Films about love. Might as well say Films About Loss. Or Films About Hate, or Films About the Struggle to Love. After our first two screenings (LOST TANGO IN PARIS and THE TANGO LESSON), audience members have talked about love as an unfortunate affliction but few have rhapsodized about its joys. I did, but from a certain perspective. Not to have loved must be the worst of afflictions. Memories of love are safer, tangled in webs of memory and loss, necessary phantasms accompanying age.

I was struck in both screenings by how much sex and love are subject to judgments, political critiques, and expectations which have little to do with the experience itself. Blame is popular. He or she did this or that. Entire genders are judged by the behavior of one member. What a burden, for such a tender and vulnerable, fierce and contradictory force. In our over-politicized world, blizzards of opinion obscure the only thing we possess outright… our personal experience of the world’s mysteries. But I asked for it. I wanted frank discussion. So let’s speak with fervor. Even fever. How often do we have the chance to do that?

I think love, sex, lust, eroticism and the various states which cloak the mystic Eros/Agape is a Darwinian strategy for survival of the race wrapped into a powerful personal cataclysm of physical need, desire for intimacy and the wild imaginings of a fevered brain. And everything else the poets have said or will say about it. It lies at the heart of our survival giving it the primal position in our lives and makes me want to add my vision to its collective expression. Ten Films About Love: the next undertaking I hope to undertake with friends and collaborators, old and new.

Here is the complete schedule of Citizen Cinema’s FILMS ABOUT LOVE series.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS, Bernardo Bertolucci- 2/28/07
THE TANGO LESSON, Sally Potter- 3/14/07
THE CELEBRATION, Thomas Vinterberg- 3/28/07
IRREVERSIBLE, Gaspar Noe- 4/11/07
WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, John Cassavetes- 4/25/07
CRIES AND WHISPERS, Ingmar Bergman- 5/9/07
WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Hiroshi Teshigahara- 5/23/07
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, Nagisa Oshima- 6/6/07
FACES, John Cassavetes- 6/20/07
WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? Tsai Ming Liang- 7/11/07
BREAKING THE WAVES, Lars Von Trier- 7/25/07
HEAT AND SUNLIGHT, Rob Nilsson- 8/8/07

As you can see these films play every other Wednesday, skipping only Wednesday, July 4. None of them embrace the popular fictions about living happily ever after. Since no one has ever done so we can dispense with the Popular Mechanics or Hallmark card versions. Whether acknowledged or not, we all hover between the twin poles which mark the pain and pleasure of the life force. All of these films take us into unexplainable realms of paradox and contradiction, and hopefully will be disturbing, at least disquieting, and certainly worthy of discussion. A couple will be difficult to watch. Be brave. One of art’s advantages is that you get to witness and contemplate things you aren’t likely to have to experience yourself. The resulting catharsis will be, as Aristotle wanted it to be, cleansing. In the end, all of these films are works of high achievement, rarely seen in the multiplexes.

This coming Wednesday, March 28, 7:00 at the Edwin Johnson Screening room, 1418 5th. St., Berkeley, we are showing THE CELEBRATION, by Thomas Vinterberg, of the Danish Dogme group. It’s a film which I can watch over and over, always marveling at its simple observation of human behavior. It depicts both the hypocrisy and the truth in family life, horrific, funny, tender and bawdy in turns. I think it’s the most Shakespearean modern film I’ve seen and done in the best of the rough, verite style of Cassavetes’ SHADOWS.

Please RSVP as soon as possible at (510)527-7217 or rnilsson@robnilsson.com. Seating is limited.

P.S. A short request. We are trying to establish a new interactive and dynamic web site to help inaugurate the era of Citizen Cinema. It will help make it possible to reflect our latest events, classes, conversations and screenings and to generally get the word out on our cinematic mission. We have established a relationships with a design school in the East Bay where students will collaborate in creating this site as part of their curriculum. A small tax deductible contribution (I’m serious, even $1) will help with this project. Orion Star, one of our staunch honchos is spearheading this effort. It’s good for us, good for the students and good for community relations. Visit the fund raising site at www.lpcpledge.com and show your support by making a contribution and posting a comment.

Discussions on The Celebration are now taking place in the Citizen Cinema Forums located here: The Celebration : Love Screening #3