Schedule:

1:00 PM HOUSEWIFE OF THE YEAR

From 1968 to 1995, Irish television annually featured the “Housewife of the Year” contest in which mostly-middle-aged mothers of many children competed for the crown and sash and the grand prize of a gas range after demonstrating their skill in household arts including preparing a simple meal. Scenes from the show’s history range from humorously kitsch to shockingly sad, revealing a life with parameters strictly proscribed by society and the Catholic church, and in which motherhood was not optional. The film’s present-day encounters with surviving winners revive mixed memories while delving into once-forbidden subjects including virginity and marriage, unwed motherhood, contraception and husbands wedded to the pub. Winner of Best Irish Feature Documentary at the 2024 Galway Film Fleadh.

4:00 PM AUCTION LE TABLEAU VOLÉ

The issue of the return of Nazi-looted art to its rightful heirs makes this high-stakes art world drama as current as international headlines. A wily Paris art auctioneer gets wind of an alleged Egon Schiele painting stolen in 1939 but now come to light in a small working-class suburb. Writer/director Bonitzer creates a web of intrigue in which money over morals threatens to prevail.  Worth millions if authentic, the painting triggers fevered ambition on the part of the auctioneer, his ruthless art appraiser ex-wife, and his emotionally unstable assistant.  Between the auction house and the American heirs of the painting’s original owners stands a naïve and earnest young factory worker, the painting’s current owner.  In French, English and German with English subtitles.

7:00 PM THE GLORY OF LIFE DIE HERRLICHKEIT DES LEBENS

A tender love story with Franz Kafka at the center would seem to run counter to the popular image of the author of such deeply paranoid works as The Metamorphosis and The Trial as a solitary, alienated man.  For the filmmakers of THE GLORY OF LIFE, that is precisely the point.  This bittersweet tragic tale unfolds the loving and life-affirming relationship between 40-year-old Kafka, already in poor health with tuberculosis, and Dora Diamant, the young children’s caregiver he meets in 1923.  From the early days of their passionate attraction through a forced separation and a final reuniting in wintry Berlin, love, faith and humor come to the fore with a lightness that puts Kafka’s personal story in a new perspective.  In German with English subtitles.

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