Join us at SLFS in April 2023 for a retrospective series featuring the films of P.T. Anderson and Wes Anderson every weekend on Friday and Saturday starting March 31st.
Paul Thomas Anderson (known as P.T.) grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the ’70s and 80’s. At an early age, he decided that directing was all he wanted to do and started making short films with his friends. As a senior in high school he wrote, produced, and directed a 30 minute short film “The Dirk Diggler Story”. (This became the basis for his film Boogie Nights.) While at the Sundance Feature Film program he developed the film “Sydney” which became the acclaimed film Hard Eight. After struggles with his distributor, he took his own version of “Sydney” to Cannes where it screened in the Un Certain Regard section. Eventually “Sydney” was released as Hard Eight in 1996, of which film critic Roger Ebert wrote “Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us.”
Wes Anderson was born in Houston, Texas in 1969. Also at a young age he was driven to become a filmmaker making silent films with his brothers and friends. Later working as a projectionist at the University of Texas at Austin he met writer/actor Owen Wilson who he collaborated with in his early films such as Bottle Rocket. His signature post-modern style and subversion of main-stream storytelling stands out amidst commercial filmmaking today. Big star-studded casts, fast paced humor, and a nostalgia mark his films which are never quite what you expected.
These popular directors, who happen to share a last name, represent a new wave of stylistic directing that always surprises. Their way of telling stories is unique in a world of short attention spans and easy endings.
Showtimes may vary. Tickets will be on sale at www.slfstix.org.
Mar 31: The Fantastic Mr. Fox
April 1: Boogie Nights
April 7: Punch Drunk Love
April 8: The Grand Budapest Hotel
April 14: Hard Eight
April 15: Bottle Rocket
April 21: There Will Be Blood
April 22: The Royal Tenenbaums
April 28: Magnolia
April 29: Rushmore
