Name: Cinematheque at the Chazen: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING
Start: 2025-02-09T14:00:00-06:00
Location: Chazen Museum of Art

Cinematheque at the Chazen: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING

At the Chazen: Treasures from the WCFTR
This Sunday afternoon series at the Chazen celebrates the history of adventurous film programming in Madison and beyond with films from the Amos Vogel Collection and the Wisconsin Film Festival Collection, both archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Our series kicks off with Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, which Amos Vogel introduced and distributed to American audiences through Cinema 16, the influential film society he ran in New York from 1947 to 1963. Two features included in previous editions of the Wisconsin Film Festival, Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple and Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing, will highlight examples of the independent and international films that the Festival has brought to Madison audiences since its founding in 1999. And in the spirit of Amos Vogel’s wide-ranging curation, the final program will bring together 16mm and 35mm prints of seven short films that he screened or distributed through Cinema 16. The Amos Vogel and Wisconsin Film Festival collections are part of WCFTR’s ongoing “Expanding Film Culture’s Field of Vision” project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
SUN., 2/9, 2 p.m.
Chazen
13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING
USA | 2001 | 35mm | 103 min.
Director: Jill Sprecher
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Alan Arkin
A group of New Yorkers, including a lawyer (McConaughey), an insurance manager (Arkin), a house cleaner (Clea Duvall), and a physics professor (Turturro), seemingly have little in common. From car accidents to marital infidelity, thirteen vignettes track the surprising connections between this set of strangers, as the intricate story highlights the unpredictable ways that small actions can affect us. In the 2002 Wisconsin Film Festival guide, Mary Carbine praised the film’s “dazzling narrative architecture, superb acting and emotionally literate sensibility.” The film was directed by Jill Sprecher and co-written with her sister Karen Sprecher, both Madison natives and UW-Madison alumni. Print courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. (MSJ)