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No Maps on My Taps & About Tap

No Maps on My Taps & About Tap
Tonight's presentation starts off with the hour-long crowd-pleasing documentary No Maps on My Taps. It will be followed by About Tap, the half-hour followup documentary made six years later by the same director.

Filmmaker George T. Nierenberg presents a poignant, intimate portrait of three gifted men who represent a bygone era of tap dancing: Chuck Green, Bunny Briggs, and Sandman Sims. They worked in vaudeville and nightclubs but for the most part they acquired their skills on the sidewalks of New York. An older generation of dancers were generous with advice and know-how, and they are also part of this story. No documentary about tap dancing would be complete without footage of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, but the clip that blows me away features John Bubbles in the 1937 feature Varsity Show. Bubbles was a huge influence on a generation who followed in his (literal) footsteps; he appears in this film in a telephone conversation, as a stroke put an end to his dancing career.

The framework for No Maps on My Taps is a performance at the legendary Small’s Paradise nightclub in Harlem, where the exuberant Lionel Hampton and his band provide backup for a “challenge dance” competition. Green, Briggs and Sims have entirely different approaches to the art of tap dancing, and in candid interviews they tell their stories—the hard-knock experiences that shaped them and came out in their work. They thrive on competition but there is no venom in what they do—just pure, unadulterated joy.

Leonard Maltin, Leonardmaltin.com

No Maps on My Taps & About Tap

Fri December 1, 2017, 7:30 PM, Muenzinger Auditorium

USA, Color, 58 min • official site

recommend

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

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