Benito Rakower, Ed.D.


Film Appreciation

Benito Rakower, Ed.D., was educated at Queens College and Harvard University, where he received a doctorate in the teaching of English. Dr. Rakower taught writing at Harvard College, and has lectured on film at the French Library in Boston.

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The 21st Century – A New Vision in Film-Making

Perpetual Renewal in the Art of Film

These six 21st century films exemplify the two outstanding requirements of film Modernism. The first is a craving for novelty. The second is an assertion of individual possibility. In film, it is always personal experience that reveals the nature of reality.
Six Lectures
  1. “In America” (2003, Irish-American-British) - A seemingly, simple film about an Irish immigrant family struggling to survive in New York City amid deplorable conditions. It is impossible not to identify completely with this family. One is captivated by the courage, pluck, and charm of the two sisters and their parents.
  2. “The Big Short” (2015, American) - The power of film is used to examine and explain the 2007 financial crisis. The concepts of greed and cynicism suddenly become the raw emotions and intoxicating vices they really are.
  3. “Phoenix” (2014, German, English subtitles) - A staggeringly brilliant attempt to deal with the Nazi period through the experience of one person. A woman, betrayed to the SS, escapes from a concentration camp, her face horribly disfigured. She attempts to re-unite with her husband. A gripping film that transcends all the platitudes of history.
  4. “I Am Love” (2009, Italian, English subtitles) - The Italians are the supreme masters of making films about aristocratic families. Tilda Swinton plays the role of a Russian woman, fluent in Italian, who is the wife of a wealthy Italian aristocrat. The stifling tyranny of leisure, ceremony, and luxury is threatened when she falls passionately in love with a chef. Tilda Swinton totally re-invents a familiar theme.
  5. “Mean Girls” (2004, American) - One of the best high school films ever made. Aside from its incomparable wit and striking sense of realism, the film shows adults how little they actually know about the complex, social world of American teenagers.
  6. “The Ides of March” (2011, American) - An ensemble of American actors reveal that the ideal of virtue is incompatible with the messiness of American politics. The extraordinary cast is headed by George Clooney, who also directed.
Course # S6F5 — Full 6 Weeks
Place:Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Complex, Jupiter Campus
Dates:Fridays, March 24; April 7, 14, 21, 28; May 5 2017
Time:2:15 - 4:45 PM
Fee:$60 / member; $85 / non-member
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The 21st Century – A New Vision in Film-Making (First four weeks only)

Perpetual Renewal in the Art of Film

These six 21st century films exemplify the two outstanding requirements of film Modernism. The first is a craving for novelty. The second is an assertion of individual possibility. In film it is always personal experience that reveals the nature of reality.
Four Lectures
  1. "In America" (2004) - A seemingly, simple film about an Irish immigrant family struggling to survive in New York City amid deplorable conditions. It is impossible not to identify completely with this family. One is captivated by the courage, pluck, and charm of the two sisters and their parents.
  2. "The Big Short" (2015) - The power of film is used to examine and explain the 2007 financial crisis. The concepts of greed and cynicism suddenly become the raw emotions and intoxicating vices they really are.
  3. "Phoenix" (2014, German) - A staggeringly brilliant attempt to deal with the Nazi period through the experience of one person. A woman betrayed to the SS, escapes from a concentration camp, her face horribly disfigured. She attempts to re-unite with her husband. A gripping film that transcends all the platitudes of history.
  4. "I Am Love" (2010, Italian and English) - The Italians are the supreme masters of making films about aristocratic families. Tilda Swinton plays the role of a Russian woman, fluent in Italian, who is the wife of a wealthy Italian aristocrat. The stifling tyranny of leisure, ceremony, and luxury is threatened when she falls passionately in love with a chef. Tilda Swinton totally re-invents a familiar theme.
Course # S4F6 — First 4 Weeks
Place:Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Complex, Jupiter Campus
Dates:Fridays, March 24; April 7, 14, 21 2017
Time:2:15 - 4:45 PM
Fee:$40 / member; $60 / non-member
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Out of the Ordinary

Six Films of Rare Excellence

The films for this course were chosen for their striking originality and power. Intelligently conceived and brilliantly acted, they demonstrate that the “real world” is best understood through art – painting, writing and photography.

Each film will be preceded by film notes and a brief introductory lecture. There will also be a discussion period after each showing.
Six Lectures
  1. “The Best Offer” (2013, Italian, in English) - The world of high-end, European auctions provides the setting for this lavish, elegant film of love and deception. The film examines the ways in which an art connoisseur affects the private life of a woman client.
  2. “Intimate Strangers” (2004, French, English subtitles) - This film poses a fascinating question: What happens when an intelligent man listens to a beautiful woman? A woman makes an appointment to see a psychiatrist. She goes to the wrong door and enters the office of a tax consultant instead. He doesn’t tell her she has made a mistake. She continues seeing him in the belief that he is a psychiatrist.
  3. “The Debt” (2010, English) - An operation by the Israeli Mossad to abduct a Nazi war criminal from East Berlin in 1965 goes awry. Thirty years later, the truth of the mission is revealed.
  4. “The Girl on the Bridge” (1999, French, English subtitles) - A performing artist rescues a girl from drowning in the River Seine. She becomes part of his act and they travel through Europe bringing each other luck. Then, fate intervenes.
  5. “The Bank Job” (2008, English) - This may well be the best bank robbery film ever made because it was based on an actual event. What the bank robbers steal attracts the interest of M15 – the British Security Services.
  6. “The 36th Precinct” (2004, French, English subtitles) - Two Parisian police detectives, with different goals, are trying to capture a particularly violent gang of criminals. It is their distinctive self-possession and style that carries the film.
Course # SUR1 — Full 6 Weeks
Place:Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Complex, Jupiter Campus
Dates:Thursdays, May 18, 25; June 1, 8, 15, 22 2017
Time:1 - 3:30 PM
Fee:$60 / member; $85 / non-member
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Literature, Film and the Real World

Very little attention is given to the way novels and films can affect people and alter history. When President Abraham Lincoln met the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, he said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Beecher’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly” aroused the intense hatred in the North that made the Civil War inevitable.

Similarly, a film titled “The Battle of Algiers,” is indisputably the most influential political film ever made. Though a work of fiction, its stunning documentary style became the “textbook” for the chaos now raging in the Middle East.

This lecture will be devoted to examining several novels and films that changed people’s thinking.
  • "The Red Shoes" (British film, 1948) - The problematic romanticism of this film transfixed and influenced girls all over the world. It was directly responsible for establishing classical ballet as a popular art in the United States.
  • "The Human Comedy" (French novels, 1829-47) - In 90 novels and novellas, Balzac attempted to describe the totality of French society in order to discover the motives that govern human behavior. One of the most referred to achievements in literature.
  • "Citizen Kane" (American film, 1942) - With its ironic Humphrey Bogart, and an international cast, this film created the definitive American male of the 20th century.
  • "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" (American novel, 1852) - Harriet Beecher Stowe’s emotionally devastating novel continues to influence and shape the question of race and society in America.
  • "The Battle of Algiers" (Italian/Algerian film, 1966) - In this film, Pontecorvo did something every director dreams of accomplishing – seizing and dominating an audience’s imagination. A film impossible to resist.
  • “Frankenstein” (British novel, 1818) - Mary Shelley’s novel is the single most famous and familiar work in world literature. Brilliantly written, it combines two powerful ideas. One is the absence of love and its effects. The other is the unpredictable effects of the war between man and nature.
Register Early! There is a $5 charge for registering on the day of a one-time lecture or event.
Course # SUM1 — One Time Event
Place:Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Complex, Jupiter Campus
Dates:Monday, May 15 2017
Time:1:30 - 3 PM
Fee:$25 / member; $35 / non-member
Register Now
 
 Last Modified 2/12/15