There are currently some pretty exciting semi-regular film events taking place all around the Bay area — the Ironweed Film Club at St. Pete’s Studio@620 has been putting together some interesting evenings lately, and the Tampa Film Review continues to play an important role with its popular monthly showcase of local films over at Centro Ybor. But the one film series that exceeded all expectations this year was Eckerd College’s International Cinema Series. This free, biweekly series amazed and delighted us over the past year with beautiful, 35mm prints of fascinating and important films that no local venues were brave enough to take a chance on — movies like Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Army of Shadows, the Quay Brothers’ surrealist tone poem The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, the modern-day Aboriginal myth Ten Canoes, David Lynch’s mysterious and massively controversial Inland Empire and the Kafka-in-Africa head trip Bamako. This is a series that values its good ol’-fashioned entertainment as well as its art, by the way, and let’s not forget that ICS even gave Bay area audiences a sneak peek at the groovy South Korean horror film The Host well before local theaters or film festivals figured out it was safe to screen. All screenings take place at Miller Auditorium at Eckerd College,
4200 54th Ave. S., St. Petersburg, 727-864-7551, eckerd.edu/film.
