Salina Art Center

Events

Films

The Young Victoria

When Americans today hear “Queen Victoria,” we’re likely to recall our impressions of the “Victorian Age” and link the British monarch to notions of class consciousness, social intolerance, sexual repression, and suffocating corsets. Film lovers might conjure an image of Dame Judi Dench as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, dressed in black and looking depressed and sour-faced and judgmental. Many historians would assert that Queen Victoria was not the stone-hearted moral crusader of the…

Me and Orson Welles

Before Orson Welles directed what many critics believe is the greatest American film ever made (at the age of 25!), he was a skinny, handsome genius who created (with John Houseman) the legendary Mercury Theatre. The company is perhaps best remembered today for its venture into radio with “Mercury Theatre on the Air,” highlighted by a certain mischievous Halloween prank that threw America into a panic. But even before Welles scared the nation with “live” reports of a Martian invasion…