FILMS AND EVENTS

Using only the fiber of locally foraged stinging nettles, textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years creating a couture dress by hand. A modern-day fairytale and hymn to the healing power of art and nature, THE NETTLE DRESS explores the process of an ancient craft and the journey of using art as an outlet to process grief. Throughout the years, the dress becomes more than just a piece of cloth as it transforms into a woven history, each foot of thread representing and honoring the stories of those Brown has loved and lost.

Narrated by Danny Trejo, THE MICHOACAN FILE explores the origin, history and impact of Mexican food in modern society. As the crosspoint between European and Asian trade routes throughout its history, Mexico has gained a vast and strong food culture, featuring infinite recipes, varieties and flavors. Diving into the past and present and examining culinary experts, anthropologists and traditional cooks, this timely, provocative and culturally significant documentary challenges and ultimately deconstructs what we understand about Mexican cuisine.

Film director King Vidor is often associated with large-scale motion pictures such as The Big Parade, the silent-era war film that made MGM into Hollywood’s top studio, and War and Peace, where Tolstoy’s sprawling Napoleonic saga gets told over three-and-a-half hours. But Vidor was also adept at intimate stories of American life, at tales told with humor, romance and a generous sprinkling of home-grown satire. Such a film is H. M. Pulman, Esquire, his 1941 adaptation of John P. Marquand’s novel about a conservative, middle-aged businessman reconsidering a life dominated by the routine conventions of society. Starring Robert Young (“a director’s dream,” Vidor one said), Hedy Lamarr, Ruth Hussey and Charles Coburn, the bittersweet story looks at a blue-blooded Bostonian who outwardly believes he’s happy but suddenly gets a couple of phone calls that cause him to wonder if he truly is.