The Six Week Film School

Welcome to the home page for the Six Week Film School. Here you'll find links to articles and resources that will provide context for the films, both individually and as they fit in the series. All materials presented below are of course optional; don't worry, we won't grade you on whether you did your homework.

You are welcome to attend any individual film in a series, or join us for all six. All films are free to attend. We do ask that you reserve yourself a seat or RSVP in advance. Just click the link to on the "class" you would like to attend and put your name down. Each night will feature a brief introduction and post-show discussion led by Illinois State University's William Thomas McBride.

It seems like zombies and vampires keep popping up everywhere you turn. They are creepy. They give the impression they’ve been with us forever. Maybe they have. Both are dead. Or undead. What does “undead” mean? Are these two monsters in the Bible? Why are vampires sort of Slavic? Why do we love watching people turn into bats and then back into people who want to suck our blood? And why are they afraid of the crucifix and stakes in the heart? Why once bitten do we become vampires? While we’re on the subject of biting, why do zombies want to eat us? How come zombies are sort of from Haiti? What’s the difference between a slow and a fast zombie? How come Witch Doctors and Counts have victims who wander the night in a trance? Then there’s Love and Death. How come the subject of vampires is kind of erotic whereas zombie themes are usually morbid? Why do we try to kill vampires but exterminate zombies? What role might religion play? So why are they just about everywhere in our culture, cereal, toys, tv and comic book series, social media, you name it? What would Halloween be without them? And finally what’s the connection between these two and the nature of cinema? Come and see three vampire and three zombie classics on the big screen and you decide. To help us come up with some answers I’ve got two ISU graduate students as co-hosts: David Hansen (“The Evolution of Dracula’s Visual Rhetoric and its Impact on Classroom Studies”) and Ann Johnson (“Aaaahhh Zombies! An Historical Examination of Societal Anxiety Through the Lens of Zombie Cinema.”) Free and open to everyone. If you dare!

"Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there."

Box of Rain, Lyrics by Robert Hunter

The Grateful Dead American Beauty, 1970

NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR

In this highly influential silent horror film, the mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck) summons Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen (Greta Schroeder). After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock (Alexander Granach), prepares for his master to arrive at his new home. NR / 94 min.

Join SWFS series curator Dr. Bill McBride in a discussion following the film.

10/08 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR CLASS!

WHITE ZOMBIE

Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi) is the menacingly named zombie master of Haiti. So it's to him that Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) goes when he needs help for a twisted plan. Spurned in marriage by Madeline Short (Madge Bellamy), Beaumont has decided on a simple solution: kill Short and bring her back as a zombie. Then she can be his forever. The only problem comes when Legendre keeps the fetching girl for himself -- and her new husband (John Harron) comes to Madeline's rescue. NR / 85 min.

Join SWFS series curator Dr. Bill McBride in a discussion following the film.

10/15 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR CLASS!

DRACULA

The dashing, mysterious Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), after hypnotizing a British soldier, Renfield (Dwight Frye), into his mindless slave, travels to London and takes up residence in an old castle. Soon Dracula begins to wreak havoc, sucking the blood of young women and turning them into vampires. When he sets his sights on Mina (Helen Chandler), the daughter of a prominent doctor, vampire-hunter Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is enlisted to put a stop to the count's never-ending bloodlust. NR / 85 min.

Join SWFS series curator Dr. Bill McBride in a discussion following the film.

10/22 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR CLASS!

DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT

Dapper Count Dracula (Leslie Nielsen) relocates from his Transylvanian castle to Victorian London with his slavish assistant, Renfield (Peter MacNicol), in search of new blood. He finds it in a pair of beautiful young women, Mina (Amy Yasbeck) and her best friend, Lucy (Lysette Anthony). When Mina's straitlaced fiancé, Jonathan (Steven Weber), notices his future bride's odd behavior, he calls in his mentor, vampire hunter Van Helsing (Mel Brooks), to save the day. PG-13 / 95 min.

Join SWFS series curator Dr. Bill McBride in a discussion following the film.

11/12 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR CLASS!

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 30-something loser with a dull, easy existence. When he's not working at the electronics store, he lives with his slovenly best friend, Ed (Nick Frost), in a small flat on the outskirts of London. The only unpredictable element in his life is his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), who wishes desperately for Shaun to grow up and be a man. When the town is inexplicably overrun with zombies, Shaun must rise to the occasion and protect both Liz and his mother (Penelope Wilton). R / 99 min.

Join SWFS series curator Dr. Bill McBride in a discussion following the film.

11/19 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT FOR CLASS!

"In my ISU film class this semester I asked my undergrads how many had seen Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, it turned out only a few. However they all knew both Bernard Herrmann’s knife-screeching music and the rapid cuts in the shower scene. Stanley Kubrick has likewise given birth to at least two enduring trademarks: Hal’s red robotic eye and menacingly mellow voice in 2001 and Jack “the maniac” Nicholson’s grinning as he delivers the line “Here’s Johnny” through the busted door in THE SHINING. Like Hitchcock’s injection of Bernard Herrmann’s stabbing theme, Kubrick memorializes both Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001) and Beethoven’s 9^th symphony (A Clockwork Orange). We will try to get at the bottom of the power packed in these audio and visual memes as we acknowledge his penchant for bringing to the screen the work of great novelists like Nabokov and Burgess. And of course we’ll “focus” on the film’s cinematography."

- Bill McBride

THE KILLING (1956)

Career criminal Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) recruits a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey), a crooked police officer (Ted de Corsia), a bartender (Joe Sawyer) and a betting teller named George (Elisha Cook Jr.), among others, for one last job before he goes straight and marries his fiancee, Fay (Coleen Gray). But when George tells his restless wife, Sherry (Marie Windsor), about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. NR / 84 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS curator Bill McBride to discuss the film following the screening.

02/20

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

LOLITA (1962)

With a screenplay penned by the author himself, Stanley Kubrick brings Vladimir Nabokov's controversial tale of forbidden love to the screen. Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is a European professor who relocates to an American suburb, renting a room from lonely widow Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). Humbert marries Charlotte, but only to nurture his obsession with her comely teenage daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon). After Charlotte's sudden death, Humbert has Lolita all to himself -- or does he? NR / 153 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS curator Bill McBride and Stephanie Bridges from the YWCA Stepping Stones prorgram to discuss the film.

YWCA Stepping Stones, the local McLean County sexual assault program, provides 24-hour assistance for sexual assault and sexual abuse victims and their families in McLean County. We are here for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Trained and caring sexual assault advocates can be reached anytime you need them.

Call PATH at (309) 827-4005 and ask for Stepping Stones.

This free, confidential service also serves as the central sexual assault resource for McLean County. Services focus on empowering survivors, their families, and their friends on the path of healing, building relationships with professionals and agencies that will be part of the process, and educating the community about sexual assault.

Visit the Stepping Stones website for more information.

02/27

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

A film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button -- and it played the situation for laughs. U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper goes completely insane, and sends his bomber wing to destroy the U.S.S.R. He thinks that the communists are conspiring to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. PG / 95 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS Curator Bill McBride for a post film discussion.

03/06

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

An imposing black structure provides a connection between the past and the future in this enigmatic adaptation of a short story by revered sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. When Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and other astronauts are sent on a mysterious mission, their ship's computer system, HAL, begins to display increasingly strange behavior, leading up to a tense showdown between man and machine that results in a mind-bending trek through space and time. Fully restored 4K print. G / 149 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS Curator Bill McBride and Retrofuturist Michael Johnson for a post film discussion.

03/20

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

In an England of the future, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his "Droogs" spend their nights getting high at the Korova Milkbar before embarking on "a little of the old ultraviolence," while jauntily warbling "Singin' in the Rain." After he's jailed for bludgeoning the Cat Lady to death, Alex submits to behavior modification technique to earn his freedom; he's conditioned to abhor violence. Returned to the world defenseless, Alex becomes the victim of his prior victims. R / 136 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS curator Bill McBride and Cinnamon Porter from the YWCA Stepping Stones prorgram to discuss the film.

Call PATH at (309) 827-4005 and ask for Stepping Stones.

Visit the Stepping Stones website for more information.

03/27

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

THE SHINING

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and his son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family. R / 146 min. Free to attend.

Join SWFS Curator Bill McBride for a post film discussion.

04/03

WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED CLASS!

A Streetcar Named Desire

Six Week Film School: Classic Broadway Stage to Stylized Hollywood Screen

Based on the play by Tennessee Williams, this renowned drama follows troubled former schoolteacher Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) as she leaves small-town Mississippi and moves in with her sister, Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), and her husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando), in New Orleans. Blanche's flirtatious Southern-belle presence causes problems for Stella and Stanley, who already have a volatile relationship, leading to even greater conflict in the Kowalski household. Directed by Elia Kazan. FREE to attend. PG / 127 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride, along with Dave Krostal for a discussion following the film.

09/26 @ 7:00pm

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Dutchman

An African-American man named Clay (Al Freeman Jr.) rides the New York City subway and becomes the fixation of a white woman, Lula (Shirley Knight), who is seemingly sexually attracted to him. Lula's brazen attempt to seduce Clay in public feels menacing, and he rejects her advances. She becomes increasingly threatening and Clay eventually snaps, no longer able to remain polite in the face of her anger. His reaction, though, has severe repercussions. Directed by Anthony Harvey. FREE to attend. NR / 55 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/03 @ 7pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

History professor George (Richard Burton) and his boozy wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), return late one Saturday night from a cocktail party at the home of the college president, Martha's father. Martha announces that she invited another couple, newly appointed instructor Nick (George Segal) and his timid wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), over for a nightcap. When the younger couple arrive, the night erupts into a no-holds-barred torrent of marital angst and verbal tirades. Directed by Mike Nichols. FREE to attend. NR / 132 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/17 @ 7:00pm

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Boys in the Band

Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is hosting a birthday celebration for a pal when he gets an unexpected visit from old friend Alan (Peter White). The problem is, Alan is straight -- and extremely straitlaced -- and everyone else at the party is gay. Michael hopes to conceal his sexuality from Alan, but this charade doesn't last. After being outed, Michael turns on Alan, accuses him of being a closeted gay and forces him to partake in a revealing party game that has devastating consequences. Directed by William Friedkin. FREE to attend. NR / 119 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

10/24 @ 7:00pm

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True West

Austin (Gary Sinise), a Hollywood screenwriter living comfortably in suburban Arizona, is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of his prodigal brother Lee (John Malkovich), whose menacing demeanor and pugilistic attitude draws Austin further and further into conflict until he must finally engage his brother in an intense psychological battle for his ideals, and perhaps even his life. Directed by Allan A. Goldstein. FREE to attend. NR / 110 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride for a discussion following the film.

11/07 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's revered drama focuses on Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman), an aging traveling salesman in the midst of a major crisis. Burdened by financial woes and distanced from his wife, Linda (Kate Reid), and two grown sons, Biff (John Malkovich) and Happy (Stephen Lang), the increasingly unstable Willy dwells on various memories of his family and his career as he looks back to find out what went wrong with his life. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. FREE to attend. PG / 136 min.

Join your professor, Dr. McBride, along with Sally Parry & Bob McLaughlin for a discussion following the film.

11/14 @ 7:00pm

SIGN UP FOR CLASS TODAY!

From Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner,1940)

JUDY O’BRIEN [Maureen O’Hara] (dancing onstage, dress straps rip-male audience members taunt) Go ahead and stare. I'm not ashamed. Go on, laugh; get your money's worth. Nobody's going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your 50 cents' worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won't let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here?

(camera pans l to r well-heeled and ashamed male in tuxedos and reproving female audience members)

With your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of. It's a thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We'd laugh right back at you, only we're paid to let you sit there...and roll your eyes, and make your screamingly clever remarks. What's it for? So you can go home when the show's over, strut before your wives and sweethearts... and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I'm sure they see through you just like we do.

Tess Slesinger & Frank Davis (screenplay); Vicki Baum (story)

From series curator William Thomas McBride:

"On my way out of the Normal Theater following the post-screen discussion of one of Scorsese’s films, a female patron approached me and asked why not do a series of female directors? I have been working on our new series ever since—and given the current cultural moment regarding harassment and gender inequality in Hollywood, Washington, and everywhere else, the timing of Wonder Women Directors seems perfect. Joining me for individual screenings will be Shari Zeck, Interim Dean, Milner Library, Illinois State University; Li Zeng, Head of Theatre and Film Studies and Film Minor, Illinois State University; Chamere Poole, Dept. of English Ph. D. candidate, Illinois State University; and Ann Johnson, Dept. of Sociology Masters student, Illinois State University, who will discuss the overarching cultural concepts of sex, power, history, and film style in these six films directed by women."

Back to School with Wonder Women!

Christopher Strong

Female aviator Lady Cynthia Darrington (Katharine Hepburn) and Parliament member Sir Christopher Strong meet at a party, where the free spirit and the married politician are instantly attracted. Christopher's wife, Lady Elaine, invites Cynthia to stay at the Strongs' summer house, where she grows even closer to him. Mindful of the damage an affair would do to Christopher's career and family, the couple parts, but they soon realize they can't live without each other. From 1933. NR / 78 min. Directed by Dorothy Arzner.

01/24 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

The Hitch-Hiker

Ray (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert's (Frank Lovejoy) fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker (William Talman) they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. From 1953. NR / 71 min. Directed by Ida Lupino.

This class will include guest lecturer:

Li Zeng, head of ISU's Theatre and Film Studies

01/31 @ 7:00pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

A League of Their Own

Lost in Translation

Selma

Wonder Woman

Fall 2017 - From ALICE to SILENCE: The Scorsese Style

Martin Scorsese - The Source Material

“Marty Scorsese is one of the greatest living filmmakers. He’s earned the right to independently finance a movie and make the movie he wants to make."

- Megan Colligan, Paramount’s marketing and distribution head on SILENCE (2016)

Listen to William Thomas McBride discuss the Six WeekFilm School and Martin Scorsese on WGLT.

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE - Wednesday, September 27th at 7:00pm

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE - Notes from class

More on ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

TAXI DRIVER - Wednesday, October 4th at 7:00pm

William Thomas McBride's Chapter on TAXI DRIVER
From series curator William Thomas McBride: "Last night's post-film lively discussion, concerning Scorsese's style, hand gun violence, and Sunday night's Las Vegas trauma, concluded with an audience member's question: "Was Scorsese's ending of his film a dream?" Interesting points were made on both sides. Driving home Wednesday evening my wife found this article, citing critics, DeNiro, and Scorsese, and seems to settle the question.

More on TAXI DRIVER

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - Wednesday, October 11th at 7:00pm

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - Notes from class

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GANGS OF NEW YORK - Wednesday, October 25th at 7:00pm

GANGS OF NEW YORK - Notes from class

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HUGO - Wednesday, November 1st at 7:00pm

More on HUGO

SILENCE - Wednesday, November 8th at 7:00pm

More on SILENCE

“My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.”

- Martin Scorsese

When we awake with a vivid dream fresh in our memory, or are regaled by someone else’s dream narrative, we often launch head on into an analysis of the latent meaning of the dream’s manifest content. Without hesitation, and usually without trained expertise, we apply common principles of psychology and insights about gender, myth and popular culture, and make claims relating to biographical knowledge of the dreamer as well. The spectacularity of dreams is often attributable to both the uncannily realistic nature of them and their cinematic quality. Early on in its development, Hollywood (and Hitchcock) fell in love with Freud, and given cinema’s dreamlike status, it is rather easy to see why. Hitchcock’s psychoanalytic bent is evident in many of his titles: PSYCHO, VERTIGO, FRENZY, STAGE FRIGHT, SHADOW OF A DOUBT. His 1945 film SPELLBOUND took the extraordinary steps of hiring as co-writer and psychiatric advisor, May E. Romm M.D. and, as dream sequence designer, surrealist painter Salvador Dali. Freud characterizes dream form as Darstellbarkeit (suitability for display) whose plastic representation exhibits the visual and auditory modes we associate with film over and against a novel or epic poem. Just as we translate Freud’s monumental publication, Die Traumdeutung (1900) as The Interpretation of Dreams, so these Six Week Film School semesters center directly on the art of interpretation (hermeneutics). This scholarly search for meaning in texts originates as Biblical exegesis and Midrash, soon branching out to legal, philosophical and aesthetic hermeneutics, all marked by a concern with the relation between interpretive subject, text, and argument. As we have been discovering, the metaphors film style employs, like the ones populating our dreams, are simple and commonplace—often to the point of being clichéd. Of all of the films that most consistently and fluently speak the stylized language of cinema, it is those directed by Alfred Hitchcock. And it should come as no surprise that Alfred Hitchcock began his film career as an Art Director and composer of storyboards—hand-drawn images composed prior to shooting that depict and direct what each shot in the film should look like—a practice he continued throughout his life in film. This Six Week semester promises to deliver fun along with the language and interpretive "skill set" necessary to read films and other narrative texts via their formal elements. Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol conclude their little 1957 Hitchcock book this way:

Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire history of cinema. Perhaps only Murnau and Eisenstein can sustain comparison with him when it comes to form.

While Hitchcock's oeuvre certainly invites our formal analysis of its cinematic language and a feminist, masculinist, queer problematizing of its psychosexuality, we will not limit our investigations there—grindhouse theory (PSYCHO, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN), ecocriticism (THE BIRDS), music theory (VERTIGO, PSYCHO), marxist and trauma studies (most films)—are all fruitful approaches and welcome.

William Thomas McBride discusses the Six Week Film School theme of "Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Style"
William Thomas McBride discusses the Six Week Film School on WGLT
Alfred Hitchcock Wiki Mainpage
1000 Frames of Hitchcock
“Hitchcock’s Stylized Capture of Post-Adolescent Fatheads.” by William Thomas McBride. Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Ed. Debbie Olson. Palgrave-McMillan, 2014, pp 237-263.
DIAL H FOR HITCHCOCK (1999)
The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory 2nd Edition by Tania Modleski