Part of Talk About the Passion: Stephen Cone's First Act
Sunday, November 12, 2017, 5:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos Screening Room

With director Stephen Cone in conversation with film curator Nellie Killian

Dir. Stephen Cone. 2015, 87 mins. Digital projection. With Cole Doman, Joe Keery, Pat Healy, Tyler Ross, Elizabeth Laidlaw. On his seventeenth birthday, preacher's kid Henry Gamble (Doman) is throwing a pool party. While Henry treads through various sexual possibilities, questioning who he is and what he might want, so do both the adults and teenagers at the party stumble through and forge ahead in matters of desire, love, identity, and faith. Shot through with Cone's typical emotional precision and rigorous humanity, Henry Gamble's Birthday Party also has a formal ambition that does not call attention to itself, spanning 24 discrete hours and registering a host of experiences with a democratic curiosity that can rightfully be called Altmanesque. "It’s a rambunctious, often hilarious, and carefully constructed story. A lot of low-budget films have a similar setup to Henry Gamble: They take place in one location and focus on interpersonal relationships. But Henry Gamble is huge in comparison. It’s about people in the process of “becoming.”— Sheila O'Malley, RogerEbert.com. A Wolfe Releasing film.

Preceded by "Silver Horizon" by Trey Pearson (2017, 5 mins.), a music video directed by Cone and starring Cole Doman.

Tickets: $15 (Free for members at the Film Lover level and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected] with questions regarding online reservations.)

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