Giant

The French Legation State Historic Site is screening Giant (1956) outdoors on Thursday, November 5, as part of its Painted Dreams & Western Horizons film series. The movie is rated G and runs 3 hours and 21 minutes, so it's a long one—bring a chair and settle in.

Painted Dreams & Western Horizons is the Legation's outdoor film series, and it's rooted in the site's history of hosting Cinema East, a long-running tradition of communal, open-air screenings. The series pairs the films with "Behind the Scenes" speaker sessions by Karen Maness, a visual artist, designer, educator, and scenic artist whose forty-year career has centered on painting and fabrication for the entertainment industry. She's an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Austin and Associate Director of Scenic Art for Texas Performing Arts, where she oversees the Texas Performing Arts Hollywood Backdrop Collection. She also co-authored The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, the definitive history of Hollywood's motion-picture scenic art.

In her talks, Maness shows how painted backdrops—many shaped by European and French traditions—built some of cinema's most iconic visual worlds, linking Golden Age musicals, Technicolor fantasies, and contemporary Westerns. If you're interested in how those worlds were actually made, you can also see one of the original motion-picture backdrops used in filming on display at the site.

The screening is at the French Legation State Historic Site, 802 San Marcos Street, Austin, TX 78702. Gates open at 6:30 PM and the movie begins at 7 PM. Tickets are $5 for adults, and children 17 and under are free with an adult.