On Thursday, April 10, movie lovers are invited to consider Stanley Kubrick’s iconic horror film The Shining from a new perspective. Liberal Arts faculty member Dr. Christopher Wilson will introduce the film with an emphasis on the hotel in which it takes place. Instead of a backdrop that holds the plot and main characters, he proposes that the building acts as a fourth character after Jack (Jack Nicholson), his wife (Shelley Duvall), and their son.
Wilson also teaches a Liberal Arts course called Architecture in Film that examines cities, places, and spaces as seen in movies. Dr. Wilson chooses films where the buildings and spaces help tell the story. He points out that in The Shining, the hotel is the first major element the viewer sees. He said, “I chose The Shining for that reason—not only is the hotel a character, but important scenes of the film take place on stairs (meaning: transition), in doorways (meaning: relationship troubles), and at windows (meaning: watching/being watched).”
Now in its ninth year and 19th season, the Big Screen Film Series began in 2015 with a screening of a Hungarian film called White God by Kornel Mundruczo. Each season has a unique theme: The ‘80s: Big Screens! Big Hair! Big Drama!, Close Connections: Around the World with Film, Disguise and Transformation, and Hot Button Movies: Courting Controversy. The films are curated by a rotation of Liberal Arts faculty members, whose choices reflect their areas of interest and expertise, with the exception of a few seasons of special guest collaborators.
A few years ago, they invited librarians to curate and introduce a series featuring movies about books and libraries. For another season, they partnered with New College to celebrate the anniversary of the book Frankenstein, showing half a dozen film versions.
The series was started by Liberal Arts faculty members Dr. Susan Doll and Del Jacobs, the idea of Jacobs, who is a film historian. He had been involved with film series at several venues in Sarasota and proposed it to Dr. Doll, who had her own experiences organizing midnight movies in Chicago. “To be able to see movies from all over the world, movies from all eras of film history, movies you have never heard of, or movies that are popular favorites was (and is) an incredible opportunity to understand movies as an art form or as entertainment or as a reflection of the era that produced it.” Dr. Doll shared.
Over the years, they have shown everything from Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles to the Turkish film Mustang, the silent film Thief of Bagdad, and Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. They have screened to as few as five people in the audience and as many as 80.
Del said of the value that the film series offers students at the College, “A community of spectators gathered together to watch a film on the big screen is the ultimate manifestation of cinema and the optimum witness experience for both audience and student-filmmaker. Our Ringling series is curated for relevance and effect and lends historical perspective to the art and commerce of the movies.”
The Big Screen Film Series screening of The Shining will give audience members a small glimpse of Dr. Wilson’s class, which looks at buildings and the built environment as they are portrayed in films. “Most of the films that we see in the course involve a building (or entire city) that isn’t just background but seems to be one of the characters of the film, along with the actors,” he shared. The course was developed after he co-wrote the book Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations with his former colleague, Dr. Gul Kacmaz Erk. The two watched around 350 films that were either shot or set in Berlin, from which they chose 24 buildings, including the Berlin Wall, to write about.
The Shining will screen on Thursday, April 10, at 7 pm at the Morganroth Auditorium in the Larry R. Thompson Academic Center.
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