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Summer 2019: Movie Nights for Teens
Hollywood Classics
Must-see films our teens might otherwise never see...
Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934)
Few students today have any familiarity with the age of "screwball comedy" or the great detectives of "film noir." Names that were once household words — like Clark Gable or Claudette Colbert or Humphrey Bogart — are unknown to them.
What's more, they've never experienced the silvery splendor of black-&-white photography, nor the brilliant writing that emerged from Hollywood in the 1930s, -40s, and -50s. — This period was an amazing time for the movies, with the emergence of great directors like John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock, among others. Yet most of our students are familiar with neither those directors nor their movies.
John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
A great opportunity
 Over the course of the summer we're hosting a series of nine evenings to bring together teens and classic Hollywood movies. — Each evening includes:
- dinner, dessert, and companionship — all in a relaxed yet civilized atmosphere;
- background on each movie — including information on writers, directors, cinematographers, and more;
- lively discussion — both at each film's mid-point and at its end.
Host: Roy Speed. (Learn about Roy here.)
The films
We're still culling our list, but among the films we're considering for this series are:
- FRANK CAPRA: It Happened One Night (1934)
- JOHN FORD: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- MICHAEL CURTIZ: Casablanca (1942)
- FRANK CAPRA: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Notorious (1946)
- WILLIAM WYLER: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
- HOWARD HAWKS: The Big Sleep (1946)
- ROBERT STEVENSON: To the Ends of the Earth (1948)
- WILLIAM WYLER: Roman Holiday (1953)
- ALFRED HITCHCOCK: North by Northwest (1959)
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Comments about our previous film series
I like how you built a lot of socialization time into the agenda... We appreciate your hosting this class and the format. My son has gotten a lot out of it already.
— Homeschooling dad
[Our son] totally enjoyed the class and is looking forward to the coming weeks. A big thank you for coming up with an activity that teaches while making it fun and giving [our son] an opportunity to hang out with his peers.
— Homeschooling mom
William Wyler's Best Years of Our Lives [1946] felt surprisingly modern and honest — a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home from WWII.
— Student
From watching John Ford's Grapes of Wrath, I've learned amazing things about cinematography. With lighting, camera angles, the placement of actors in shots, directors of photography can work wonders with not just a scene but an entire movie, as Gregg Toland did in Grapes of Wrath.
— Student
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Summer of 2019
Saturday evenings
in Bethel, CT
5:30 – 10 pm
June 8 – August 10
Note: No movie night on July 6
Want to know more?
— Please contact
the host by clicking here.
Visitors welcome!
William Wyler's
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Summer Shakespeare Intensive
Eight online classes
 This new online series comprises eight sessions on one of Shakespeare's finest comedies. Twelfth Night satirizes unrequited love, mocks sanctimony and snobbery, and celebrates the simple pleasures of ordinary life. This course is primarily a course in close reading — students become acquainted with Shakespeare's vocabulary and verse, but equally important, they acquire the skills involved in deciphering a difficult text, e.g., annotation.
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