Harpur Cinema Presents: Bisbee Robert Greene, 2018, 112 min Friday, September 24 and Sunday, September 26- Lecture Hall 6 7:30 pm Cinema Department Binghamton University, State University of New York Radically combining collaborative documentary, western, and musical elements, the new film by Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine) follows several members of a close-knit community as they attempt to reckon with their town’s darkest hour. In 1917, nearly two-thousand immigrant miners, on strike for better wages and safer working conditions, were violently rounded up by their armed neighbors, herded onto cattle cars, shipped to the middle of the New Mexican desert, and left there to die. This long-buried and largely forgotten event came to be known as the Bisbee Deportation. “Bisbee” ’17 documents locals as they play characters and stage dramatic scenes from the controversial story, culminating in a large-scale recreation of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and offer conflicting views of the event, underscoring the difficulty of collective memory, while confronting the current political predicaments of immigration, unionization, environmental damage, and corporate corruption with direct, haunting messages about solidarity and struggle. Programmed by Professor Kenneth White (Cinema) and Professor Brian Wall (Cinema) Since 1965, Harpur Cinema has presented significant films to the University community. Our program is international in scope, emphasizing foreign and independent films, as well as important films from the historical archive. All foreign films are shown in their original language with English subtitles.
