EVENT DETAILS

Free Summer Film Series: Humpday

Humpday
Directed by Lynn Shelton
(2009, USA, 94 minutes, Rated R)

Humpday, written and directed by Lynn Shelton, is one of the more well-known comedies associated with mumblecore, a recent American independent film movement marked by its use of microbudgets, D.I.Y aesthetics, and intimate, character based stories. The film stars Mark Duplass as a contently middle-class husband preparing to start a family. One night he receives an unexpected visit from a college friend, played by Joshua Leonard, who has been living like a wandering bohemian for the better part of a decade. During a night of catching up, drinking, and smoking with a group of free-spirited artists, they come up with a concept to win a local amateur pornography contest: two straight friends having sex. Propelled by irrational competitiveness and a mutual desire to prove and defend their masculinity, both men accept the dare and deal with the unsettling messiness that inevitably accompanies the challenge.

http://www.summer.uci.edu/calendar/filmseries_july.aspx

Free to UCI students, faculty, staff and visitors - No need to RSVP! Free snacks provided to enjoy during the film. Participate in a post-film group discussion with curator Jenna Weinman, a graduate student in Visual Studies.

Although romantic comedies are beloved, or at least well-known, for their delightfully predictable happy endings, this series focuses on the complaints and frustrations that inform the couples’ conflicts and compromises. How do romantic comedies work to recognize and absorb various tensions, anxieties, and desires circulating within a particular historical moment? In what ways are certain intimate expectations, struggles, and thrills recycled across different historical contexts? The films in this series use distinct figurations of the couple–ranging from upperclass, estranged spouses to two heterosexual buddies curiously determined to take their friendship to a physical level–to engage issues of gender and sexuality, singleness and commitment, immaturity and maturity, romance, class, and parenthood.