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Choose Connor

Colorado Premiere of Young Boulderite's Directorial Debut -- Luke Eberl In Person!

Choose Connor

Luke Eberl's "Choose Connor" is a real stunner, an unusual coming-of-age story that packs a wallop in unexpected ways. It is all the more remarkable because writer-director-editor and co-producer Eberl was only 20 when he made it.

Eberl has both a dryly cynical grasp of how the world of politics can work and a gift for complex characterization coupled with an ability to draw from actors spot-on portrayals of much range and depth. He can suddenly unleash a jolting fear yet not let his film lapse into a standard suspense thriller; he is skilled at the visual as well as the verbal, a filmmaker of formidable powers of persuasion.

After a prologue that is daringly disturbing, Eberl cuts to a middle-school graduation where U.S. Senate candidate Lawrence Connor (Steven Weber) gives a speech and presents 15-year-old Owen (Alex Linz) with an award -- and ends up recruiting the admiring Owen as the spokesman for his youth campaign. Owen is a brainy but innocent idealist bedazzled by a glib politician who sees himself heroically walking a tightrope between high principle and necessary compromise.

That Owen learns politics can be a dirty business -- and hidden within that world much darker secrets -- is not all that shocking, but what makes "Choose Connor" so special and unsettling is the consistent adroitness and perfect timing with which Eberl makes his revelations. As equally impressive as Weber in the role of Connor is Escher Holloway as his troubled adopted nephew, a talented artist of dark visions.

— Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Choose Connor

Sat December 27, 2008, 7:00 only, The Film Studies Theater in ATLAS 102

USA, 2007, in English, Color, 114 min., Not Rated, 1:85:1 • official site

recommend

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

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