December Films at Northwestern

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University’s Block Cinema will conclude its’ fall film series in early December with a free sneak preview of “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a new Coen Brothers film, and a ticketed screening of Jem Cohen’s “Museum Hours.”

FREE SNEAK PREVIEW

“Inside Llewyn Davis,” Dec. 5, is a new film about a singer and songwriter in 1960s New York, written and directed by the Academy Award-winning Joel and Ethan Coen and co-produced with Scott Rudin.

REGULARLY SCHEDULED SCREENING

Jem Cohen’s “Museum Hours,” Dec. 6, is about the unlikely cross-cultural friendship between a museum guard and a museum visitor and the redeeming power of art. It is part of the Block Cinema’s Contemporary Independents series.

Both films will be screened in the James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on Northwestern University’s Evanston campus.

Block Cinema screens new and recent films and revered classics throughout the academic year. Block Cinema’s Winter 2014 film screenings begin Friday, Jan. 24.

Unless otherwise noted, general admission to Block Cinema is $6 for the general public or $4 for Block Museum members, Northwestern faculty, staff and students, students from other schools with valid IDs and individuals 65 and older. Quarterly passes are $20. Tickets are available one hour before show time. For more information, call the Block Cinema Hotline at (847) 491-4000 or visit the Block Cinema website. 

DECEMBER 2013 BLOCK CINEMA FILMS

Sneak Preview, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5, Block Cinema FREE

(Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2013, United States, 35mm, 105 minutes.) “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the new film from Academy Awards winners Joel and Ethan Coen follows a week in the life of a young folk singer at a crossroads, struggling to make it in the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) -- guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter -- is beset by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, some of them of his own making. Living at the mercy of both friends and strangers, scaring up what work he can find, Llewyn journeys from the baskethouses of the Village to an empty Chicago club -- on a misbegotten odyssey to audition for a music mogul -- and back again. The film stars Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and produced by Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen.

Contemporary Independents, “Museum Hours,” 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6, Block Cinema (Jem Cohen, 2013, Austria and United States, DCP, 106 minutes.) In one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, director Jem Cohen has realized a beautiful and emotional story about two strangers who connect through the power of art. Anne has traveled to Vienna to visit an ailing distant relative; Johann is a guard at the famed Kunsthistorisches Museum. They strike up an unlikely friendship and through their conversations and the timeless qualities of art as a catalyst for reflection and transformation, dormant truths emerge. Cohen’s film is a sublime celebration of the restorative power of art and the importance of human connection.

CONSTRUCTION ALERT

A long-term construction project on Northwestern’s south campus has closed vehicle access to the Block Museum and Arts Circle Drive. Free parking is available in the lot directly south of the museum. For directions and parking information, visit the Block Museum.