Emory Cinematheque: They Won't Forget
Emory Cinematheque: They Won't Forget, Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1937 | 95 min.
This low-budget anti-lynching film from Mervyn Leroy (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) may be the most powerful 1930s Hollywood film you’ve never seen. As Bernstein discusses in his Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television, the film is a thinly disguised fictional adaptation of Atlanta’s own notorious Leo Frank and Mary Phagan case. Featuring marvelous performances from Claude Rains as an ambitious prosecutor and a cast of relative but talented unknowns (including Lana Turner in her screen debut), They Won’t Forget is classic fast-paced Warner Bros. product, a film so potent that Atlanta’s city leaders ensured it was never shown here upon its release. Come and see why. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Emory Cinematheque: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Directed by Don Siegel, 1956 | 80 min.
Residents of a small California town become alarmed when friends and relatives become shells of their former selves. It’s up to Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and his old flame Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. Producer Walter Wanger, the subject of Bernstein’s first book, produced this classic, ingeniously-shot, low-budget sci-fi horror film, directed by Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, The Shootist) from a noir-tinged script by Daniel Mainwaring (of Out of the Past fame). Its generalized portrayal of fighting the pressure to conform resulted in its being interpreted as both anti-Communist and anti-anti-Communist. Remade several times, this version arguably remains the best.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Billy Knight: Advance Screening & Filmmakers Q&A
Billy Knight: Advance Screening & Filmmakers Q&A
Friday January 23 at 3pm in White Hall 208
Join us for an exclusive advance screening followed by a discussion with the filmmakers! Billy Knight is a coming-of-age story and a love letter to cinema starring Al Pacino and Charlie Heaton, and the post-screening Q&A will feature: Alec Griffen Roth (director and writer), Max Russell Pratts (producer), and Josh Clayton (producer and Emory Alum!). We hope you can make it!
Event is free and open to the public.
University Event Topic: Arts. School: All Emory University. Department / Organization: Film & Media. Arts at Emory. Event Open To: All (Public).
Friday, January 23, 2026, 3:00 PM.
White Hall Room 208 | 301 Dowman Dr, Atlanta, GA 30322.
Between Shadow and Light: Artwork on Compassion
Between Shadow and Light: Artwork on Compassion
Show Opening January 28
5pm - 6:30pm
Center for Ethics
This exhibition features artwork created by Emory students selected from Introduction to Painting and Modes of Visual Thinking studio art courses. Developed in collaboration with Ethics & the Arts at the Emory Center for Ethics, the works explore the theme of compassion through drawing, painting, and sculpture. Ranging from quiet, intimate gestures to more expansive visual reflections, these student artworks consider how empathy, care, and ethical awareness can be expressed through close observation, material choices, and creative process. These works highlight artmaking as a space for reflection, connection, and thoughtful engagement with the human experience.
The show will run for the duration of the semester.
University Event Topic: Arts. School: All Emory University. Department / Organization: Center for Ethics. Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
Center for Ethics | 1531 Dickey Dr, Atlanta, GA 30322.
Emory Cinematheque: Rome, Open City
Emory Cinematheque: Rome, Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini, 1945 | 103 min.
Based on actual events that took place in the closing days of World War II, Roberto Rossellini’s fast-paced, thrilling landmark drama about the Catholic and Communist fight against Nazi rule in Rome was nothing short of revolutionary. A founding work of Italian Neorealism, the film rejected many Hollywood studio traditions and focused on ordinary people and their struggles to survive in the wake of World War II’s devastation. Intricately plotted and shot while the Nazis were still in Rome, the film established a new standard of cinematic realism. All in all, it is an inspiring, highly influential and deeply moving tribute to Italian resilience and the abiding power of love.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: Nothing but a Man
Emory Cinematheque: Nothing but a Man
Directed by Michael Roemer, 1964 | 95 min.
This underseen masterpiece of American independent cinema depicts working class Black experience in the South of the early 1960s with enormous sensitivity and intimacy, a far cry from the slicker Hollywood versions produced in the decade. When self-contained, confident railroad worker Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon, The Spook Who Sat By the Door, Hogan’s Heroes) comes to a southern town and falls in love with the preacher’s daughter Josie (jazz legend Abbey Lincoln), they struggle to fight all kinds of pressures from the Black and white communities which insist they accept the indignities of segregation and white supremacy. Recently restored, the film looks better than ever, with superb performances from the entire cast.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: Ashes and Diamonds
Emory Cinematheque: Ashes and Diamonds
Directed by Andzrej Wajda, 1958 | 103 min.
Andzrej Wajda’s third film on World War II Polish experience is still arguably his greatest. Its tight 24 hour time frame takes place in a small town on the pivotal day when the Nazis have retreated but the Soviet military are rolling in to assume authority--The long-time underground resistance fighter Maciek Chelmicki (the charismatic, dynamic Zbigniew Cybulski, called “the Polish James Dean”) has fought both enemies---and he weighs the moral and emotional dimensions of his latest assignment--to assassinate the new local Communist leader. Jerzy Wójcik’s absolutely stunning deep focus cinematography conveys this utterly compelling story of Poland complex and tragic history in luminous images.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: The Lives of Others
Emory Cinematheque: The Lives of Others
Directed by Florian Hencken von Donnersmarck, 2006 | 137 min.
Screening introduced by Dr. Caroline Schaumann, Professor of German Studies.
Florian Hencken von Donnersmarck burst onto the international scene with this Oscar-winning exploration of oppressed life and artistic censorship during the 1980s in repressive, authoritarian East Germany. When a die-hard STASI (secret police) agent begins surveilling a successful, government-approved playwright and his partner, a leading actress, he begins to question his work and his own beliefs. With an exquisitely complex script and superb performances from his cast, von Donnersmarck crafted one of the greatest films of the 21st century, a truly moving example of coming to terms with the past and the unquenchable desire for freedom.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Emory Cinematheque: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Directed by John Ford, 1962 | 123 min.
The western genre mythologized America’s frontier expansion, and John Ford’s last great film in this genre manages to sum up both his own work and the genre itself. Through the multiple confrontations among the murderous outlaw Liberty Valence (Lee Marvin), the quintessential western loner hero Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) and naïve eastern lawyer Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart), this ultimately elegiac film explores and dismantles the mythology of the settling of the west while dramatizing the process of establishing a western state—and at what cost. Suspenseful, funny and ultimately melancholy, Liberty Valence‘s dramatization of competing values of individualism and community and the place of gun violence in American history remain strikingly relevant today. The three leads give iconic performances.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: Notorious
Emory Cinematheque: Notorious
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1946 | 102 min
Hitchcock’s best black and white Hollywood film, the recently restored Notorious shows the master of suspense in complete command of cinematic storytelling and simultaneously marked his new level of commitment to portraying romance. In this espionage thriller, Hitchcock vividly portrays the intense romantic triangle and swirl of sexual jealousy involving proto-CIA agent Devlin (Cary Grant), the amateur spy Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) and the man she is assigned to seduce in Brazil, the Nazi Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains). The three leads are at the top of their game, thanks in part to the brilliant, often cynical and morally complex script by Ben Hecht.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: The Third Man
Emory Cinematheque: The Third Man
Directed by Carol Reed , 1949 | 104 min.
Arguably no film better captured the sense of post-World War II disillusionment than Carol Reed’s realization of an original Graham Greene script about despicable crime and corruption in Vienna. Declared by at least one critic as “probably the greatest British thriller of the postwar era,” the film, featuring exteriors shot on location in Vienna, is largely a detective noir featuring an out of his depth American pulp fiction writer Holly Martens (Joseph Cotton), his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) and the woman they both love (Alida Valli). Reed elicited memorable performances from his cast (also including Trevor Howard). Cinematographer Robert Krasker furthered the film's unsettling atmosphere with his extensive use of canted angles. And Anton Karas’s zither “Third Man Theme” achieved top-charting status for nearly three months. You will have a hard time forgetting it or more to the point, the film.
Free event and open to…
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: High and Low
Emory Cinematheque: High and Low
Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1963 | 143 min.
Akira Kurosawa is best known for his innovative samurai films, but he took special pride in his contemporary dramas like Ikiru / Living (1952) and this masterful kidnapping detective thriller, recently reconfigured by Spike Lee as Higher 2 Lowest (2025). Immediately after shoe company executive Kingo Gondo (frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune) mortgages everything to buy a controlling interest in his company, he faces a moral dilemma as to whether to pay an outrageous ransom for the kidnapping of his chauffeur’s son. Kurosawa, at this point fearless in his storytelling prowess, uses every cinematic technique at his disposal to produce a gripping, unpredictable, exhilarating film that is both intimate and epic in its scope.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: The Gold Rush
Emory Cinematheque: The Gold Rush
Directed by Charles Chaplin, 1925 | 96 min.
1920s silent comedy was America’s gift to the world, and Charlie Chaplin’s film about the Tramp’s adventures in the frozen north remains the peak of his considerable 1920s achievements. He had solved the challenge of combining stand-alone comic episodes into a fully realized narrative and created a fully realized fictional world. Chaplin remains the greatest screen performer in cinema history, and this film—for which he wrote the script, the music and which he directed--showcases his trademark inventiveness via the imaginative transformation of objects, hilarious slapstick, as well as The Tramp’s enduring, endearing yearning for love and acceptance. We are screening the brand new restoration print celebrating the film’s 100th anniversary.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, April 1, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.
Emory Cinematheque: Sense and Sensibility
Emory Cinematheque: Sense and Sensibility
Directed by Ang Lee, 1995 | 136 min.
Emma Thompson’s perceptive and witty Oscar-winning screenplay provided the foundation for this outstanding adaptation of Jane Austen’s first novel. We remain always at the side of the dispossessed Dashwood sisters, especially the practical Elinor (Thompson) and the passionate Marianne (Kate Winslet), as they debate how best to approach matters of the heart, over which they, like all of Austen’s heroines, have so little control. Boasting a fine cast of British actors--including the three romcom heartthrobs Hugh Grant, Greg Wise and Alan Rickman--the film perfectly marries Ang Lee’s penchant for long takes and stories of repressed emotion to late 18th century British society.
Free event and open to public.
University Event Topic: Arts. Department / Organization: Arts at Emory. Film & Media. Event Open To: All (Public).
Wednesday, April 8, 2026, 7:30 PM.
White Hall 208 | 301 Dowman Dr.