Aurora Film Society Presents: City Of Hope

General Admission tickets: $10.00

06:30pm Doors

07:00pm Show Time!

All tickets sales are considered a donation to The Aurora Film society and The Fox Valley Music foundation.

About the Film:

City Of Hope [1991 / John Sayles]

John Sayles remains one of our greatest independent filmmakers, & this one is his masterpiece, as well as one of the most criminally underseen classics of the ‘90s. Typical of Sayles’ films, “City Of Hope” weaves together the tales of some 2 dozen characters whose struggles are centered around the fate of an old apartment block scheduled for demolition (to be replaced by a new commercial development). Crooks & crusaders, rich & poor, powerful & powerless, whites& people of color, duke it out for their piece of the pie. Both epically sweeping & micro-detailed, “City Of Hope” expertly shows the ways these people’s lives — mostly unknowingly — intersect & deeply effect each other, & how systemic corruption & individual courage can each in turn touch us all. Much like Robert Altman’s “Nashville”, “City Of Hope” is a portrait of a whole city, & with it Sayles prefigures & predicts the slew of mosaic/tapestry films that have appeared since the late ‘90s such as “Magnolia”, “Crash”, “Disconnect”, “Traffic”, “Lantana”, “Babel” (& other films with mononymous titles), not to mention TV’s “The Wire”. Though it’s set in a fictional New Jersey town, this film could be set anywhere, because we all know — & sometimes have been — these people in our lives. “City Of Hope” is one of those rare & outstanding movies that works on a huge canvas, yet never forgets to show the core humanity in even its least likeable characters. Whether they be corrupt politicians, idealistic activists, compromised businessmen, or nameless street people, we get to meet them all in “City OfHope”.

The Aurora Film Society

Since 2018, the Aurora Film Society (AFS) has been broadening our community’s collective horizons by screening great movies together. For $60 a year, our subscribers are shown 12 carefully selected & curated movies, works that are historically important & groundbreaking, works that provide a window into far-flung cultures, works that are sometimes overlooked or unavailable to most audiences. The AFS puts a special emphasis on showing the sorts of luminous & idiosyncratic stories from beyond the mainstream that people of the Fox Valley area would normally not have a chance to see in a theatrical setting. We screen every third Wednesday of the month at The Venue.
For questions and/or to subscribe, please email [email protected]
To see our current schedule & past movies, visit aurorafilmsociety.org

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101588/

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