Clark Art Screens Free Pastoral on Paper Film Series

04:00PM / Saturday, April 19, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — This April and May, the Clark Art Institute hosts a series of films celebrating the Pastoral on Paper exhibition, with films that introduce some kind of conflict into peaceful landscapes in the rural United States, France, and Ireland.

All films are free and screened in the Manton Research Center auditorium on select Thursdays at 6 pm.

April 24
Days of Heaven (1978)
After accidentally killing his foreman at a steelworks in Chicago, laborer Bill, (Richard Gere) goes westward to the Texas plains with his girlfriend, Abby (Brooke Adams), and younger sister (Linda Manz). Posing as siblings, the trio find work in the wheat fields. To escape their life of toil, Bill convinces Abby to marry a wealthy but dying farmer (Sam Shepard). The ensuing love triangle binds the three together as they circle around the idyllic landscape. The lonely beauty of Terrence Malick’s film pays homage to the paintings of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. (Run time: 1 hour, 34 minutes)

May 15
The Quiet Man (1952)
Both an exemplary and a unique example of director John Ford's use of landscape, The Quiet Man longs for an unregainable past, for tradition and ceremony, and for the peace and escape of an idyllic country. Set in the 1920s, the film stars Ford’s muse, John Wayne, as Sean Thornton, a recently retired boxer who has travelled from America to his birthplace of Innisfree to lay claim to his family farm. (Run time: 2 hours, 9 minutes)

May 22
Jean de Florette (1988)
This engrossing epic of greed and deception is set amid the bucolic splendor of the Provence countryside. Gérard Depardieu gives one of his great performances as the hunchbacked city slicker Jean, who is determined to make a success of the farm he has inherited—unaware that his new neighbor César (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) have launched a ruthless scheme to take control of the land for themselves. (Run time: 2 hours)

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Willinet Cameras to Capture Monday's Williamstown Select Board Session

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
02:31PM / Saturday, October 24, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board's third-floor meeting to complete its evaluation process for the town manager will be televised by the town's public, educational and governmental television station.

Willinet Executive Director Teri Yuan confirmed this week that the station will put a camera in the upstairs conference room to record a planned 8 p.m. single-item agenda meeting to do the annual review of Town Manager Robert Menicocci.

The board at its last meeting decided to break the evaluation out from its regular 7 p.m. meeting in the first floor Community Meeting room, which is set up with multiple cameras and audio equipment to facilitate live Willinet telecasts of most public meetings of town boards and committees.

The Select Board offered no real explanation for the desire to complete the evaluation in an otherwise public meeting outside of view from Willinet's cameras other than a desire to "sit around the table" rather than sit on one side of a large table along one side of the first floor meeting room.

The "sit around the table" talk was particularly puzzling given the fact that Willinet has a camera mounted on the wall behind the spot where Menicocci generally sits for Select Board meetings, a camera that gives a full view of both sides of the table, and an angle that Willinet frequently uses when panels like the Finance Committee invite participants to sit across the table from the committee to give testimony.

Perhaps the real reason is better explained by a joking comment from one Select Board member at the Sept. 28 meeting who indicated that doing the evaluation without access to things like Zoom capability was "the object" of moving that business to the third-floor meeting room.

The evaluation discussion on Monday evening will follow on a survey of the five board members assessing Menicocci's performance in fiscal year 2026, which ended on June 30.

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