Kelly Masterson

SNOWPIERCER (South Korea/Czech Republic/United States/France, 2013, 126 minutes, color and b/w, directed by Bong Joon-ho) will be shown on Friday, October 21, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. [note early start time] in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany’s downtown campus. The screening will be followed by commentary and Q&A with Kelly Masterson, the film’s screenwriter. Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute as part of its Classic Film Series, the screening is free and open to the public.   

Based on the French graphic novel, Le Transperceneige, SNOWPIERCER is widely hailed as a classic of the new climate fiction genre (“cli-fi”). A failed climate-change experiment has killed almost all life on the planet and has plunged the Earth into an Ice-Age. The few survivors create their own economy and class system while living on a train that travels in a continuous loop around the globe. USA Today called it, “a rare hybrid that perfectly blends the dazzle of a futuristic action thriller with the intellectual substance of an art film.”  Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers described the film as a “slambam sci-fi thriller with a brain, a heart and an artful sense of purpose. You’re in for a wild whoosh of a ride.” Nominated for 94 film awards, it received a total of 19.

Kelly Masterson, screenwriter of SNOWPIERCER, also wrote the screenplays for BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD (2007), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, GOOD PEOPLE (2014), starring James Franco and Kate Hudson, and KILLING KENNEDY (2013), a National Geographic Channel production starring Rob Lowe. Masterson started his career as a playwright in the 1980s.His award winning play, Touch, was produced off Broadway in 1987. Masterson’s play Edith, about Woodrow and Edith Wilson, premiered at the Berkshire Theater Festival in 2012.

The screening is sponsored in conjunction with the UAlbany Art Museum’s exhibition Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene (on display through December 10, 2016).

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst