Film   

• Heartwarming and Uplifting Film: Gifted 

• IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom at the Vineyard Church

  Gifted is a deeply satisfying film (2017) about a single man dedicated to raising his spirited young niece who is a child prodigy. Their life together becomes threatened when the girl’s mathematical abilities come to the attention of her overbearing grandmother, who has her own plans for the girl. This outstanding film has a rich mixture of humor and drama to provide an entertaining experience for mature audiences. Rated PG-13. Toby Teorey is the current Vice Chair of the Elderwise Council. He is retired from the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, and in retirement pursues his enduring love of world history, music, and culture.

  

   

• Fee: $15.00

• Instructor(s): Toby Teorey

• Dates: 4/30/2025 - 4/30/2025

  Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Sessions: 1

  Days: W

• Building: Vineyard Church

  Room: Classroom at the Vineyard Church

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• Women and Film: Dance, Girl, Dance 

• IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom at the Vineyard Church

  Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), starring Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball, is one of a very small number of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age that was directed by a woman – Dorothy Arzner. We will view the film in the first session, and then discuss it in the second session by looking closely at a number of specific examples from the film and considering them in relation to the film as a whole. Discussion will be supported by recent research conducted by the instructor, who is in the process of writing a book about the film and is actively interested in the Elderwise community’s ideas about it. Matthew Solomon is a professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century, which won the Kraszna-Krausz Award for best moving image book. He has also authored a BFI Film Classics monograph on Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and, most recently, Méliès Boots: Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris.

  

  

   

• Fee: $30.00

• Instructor(s): Matthew Solomon

• Dates: 5/7/2025 - 5/14/2025

  Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Sessions: 2

  Days: W

• Building: Vineyard Church

  Room: Classroom at the Vineyard Church

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• Novel into Film: A Lesson Before Dying 

• IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom at the Vineyard Church

  Registrants should read A Lesson Before Dying prior to the first class.

  This class begins at 9:30 a.m. and goes until 12 noon.

  Rural 1940s Louisiana is the setting for Ernest J. Gaines’s (1933-2019) sixth novel, A Lesson Before Dying, winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. While he is perhaps best known for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), A Lesson Before Dying is considered to be Gaines’s masterwork. It was adapted into a film in 1999, starring Don Cheadle (Grant Wiggins), Mekhi Phifer (Jefferson), Cicely Tyson (Tante Lou), and Lisa Arrindell (Vivian Baptiste). In our first session we will discuss the author’s life and this novel, and in our second session we will view the film adaptation. Combining the two will give us a better understanding of how the work continues to resonate in the 21st century. Registrants should read A Lesson Before Dying prior to the first class. Kevin Eyster is a Professor Emeritus at Madonna University in Livonia, where he continues to teach courses in literature.

  

  

   

• Fee: $30.00

• Instructor(s): Kevin Eyster

• Dates: 5/15/2025 - 5/22/2025

  Times: 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM

• Sessions: 2

  Days: Th

• Building: Vineyard Church

  Room: Classroom at the Vineyard Church

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