New films among Buffalo Film Seminars’ offerings

Over the course of its 52 seasons, the Buffalo Film Seminars has rarely featured recent films in the lineup.

”We like to let even the ones we really like sit around a while so we have a better sense of how they fit with the earlier films we’re doing,” says Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture in the Department of English, who hosts the popular series with Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English department.

Jackson notes that he and Christian never planned to exclude recent films from the lineup — it just worked out that way during the series’ first several seasons.

“Once we saw that pattern evolving, a recent film had to be really special to work its way into the lineup,” Jackson says.

But for the spring 2026 edition that opens on Jan. 27, three films from 2025 — “Frankenstein,” “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” — are among the offerings. In fact, the films will be the final three of the semester.

What’s changed this year?

Jackson answers that question by explaining that he and Christian have several objectives for each season of the series. Among them:

• Present a variety of films that are interesting to experience and worth talking about.
• Give a sense of how film language has developed since long-form narrative film became possible. Over the years, filmmakers have found more and more ways to use the medium to tell their stories, and audiences have learned how to understand what they were experiencing.
• Show how technological change in one aspect of filmmaking impacts all the other aspects of filmmaking; for example, the introduction of sound changes the way actors perform, the way set designers design, the options cinematographers have (or lose) and the way editors edit.
• Give a sense of film as the most collaborative of the arts while maintaining artistic “voices” unique in all the world.
• Give a sense of genre in film and how genre may restrict or empower what a director does in any particular film.

“But we don’t want to do themes,” Jackson says. “If we wind up with more than one western or war film or film noir on our list, the doubling is for other reasons.”

He notes he and Christian can’t meet all those objectives with any one film. “But we can, over the 14 weeks (of the semester), exhibit and talk about films that are exemplary in one or more of them,” he says. “Our hope is, that by the end of any 14-week season, the students and non-students who have taken part in the discussions and read the mailings will go on to experience films on their own with a sensibility that makes those subsequent film experiences richer and more rewarding than they would otherwise have been.”

When compiling the films for a season, Jackson says he and Christian start with a long list of possible films and gradually winnow it down. And then they consider if any new or recent films they have seen meet the series objectives better than the older films under consideration. And they also consider if it’s worth showing the recent film — which many participants likely have already seen — rather than introducing them to an older film or a filmmaker they’ve never encountered and perhaps otherwise never will.

“Just about none of our students have seen a silent film before this class,” Jackson points out, “and not many more have seen a black-and-white film.”

So, what changed this year?

“Each of the 2025 films we’re doing gives us a chance to engage in conversation about interesting and important stuff in different ways,” he says. “Diane and I have been doing this long enough now that we can, with confidence, put these three films in the company of the other 11 (in the lineup). The fact that they’re young means we’ve given them a careful look, but it’s surely not a reason to exclude them.”

And besides, “They’re too good to resist!”

This semester’s Buffalo Film Seminars discussions take place at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays from Jan. 27 through May 5.

An email notification about each film will be sent out on the Saturday before the Zoom discussion date to students registered for Christian and Jackson’s “Film Directors” class (ENG 381), as well as to the Department of English’s Discussion List and to the Buffalo Film Seminars’ listserv (email Jackson or Christian to get on the BFS listserv). That notice will include a URL for the pair’s Vimeo introduction to the film and a PDF of that week’s Goldenrod Handout — informational material about each film, including some critical comments. The notice will also include an invitation to the Zoom discussion.

All films in the series are available for streaming at Amazon, Apple TV, Netflix and/or YouTube. For information on streaming availability, go to  https://www.justwatch.com/. Some films in the series are available for free streaming to UB email account holders through the UB Libraries. 

The series opens on Jan. 27 with the 1923 silent comedy “Our Hospitality,” directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone. It tells the story of a man who returns to his Appalachian homestead and falls for a young woman. The only problem is that her family has vowed to kill every member of his family.

The remainder of the spring 2026 schedule, with descriptions culled from the IMDb online movie database and other sources:

Feb. 3: “Little Caesar,” 1931, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. A small-time criminal moves to a big city to seek a bigger fortune.

Feb. 10: “Mildred Pierce,” 1945, directed by Michael Cortiz. A hard-working mother inches toward disaster when she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant to support her spoiled daughter.

Feb. 17: “Él,” 1953, directed by Luis Buñuel. A husband's suave exterior unravels after his marriage, and he unleashes his paranoid and volatile temper on his wife, which escalates to more dangerous and unpredictable tantrums.

Feb. 24: “Wages of Fear,” 1953, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. In a decrepit South American village, four men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment through rugged country.

March 3: “High and Low,” 1963, directed by Akira Kurosawa. An executive of a Yokohama shoe company because a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.

March 10: “Don’t Look Now,” 1973, directed by Nicolas Roeg. A married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.

March 17: No screening; spring break

March 24: “Reds,” 1981, directed by Warren Beatty. A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.

March 31: “Malcom X,” 1992, directed by Spike Lee. Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination.

April 7: “Dead Man,” 1995, directed by Jim Jarmusch. On the run after murdering a man, an accountant encounters a strange Native American who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.

April 14: “The Departed,” 2006, directed by Martin Scorsese. An undercover cop infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other.

April 21: “Frankenstein,” 2025, directed by Guillermo del Toro. Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment.

April 28: “One Battle After Another,” 2025, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own.

May 5: “Sinners,” 2025, directed by Ryan Coogler. Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.