Foreign Cinema Night
CLOSE YOUR EYES
Thursday, September 19 at 7:30pm
$16 Public | $10 Members
Curated & introduction by series programmer by Sahib Singh Bakshi
Spanish director Víctor Erice’s fourth film in 50
years, Close Your Eyes is the culmination of one of the most
legendary careers in modern cinema, following the masterpieces The Spirit of
the Beehive, El Sur, and The Quince Tree Sun. In this elegiac
personal epic about time, memory, and, of course, the movies, an aging
filmmaker named Miguel (Manolo Solo) is reluctantly pulled back into a
decades-old mystery connected to his final, unfinished work, titled The
Farewell Gaze. During production, his leading actor and close friend, Julio (Jose
Coronado), vanished and was never heard from again; in the process of
trying to track him down so many years later, Miguel must come to terms with
his own past, his present life, and the irrevocably changed processes of his
art form. Featuring captivating performances from a cast that also includes Ana
Torrent (Beehive’s unforgettable child star) in a moving role as
Julio’s grown daughter, Close Your Eyes is a poignant, summative
work that finds original ways to remind viewers of the moving image’s ability
to reach across time. (Spain, 2023, 169 min. Spanish, Catalan, French,
Chinese with English Subtitles | Dir. Victor Erice)