Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
TONY BUBA: THE BARD OF BRADDOCK
June 8 – June 12
One of the most singular, and egregiously overlooked, filmmakers in the U.S., Tony Buba is a national treasure, the prime representative of the blue-collar, populist, politically-committed yet outrageously entertaining American filmmaking movement that’s largely missing-in-action. A resident of Braddock, PA (located just outside Pittsburgh), a town that, like many others across the country, fell victim to the decimation of American industry over the past 50 years, experiencing a precipitous and tragic decline into poverty and abandonment, Buba has been making films about Braddock – shorts, features, documentaries, fictional narratives, you name it – since the early seventies. Displaying a passionate commitment to chronicling Braddock’s trajectory and an inspiring resourcefulness in making the films a reality, his body of work is an unparalleled record of a particular city, and of the plight of urban America in general. Heavy as that may sound, Buba’s profoundly good-natured sensibility, his boundless creativity, and his goofy sense of humor set his films far, far apart from most bleeding-heart, liberal filmmaking.
Anthology is overjoyed to host Buba for this long-overdue retrospective, highlighting a body of work that really has no parallel in the U.S.
“Another of life’s legion of ironies is that one of America’s deader towns has a highly lively filmmaker chronicling its steady decline. … We all know interesting novels or at least short stories, tied up in people we know. We like to think that, written properly, our lives would make good books, and especially with a few embellishments we earnestly wish were true. Buba shows it with the people he knows.” –Ted Mahar, THE OREGONIAN
Special thanks to Tony Buba, and to May Haduong (Academy Film Archive), Richard Rubenstein & Beth Studer (MKR Group), and Clémence Taillandier & Ben Crossley-Mara (Zeitgeist Films).
This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org; www.eARTS.org).
Please note: the Tony Buba retrospective is presented in concert with the series SOMETIMES CITIES, a selection of documentaries focusing on often-neglected American urban centers. See pages ? for more details.
