Events

About the Film: Alexander Payne directed this adaptation of Tom Perotta’s 1998 novel on dirty politics in a high school election, which was inspired in part by the 1992 presidential race where George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot vied for the U.S. presidency. Sabotage, vandalism, ballot irregularities--all feature in this disturbing and hilarious…

About the Film: Shola Lynch’s remarkable documentary on Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 campaign to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee never felt more relevant. Energetic and celebratory, this film tells the story of the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and her mission: to transform American politics as…

Ackland Art Museum & UNC Film Studies Present: A Celebration of Christine Vachon Join us for a two-night event honoring Christine Vachon, one of independent cinema’s most fearless and influential producers! For more than three decades, Vachon has been at the forefront of American queer cinema and has championed bold, uncompromising stories that challenge filmmaking…

Ackland Art Museum & UNC Film Studies Present: A Celebration of Christine Vachon Join us for a two-night event honoring Christine Vachon, one of independent cinema’s most fearless and influential producers! For more than three decades, Vachon has been at the forefront of American queer cinema and has championed bold, uncompromising stories that challenge filmmaking…

One of the leading directors of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda made her reputation with Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962), which tells the story of a singer who is waiting to receive test results that may indicate that she has cancer. But it’s Varda’s follow-up film, Le Bonheur, that actually creates a sense…

Contrary to popular myth, color didn’t arrive to the movies when Dorothy landed in Oz.  While Hollywood studios embraced black and white cinematography in the sound era, reserving the use of the complex, and expensive, Technicolor for only its biggest productions, filmmakers in the silent era embraced the use of color. Films were tinted using…

Mira Nair’s second feature film, and her first set in the United States, tells the story of Ugandan Indian family who is forced to leave their country after the dictator Idi Amin expels all people of Asian descent from Uganda. As its title implies, the film largely takes place in Mississippi, where the family resettles…

Set during a modest holiday at a Turkish resort in the early 2000s, Aftersun approaches coming of age obliquely, through memory and retrospection. Stunningly shot on 35mm film, which is contrasted with mini DV home movie video footage, the plot follows young Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her father Calum (Paul Mescal). But it is the adult…

Filmed over twelve years with the same cast members who conspicuously age from segment to segment, Boyhood offers one of cinema’s most literal and radical explorations of coming of age. Following Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from early childhood through his first days of college, the film refuses traditional narrative climaxes in favor of accumulation: small moments, shifting…

Set in 1970s Brooklyn, Crooklyn recounts childhood from the perspective of nine-year-old Troy Carmichael (Zelda Harris), whose coming of age unfolds within the rhythms of Black family life, neighborhood culture, and social constraint. The film balances warmth and humor with moments of rupture, revealing how maturity often arrives through confrontation with authority, injustice, and grief. Lee…