Artists Love Movies: April Gornik on “Spirited Away” at the Pierson High School Auditorium

ARITSTS LOVE MOVIES is inspired by the rich tradition of artists that defines the East End and by the fascinating, ever growing relation between film and visual arts.

Adult Tickets in advance – $10

Kids under 14 FREE!

 masterpiece from the cinematic eye-popping wonders of Studio Ghibli, the higly infuential house of animation that Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki helped to create in 1985. Often compared to children classics such as Alice in Wonderland and to the film The Wizard of Oz, Spirited Away is the story of Chihiro, a 10-years-old girl who see her parents turned in to pigs and finds herself plunged into a haunting (and marvelous) fantasyland populated by spirits, sorceress, ghosts, monsters and other creatures of wonder. The film is to this day the highest-grossing title ever released in Japan, and scored an Academy Award for Best Animated movie in 2003. Myazaki would win a second statue, an Honorary Oscar, in 2015. One year later, in London, the BBC commissioned a poll of critics to determine the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century. Spirited Away was listed among the top 5. Running Time: 125 minutes.

April Gornik is a painter and cultural philantropist whose celebrated work focuses on stunning atmospheric landscapes. Born in Cleveland, OH, she studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, receiving her BFA there in 1976. Her works are presently held in the collections of institutions such as Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Cincinnati Museum, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Modern Art Museum of Art of Fort Worth, the Orlando Museum of Art, and other major public and private collections. She has shown extensively, in one-person and group shows, in the United States and abroad. Gornik and her husband, artist Eric Fischl, live in Sag Harbor. Gornik and Fischl are also greatly commited to important cultural projects and philantropic initiatives to support the local art community and give opportunity for emerging artists to make a difference.