NOTFILM – Samuel Beckett/Buster Keaton Documentary This Weekend at Webster U

NOTFILM screens this Friday through Sunday (July 22nd-24th) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood, Webster Groves, MO 63119). The film begins each evening at 8:00. 

In 1964 author Samuel Beckett set out on one of the strangest ventures in cinematic history:  his embattled collaboration with silent era genius Buster Keaton on the production of a short, titleless avant-garde film.  Beckett was nearing the peak of his fame, which would culminate in his receiving a Nobel Prize five years later.  Keaton, in his waning years, never lived to see Beckett’s canonization. The film they made along with director Alan Schneider, renegade publisher Barney Rosset, and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Boris Kaufman, has been the subject of praise, condemnation, and controversy for decades. Yet the eclectic participants are just one part of a story that stretches to the very birth of cinema, and spreads out to our understanding of human consciousness itself.

NOTFILM is the feature-length movie on their film’s production and its philosophical implications, utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.

The critics love NOTFILM:

A.O. Scott at The New York Times says:

“NOTFILM testifies to an almost inexhaustible fascination with the pleasures and paradoxes of cinema…. Notfilm finds a hitherto uncharted dimension of human and cinematic experience.”

Kenneth Turan at The Los Angeles Times called NOTFILM:

“Completely fascinating! … A thoughtful, incisive meditation on its decades-old events,Notfilm is gossipy and philosophical by turn, joining microscopic analysis of the filmmakers’ lofty intentions with juicy morsels of information about exactly what happened when theory met practice on the steamy summer streets of New York City where Filmwas shot…For moviegoers who care about film not just as a title, Notfilm can be unreservedly recommended.”

Now you’ll have the chance to see it on the big screen when it plays this weekend Friday through Sunday (July 22nd-24th) at Webster University.

Admission is:

$6 for the general public
$5 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools
$4 for Webster University staff and faculty

Free for Webster students with proper I.D.

Advance tickets are available from the cashier before each screening or contact the Film Series office (314-246-7525) for more options. The Film Series can only accept cash or check.

The Webster University Film Series site can be found HERE

http://www.webster.edu/film-series/