December 2023
Friday November 17 – Monday December 4
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JOAN BAEZ
Where are we Located? Free Parking What else is Showing this Month? Contact Us Subscribe to our Newsletter
Sat, Nov 25 at 6:30 ♦ Sun, Nov 26 at 3:30
Fri, Dec 1 at 6:30 ♦ Sat, Dec 2 at 3:30 and 6:30 ♦ Sun, Dec 3 at 3:30 and 6:30
IU Fine Arts Theater ♦ Purchase Tickets
“I am not a saint, I am a noise,” wrote 13-year-old Joan Baez in her journal, reflecting on a discordance between her outer and inner lives that would only deepen. Icon of ’60s folk music and activism, Baez made the cover of TIME at 21, her relationship with Bob Dylan was widely publicized, and she famously performed “We Shall Overcome” at the March on Washington.
What the public didn’t know: she was subject to racist taunts as a child (her father was Mexican), suffered intense anxiety, and harbored long-simmering questions about unacknowledged family trauma. An intimate, revelatory portrait of an artist looking back on a six-decade career, crafted from a wealth of never-before-seen home movies, diaries, and audio recordings, while following Baez during her 2018 farewell tour.
2023 | 113 minutes
At 82, Baez seems to have processed her struggles. She is plain-spoken about her early fame and her devotion to Bob Dylan, and does not let herself off the hook when her son admits to feeling her absence while she was “busy saving the world.” An eloquent meditation on making peace with the past. . . CRITIC’S PICK! – The New York Times
Friday December 8 – Monday December 11
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PAST LIVES
Where are we Located? Free Parking What else is Showing this Month? Contact Us Subscribe to our Newsletter
Fri, Dec 8 at 7pm ♦ Sat, Dec 9 at 4pm and 7pm ♦ Sun, Dec 10 at 4pm
IU Radio & Television Theater ♦ Purchase Tickets
Past Lives is in the conversation as a BEST PICTURE candidate for this year’s Academy Awards. A film about second chances, if you missed Past Lives when we screened it this summer here’s your second chance….
A budding childhood romance between Nora and Hae Sung, classmates at a primary school in Seoul, ends abruptly when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny and love, and the choices that make a life.
An deeply romantic debut feature from Korean-Canadian filmmaker and New York City playwright Celine Song (Endlings). Song’s artful aesthetic and profound character writing explore love, identity, and “In Yun,” a Korean notion of fate stemming from two people’s connection in a past life. (106 minutes)
A MASTERPIECE! A movie that liberates your tears and makes you fall in love with it. It is almost assuredly predestined to be the single best movie you see this year. – Rolling Stone
This jaw-droppingly assured freshman effort from Celine Song has been perched atop most cinephiles’ must-see lists since its triumphant debut at Sundance. It’s a DELIRIOUSLY HONEST romantic drama that is utterly singular even while it calls to mind everything from Richard Linklater to Wong Kar-wai to David Lean’s Brief Encounter. – The Observer
A ONE-OF-A-KIND MIRACLE, Past Lives is one of the best movies of the year, maybe the very best even though it’s just June. I first found this gem at Sundance five months ago and I still can’t get it out of my head and heart. – ABC News
CRITIC’S PICK! – The NY Times
Friday December 8 – Monday December 18
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RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE
Where are we Located? Free Parking What else is Showing this Month? Contact Us Subscribe to our Newsletter
Fri, Dec 8 at 8:15 ♦ Sat, Dec 9 at 8:15 ♦ Sun, Dec 10 at 5:15
Sat, Dec 16 at 4pm and 7pm ♦ Sun, Dec 17 at 4pm
Locations: on Dec 8, 9 and 10 Rare Exports will be screened at the IU Fine Arts Theater
On Dec 16 and 17 Rare Exports will be at the IU Radio & Television Theater ♦ Purchase TicketsOur semi-annual Christmas film.
It’s the eve of Christmas in northern Finland, and an ‘archeological’ dig has just unearthed the real Santa Claus. But this particular Santa isn’t the one you want coming to town. When the local children begin mysteriously disappearing, young Pietari and his father Rauno, a reindeer hunter by trade, capture the mythological being and attempt to sell Santa to the misguided leader of the multinational corporation sponsoring the dig. Santa’s elves, however, will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader from captivity. What ensues is a wildly humorous nightmare – a fantastically bizarre polemic on modern day morality.
Finland / 84 min / 2010/ subtitled
Critics Pick! The Santa at the center of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is not the sort Mommy is likely to be kissing beneath the mistletoe (or anywhere else) this year. Drawing on ancient Scandinavian mythology, Jalmari Helander’s feature debut is a thing of frigid beauty and twisted playfulness. Kids will love the diminutive, motherless hero and a plot that’s completely bonkers; adults will enjoy the exuberantly pagan images and deadpan humor. -The New York Times
Friday December 8 – Monday December 18
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The Life and Times of ALLEN GINSBERG
Fri, Dec 8 at 6:30 ♦ Sat, Dec 9 at 3:30 and 6:30 ♦ Sun, Dec 10 at 3:30
Sat, Dec 16 at 3:30 and 6:30 ♦ Sun, Dec 17 at 3:30
IU Fine Arts Theater ♦ Purchase Tickets
Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher – Allen Ginsberg’s remarkable life shaped the very soul of American counterculture.
Jerry Aronson groundbreaking documentary premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival to much acclaim — thirty years later it has been digitally remastered. Featuring William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Joan Baez, and Abbie Hoffman (84 minutes)Rich, deep and moving. – Chicago Tribune
A fascinating portrait of the visionary poet.
– Newsweek
A rich slice of cultural history. – Boston Globe
A remarkably clearheaded study of a complex individual…few have taken so many chances and exercised so large an influence.
– The New York Times
The Ryder Film Series has presented the best in international, independent, and classic American films in Bloomington for over forty years. If your taste runs toward personal movies that you won’t find at the multiplex, major festival winners, or activist documentaries, you’ve come to the right place.
The Ryder screens films at several locations, each with its own unique charms.
A monthly film program is published in The Ryder magazine, Bloomington’s free magazine of the arts and popular culture. The magazine is distributed in over 250 locations in and around Bloomington and the Indiana University campus.
We welcome suggestions. Tell us what you’d like to see. We can be talked into almost anything.