Vodka Lemon
Masterful screwball Armenian comedy
This Armenian comedy about a post-Soviet mountain village, its boondocks cemetery, its single bus, and two sexagenarians finding love in the ruins is a blessed wonder. The town survives largely by peddling off prized possessions, including marriageable daughters, and a potentially money-bearing letter from France is cause for the entire town to turn into an anxious mob. (Why is the community schnapps labeled "lemon" when "it tastes like almonds"? "That's Armenia," is the answer.) Saleem, a Paris-based Kurd, displays the visual confidence and subtle screwball rhythms of a master, exploiting offscreen space, deadpan compositions, and deft visual backbeats, as well as attaining a breathtaking fidelity to real light and landscape. From the first sequence of an old man's hospital bed rolled down a snowy road to a funeral (Romen Avinian is heroic as the crotchety protagonist), the movie makes comic eloquence look easy. (M. Atkinson, The Village Voice)
Vodka Lemon
Sat & Sun April 16 & 17, 2005, 7:00 & 9:00, Muenzinger Auditorium
France/Italy/Switzerland/Armenia, in Armenian, Kurdish, Russian & French, Color, 90, Unrated
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.