Ackland Film Forum: “Old Joy” (Kelly Reichardt, 2006)

Join us for the next screening in the Ackland Film Forum’s Spring 2023 series Do Something: Responding to Climate Change presented by UNC Film Studies and the Ackland Art Museum.

Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006)
Varsity Theatre, 123 E. Franklin Street | 7:30 p.m.
Free Tickets at the Varsity Theatre

Introduction by Dr. Rick Warner (English and Comparative Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill)

SYNOPSIS

Kelly Reichardt’s second film, released more than a decade after her underseen debut River of Grass (1994), is a landmark film in the short-lived mumblecore (Jay Duplass, Greta Gerwig) film movement of the early 2000s. But unlike other Mumblecore films, which focus on urban characters and urban problems, Old Joy takes us into the woods, where two friends reunite for a weekend camping trip. Based on a short story by Jonathan Raymond, Old Joy is a quiet, if complex, meditation on friendship, work, and nature. 

TICKETS

Free tickets are available the evening of the screening at the Varsity Theatre. UNC students can receive CLE credit for this event.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Do Something: Responding to Climate Change
Ackland Film Forum | Spring 2023

We are living in the age of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch shaped by human activity. And yet, we, as individuals, and as a society, have difficulty addressing the climate change that we helped create. In this series, we’ll consider films in which humans respond to climate change. We’ll see people who escape floodwaters, fight off mining companies, care for plants, launch protests, and simply take a walk in the woods. Instead of proposing a single way to address climate change, these films will offer us ways to contemplate the relationship between ourselves, the world we live in, and the world we want it to be.

Presented in connection with Ghost of a Dream: Aligned by the Sun (through the revolution) on view at the Ackland Art Museum through May 28, 2023.