Flick Pick

Jonathan Swift's observation that satire is "a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own" almost certainly applies to moviemakers who ape the work of their peers with comic intent, as evidenced by a well-chosen selection of films on view in Boulder this week. Under the umbrella title "Parodies and Satires of Cinema," the Boulder Public Library Film Program will show Bending Hur, a 1925 parody of the great silent epic Ben Hur; History of the Cinema, John Halas and Joy Batchelor's delightful 1956 burlesque on the progress of movies to that point; Woton's Wake (1962), a parody of and homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman and many others by the young Brian de Palma and collaborator William Finley; De Duva (The Dove) (1968), which takes comic shots at dark Bergman classics such as The Seventh Sealand Wild Strawberries; and Hardware Wars (1978), a thirteen-minute parody of the original Star Wars in the form of a theatrical trailer.

A scene from Hardware Wars.

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More About

• Ingmar Bergman
• Jonathan Swift
• William Finley
• Joy Batchelor
• John Halas

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Screenings start at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 9, at the Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Boulevard; admission is free. For information, call 303-441-3197.