LA Premiere: WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN (Nicholas Ray, 1976) & DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH (Susan Ray, 2011)

Event Date: January 31, 2012 - 6:30pm

Location: The James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409, UCLA

WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN (1976):

A decade after quitting Hollywood, legendary director Nicholas Ray (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, IN A LONELY PLACE, JOHNNY GUITAR) accepted a teaching position at Harpur College in Binghamton, New York. There, with the intensive collaboration of his students, he began work on a project unlike anything he had done before, the making of which would consume his creative energies for the remainder of his life. Entitled WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN, that film is Ray’s enormously ambitious, profoundly personal, wildly experimental magnum opus – a collection of notes on Vietnam-era America, the generation gap, and the filmmaking process itself, conceived in a dizzying kaleidoscope of split screens, superimpositions and other radical image manipulations that anticipate later trends in video art and digital effects.

After rushing to complete the film for its premiere at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Ray continued to re-work WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN until his death from lung cancer in 1979. On the occasion of Ray’s centenary, we are proud to present the most complete version of this one-of-a-kind film in a stunning digital restoration undertaken by Ray’s widow, Susan Ray, President of The Nicholas Ray Foundation, in close collaboration with the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Film Archive.

DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH (2011):

In this feature-length companion piece to Nicholas Ray’s WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN, Ray’s widow, Susan, examines her late husband’s stormy romance with Hollywood, his self-imposed exile in Europe, and his eventual return to America, where he began work on the wildly experimental magnum opus that would become his final cinematic testament. Incorporating never-before-seen archival picture and sound from the Nicholas Ray Archive, and new interviews with directors Victor Erice and Jim Jarmusch and many of the original cast and crew of WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN, DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH offers a revealing portrait of a great director’s life, work and lasting influence.

Following the program, there will be a Q&A featuring:

Janet Bergstrom, UCLA Professor and Nicholas Ray Historian
Christa Fuller, Actress and a Personal Friend of Nicholas Ray
Charles Bornstein, Editor and Crew Member, We Can't Go Home Again
Richard Bock, Editor and Crew Member, We Can't Go Home Again
Bill Krohn, U.S. Correspondent for Cahiers du Cinéma - interviewed Nicholas Ray in '77

Praise for WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN:

Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection, Buenos Aires International Film Festival
Official Selection, Venice International Film Festival
Official Selection, New York International Film Festival
Official Selection, BFI London Film Festival
Official Selection, Vancouver International Film Festival

“Nicholas Ray, returned from a literal and figurative exile, made what may well have been the most advanced and audacious film of the era. The fact that it has been invisible for decades and is only now becoming available makes a viewing – and its release – all the more essential. To quote a now familiar line: It isn’t that he was ahead of his time; he was in step with it when others were behind it.” –Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“A serious head-rush of a career's worth of forcibly repressed ideas; many are goofy, but the energy's infectious.” –Vadim Rizov, GreenCine Daily

Praise for DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH:

Official Selection, Venice International Film Festival
Official Selection, New York International Film Festival

“Remarkably informative about the legendary director, his experiment with collective filmmaking and the changing cinematic landscape of the early '70s…Susan Ray furnishes a fascinating dual portrait of a passionate artist at career's end and a revolutionary dream approaching its terminus.” –Ronnie Scheib, Variety

WE CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN (1976)
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Ray
WRITERS: Nicholas Ray, Tom Farrell, Susan Ray
STARRING: Richie Bock, Tom Farrell, Danny Fisher, Jill Gannon, Jane Heymann, Leslie Levinson, Stanley Liu, Luke Oberle, Nicholas Ray, Ned Weisman, Phil Weisman
Oscilloscope Laboratories
Blu-Ray, 93 min.

DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH (2011)
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Susan Ray
FEATURING: Tom Farrell, Jim Jarmush, Walter Murch, Nicholas Ray
Oscilloscope Laboratories
Blu-Ray, 70 min.

Please note the early start time for this program, which begins at 6:30PM.