Persistence Of Vision
Dedicated to preserving and presenting the art of Cinema

For Immediate Release

"The cinema has no boundaries -- it's a ribbon of dream."
–Orson Welles

Movie lovers in New England’s Pioneer Valley will soon be treated to a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see legendary cinema, some of it never unavailable to theaters.  Unseen and rare treasures of the film director who created the film most often voted “The Greatest Film Of All Time” will have two very special showings at the Academy Of Music, 274 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts on the afternoons of March 11 and 12, 2006 at 2:00 PM.  A portion of the weekend’s proceeds will go for the benefit of Amherst Community Television (ACTV) and their outstanding internship program helping area students develop skills of filmmaking and visual communication.
 
POV’s Larry Jackson, former Managing Director of The Orson Welles Cinema Complex in Cambridge, MA, and a longtime friend and associate of the director Orson Welles, has made arrangements with Welles’ cinematographer and closest friend, Gary Graver, to present an eye-opening program of Welles rarities and curiosities that are an absolute must for any filmmaker or lover of cinema anywhere. Few in the world have ever had access to some of this material.

At Welles’ side from 1970 until his death in 1985, Gary Graver worked on many of the master’s films, including THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, FILMING OTHELLO and F FOR FAKE.  (He was also cinematographer on dozens of other films, including a number cult classics.)   Graver and his wife Jillian are caretakers of Welles’ own archive of his works, including a number of the legendary “lost” or unfinished works, like THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. No Wellesian can afford to miss this chance, not only to see such rare footage, but also to share an afternoon with the man who worked most closely with Welles for the last 15 years of his life and who will share his own stories of the adventure and his inside observations on the director’s career.
 
Probably no film artist was ever so misunderstood or beleaguered as the “boy genius” Orson Welles, whose formal education ended at age 15, and who, in 1941 at the age of 25, turned Hollywood on its ear with Citizen Kane, reinventing the syntax of cinema and leading it into the medium we know today.  
 
Welles was the ultimate independent filmmaker long before there were any “Indies.” He was the rebel who always refused to play by the rules. Welles made some of his most interesting work  abroad and essentially on his own, piecing together resources and financing as he went along, against great odds and orthodoxy, in order to maintain his artistic freedom to create masterpieces like his Falstaff treatment, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, which won the Grand Prize at the 20th Cannes Film Festival in 1966, and like his still unseen final testament on the conflict between art and Hollywood, starring John Huston.
 
The program will include some surprise material from two of Welles’ unreleased films, including his last.  As he has at only a handful of major international film festivals and national cinemathéques, Graver will present choices from Welles’ own archive.  But the March event will feature more than films and film excerpts.  From the perspective of Welles’ closest collaborator, Graver will also speak about the experience of working with Welles, his vision, his creative process of writing, acting and directing, and the challenges he faced throughout the years.

For information on tickets and further details contact:  
Persistence Of Vision       Larry Jackson
83 Shays Street € Amherst, MA 01002 € Tel. (413) 253-4200 € Mobile (413) 687-9967 lej1001@...