If you've got a fondness for chickens and/or rural celebrations of Mardi Gras, you would do yourself right to check out this week's installment of Film @ the Center. If you've got a fondness for chickens and/or rural celebrations of Mardi Gras, you would do yourself right to check out this week's installment of Film@theCenter.
The Acadiana Center for the Arts, the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, and the Media Arts Workshop at the UL at Lafayette continues the free film series Film @ the Center with Dance for a Chicken on Feb. 21 at 2 p.m.
In the film Dance for a Chicken, local filmmaker Pat Mire explores the rural aspects of the Cajun Mardi Gras. Each year before Lent begins, processions of masked and costumed revelers, often on horseback, go from house to house gathering ingredients for communal gumbos in communities across rural southwest Louisiana. The often-unruly participants in this ancient tradition play as beggars, fools, and thieves as they raid farmsteads and perform in exchange for the donation of a chicken.
For more information, call 233-7060.
2010 Film@the Center schedule:
February 21 "Dance for a Chicken" (1993)
March 21 "American Creole" (2006)
April 18 - Short Circuit Traveling Film Festival
May 16 UL Lafayette Media Arts Workshop Student Showcase
June 20 "All The King's Men" (1949)
July 18 "Spend It All" (1971)
August 15 "Against the Tide: The Story of the Cajun People of Louisiana" (2000)
September 19 "Low and Behold" (2007)
October 17 "The Blob" (1988)
November 21 - 48th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival (Film program to be announced in March 2010)
December 19 "Louisiana Story and Louisiana Story: The Reverse Angle" (1948)
Film @ the Center is a free film series held every third Sunday of the month at the AcA that exposes local residents and students to films portraying Louisiana's people and way of life to an international audience while also allowing current generation filmmakers and film students to screen their work to a hometown audience.