Cinema Classics Seminar: THE PIANO (1993)
Schedule
Tue Mar 10 2026 at 06:30 pm to 09:30 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Bryn Mawr Film Institute | Bryn Mawr, PA
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Tuesday, March 10, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm Instructor: Elizabeth Nathanson, Ph.D., Muhlenberg College
Although The Piano tells the story of a woman who cannot speak, it landed loudly on the global film scene when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. A complex mixture of Gothic storytelling, costume drama, maternal melodrama, and torrid romance, THE PIANO was widely celebrated on the awards circuit, with director Jane Campion becoming the first woman to ever win a Palme d’Or and the second to be nominated for the Best Director prize at the Academy Awards.
Set in the 19th century, the film tells the story of Ada (Holly Hunter), a mute Scottish woman who is sent with her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) to live with a new husband in rural New Zealand. Ada and Flora land on desolate beaches accompanied by Ada’s beloved piano, an instrument that not only speaks with and for Ada but is imbued with deep symbolic and emotional meaning.
This seminar will explore this richly complicated film, considering the array of relationships that it presents, and its depictions of romance, motherhood, colonialism, and freedom. We will also discuss the movie’s visual style, exploring how the lush, haunting images of windswept landscapes and the use of Victorian costuming set the stage for this fraught human drama, and how it tells its story, sometimes using no words at all.
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Where is it happening?
Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 W Lancaster Ave,Bryn Mawr,PA,United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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