Just Announced
A special screening in celebration of Peter LoPilato, Harold and Maude is Hal Ashby's classic black rom-com about two unlikely people coming together just when they need it most.
Harold and Maude is a romantic, dark comedy about living life to the fullest. Twenty-year-old Harold (Bud Cort) is obsessed with death, passing his spare time visiting junkyards, watching building demolitions, and attending funerals of strangers. One random funeral leads him to Maude (Ruth Gordon)—a septuagenarian who shares his funeral-hopping hobby. Their unlikely friendship soon evolves into an even more taboo romance. With gallows humor considered far too dark for many critics and audiences in 1971, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1997. [91 min; comedy, drama, romance; English]
IU Cinema is offering this screening in honor of our dear friend, Peter LoPilato, who passed away earlier this month. Peter was the founder of the Ryder Magazine and Film Series, a champion of independent film, and a passionate advocate for the arts in Bloomington. Please join us in this celebration of Peter's life and love for film.
"The movie is a paean to outsiders and reckless love." — Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"It's to director Hal Ashby's credit that he succeeds in maintaining an unsettling tone of pre-Lynchian absurdism throughout, while also pulling the viewer into a touching love story between perhaps the most unlikely couple in cinema history." — The Guardian
"The picture is anti-war, anti-repression, and full of fun; a charming hour and a half of black humor." — Rosalyn Drexler, Vogue
Any film screened at IU Cinema may contain content that viewers find sensitive or upsetting. Visit our Audience Advisories page to learn more.
