Culture: September 2006 Archives

People who can't find something interesting to do in Tulsa just aren't looking hard enough.

Tulsa is home to a chapter of the Altarnet Film Society, a group that exists to promote films "that have a transcendent theme, story, or experience." The AFS website asks and answers the question:

Could there be films that positively communicate wonderful deep concepts? Is it possible to have stories that encourage the heart and inspire personal greatness without being cheesy or corny? At AFS we have discovered that there are just such films, some only a minute long, others 10:00, still others 30:00 long. Let’s screen them together and then talk about what we have just experienced!

The Tulsa chapter holds a screening the last Saturday of each month, and this Saturday they'll be showing Secession, written by Tulsa-based blogger Earnest Pettie, a graduate of OU's film school. Here's the film's synopsis:

An under-appreciated, under-loved housewife decides to move out... or rather, in... to her own pantry. In a war of wills, her husband and son must come to terms with this housewife's unorthodox decision.

It's based on a short story that Earnest wrote, and it was directed by Kate Christensen. Following the film, Earnest will take questions.

The screening will be Saturday night at 7:30, at the Agora Coffeehouse, just northeast of the fountain in the Fontana Shopping Center, 51st & Memorial.

MORE: On his MySpace blog, Earnest wrote about the travails of location shoots for his latest production, "A Man and His Mustache."

AND YET MORE: Here's a short trailer for A Man and His Mustache.

BatesLine has saluted the paintings of William Bouguereau on several occasions in the past, so I was excited to read in the latest Urban Tulsa Weekly that Tulsa's Philbrook Museum is hosting an exhibition of Bouguereau's work and that of his students, beginning on Sunday and running through the end of the year.

Holly Wall's story about the exhibition puts Bouguereau's life and career in the context of the artistic trends of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Popular in his lifetime, his work was obscured within a few years after his death by the rise of impressionism. At long last it's respectable again to enjoy realism in painting.