We Can't Go Home Again
Feb 10 - Feb 16, 2012
(Nicolas Ray, 1973-1979, USA, Blu-ray, 90 min)
Seattle premiere!
Friday show free for members
Special introduction by author David Spaner on Saturday (beginning at 6:30)
On the occasion of Ray’s centenary, we are proud to present the most complete version of this one-of-a-kind film in a stunning digital restoration undertaken by Ray’s widow, Susan Ray. Made by the one-eyed legendary director and his students during his stint as a film professor at State University of New York, Binghamton, under abysmal financial conditions, the film records Ray’s groundbreaking use of multiple images as a way of telling more than one story simultaneously, and of colorization as a way to heighten emotional expression. He called it a “journalistic” film, one that shares the anthropologist’s aim of recording the “history, progress, manners, morals and mores of everyday life” at a critical moment in American history. We Can’t Go Home Again is a crucial document in both Ray's filmography and in the history of American independent cinema.
About David Spaner
David Spaner is the author of the new book Shoot It! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film. Shoot It! is a revealing history of how Hollywood, with its eye on the bottom line, arguably lost its ability to support the work of creative filmmakers; the book is also a passionate portrait of the independent filmmakers around the world who have risen up to fill the void. Spaner has worked as a movie critic, feature writer, reporter, and editor for numerous newspapers and magazines.His writings about film and politics have appeared in alternative and mainstream publications across the US and Canada. His movie coverage and other cultural writing was featured in the Vancouver Province daily newspaper from 1999 to 2008, and won the Publishers Award for best feature writing in the paper.
Spaner was a co-founder of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle and has often appeared at film events as a moderator, juror (from Vancouver's 48-hour-film contest to the Toronto International Film Festival's panel that selects the year's top-10 Canadian films), or programmer (in 2010, he curated a tribute to University of B.C. filmmakers). Along with Shoot It!, Spaner authored a history of Vancouver filmmaking, Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest (Arsenal, 2003).
