Four Films Selected to Inaugurate the New Projector and Sound System in Winifred Moore

The Winifred Moore Auditorium has a new projector and sound system, thanks to a generous donation from Webster friends Jane M. and Bruce P. Robert. The Webster Film Series has announced the following films will be shown in the newly-renovated Winifred Moore Auditorium this summer:

Neptune Frost - Thursday, June 23; Wednesday, June 29; Thursday, June 30. All shows at 7:30 p.m. (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, 2021, USA/Rwanda, 106 minutes)

Renaissance man Saul Williams has recorded half a dozen albums and worked with producers such as Rick Rubin and Trent Reznor. Williams has written about as many volumes of poetry, and also starred in the 2014 Broadway show “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” a jukebox musical of Tupac Shakur music. Williams is perhaps best known to St. Louis audiences as the star of the 1998 film “Slam” (winner of the Audience Award at that year’s St. Louis International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Camera d’Or at Cannes), or for any of his many appearances at Mississippi Nights or Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room over the years.

Williams' long and impressive resume feels like it has all been leading up to the visionary crowdfunded Afrofuturist punk musical “Neptune Frost,” which he made with his wife, Rwandan artist Anisia Uzeyman. With Williams co-directing, writing, and composing the music and Uzeyman co-directing and shooting the film, the result of “Neptune Frost” is a terrifically good-looking and -sounding picture. In it, viewers finds themselves in Burundi amidst an anti-colonialist hacker collective composed of former coltan miners and an intersex runaway, who joins their efforts. Though this film has been kicking around the circuit of the world’s best film festivals for a year now (Cannes, Toronto, New York, Sundance), it still feels so far ahead of its time that we haven’t caught up with it culturally just yet. In Kinyarwanda, English, Swahili, and French with English subtitles.

Pleasure - June 24 - 26, 7:30 p.m.

"Pleasure" is an unflinching feminist take on the modern American pornography industry, from beloved distributor Neon. A selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival and 2021 Sundance Film Festival, "Pleasure," is the feature film debut of writer/director Ninja Thyberg. The film  follows the ascent of Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel, “astonishing” according to Manohla Dargis of the New York Times), a Swede who comes to America with the hopes of becoming a porn star. This feminist take on the American pornography industry asks many tough questions and is not at all interested in easy answers. Neon is also the studio behind the American release of such international heavy-hitters as "Parasite" and "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."

Lux Æterna - June 24 - 26, 10 p.m.

This film comes from notorious French filmmaker Gaspar Noé, who was first thrust on St. Louis audiences when the Webster Film Series ran "I Stand Alone" some 23 years ago. "Lux Æterna" has legendary French actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg ("Antichrist") and Béatrice Dalle ("Betty Blue") playing versions of themselves. 

Mad God - July 1 - 3, 7:30 p.m.

"Mad God" is a stop-motion animated film from legendary Oscar-winning visual effects legend Phil Tippett ("Return of the Jedi," "Jurassic Park"). This is his debut as a feature film director with his 30-years-in-the-making stop-motion animation passion project, "Mad God." 

Admission Costs

Admission is free for Webster students. General admission is $8. Admission for students from other schools, senior citizens and Webster alumni is $7. Webster faculty and staff admission is $6.