Year round at The Roxy Theater, Montana Film Festival now presents a new release in independent cinema each month, one night only.
This month, Montana Film Festival brings a new reissue of the 1986 film Desert Hearts, the film from Donna Deitch that became a landmark in queer cinema and the depiction of women in romantic relationships on the silver screen.
“In the 1959-set film, an adaptation of a beloved novel by Jane Rule, straitlaced East Coast professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) arrives in Reno to file for divorce, but winds up catching the eye of someone new, the younger free spirit Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), touching off a slow seduction that unfolds against the breathtaking desert landscape.” (Slate)
Desert Hearts came at the start of cinematographer Robert Elswit’s career, who would go on to gorgeously capture some of the great films of the late 20th and early 21st century, most notably all of the films to date from Paul Thomas Anderson. The picture will be from a print newly restored by The Criterion Collection and projected in crisp DCP format.