March 12, 7pm:  The New World

 The Historical Society of Santuit and Cotuit and Cotuit Center for the Arts present a monthly historical film festival this winter beginning in January and running through April. All films will be shown at 7pm at Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Rt 28, Cotuit. Admission is free.

This historical adventure, starring Colin Farrell and !’orianka Kilcher, depicts the founding of the Jamestown, Virginia settlement and is inspired by the historical figures Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

Friday, March 16th, 7pm

Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner

Feature Documentary | 2005 | 79 min., USA

This delightful story of the annual International Whistling Competition opens a window on an astonishing world. Including explanations and tips from a sound-effects expert and champion whistlers, hilarious archival footage of whistling in its heyday, and portraits of current contestants, the directors move the film from fun frivolity to a celebration of a fading art form. Follow the efforts of competitors drawn from all walks of life: a turkey hauler, an investment banker, and a Dutch social worker: who share the amazing ability to whistle everything from pitch-perfect opera and Vivaldi to rollicking Texas swing. With great footage of Harpo Marx, Monty Python, and Elvis, as well as the whistling languages of Turkey and the Canary Islands, this family film offers great fun for young and old. You’ll leave the theater ready to pucker up and blow!

Tickets: $12/$10 Members

For tickets, please click here or call 508-428-0669. Tickets will also be sold at the door if available.

The Historical Society of Santuit and Cotuit and Cotuit Center for the Arts present a monthly historical film festival this winter beginning in January and running through April. All films will be shown at 7pm at Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Rt 28, Cotuit. Admission is free.

April 9, 7pm:  The Crossing

This 2000 A & E film is based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast.  The Peabody Award and stars Jeff Daniels as George Washington

Tuesday, April 17^{th, 7pm}

Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie by Michelle Esrick

Feature Documentary | 2008 | 88 min., USA

Saint Misbehavin’ reveals the true story of cultural phenomenon Wavy Gravy, a man whose commitment to making the world a better place has never wavered. We experience the impact one person can have and connect to the hope that each one of us can make a difference while keeping our sense of humor. Wavy Gravy is known as the MC of the Woodstock Festival, a hippie icon, clown and even a Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavor. In Saint Misbehavin’ we meet a true servant to humanity who carries his message through humor, compassion and a song he sings, called ‘Basic Human Needs.’ Saint Misbehavin’ weaves together intimate verite footage, reflections from an array of cultural and counter-cultural peers, and never-before-seen archival footage to tell a story that is bigger than the man himself.

Tickets: $12/$10 Members

Friday, May 18^{th, 7pm}

Louder Than a Bomb by Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs

Feature Documentary | 2010 | 99 min., USA

Louder Than a Bomb tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare for the world’s largest youth slam. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. Louder Than a Bomb is not about “high school poetry” as we often think of it. It’s about language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance. While the topics they tackle are often deeply personal, what they put into their poems – and what they get out of them is universal: the defining work of finding one’s voice.

Tuesday, June 19^{th, 7pm}

Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology by Tiffany Shlain

Feature Documentary | 2011 | 82 min., USA

With wonderful heart and an impressive sense of scale, Tiffany Shlain’s vibrant and insightful documentary, Connected, explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our time-the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy-while searching for her place in the world during a transformative time in her life. Employing a splendidly imaginative combination of animation and archival footage, plus several surprises, Shlain constructs a chronological tour of Western modernization through the work of her late father, Leonard Shlain, a surgeon and best-selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. With humor and irony, the Shlain family life merges with philosophy to create both a personal portrait and a proposal for ways we can move forward as a civilization. Connected illuminates the beauty and tragedy of human endeavor while boldly championing the importance of personal connectedness for understanding and coping with today’s global conditions.

Tickets: $12/$10 Members

Thursday, July 12^{th, 7pm}

Jimmy Tingle’s American Dream by Vinnie Straggas and Jimmy Tingle

Feature Documentary, | 2010 | 73 min. USA

Jimmy Tingle’s American Dream is a one hour tour de force of comedy, commentary and conversation with some of America’s most iconic personalities and social critics, as well as family, friends and total strangers as they speak up and speak out on the American Dream.As he weaves his stand up comedy career into the fabric of the American Dream, you’ll meet Oscar winners and comedians, historians and the homeless as he aspires to make us laugh, to make us think, and encourages us to dream.Interviews with Robert Altman, Howard Zinn, Al Franken, Janeane Garafalo, Columnist Margery Egan, Sister Lena Divey, Jimmy’s mother Frances and more.Music by Willy Nelson, The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones, The Neighborhoods, and Jimmy Tingle on harmonica.

SCREENING FOLLOWED BY A SPECIAL STAND UP SHOW BY JIMMY TINGLE – Tickets for this show only are $25

Tuesday, September 18^{th, 7pm}

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison by Bestor Cram

Feature Documentary | 2008 | 87 min., USA

January 1968; a year that was saturated in violence and historical change. Tucked away in a gray prison cafeteria in Northern California, isolated from the tumult outside, hard men doing hard time witnessed the making of a legendary album that would catapult a country singer to international stardom. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison remains one of the greatest live albums ever made, and the man himself one of America’s greatest troubadours and advocates for prison reform. Forty years later, the album still resonates today with a rawness and authenticity that few recordings have ever achieved. This film will expose a lesser known “Man in Black” through an exciting, visually compelling examination of this historic concert.

Tuesday, October 16, 7pm

The Drummond Will by Alan ButterworthF

Feature Comedy | 2010 | 81 min., UK

Two prodigal brothers, Danny and Marcus, are reunited with each other and their uncle at their father’s funeral in a remote English village. Marcus, a frustrated would-be businessman, is less than impressed when Danny, his mooching, partially-estranged dilettante of a brother cannot even manage to turn up on time. Their uncle, however, is simply very happy to see them both together, and insists that they stay the night before going their separate ways once more. At the very least, they should stay long enough to meet with the solicitor, and discuss the matter of their father’s will.

So it is that the brothers, hung-over from the wake and already grating on each other’s nerves, find themselves the proud owners of their late father’s dilapidated cottage. As expected, they initially discover precious little of any value inside. What they certainly did not expect to find was an enormous sum of cash hidden in a bag in a cupboard and more surprising still is the belligerent old man they find holding onto it. They have a predicament: knowing their father, the money is highly unlikely to be of legal providence, so simply going to the police presents a problem if they want to keep it. However, they also have the furious and pugilistic Malcolm the Bastard one of the disreputable gang of pensioners who represent the closest thing their father had to friends to contend with. The Drummond Will is a black comedy set in decaying rural England, a collision between old and new. The film follows estranged brothers Marcus and Danny Drummond as they find themselves on a surprisingly dangerous undertaking to unravel the mystery surrounding their father’s unlikely wealth.

Tickets: $12/$10 Members

Friday, November 16^{th, 7pm}

A Good Man by Bob Hercules and Gordon Quinn

Feature Documentary | 2011 | 86 min., USA

A Good Man follows acclaimed director/choreographer Bill T. Jones (Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Still/Here, FELA!) as he and his company create their most ambitious work, an original dance-theater piece in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s Bicentennial. Through two tumultuous years, we witness raw moments of frustration as Jones struggles to communicate his vision to his dancers and collaborators, as well as moments of great exhilaration when movement transcends the limitation of words. Jones and his company come face to face with America’s unresolved contradictions about race, equality and the legacy of our 16th President. Premiering on the heels of Jones’s Tony Award for FELA! and 2010 Kennedy Center Honor, A Good Man is a window into the creative process and, indeed, the creative crisis of one of our nation’s most enduring, provocative artists as he explores what it means to be a good man, to be a free man, to be a citizen.

Tickets: $12/$10 Members