Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Todd Berliner, professor of film studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, will speak on 1970s cinema at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25 in King Hall Auditorium on the UNCW campus. Berliner will also sign copies of his new book, "Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema" (University of Texas Press, 2010). The event is free and open to the public.

In "Hollywood Incoherent," Berliner focuses on the aspect of '70s cinema that, probably more than any other, draws people to films of the period: the peculiar manner of storytelling.

"During the 1970s, for the only time in film history, mainstream American filmmakers regularly pursued a narrative design that challenged the harmony and felicity of Hollywood cinema," Berliner explained. "Although present since the early days of studio filmmaking, this relatively deviant design reached its greatest prominence, popularity and intensity in the '70s, when filmmakers repeatedly set out to create the narrative disharmonies that their predecessors spent so much energy trying to avoid."

Those disharmonies resulted in complex characters, unresolved endings and a cinematic universe as morally confusing as the one filmgoers went to the movies to escape. In his book, Berliner examines formally eccentric films—such as Nashville, Taxi Driver, The Godfather Part II, A Clockwork Orange and the films of John Cassavetes—as well as mainstream films, including The Exorcist, The Godfather, The French Connection, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Dog Day Afternoon, Chinatown, The Bad News Bears, Patton, All the President's Men, Annie Hall and many others.

Berliner's talk at UNCW will examine the period's defining narrative strategies and explain the films' aesthetic contribution to American cinema. A professor of film studies, Berliner teaches American cinema, film narration and film aesthetics. He was a Fulbright Scholar and founding chair of UNCW's Department of Film Studies.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu