What’s inside the new issue of The Ryder magazine? See for yourself: here’s your personal copy. And here is a snapshot of what you’ll find…

• Rudy Pozzatti (1925-2021): Rudy Pozzatti embodied the ideal of the artist-teacher. During his lengthy tenure as a distinguished professor at Indiana University, he helped to build the printmaking department into one the best in the country.

• Middle Way House Turns 50: “Living in a shelter is tough,” Executive Director Debra Morrow explains. “It’s not your home. The longer people sit in shelter, the harder it is for them to reclaim their lives. “

• The Lilly Library from A to Z: From James Bond’s cigars to locks of Edgar Allen Poe’s hair, the Lilly Library boasts an amazing collection of curiosities.  And they are all in Darlene J. Sadlier’s book, The Lilly Library from A to Z. 

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Appalachia: Three films–Hillbilly, Nomadland and Hillbilly Elegy–take on working class white identity in Appalachia.

• Die Pest: In pandemic times, we search out pandemic tales. Otto Rippert’s silent 1919 film, Die Pest in Florenz (The Plague in Florenz) is a plague film for a plague year.

• This Old House: Jawshing Arthur Liou’s multichannel video work at the Eskenazai Museum of Art, House of the Singing Winds, embraces high resolution video. But art is directly tied to economics and politics. Money and influence have a particularly unique relationship with the film/video artforms due to high equipment costs, studios, “the industry” and many other components. “IU has many T.C. Steele paintings in its collection,” Liou says. “I’m bringing the whole house.”

This issue of The Ryder is funded in part by a Recover Forward grant from the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association. The grant covers some of our expenses, but not all.
As you flip through this issue of the magazine (85 pages this month!), if you should see a story that you like, or if you would just want to support local, independent journalism, please consider making a donation.

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The Oscar Shorts

The Academy Awards are Sunday night. If you haven’t watched the Oscar Shorts yet this might be a good time. Here’s the link. And if you have already watched them, you might consider gifting the Shorts to your favorite cinephile. The Oscar Shorts are a gift that will be fondly remembered for a long time, or at least until Sunday night.

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Also in our Virtual Theater: BILL TRAYLOR CHASING GHOSTS

Bill Traylor was born into slavery in 1853 on a cotton plantation in rural Alabama. After the Civil War, Traylor continued to farm the land as a sharecropper until the late 1920s. Aging and alone, he moved to Montgomery and worked odd jobs in the thriving segregated black neighborhood. A decade later, in his late 80s, Traylor became homeless and started to draw and paint, visualizing memories from plantation days and scenes of a radically changing urban culture. Having witnessed profound social and political change during a life spanning slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and the Great Migration, Traylor devised his own visual language to translate an oral culture into something original, powerful, and culturally rooted. He made well over a thousand drawings and paintings between 1939-1942. This colorful, strikingly modernist work eventually led him to be recognized as one of America’s greatest self-taught artists and the subject of a Smithsonian retrospective. Using historical and cultural context, Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts brings the spirit and mystery of Traylor’s incomparable art to life. Making dramatic and surprising use of tap dance and evocative period music, the film balances archival photographs and footage, insightful perspectives from his descendants, and Traylor’s striking drawings and paintings to reveal one of America’s most prominent artists to a wide audience.

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May 20, 21 and 22 at 7:30 at the IU Radio & Television Theater • Purchase Tickets
Iconic, elegant, and populist all at once: the Automat (aka Horn & Hardart) revolutionized American dining a century ago, long before there were fast food restaurants or hipster coffee shops. Patrons inserted nickels into slots, and slices of lemon meringue pie, mac & cheese, baked beans, and creamed spinach magically appeared from a grid of gleaming chrome windows. Then there was the eatery’s signature 5-cent coffee, cascading from ornate dolphin-headed spouts. To describe the clientele as eclectic would be an understatement. Everyone ate there–young and old, rich and poor, famous (Audrey Hepburn, pictured above) and infamous (Allen Ginsberg). Mel Brooks (who sings an homage he wrote specifically for the film), Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell, Carl Reiner, and others pay effusive tribute to this communal Art Deco home away from home. Says Brooks: “You didn’t need a lot of money. You needed a lot of nickels.” Debut filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz collages rare artifacts, images, and memorabilia (including personal photos and deeply affectionate stories from former employees and the founding family) to create a love letter to pie and nickel coffee. (79 min)

CRITIC’S PICK! Sweet and shaggy. An engrossing tale of cultural harmony. Plunges us… into states of delight and visceral lament. Rapturous accounts of the women who changed dollars into nickels… Brooks goes gaga at the thought of the Automat’s coconut custard. FEELS LIKE THE KEY TO SOME LOCK ON THE AMERICAN SOUL. – Wesley Morris, The New York Times

I LOVED THE AUTOMAT. It is something special: a mixture of fragrant recollections and astute social history. What’s surprising in the extreme is how moving the film can be in evoking those places of welcome during an era of American optimism. – Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

You can watch The Oscar Shorts right here, right now!

The Oscar Shorts offer a vision of what the Academy Awards should and could be but very rarely are: eclectic, cosmopolitan, scrappy and surprising.
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times

One of the most entertaining categories at the Academy Awards — and one of the least heralded — is for the Best Short Subject. We are featuring the nominees for Best Short Animated, Live-Action and Documentary Film. Below are brief descriptions of each nominee.

The Oscar Shorts open on Friday, April 2nd and will stay on our calendar through April 30th. This is your chance to see all 15 nominated films before the awards ceremony on April 25th.

Tickets: Each program is $12. You can bundle all three into one package for $30. As with all of the films we have been screening for the past year in our virtual theater, 50% of the proceeds will eventually make their way back to us and help keep us going during the pandemic.

All films are unrated; the ratings included here are, basically, our best guess for what they would be rated. You know your kids better than we do. That said, parents should feel free to email us (editor@theryder.com) with questions about the appropriateness of films for younger viewers and children should feel free to email us if they feel their parents have become hopelessly out of touch with the contemporary world.

You will find a link right here on April 2nd to begin watching the Oscar Shorts.

ANIMATED SHORT FILMS, approximately 92 minutesNinety-six films qualified for Best Animated Short. This category includes the five nominees along with three bonus films that were shortlisted for a nomination, but came up short. (Rated PG-13)

BURROW, Madeline Sharafian and Michael Capbarat, USA, 6 minutes.
A young rabbit tries to build the burrow of her dreams, becoming embarrassed each time she accidentally digs into a neighbor’s home.

GENIUS LOCI, Adrien Merigeau and Amaury Ovise, France, 16 minutes.
One night, Reine, a young loner, sees among the urban chaos a moving oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide. (This film features adult language.)

IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU, Will McCormack and Michael Govier, USA, 12 minutes.
Grieving parents struggle with the loss of their daughter after a school shooting. An elegy on grief. (Might not be suitable for children 12 and under)

OPERA, Erick Oh, South Korea/USA, 9 minutes.A stunning, multi-layered pyramidal tour portrait of the cycles, foibles, and wonder of humanity, filled with beauty and absurdity.

YES-PEOPLE, Gisli Darri Halldorsson and Arnar Gunnarson, Iceland, 8 minutes.
One morning an eclectic mix of people face the everyday battle, such as work, school and dish-washing. As the day progresses, their relationships are tested and ultimately their capacity to cope.

Bonus Films:

THE SNAIL AND THE WHALE, Max Lang and Daniel Snaddon UK/Germany, 26 minutes.
The heartwarming story of a snail who lives on a rock and wants to see the world so gets a lift from a huge humpback whale. Based on the picture book written by the creators of the lovable Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler. Character voices are lovingly provided by stars Diana Riggs, Sally Hawkins, David Cumming and Rob Brydon.

KAPAEMAHU, Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, USA, 7 minutes.
Long ago, four extraordinary individuals of dual male and female spirit brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii. Beloved by the people for their gentle ways and miraculous cures, they imbued four giant boulders with their powers. The stones still stand on what is now Waikiki Beach, but the true story behind them has been hidden – until now. Narrated in an ancient Hawaiian dialect, Kapaemahu brings this powerful legend back to life in vivid animation, seen through the eyes of a curious child.

TO: GERARD, Taylor Meacham, USA, 8 minutes.
A sprightly elderly man, through a little magic, gives a child the ability to dream of possibilities. First shown at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, the retro feel of this story is perfectly set by the French influenced, European styles of animation.

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILMS, approximately 124 minutes
One hundred seventy-four films qualified in the category, these are the nominees. (Rated R, Adult Themes and Language)

FEELING THROUGH, Dough Roland and Susan Ruzenski, 19 minutes.
A late-night encounter on a New York City street leads to a profound connection between a teen in need and a man who is DeafBlind.

THE LETTER ROOM, Elvira Lind and Sofia Sondervan, 30 minutes.
When a corrections officer is transferred to the letter room, he soon finds himself enmeshed in a prisoner’s deeply private life.

THE PRESENT, Farah Nabulsi, 25 minutes.
On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?

TWO DISTANT STRANGERS,  Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, 29 minutes.
Cartoonist Carter James’ repeated attempts to get home to his dog are thwarted by a recurring deadly encounter that forces him to relive the same awful day over.

WHITE EYE, Tomer Shushan and Shira Hohcman, 21 minutes.
A man finds his stolen bicycle, which now belongs to a stranger. While attempting to retrieve it, he struggles to remain human.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILMS, approximately 135 minutesOne hundred fourteen films qualified in the category, these are the nominees. (Rated R

A CONCERTO IS A CONVERSATION, Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, 13 minutes.
A virtuoso jazz pianist and film composer tracks his family’s lineage through his 91-year-old grandfather from Jim Crow Florida to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

A LOVE SONG FOR LATASHA, Sophia Nahli Allison and Janice Duncan, 19 minutes.
An evocative exploreation of 15-year-old Latasha Harlin’s life and dreams. subsequent to her death in 1992.

COLETTE, Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard, 25 minutes.
Former French Resistance member Colette Marin-Catherine refused to step foot in Germany for 74 years. This changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life and convinces her to visit the concentration camp where the Nazis killed her brother.

DO NOT SPLIT, Anders Hammer and Charlotte Cook, 35 minutes.
In 2019 a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalated protests throughout Hong Kong. DO NOT SPLIT captures the determination and sacrifices of the protesters, the government’s backlash, and the passage of the new Beijing-backed national security law.

HUNGER WARD, Skye Fitzgerald and Michael Scheuerman, 40 minutes.
Filmed from inside two of the most active therapeutic feeding centers in Yemen, HUNGER WARD documents two female health care workers fighting to thwart the spread of starvation against the backdrop of a forgotten war. The film provides an unflinching portrait of Dr. Aida Alsadeeq and Nurse Mekkia Mahdi as they try to save the lives of hunger-stricken children within a population on the brink of famine.

Women Composers opens this week in our virtual theater. Y

You can watch Women Composers right here, right now

When Leipzig pianist Kyra Steckeweh realized that her repertoire almost exclusively consisted of music composed by men, she began searching for pieces written by female composers. Her research in archives, libraries, and publishing houses quickly brought to light a variety of remarkable piano pieces that have been buried in history and rarely performed. Steckeweh sees a lot of catching up to do, which is why the focus of her piano recitals and recordings has since shifted to the music of women composers, particularly Mel Bonis, Lili Boulanger and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel.

With these releases she has brought to our attention and delight three very different composers, all of whom left a diverse body of work. In addition to the in-depth examination of the music, Steckeweh, as a pianist and historian, seeks to look “behind the notes”: How did these women live? What barriers did they have to overcome and how did they manage to cope with the obstacles of their time? “Women Composers” highlights the historical and personal circumstances under which these three remarkable women created their works in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland toured an anti-war comedy show across Southeast Asia. It was directly engaged with and inspired by veterans against the war and, naturally, it upset U.S. military higher-ups. The F.T.A. tour was highly controversial and was a huge success among stationed soldiers. In spite of enthusiastic reviews and box office buzz, the film version was quickly taken out of circulation due to political pressures and has been difficult to see for decades. (Officially, “FTA” stood for “Free the Army.” Unofficially . . . well, we think you can figure out what it stood for unofficially.

A present-day interview with Jane Fonda precedes the film.

“A genuine, powerful and even stirring expression of the antipathy engendered by war…and scarred the psyches of those who lived through it.” – J. Hoberman, The New York Times

“F.T.A. has enormous contemporary resonance.” – AV Club

“Sounding out a once-elusive call of defiance for all to hear…[Fonda] and her comrades loved the country that they devoted their energies and risked their reputations to better it, their criticisms the ultimate act of patriotism.” – Charles Bramesco, The Guardian

“Holds up as a terrifically funny movie. Nixon might be long dead, but if you want to sock it to him regardless, be sure to check this out.” – Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic

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The March / April issue of The Ryder magazine is on the virtual newsstands–here is your personal copy.

There’s a new Bob Ross museum in Muncie. Mason Cassady writes about the iconic painter and television star in Bob Ross: Person, Painter and Perm.

Legendary arthouse filmmaker Werner Herzog visited IU in 2012 and Dennis J. Reardon, Head of the Playwriting Program at IU, unashamedly glommed on to him. It would be a stretch to say that they were inseparable, but they spent a lot of time together. Dennis J. Reardon looks back at a defining week in his life in Stalking Werner.

Many people have time on their hands during the pandemic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sally Harvey has put her time to productive use by breaking into the homes of her neighbors and she writes about it in My Preferred Pandemic Life.

Ether Game turns 50 (!) and more in this month’s issue

Black Lives, Black Voices, a micro-festival of four current films by Black filmmakers exploring issues of racial justice and Black identity. The films in the series include The Inheritance, Test Pattern, Our Right To Gaze and The Lady Who Swings the Band. We hope to add one or two additional films as they become available. Three of the films are playing this week; the fourth, The Inheritance, opens on March 12th. The festival is underwritten in part by a grant from the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Zone.

TEST PATTERN: Part psychological thriller, part realist drama, this exhilarating debut feature from Shatara Michelle Ford, offers a Black woman’s perspective on institutional racism and misogyny, inequitable healthcare, and issues of sex and consent. You can watch Test Pattern and read more about it right here

OUR RIGHT TO GAZE: In this collection of six shorts, filmmakers gaze at themselves and their world, attempting to make sense of what they see reflected back. From gripping drama to heart-warming comedy, Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities features timely stories from Black artists that take us outside of the ordinary. You can watch Our Right to Gaze right here, right now

MARY LOU WILLIAMS: THE LADY WHO SWINGS THE BAND: Mary Lou Williams was ahead of her time, a genius. Her musical career began in the 1920s; in an era when jazz was the nation’s popular music, she was one of its greatest innovators. As both a pianist and composer, she was a wellspring of daring and creativity who helped shape the sound of 20th century America. And like the dynamic, turbulent nation in which she lived, Williams seemed to re-define herself with every passing decade. From child prodigy to “Boogie-Woogie Queen” to groundbreaking composer to mentoring some of the greatest musicians of all time, Mary Lou Williams never ceased to astound those who heard her play. You can watch “Mary Lou Williams” or read more about it right here

THE INHERITANCE: After nearly a decade exploring different facets of the African diaspora — and his own place within it — Ephraim Asili makes his feature-length debut with The Inheritance, an astonishing ensemble work set almost entirely within a West Philadelphia house where a community of young, Black artists and activists form a collective. A scripted drama of characters attempting to work towards political consensus — based partly on Asili’s own experiences in a Black liberationist group — weaves with a documentary recollection of the Philadelphia liberation group MOVE, the victim of a notorious police bombing in 1985. Ceaselessly finding commonalties between politics, humor, and philosophy, with Black authors and radicals at its edges, The Inheritance is a remarkable film about the world as we know it. The Inheritance opens March 12th. Read more

You can watch this film right here, right now, until February 25th

Mary Lou Williams was ahead of her time, a genius. Her musical career began in the 1920s; in an era when jazz was the nation’s popular music, she was one of its greatest innovators. As both a pianist and composer, she was a wellspring of daring and creativity who helped shape the sound of 20th century America. And like the dynamic, turbulent nation in which she lived, Williams seemed to re-define herself with every passing decade. From child prodigy to “Boogie-Woogie Queen” to groundbreaking composer to mentoring some of the greatest musicians of all time, Mary Lou Williams never ceased to astound those who heard her play.

In the 1950s, jazz icons like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell regularly visited Mary Lou Williams at her Harlem apartment to gain knowledge and inspiration. And in the 1970s, after her conversion, Mary Lou Williams took jazz in whole new direction—inside the Catholic Church.

But away from the piano, Williams was a woman in a “man’s world,” a black person in a “whites only” society, an ambitious artist who dared to be different and struggled against the imperatives of being a “star.” Above all, she did not fit the (still) prevailing notions of where genius comes from or what it looks like. Time and again, she pushed back against a world that said, “You can’t” and said, “I can.”

Prior to her career as an independent filmmaker, Carol Bash worked in broadcast television at CBS News and the BBC. Currently, she is developing Clean Justice, a  feature documentary on the environmental justice movement; Coming To A School Near You, a  short documentary on the impact of Betsy DeVos’ educational policies on the Detroit public  school system; and Blueprint For My People, an experimental film exploring the history of African  Americans through poetry and rare archival images.

You can watch “Preparations” right here, right now

Márta Vizy (Natasa Stork) is a 39-year-old Hungarian neurosurgeon. After 20 years in the United States, she returns to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous at the Liberty Bridge with János (Viktor Bodó), a fellow doctor she met at a conference in New Jersey. Márta waits in vain, while the love of her life is nowhere to be seen. When she finally tracks him down, the bewildered man claims the two have never met.

Like Madeleine in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Adèle H. in Truffaut’s The Story of Adèle H., or the women of Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy, Márta is a strong yet vulnerable force who anchors herself in her feelings when faced with uncertainty.

For her second feature, following 2015’s The Wednesday Child, writer-director Lili Horvát spins a delicate web of contrasts and silent explosions that shift the viewer’s understanding. Shot with impeccable symmetry on entrancing 35mm, it is an Orphic tale reminding us that, while the heart is an abstruse trickster, the human brain — ruling us with over 80 billion interconnected neurons — is our most complex organ. (Hungary / subtitles / 95 min )

A neurosurgeon pursues the man of her dreams in this simmering portrait of obsession by the Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvat. Critic’s Pick! -The New York Times

You Will Die at Twenty opens on Friday, Feb 12th in our virtual cinema.

Winner of the Lion of the Future Award for best Debut Feature at the Venice Film Festival, You Will Die at Twenty is a visually sumptuous “coming-of-death” fable. During her son’s naming ceremony, a Sheikh predicts that Sakina’s child will die at the age of 20. Haunted by this prophecy, Sakina becomes overly protective of her son Muzamil, who grows up knowing about his fate. As Muzamil escapes Sakina’s ever-watchful eye, he encounters friends, ideas and challenges that make him question his destiny. Sudan’s first Oscar submission, You Will Die at Twenty is an auspicious debut and a moving meditation on what it means to live in the present. Directed by Amjad Abu Alala (Sudan / 102 mins / Arabic with English subtitles)

“A rapturous debut feature… finds boundless enchantment in every frame.” – The New York Times

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Here’s a complete movie calendar

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And here is a copy of the Jan/Feb issue of The Ryder magazine.