Salina Art Center

Monday, April 14

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge • 12:00 noon
Picnic • 6:30pm
Discussion with Ernesto Pujol • 8:30pm

Bring a sack lunch and/or dinner!
Films & Discussion take place at the Cinema.

The Becoming the Land exhibition project at the Salina Art Center continues to examine the identity of the region through the viewing and discussion of two Kansas thematic films: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, set in the 1940s, and Picnic, set in the 1950s. While other aspects of the project examine the prairie as it was and continues to be fashioned into a farming environment, idealized nationally as the heartland, these two films explore the unfolding of gender within that space. How did men and women come to be socially defined long after settlement?

Old Mr. and Mrs. Bridge are well-to-do residents in Kansas City. Nevertheless, Mr. Bridge (Paul Newman) painfully envisions his wife (Joanne Woodward) as property, obstinately generating an archaic interpersonal dynamic altemating between the tragic and amusing. The movie's most memorable scene depicts Mr. Bridge ordering his obedient wife not to leave their table at the country club, despite an approaching tomado. Thus, they sit quietly in a deserted room while the building rattlers and shakes.

Picnic, directed by Joshua Logan of Broadway fame, was one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1950s. A sleepy, close-knit small Kansas town is disrupted by the unexpected appearance of a young handsome drifter (William Holden) during its Labor Day celebrations. The local beauty queen (Kim Novak) falls in love with the awkward but seductive stranger, ultimately dumping a boyfriend and betraying her community's expectations. The film's cinematography, by veteran James Wong Howe, portrays a bleak setting. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge, the film is critical of America's strict gender roles during the 1950s.

The two films will be shown at the Art Cinema and followed by an evening informal discussion with Emesto Pujol, our visiting artist-inresidence. In selecting them to compliment the project, Pujol wanted to add yet another layer of meaning to the visual meditation on our relationship with the land, through the impact of gender. Men and women determine each other, and in so doing determine the destiny of the land. And the 1940s and 50s were formative decades of what we still understand America to be.



				Monday, April 14 Mr. & Mrs. Bridge • 12:00 noon Picnic • 6:30pm Discussion with Ernesto Pujol • 8:30pm Bring a sack lunch and/or dinner! Films & Discussion take place at the Cinema. The Becoming the Land exhibition project at the Salina Art Center continues to examine the identity of the region through the viewing and discussion of two Kansas thematic films: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, set in the 1940s, and Picnic, set in the 1950s. While other aspects of the project examine the prairie as it was and continues to be fashioned into a farming environment, idealized nationally as the heartland, these two films explore the unfolding of gender within that space. How did men and women come to be socially defined long after settlement? Old Mr. and Mrs. Bridge are well-to-do residents in Kansas City. Nevertheless, Mr. Bridge (Paul Newman) painfully envisions his wife (Joanne Woodward) as property, obstinately generating an archaic interpersonal dynamic altemating between the tragic and amusing. The movie's most memorable scene depicts Mr. Bridge ordering his obedient wife not to leave their table at the country club, despite an approaching tomado. Thus, they sit quietly in a deserted room while the building rattlers and shakes. Picnic, directed by Joshua Logan of Broadway fame, was one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1950s. A sleepy, close-knit small Kansas town is disrupted by the unexpected appearance of a young handsome drifter (William Holden) during its Labor Day celebrations. The local beauty queen (Kim Novak) falls in love with the awkward but seductive stranger, ultimately dumping a boyfriend and betraying her community's expectations. The film's cinematography, by veteran James Wong Howe, portrays a bleak setting. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge, the film is critical of America's strict gender roles during the 1950s. The two films will be shown at the Art Cinema and followed by an evening informal discussion with Emesto Pujol, our visiting artist-inresidence. In selecting them to compliment the project, Pujol wanted to add yet another layer of meaning to the visual meditation on our relationship with the land, through the impact of gender. Men and women determine each other, and in so doing determine the destiny of the land. And the 1940s and 50s were formative decades of what we still understand America to be.		BACK TO Becoming the Land