✨ FREE community event
This summer, the Wachholz College Center is excited to launch the WCC FILM SERIES, an ongoing series featuring a variety of films and film themes throughout each season. Each film will feature a short talk-back to begin the evening, providing the audience with important information and interesting facts about the film(s) they are about to view.
The theme for the summer of 2025 is MADE IN MONTANA - featuring a selection of cinema highlighting several lesser known movies that were shot under the Big Sky! While production crews often utilize Montana's stunning backgrounds to set the scene before retreating to the comfort of a studio lot, the seven feature films of this summer were created almost entirely in the Treasure State. Therefore, each one taps into the same culture and landscapes we all share, and relates it back to us in new and surprising ways. We hope that by curating a lineup of Montana-centric cinema specifically for the community, audiences might find something new and surprising about our home state in each one of these films.
FEATURED FILM:
Title: Danger Lights
Year: 1930
Director: George B Seitz
Starring: Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, Jean Arthur
Run Time: 1hr 14mins
A brutish rail yard boss and an alcoholic engineer are in love with the same woman, the former’s fiance.
Danger Lights (1930), an essentially forgotten piece of pre-Code cinema, is historically significant for documenting the daily operations of the Miles City train yard and a stretch of track known as Sixteen Mile Canyon. Director George B. Seitz makes great use of his locations; filling the frame with billowing smoke, churning wheels, and racing engines. The ambiance of steam whistles and clanging pistons can even be heard during interior scenes, a novel use of sound, considering that the transition to “talking pictures” was still ongoing. And the movie certainly lives up to its title as a film from the pre-Code era, a brief period after sound synchronization but before Hollywood had any standards of decorum or safety. The film opens with a controlled landslide, films trains careening towards the camera, has actors hang from moving cars, and even features rare footage of two steam locomotives in a tug-of-war.
Before the screening of Danger Lights, the evening will begin with a tribute to an icon of cinema: The Train!
The power and precision of the locomotive has drawn the attention of filmmakers for over a century. Enjoy a variety of short films that detail a brief history of trains in cinema, from the first silent films to modern video art.
Short Films Screening Guide:
1. L’arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat (v.3) (1896) - Some say the audience jumped out of their seats when cinema pioneers the Lumiere Brothers premiered this silent film.
2. Choo-Choo! (1932) - Though some of the humor is offensive today, the child actors of Our Gang (better known as The Little Rascals) were the first racially integrated cast.
3. Toccata for Toy Trains (1957) - Industrial designers Ray and Charles Eames (you know their chairs) bring Victorian toy trains to life, with music by composer Elmer Bernstein.
4. Rush Hour (1970) - 8:20-9:20 am. Waterloo Station. London, England. One of around 700 industrials produced by British Transport Films from 1949-1982.
5. Train Again (2021) - Peter Tscherkassky’s aggressive collage films collapses image and reason to reveal new associations between subject and the physical medium of film.
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