7:00 pm, Thursday, October 2

Matthew Stadler presents a film screening of Robert Altman's 1975 classic "Nashville." Art Historian James Glisson will be on hand for an introduction to the film and short discussion after the viewing.

 Mr. Glisson wrote this superb piece in Afterimage http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_4_35/ai_n24962263

From that article: "Robert Altman's Nashville (1975) is a film whose sprawling narrative structure reflects the equally sprawling fabric of the automobile-dominated, postwar boom town in which it takes place. The odd segues with scenes passing like batons from one character to another often depend on the medium of traffic, whether as traffic jams or impromptu roadside meetings. Down to the film's floating camerawork that captures actors from awkward viewpoints, it is a film in which nothing settles and its narrative momentum, like so much rubbernecked traffic, has a stop-and-go quality. Like Altman's film, contemporary photographers of suburban existence in the United States chronicle dispersed, car-centered boom towns with their strip malls, tacky signage, and acres of parking lots. In taking traffic as a narrative medium, the transportation and growth patterns of a 1970s sun-belt city are shown to circumscribe the relations between the characters. In other words, the dispersed urban fabric of Nashville patterns the human interactions in the film."