Big Screen Wonders Festival: The Matrix

ArtYard’s Big Screen Wonders Film Festival is a series dedicated to films that demand a giant screen. The festival includes feature films and virtual Q&As with artists behind the films to engage the audience. The films will be screened on ArtYard’s two-story-tall film screen in the McDonnell Theater on Saturday evenings in January.

The festival is curated by Joshua Handler, founder and programmer of Picturehouse 441, a series featuring intimate virtual Q&As with various filmmakers and actors.

All Access Wonders Pass tickets are available through Dec. 1 or until they sell out. Individual tickets will be on sale Dec. 2.

The second film of the series is The Matrix, followed by a conversation between Handler and editor Zach Staenberg.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of The Matrix. Mixing philosophy with sci-fi along with a potent twist of kung fu, The Matrix single-handedly influenced an entire generation of films and filmmakers. The Wachowski sisters’ bravura action sequences are as elegantly shot (by cinematographer Bill Pope) as they are electrifyingly-edited (by Zach Staenberg, who won an Oscar for his work), and leads Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne ooze charisma. Some 24 years after its release, this dizzying concoction feels as fresh as ever.

The Matrix

Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Writers: Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
Run Time: 2h 16m

When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth — the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.