THE LANDLORD (1970, Rated R, 112 minutes)
Monday, December 3 - Light snacks will be provided
6pm at the Wilkinson Public Library - FREE TO ALL

Telluride Film Festival Cinematheque is collaboration between
The Telluride Film Festival and Wilkinson Public Library.

The Telluride Film Festival and the Wilkinson Public Library have teamed up for another Cinematheque.  The upcoming fall/winter series will dive into seminal works from the great director, Hal Ashby, whose iconic films include COMING HOME (1978), THE LANDLORD (1970), HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971), THE LAST DETAIL (1973), SHAMPOO (1975) and BEING THERE (1979), among others.  Ashby helped drive the dialog & ideology of a nation navigating its way through the 1970’s, and his meditations still hold up today, as our nation finds itself in a new kind of revolution.

As a young adult, Ashby moved from Utah to California, where he pursued a bohemian lifestyle and became an editor (THE LOVED ONE, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING~THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT).  Ashby said throughout his career that his time as an editor gave him the techniques and insight that he later perfected as a director.

Ashby directed his first film, THE LANDLORD in 1970 (112 minutes, Rated R), which revolutionized the way racism was portrayed in American cinema:  with honesty.  “Instead of staying on that safe, predictable level, it begins to dig into the awkwardness and hypocrisy of our commonly shared attitudes about race,” wrote Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times. 

The film follows Elger Winthrop Enders (Beau Bridges), a rich society kid approaching his 30th birthday who decides it is time to move away from his parents’ home and purchases a tenement house in a Brooklyn ghetto because (as he says while relaxing beside the family pool), "everyone wants a home of his own, you know." 

Upon its release, The New York Times called the film, "a wondrously wise, sad and hilarious comedy."  In another article published by The NY Times 37 years later, journalist Mike Hale wrote an article called "Before Gentrification Was Cool, It Was a Movie." He praised the film for tackling racial tension head on and wrote in surprise how the film, "...would disappear after its 1970 release – rarely shown and just as rarely discussed.” (Wikipedia) One of Ashby’s most important works. With Beau Bridges, Louis Gossett, Jr., Pearl Bailey, Lee Grant and Diana Sands.

Upcoming screenings for January and February include HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971, 91 minutes, Rated PG), about the love between a suicidal young man of about twenty and an almost eighty-year-old widow, and BEING THERE (1979, 130 minutes, Rated PG), on Roger Ebert’s list of “Great Movies” and featuring the mesmerizing Peter Sellers.