WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (July 14, 2008) — Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host its third annual Cinema Under the Stars evening film series in August. Cosponsored by the School of Filmmaking of the North Carolina School of the Arts, this year’s series celebrates New York City in anticipation of the museum’s fall exhibition, “Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York,” which opens October 4.

Films from different eras will be screened at 9 p.m. each Saturday night in August and the first Saturday in September. Weather permitting, the movies will be shown outside on the lawn and include a pre-screening talk by local scholars. In case of rain, films will be shown inside the museum. Beer and wine will be available for purchase, and film goers are encouraged to come early and picnic on the lawn. The gates open at 8 p.m. Admission is $5 for the general public, $3 for members and students.

Cinema Under the Stars Schedule

Saturday, August 2
Blake Edwards’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) Unrated, 115 min.
Starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard
Based on the novel by Truman Capote and featuring the Oscar-winning song “Moon River,” this is the story of the fortune-hunting Holly Golightly, a small-town girl in love with an aspiring writer and a great city.

Saturday, August 9
Merian Cooper’s and Ernest Schoedsack’s “King Kong” (1933) Unrated, 100 min.
Starring Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong
In the never-ending pursuit of new and interesting shooting locales, movie director Carl Denham takes his crew and leading lady to remote Skull Island, presided over by a 30-foot tall gorilla with a soft spot for blonde starlets. Recognizing a new talent, Denham brings Kong back to New York, where he attracts a great deal of attention. 

Saturday, August 16
Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979) Rated R, 96 min.
Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, and Mariel Hemingway
Scored to classic George Gershwin, “Manhattan” is one of Woody Allen’s best films and one of the most loving tributes to New York. Return Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. for a Gershwin Pops concert by the Carolina Chamber Symphony Players.

Saturday, August 23
Ivan Reitman’s “Ghostbusters” (1984) Rated PG, 105 min.
Starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver
Three out-of-work parapsychologists open a “spectral investigation and removal service,” and their skills are soon needed to save New York from an ancient Sumerian deity in the form of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. Let’s get slimed one more time! Young professionals come early for the 7 p.m. Reynolda After Hours gathering with free Ghostbusters-inspired desserts and a cash bar.

Saturday, August 30
Norman Jewison’s “Moonstruck” (1987) Rated PG, 102 min.
Starring Cher, Nicholas Cage, and Olympia Dukakis
Awarded Oscars for screenwriter John Patrick Shanley and actors Cher and Olympia Dukakis, “Moonstruck” shows that romance brings madness and joy in equal parts, much like life in the tight-knit families of this Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Saturday, September 6
Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” (2002) Rated R, 167 min.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Cameron Diaz
It is the early 1860s, and New York is under the thumb of Boss Tweed. But the underworld has its own boss, Bill the Butcher, whose past deeds are catching up to him in the form of young Amsterdam Vallon, whose father Bill killed 20 years earlier.

This year’s film series is inspired by the fall exhibition, “Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York,” which concludes a four-city national tour at Reynolda House, where it will be on view from October 4, 2008 through January 4, 2009. The exhibition features the drawings, paintings, etchings, and photographs of the Ashcan School artist John Sloan who came to New York City in 1904 and created artwork focused on street life, shop windows, parks, elevated trains, and the city dweller’s experience. The exhibition was organized by the Delaware Art Museum, which received generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Helen Farr Sloan Trust.

Cinema Under the Stars is the first of many programs planned around “Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York.” A series of free public forums in October will focus on art and civic issues in Winston-Salem, and several gallery talks will allow visitors to learn about unique aspects of the artist and his work.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation’s premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection.  Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings, and other events.  The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

The North Carolina School of the Arts, located in Winston-Salem, was the first state-supported residential school of its kind in the nation. Established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1963, NCSA opened in Winston-Salem in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. The North Carolina School of the Arts is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual, and moving image arts. For more information, visit the school’s Website at www.ncarts.edu.