7:30pm Wednesday, March 22, 2023
137 Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst
Adoption
(Márta Mészáros, 1975, Hungary, 99 min, in Hungarian w/ English subtitles)
Kata, a widow in socialist Hungary, lives alone, plies her skills as a woodworker in a furniture factory, and keeps up for years an affair with a married co-worker. When a group of teenage girls from the orphanage stop at her home, the balance of her life is disturbed by the beautiful, self-possessed Anna. Kata discovers her desire for a child, either by birth or by adoption. With breathtaking closeups, revelatory moving frames, and lush black-and-white photography, Mészáros creates a richly layered portrait of women seeking love and freedom and learning that adoption, in all its forms demands unforeseen adaptation. Adoption is the first film directed by a woman to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. New 4k digital restoration.
Introduction by Catherine Portuges (UMass Professor Emerita, Founding Director of UMass Film Studies, and Founding Curator of the MMFF)
Co-sponsored by:
Catherine Portuges
(UMass Professor Emerita and Founding Director of the MMFF)
Catherine Portuges is the founding director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies and founding curator of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and professor emerita, Program in Comparative Literature/Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She is a frequent lecturer at international conferences, an invited programmer, curator, juror, and consultant for film festivals and colloquia, and a delegate to international film festivals. Her books include Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 (Temple, 2013); Gendered Subjects (Routledge, 2012); and Screen Memories: the Hungarian Cinema of Márta Mészáros (Indiana, 1993). Her essays have appeared in Cinematic Homecomings: Exile and Return in Transnational Cinema; Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989: Re-Visions; Bringing the Dark Past to Light: the Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe; Projected Shadows: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss in European Cinema, and A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas. Prof. Portuges serves on the editorial board of Studies in Eastern European Cinema (UK), Jewish Film and New Media, and Hungarian Cultural Studies; she is associate editor for film for American Imago. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Board, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, and Film Consultant for Eastern Europe, European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (UK). She was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for “The Subjective Lens,” the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal from the Republic of Hungary for her contributions to Hungarian Cinema, and the Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Teaching.
Shawn Shimpach
(UMass Associate Professor and Director of the MMFF)
Shawn Shimpach has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University. His work focuses on the value and meanings created at the conjuncture of cultural, institutional, and textual practice. He is the from six continents on questions of technological change and global difference in the world of contemporary television. Shawn Shimpach is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication, a member of the Five College Film Council, core faculty in the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies He has curated and co-curated seven seasons of the MMFF before and during his time as the Festival’s Director. He also currently chairs the UMass Research Library Council. His research interests include the cultural history of film and television; the social and institutional constructions of the media audience; genre theory and screen genres; and screen industries. He is editor of The Routledge Companion to Global Television and author of Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero. He is currently working on a book for Routledge to be called Data-Driven TV, which will examine the history of relationships between audience data gathering and television programming in the U.S.
Trailer
This festival is made possible by the generous support of many departments, programs, colleges, and individuals at UMass Amherst, the Five Colleges, and beyond. We wish to thank: Major Sponsors: UMass Amherst: College of Humanities & Fine Arts, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, UMass Arts Council, and Five College Film Council. With additional support from: University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst, the UMass Department of Communication, the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, and the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program. And a special thank you to all of the incredible student interns!