Film Events

Women Director Series - I SAW THE THE GLOW

Thursday, August 20, 2026 at 7:30 PM

Certain Women is a film series at the Orinda Theater highlighting women directors, with shorts to precede each feature

Selected and Introduced by your local programmers/projectionists... Linda Izcali Scobie & Chloe Ginnever

I SAW THE TV GLOW, (2024) Directed by Jane Schoenbrun

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate Maddy introduces him to a mysterious TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen's view of reality begins to crack.

For Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson, I Saw the TV Glow is "a sharp and honest film, generous in its excavation, in the way it guides the viewer through complicated psychology. It is also bitterly sad, a portrait of confusion and negation that offers no empowerment, no political triumph. The shibboleths of Schoenbrun's youth, the cultural markers of identity that they seemingly valued so fiercely for so long, are rendered insufficient, useless, even dangerous."

Preceded by:

NO NO NOOKY T.V., (1987) Directed by Barbara Hammer - 16mm

Using a 16mm Bolex and Amiga computer, Hammer creates a witty and stunning film about how women view their sexuality versus the way male images of women and sex are perceived. The impact of technology on sexuality and emotion and the sensual self is explored through computer language juxtaposed with everyday colloquial language of sex. No No Nooky T.V. confronts the feminist controversy around sexuality with electronic language, pixels and interface. Even the monitor is eroticized in this film/video hybrid that points fun at romance, sexuality, and love in our post-industrial age.

&

ORANGE GLOW, (2020) Directed by Lynne Sachs

In September 2020, Lynne Sachs was disturbed by the television images of San Francisco enveloped in wildfire smoke. When she looked at artist Laura Harrison's gestural painting, she felt as if she was watching the eerie skies of California unfurl on the canvas. Together, Sachs' words and Harrison's images respond in horror to the devastating ecological disasters.