vision behind the scenes of one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning, capturing the vast programmatic scope of NYC’s library system. The NYPL is blessed with uniformly passionate staff and deeply devoted, appreciative bibliophiles and beneficiaries across its 92 branches. The film reveals a venerable place of welcome, cultural exchange, and intellectual creativity.- Zipporah Films

Free with $5 suggested donation.

LIMITED SEATING.... PLEASE MAKE A RESERVATION AT:Email reservations@mercantilelibrary.com or call 513-621-0717.

Sunday, April 22nd, 2018

Eve’s Bayou (1997) Directed by Kasi Lemmons

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

Presented by Black Folks Make Movies

A stunning coming-of-age tale (an exceedingly rare example of one that privileges the experience of young black girls); an honest, hyper-specific portrait of black life in rural Louisiana; and one of the greatest writer-director debuts in American cinematic history.  - Vulture Magazine

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Saturday, April 21st, 2018

Fidelio: Alice’s Odyssey (2014) Directed by Lucie Borleteau

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

UC Center for Film & Media Studies Mediterranean Stories Series

French director Lucie Borleteau’s intriguing film is both a love story and the tale of a woman’s atypical odyssey through a distinctively masculine world. The protagonist Alice (Ariane Labed) is an engineer on a cargo ship based in Marseille and her voyage on the rusty old Fidelio is equal parts escapist adventure at sea, aquatic identity quest, and meditation on the sea as a link between places and cultures. The only woman among a male crew, lulled by her love affairs and the camaraderie in ports of call, Alice exposes herself to the joy of living everything at once and trying to stay on course. Introduced by Michael Gott (UC Department of Romance Languages and Film & Media Studies)

Presented by the University of Cincinnati Center for Film and Media Studies

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Born Rich (2003) Directed by Jamie Johnson 

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

First-time filmmaker Jamie Johnson, a 23-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, captures the rituals, worries and social customs of the young Trumps, Vanderbilts, Newhouses and Bloombergs in the documentary special, Born Rich. Offering candid insights into the privileges and burdens of inheriting more money than most people will earn in a lifetime. Narrated by Johnson, a history student at New York University, and filmed over a three-year period, Born Rich spotlights ten young adults who came into the world knowing they would never have to work a day in their lives.
- Top Documentary Films

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Saturday, April 14th, 2018

Alps (2011) Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

UC Center for Film & Media Studies Mediterranean Stories Series

Lanthimos's third feature-length film, Alps tracks a group of misfits who start an underground business in grief therapy. Employees play the parts of the recently deceased so as to comfort their loved ones, with results that are by turns comic and traumatic. At the center of the story stands a young nurse (Angeliki Papoulia, Best Actress at the 2009 Sarajevo Film Festival), whose forays into method acting require deep-dives into multiple characters, with the mounting risk that she might not resurface. As identity play becomes identity crisis, what begins as a side job proves to be all-consuming. Introduced by Christopher Carter (UC Department of English).

Presented by the University of Cincinnati Center for Film and Media Studies

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

Conversations with Photographers (2014)

Directed by Ann Segal

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

This one-hour documentary explores the work of Cincinnati photographers Helen Adams, Gordon Baer, Jymi Bolden, Robert Flischel, Melvin Grier and Michael Wilson. Produced by Ann Segal, shot by Scott Ginn and edited by both, images are interspersed with short but in depth conversations about their lives and careers. Funded by FotoFocus and premiered in October 2014.

Ann Segal is a Cincinnati photographer and film producer. A graduate of Walnut Hills and Boston University via University of Wisconsin, she began her photographic career in Santa Barbara and Mill Valley, CA. She has exhibited her work extensively in Cincinnati after returning here in the early 1990’s. She has exhibited her work and curated shows for FotoFocus since 2012 when she started documenting local photographers. For FotoFocus 2018 she will be premiering a video self portrait, ‘Through the Lens of Time’ at The Mini Microcinema. 

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Sunday, April 8th, 2018

Open Screen

Like Open Mic Night But With Movies

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

Join us as we host our third “Open Screen” event, highlighting work by local film and video makers.  The program will include a mix of short films from varying genres, with a total screening duration of 80 minutes. All filmmakers will be in attendance to present their work. Please join us for this new bi-monthly celebration of local media makers! Interested in screening your work? Visit http://www.mini-cinema.org/open-screen/ for more information. 

Free with $5 suggested donation. 

Saturday, April 7th, 2018

Lil’s + Lils  - Films for Kids

Doors at 10:30 AM, Screening at 11:00 AM

@ The Mini 1329 Main St.

Enjoy a selection of short films for children. The thirty-minute program includes animated films from all over the world that are either in English or without dialogue. Also enjoy free bagels from Lil’s Bagels and free coffee from Iris Book Cafe. All ages welcome!

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018

The Appalachian Studies Presents…

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

In conjunction with the 41st Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, The Mini presents “Pieced Together” along with excerpts from “The Mountain Minor.” Currently in post-production, “The Mountain Minor,” directed by Dale Farmer and Susan Pepper, tells the story of Oza and Vestal Abner in Eastern Kentucky’s depression era as they face the decision of leaving their life and home to find more opportunities for work in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fifty years later, following the desire to return to their mountain home, they face similar struggles of uprooting a life and passing on the musical traditions that have connected the Abner family to Eastern Kentucky for generations. Selected clips of this film will be shown! Directors Dale Farmer and Susan Pepper in attendance!

Pieced Together is the first documentary film about the American Quilt Square Trail movement.  Directed by Julianne Donofrio, a Peabody award-winning producer and veteran of ABC News, the movie tells the story of how one Ohio woman’s love for her mother changed the American landscape and saved her life after job loss and breast cancer.  Donna Sue, the daughter, received the Ohio Governor’s Award for the Arts in Community in 2010 and Maxine Groves (deceased, May 2015) was an honored elder and Ohio Arts Council master, traditional Appalachian textile artist.  Presented by  Julianne Donofrio, Michael Maloney, Omope Carter Daboiku

41st Annual Appalachian Studies Conference

Re-stitching the Seams: Appalachia Beyond Its Borders

April 5-8, 2018 (Millennium Hotel, Cincinnati, Ohio)

http://www.appalachianstudies.org/annualconference/

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, March 29th, 2018

Harlan County USA (1976) Directed by Barbara Kopple

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM @ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack — with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece — the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line. - Criterion Collection

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Tuesday, March 27th, 2018

Ben-Hur (1959) Directed by William Wyler

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM @ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

In Roman-held Jerusalem, Prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) finds himself betrayed by his best friend. So begins a quest for revenge across a vast and spectacular Roman Empire, from shipboard slavery to victory in the arena. Ben-Hur is a prime example of the midcentury Hollywood “Toga Epic,” featuring extravagant production values, thrills & chills, and weighty moral messaging. Showpiece sequences like the famous chariot race remain thrilling. With its wide range of Mediterranean characters and locales, this film also offers a view of how Americans imagined this region in the wake of the Suez Crisis and the depths of the Cold War. Introduced by Colin Shelton (UC Department of Classics).

Presented by the University of Cincinnati Center for Film and Media Studies

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Saturday, March 24th, 2018

Certain Women (2016) Directed Kelly Reichardt

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM @ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

The expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy and unfolding in self-contained but interlocking episodes, Certain Women navigates the subtle shifts in personal desire and social expectation that unsettle the circumscribed lives of its characters: a lawyer (Laura Dern) forced to subdue a troubled client; a wife and mother (Michelle Williams) whose plans to construct her dream home reveal fissures in her marriage; and a night-school teacher (Kristen Stewart) who forms a tenuous bond with a lonely ranch hand (Lily Gladstone), whose longing for connection delivers an unexpected jolt of emotional immediacy. With unassuming craft, Reichardt captures the rhythms of daily life in small-town Montana through these fine-grained portraits of women trapped within the landscape's wide-open spaces. - Criterion Collection

Programmed by Francesca Marcotte Rietz

Discussion led by Valerie Weinstein, Ph.D. (Associate Professor Dept. of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Dept. of German Studies, Program in Film and Media Studies - University of Cincinnati)

Sponsored by the UC Center for Film & Media Studies

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, March 22nd, 2018

Until the Birds Return (2017) Directed by Karim Moussaoui

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

UC Center for Film & Media Studies Mediterranean Stories Series

In Algeria today, past and present collide in the lives of a newly wealthy property developer, a young woman torn between the path of reason and sentiment and an ambitious neurologist impeded by wartime wrongdoings. Karim Moussaoui’s debut film follows three stories that plunge us into the human soul of a contemporary Arab society. Selected for the “Un Certain Regard” sidebar at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Director Karim Moussaoui in attendance!

Sponsored by the UC Center for Film and Media Studies and the Institut Français.

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Sunday, March 18th, 2018

Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) Directed by Gordon Parks Jr. 

Presented by Black Folks Make Movies

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

A rare blaxploitation classic starring Vonette McGee & Max Julien, Thomasine & Bushrod was intended as a counterpart to Bonnie and Clyde. This pair of thieves, who operate in the American south between 1911 and 1915, pattern themselves after Robin Hood and hold the White Establishment as (a 'modern-day') Sheriff of Nottingham. Here's the clincher-- Thomasine and Bushrod steal from rich, white capitalists, then give to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites. ~ Ratiera L. Harrison, IMDb

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

Moving Pictures: A Night of Experimental Animation

Curated by Lillian Currens

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

The rough definition of animation is a series of stills shown in rapid succession to create the illusion of movement. When we think 'animation' the first thing that comes to mind is typically Mickey Mouse or Saturday morning cartoons. However, since it's advent, film makers have been utilizing the art form to experiment, push boundaries and create entirely new genres and techniques. Join us for a series of short experimental films that break convention and turn the banal "cartoon" into an elevated art form. The collection make use of traditional cel animation as well as CGI, collage, stop motion and more to create some of the most creative and mind bending cinematic works. 

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Tuesday, March 13th, 2018

3 Women (1977) Directed by Robert Altman

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naïve and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse "Thoroughly Modern" Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman's Day magazines. When Millie accepts Pinky into her home at the Purple Sage singles complex, Pinky's hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, Robert Altman's dreamlike masterpiece, 3 Women, careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s.

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, March 8th, 2018

Caravaggio (1986) Directed by Derek Jarman

Presented by the Art Academy of Cincinnati

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

Derek Jarman's most profound reflection on art, sexuality and identity retells the life of the celebrated 17th-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld. Caravaggio incorporates the painter's precise aesthetic into the movie's own visuals, while touching on all of Jarman's major concerns: history, homosexuality, violence and the relationship between painting and film. Caravaggio is probably the closest Derek Jarman ever came to making a mainstream film.  -Zeitgeist Films

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Tuesday, March 6th, 2018

Bamboozled (2000) Directed by Spike Lee

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

Presented by the University of Cincinnati History Department in conjunction with the Zane L. Miller Symposium: Conversations in the City:  Race, Film and the City

As timely in 2018 as it was in 2000, Spike Lee’s dark satire angrily asks us to consider how popular culture, commerce, violence, and institutional racism perpetuate African American stereotypes and exclusion. Centered on an unexpectedly popular fictional variety show, Mantan: The New Millenial Minstrel Show, "Bamboozled" was dismissed by some critics as “heavy handed,” even racist. Yet Lee’s film continues to resonate in an era of Black Lives Matter and #OscarsSoWhite. What has changed? Who is at fault? What should we do? The film features Damon Wayans, Savion Glover, Tommy Davidson, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Michael Rapaport.

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Symposium Event Website:

https://www.facebook.com/events/539420049774715/

Saturday, March 3rd, 2018

Lil’s + Lils - Films for Kids

Doors at 10:30 AM, Screening at 11:00 AM

@ The Mini 1329 Main St.

Enjoy a selection of short films for children. The thirty-minute program includes animated films from all over the world that are either in English or without dialogue. Also enjoy free bagels from Lil’s Bagels and free coffee from Iris Book Cafe. All ages welcome!

CAC ArtPlay @ The Mini

Workshop Time: 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm

@ The Mini 1329 Main St.

Stick around after our “Lil’s + Lils (Films for Kids)” screening for a kid-friendly filmmaking workshop! The Contemporary Arts Center will offer a stop-motion animation workshop where children will Experiment with the iMotion app and learn how to tell a compelling story using the illusion of movement. Come prepared to experiment! The CAC will provide all equipment and art-making materials. (20 participants max) Free!

Free with $5 suggested donation.

Thursday, March 1st, 2018

La Ciénaga (2001) Directed by Lucrecia Martel

Presented by the Miami University Film Studies Program

Doors at 7:00 PM, Screening at 7:30 PM

@ The Mini Microcinema - 1329 Main St.

The release of Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beautiful cinematography, and a highly sophisticated use of on and off-screen sound, Martel turns her tale of a dissolute bourgeois extended family, whiling away the hours of one sweaty, sticky summer, into a cinematic marvel. This visceral take on class, nature, sexuality, and the ways that political turmoil and social stagnation can manifest in human relationships is a drama of extraordinary tactility, and one of the great contemporary film debuts. - Criterion

Introduction by Hugo Rios-Cordero, Assistant Professor, Miami University Film Studies Program

Free with $5 suggested donation.