The Alan Lutkus International Film Series continues its 2023-24 season with the North American premiere of The Eclipse  (2022), dir. Nataša Urban, screening at 6pm on 2/26/24 at the Geneseo Riviera, 4 Center Street, as part of SUNY Geneseo’s celebration of the 4/8/24 Total Solar Eclipse.

The screening will be introduced by Dr. Jovana Babović, Associate Professor in the Department of History, who will also lead a Q&A after the event. The screening is free and open to the public. The Alan Lutkus International Film Series is made possible by generous funding from Anne Lutkus, the English Department, and SUNY Geneseo’s Office of the Provost.

On 11 August 1999, most of Europe was engrossed in the total solar eclipse, which momentarily enveloped the Earth in darkness. But in Serbia, people were busy barricading themselves in their homes and shelters for fear of the dark. Urban returns to the eclipse as motif and metaphor in her paradoxically evocative and thoughtful film about her own upbringing during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Shot on analogue 16mm film with an artist’s eye for how traces of the past remain deposited in the present – both physically and mentally – Urban creates a rich, existential work of imagery with a quiet, philosophical weight that is rare and precious. As when her father wanders the lush landscapes while you hear him reading from his journals about the wanderings he took while the war was still going on.