-itok=Z9Mfsd1n.jpg)
The Russian Cultural Center, housed in a corner of Webster Hall, recently held an exhibition of early Soviet nonconformist art. Put together by Alla Rosenfeld, Ph.D., curator of Russian and European art at the college’s Mead Art Museum, and made possible by the generous support of the David Pennock ’60 Russian Culture Fund and Julia A. Whitney Fund for Russian Art, the exhibit showcased several counterarguments against the pervasive stereotype of the Soviet Union as a successful destroyer of individuality.
“Twin Peaks: The Return” tells the story of FBI agent Dale Cooper, who in the original series was assigned to solve the murder case of Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen in the town of Twin Peaks, Wash. Over the course of the original two-season run on ABC, Agent Cooper unraveled the mystery of the killer only to find himself entangled in a greater, older, cosmic mystery involving demons, hell and heaven; a mystery whose indelible images constantly refused to cleanly classify themselves as reality or metaphor.
With a runtime of nearly three hours, thanks to a trio of preceding short films which explained the thirty-year interlude between it and Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi masterpiece, “Blade Runner: 2049” arrived at the box office with fewer profitable rip- ples than its investors would have liked. But while its commercial underperformance is nothing notable in the post-summer daze when tentpole blockbusters fall like leaves, a deeper, closer view finds that Denis Villeneuve’s recent cyberpunk outing is his third consecutive home-run follow- ing “Sicario” and “Arrival”.
The kind of films shown in smaller local movie theaters such as Amherst Cinema possess a unique and identifiable mood to them. True, there is remarkable diversity in both content and origin not found in the box offices, but such an abundance of life is communicated in an equally rarified manner. The films almost always nibble at life, reluctant to chow down upon any grand sweeping statements about society or the universe.
Spoiler-free article!
