Hamilton College Announces Free Public F.I.L.M. Series
Clinton, N.Y. – The Hamilton College F.I.L.M. (Forum on Image and Language in Motion) series returns for the fall 2025 semester. All events are free and take place in the Bradford Auditorium in the Kirner-Johnson Building on the Hamilton College campus. Please follow signs for free parking.
Organizer and Hamilton Professor Scott MacDonald has directed the film series for more than 30 years. In addition to Hamilton, MacDonald has taught at Utica University, Bard College, Harvard University, and the University of Arizona.
Listed below are the programs in the fall 2025 series.
Sept. 13-14: An ANVIL ORCHESTRAVAGANZA!!
The renowned Anvil Orchestra (Larry Dersch, Terry Donahue, and Roger Miller) will accompany three classic, breakthrough “silent” films:
Saturday, Sept. 13
7 p.m.: Nosferatu (1923) by F. W. Murnau
Nosferatu was crucial in establishing the horror film genre.
Sunday, Sept. 14
2 p.m.: The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Dziga Vertov
A modern British Institute poll of film historians and critics rated The Man with a Movie Camera film-history’s greatest documentary.
7 p.m.: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger:
This screening of animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger’s feature animation will be accompanied by Anvil’s brand-new score.
Sunday, Sept. 21
2 p.m.: Professor Ani Abrahamyan presents My Sweet Land (2025).
The screening will be followed by a Zoom conversation with director Sareen Hairabedia. Jordanian documentary filmmaker Hairabedia uses an intimate observational approach to tell stories about people and places that usually go unnoticed.
My Sweet Land is a coming-of-age story set against a multigenerational war in the post-Soviet Caucasus Mountains.
Sunday, Sept. 28
2 p.m.: Hamilton professor Pavitra Sundar presents video-essay pioneer Catherine Grant with a presentation and discussion about her work.
The video-essay represents a new kind of cinema analysis and critique. Grant has been a central figure in the development of the video-essay as a form of scholarship.
Sunday, Oct. 5
2 p.m.: Professor Scott MacDonald presents The Sterile Cuckoo (1969).
Adapted from the novel of the same name, written by 1962 Hamilton graduate John Nichols, The Sterile Cuckoo is the only Hollywood movie filmed on the Hamilton campus. The film is a time capsule of pre-co-ed Hamilton College.
For the role of Pookie, director Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men, 1976; Sophie’s Choice, 1982) chose Liza Minnelli, whose performance was nominated for Best Actress.
Saturday, Oct. 25
2 p.m.: Hamilton professor Zhuoyi Wang presents Japanese journalist and filmmaker Shori Ito presenting Black Box Diaries (2024).
The film will be followed by discussion featuring Ito and Chinese film scholar Belinda Qian He.
Shiori Ito is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her primary focus is gender-based human rights issues. In 2020, Time magazine listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Black Box Diaries was named one of the top five documentary films of 2024 by the National Board of Review, won a Peabody Award, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Thursday, Oct. 30
4:15 p.m.: Hamilton professor Heather Merrill presents Fred Kudjo Kuwornu and his new film We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (2024).
Kuwornu: “When discussing Black people in the 15th and 16th centuries, the focus is often solely on their condition as enslaved individuals, overlooking the remarkable figures who lived in Europe during that period.”
Sunday, Nov. 16
2 p.m.: Film scholar and video essayist Max Tohline returns to Hamilton to present Through the Keyhole.
You may know Tohline’s masterwork of media scholarship, A Supercut of Supercuts (2021, available online), or remember his remarkable fall 2024 F.I.L.M. series presentation “Living in a Reversed World.”
On this visit, he turns his attention to the history of AI.
Tohline: “Our conversations about AI shouldn’t center on how we use it; they should center on how AI uses and models us.”
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Bradford Auditorium is located in the Kirner-Johnson Building on the Hamilton College campus. From the Village of Clinton, follow the “F.I.L.M. event” signs up College Hill Road. Just past the crosswalk, turn left onto Green Apple Way. Parking is available on the right, in lots behind the Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts.
