UCI Film Society to Offer Series of Alternative Landmark Films

After a year of poor attendance, student leaders of the UC Irvine Film Society hope to find a larger audience this fall with a series of landmark films shaped by the common theme of “man’s search for self.”

“We want to revive the society--it was moribund,” Randy Lord, a member of the film selection committee, said Tuesday. “The only thing that moviegoers usually get here in Orange County is the mainstream commercial stuff. That’s not enough.”

The society will launch its fall series on Sept. 30 with “8 1/2,” Federico Fellini’s 1963 autobiographical film about a director (Marcello Mastroianni) who is afraid that he has become artistically and morally bankrupt.

Other screenings, all on Friday evenings, will include:

--Vittorio de Sica’s 1948 “The Bicycle Thief” (Nov. 4), one of the so-called “shoestring masterpieces” of the Italian neo-realist movement immediately following World War II.

--Akira Kurosawa’s “Dodes’ka-den,” the Japanese director’s first color film (1970), which explores the reality of a shanty town and the fantasy lives of its derelicts.

--John Schlesinger’s 1963 “Billy Liar” (Nov. 11), widely considered the best of the British “new wave” films of the ‘60s, starring Tom Courtenay as a put-upon office worker desperate to escape his dreary suburban surroundings and Julie Christie, who comes to his rescue.

If there is anything that ties all these films together--very loosely--it is the theme of existentialism,” Lord said.

The fall series will screen nine films in 16-millimeter prints in the 250-seat Social Science Hall. All films will be shown at 7 and 9 p.m., except where noted.

Sept. 30: “8 1/2” (second screening at 9:30); Oct. 7: Stuart Rosenberg’s “Question 7,” (West Germany, 1961), about a young boy who must choose between living in East Germany or escaping to the West; Oct. 14: “Dodes’ka-den” (second screening at 9:30); Oct. 21: Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond” (France, 1985), about a young drifter who faces difficult philosophical choices on the road.

Oct. 28: Krzysztof Zanussi’s “The Constant Factor (Poland, 1980), about an idealistic worker disillusioned with the daily corruption he encounters; Nov. 4: “The Bicycle Thief”; Nov. 11: “Billy Liar”; Nov. 18: Peter Brook’s “Meetings With Remarkable Men” (Great Britain, 1979), based on the memoirs of cult mystic G.I. Gurdjieff; Dec. 2: Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (Sweden, 1956), about a 14th-Century knight who risks his life in a game of chess with the devil.

For information, call (714) 856-6924.