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Movies on the House

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Your ticket to the greatest films you have never seen. 

Some of the finest, provocative, beautifully made and stirring films don’t make it to the multiplex theaters. Or if they do, they disappear too quickly for most of us to see. MOTH is here to bring you, for free, some of the world’s greatest films that may have escaped your attention. MOTH screens films at the Andrew A. Robinson Jr. Theater and the UNF Gallery of Art on the UNF campus, and downtown at MOCA Jacksonville. Every week you have a chance to see the finest achievements in cinema. We scour the underground, the festivals, and the world, to give you must-see films that will warm, singe or burn you. If you can take the heat, come to the light.

Following a hiatus for the safety of all during the COVID-19 pandemic, Movies on the House returns in full swing this fall semester. We would like you to follow our Recommended Films that we WOULD have loved to see with you. 

container of popcorn

History of MOTH

In 1998, UNF President Fretwell wanted to create a community centered on cinema. He established a fund that could provide students, faculty, staff and the wider community with great films to ponder, discuss, debate, be outraged and be moved by. He knew that film was the source of our most widely shared stories, and that watching films together helps us understand each other in a way that can never happen by watching films alone on our laptops, phones and televisions. With the generous and unwavering support of President John A. Delaney, and the future support of the University, MOTH will continue to bring us together around a love of film.

The series was first housed at Regal Cinema on Beach Blvd. Following a generous donation of 35mm film equipment from Regal Inc, we began projecting films on campus. Now with HD digital replacing 35mm film, we project films in Andrew A. Robinson Jr. Theater's newly renovated screening rooms, the UNF Gallery of Art, and in the screening room of MOCA Jacksonville downtown.  

Upcoming Movies

Promotion Poster for After Blue (Dirty Paradise)

After Blue (Dirty Paradise)

In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, a lonely teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her prison. Roxy and her mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) are held accountable, banished from their community, and forced to track down the murderer named Kate Bush. Haunted by the spirits of her murdered friends, Roxy sets out on a long and strange journey across the supranatural territories of this filthy paradise.

Visit After Blue (Dirty Paradise) on the IMDB website

WEDNESDAY,  JANUARY 18, 2023, 7:30 P.M.

ROBINSON THEATER, BUILDING 14A / ROOM 1314

Promotion Image for Dressed in Blue

Dressed in Blue

Spanish with English subtitles

One of the best trans films you’ve likely never heard of, Antonio Giménez-Rico’s landmark 1983 documentary Dressed in Blue (Vestida de Azul) explores the lives and loves of a group of six transgender women living in Madrid in the years following Spain’s transition to democracy. But more than that, it’s a loving portrait of a culture finally emerging from the shadows after being hidden for far too long. Antonio's portrait of these women gave them the freedom to portray their own stories with their own friends & family, but in a stylized scripted narrative framework with gorgeous cinematography by Teo Escamilla. The stories of Eva, Nacha, Loren, Josette, Reneé, & Tamara were never properly released outside of Spain and never available on home video, but finally Altered Innocence and Anus Films is proud to present this vital testament to just how far we’ve come — and how far there’s still left to go.

Visit Dressed in Blue on the IMDB website

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023, 7:30 P.M.

ROBINSON THEATER, BUILDING 14A / ROOM 1314

Promotion for Call Her Ganda

Call Her Ganda

Q&A with filmmaker PJ Raval following
Co-sponsored by the UNF LGBTQ Center for Women's History Month

When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case — an activist attorney, a transgender journalist and Jennifer's mother) — galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of US imperialism.

Visit Call Her Ganda on the IMDB website

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

ROBINSON THEATER, BUILDING 14A / ROOM 1314

Promotion for Eames: The Architect and the Painter

Eames: The Architect and the Painter

Design history was born in a cavernous warehouse on a gritty street in Venice Beach, California, where Charles and Ray Eames set up their Renaissance-style studio in the optimistic flush of American victory during World War II. Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey‘s definitive cinematic foray into the world of the Eames is the first film to be made about Charles and Ray since their deaths — and the only one that peers deeply inside the link between their artistic collaboration and sometimes tortured love for one another.

Visit Eames: The Architect and the Painter on the Kanopy website

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

ROBINSON THEATER, BUILDING 14A / ROOM 1314

Graphic for three short ethnographic films

Short Ethnographic Films

Join UNF's Digital Humanities Institute and Movies on the House for an evening of ethnographic films. We will meet three anthropologists and view their short films: Cruces by Carlos Tobon Franco; A Wedding by Emiko Stock; and An Astrological Diagnosis by Nadia Naomi Mbonde. Though the themes of these films are different, a connective thread is 'movement' and changing status or defining life events (migration, pregnancy, and marriage). 

We will gather at the UNF Gallery of Art at 7 p.m. with programming to begin at 7:30 p.m. We will hear brief introductions from the filmmakers and discuss the films afterward. 

Visit Cruces by Carlos Tobon Franco
Visit A Wedding by Emiko Stock
Visit An Astrological Diagnosis by Nadia Naomi Mbonde

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

UNF GALLERY OF ART, BUILDING 2 / ROOM 1101

Promotion for Sleeping Giant Festival

Sleeping Giant Festival

The Sleeping Giant awakens from an immersive and all consuming slumber. Movies on the House is excited to share student tickets for Sun-Ray Cinema's Sleeping Giant Festival. UNF students can pick up free 5-movie passes on a first come, first served basis, but will need to note their interest in the festival and submit a reflection. Students will need to fill out this Sleeping Giant Student Pass form and contact Dr. Nicholas de Villiers n.devilliers@unf.edu. Pick up times for tickets are Wednesdays, 1-4 p.m. at Dr. Nicholas de Villiers's office, Building 8/Room 2033 (Department of English), or if not available at that time, students can arrange to pick up the tickets at the Department of English office (Building 8/Room 2001) from Jamie Roarty.

Visit Sleeping Giant Festival

APRIL 6 - 9, 2023

SUN-RAY CINEMA
Promotion for The Experimental City

The Experimental City

In the 1960s, as the cities collapsed and the suburbs sprawled, Athelstan Spilhaus had a vision: a futuristic city for 250,000 residents, engineered from scratch in the isolated woods of northern Minnesota, to solve the twin urban and environmental crises. The Minnesota Experimental City would use the newest technologies in communications, transport, energy supply, pollution control (even domed enclosure) in an attempt to create more livable cities and an improved environment for the 21st Century. Spilhaus‘ proposal was compelling on a grand scale, and quickly gained powerful backers, hundreds of experts, and its own state agency. But times were changing, and not everyone fell in line with this newfangled vision for the future.

Visit The Experimental City on the Kanopy website

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

ROBINSON THEATER, BUILDING 14A / ROOM 1314

Past Movies

Recommended Films

Homecoming - Beyonce movie poster

Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé