Dryden Theatre welcomes filmmakers David Gordon Green & Lisa Muskat Thursday, March 6

Film series throughout March celebrates films of this director/producer team

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House celebrates the films of director/screenwriter David Gordon Green and producer Lisa Muskat with a retrospective in March and April. Kicking off the series will be the Rochester premiere of their film Snow Angels and a visit from Green and Muskat themselves at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 6. The filmmakers will introduce the screening and answer audience questions.

Snow Angels, a deeply personal project that uniquely mixes humor with tragedy, tells converging stories of love and loss among two couples: one adult and one adolescent. Green's most mature work to date also features his most impressive cast of experienced and fledgling actors: Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Griffin Dunne, Amy Sedaris, Michael Angarano, and Olivia Thirlby.

The Green & Muskat retrospective at the Dryden includes seven feature films plus Green's student films made at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Also included are showings of three new independent features produced by Green and Muskat: Great World of Sound, directed by Green's fellow NCSA-alum Craig Zobel; Jeff Nichols' stunning debut, Shotgun Stories; and Chop Shop, Ramin Bahrani's follow-up to his acclaimed Man Push Cart.

Muskat, a graduate of the University of Rochester, has been Green's primary producer on all four of his feature films to date. She, like Green, is a major force in independent filmmaking.

About David Gordon Green
At the Berlin Film Festival in February 2000, moviegoers got an early introduction to the work of a very young writer-director who would become one of the new century's most important American filmmaking artists, then 24-year-old David Gordon Green. The world premiere of Green's low-budget, independently made, and mysteriously titled George Washington was cause for celebration in the way it favored poetic visuals and real human behavior in telling the story of a group of youngsters in a poor North Carolina town. Shunning conventional narrative, controlled performances, and overly emphatic dialogue, George Washington was hailed by critics who welcomed it as a movie in the tradition of Charles Burnett and Terrence Malick.

Green's follow-up, All the Real Girls, tells of the rehabilitation and heartbreak of a young ladies' man (Paul Schneider) when he falls for a no-less-innocent teenage girl (Zooey Deschanel).

While the love story is honestly heartfelt, Green never loses his touch for injecting humor into painful and awkward situations. All the Real Girls premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded a special jury prize "for emotional truth."

Undertow, Green's third feature, found him working with his idol, Terrence Malick, who served as co-producer and introduced Green to the story of an adolescent boy and his younger brother on the run from their murderous uncle. Featuring rapturous images lensed on Savannah, Georgia locations by Green's steadfast cinematographer, Tim Orr, Undertow pays homage to other films like The Night of the Hunter and Southern-set action classics from the '70s like Macon County Line, while always maintaining its own offbeat sensibility.

The films of the Green & Muskat retrospective:

8 p.m. Thursday, March 6 | Rochester Premiere
David Gordon Green & Lisa Muskat in Person!
SNOW ANGELS (David Gordon Green, US 2007, 107 min.)

8 p.m. Thursday, March 13
UNDERTOW (David Gordon Green, US 2004, 107 min.) Preceded by BIOGRAPHY OF BARRELS (David Gordon Green, US 1997, 10 min.)

8 p.m. Saturday, March 15 | Rochester Premiere
SHOTGUN STORIES (Jeff Nichols, US 2007, 92 min.)

8 p.m. Thursday, March 20
ALL THE REAL GIRLS (David Gordon Green, US 2003, 108 min.) Preceded by PLEASANT GROVE (David Gordon Green, US 1997, 10 min.)

8 p.m. Thursday, March 27
GEORGE WASHINGTON (David Gordon Green, US 2000, 89 min.) Preceded by PHYSICAL PINBALL (David Gordon Green, US 1998, 20 min.)

7 p.m. Sunday, March 30
GREAT WORLD OF SOUND (Craig Zobel, US 2007, 106 min., 35mm)

8 p.m. Saturday, April 12 | Rochester Premiere
CHOP SHOP (Ramin Bahrani, US 2007, 84 min.)

Admission at the door for each film is $6 general admission; $5 students: and $4 Eastman House members. More information is available at dryden.eastmanhouse.org or (585) 241-4090. The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House is located at 900 East Ave., Rochester.

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