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By Dean Broughton

“Movies were getting real.” That’s how filmmaker and Emily Carr University of Art professor Harry Killas describes the 30 years of American cinema between World War  II and the Reagan era, when method acting upended Hollywood and reshaped the art form.

Killas examines how this era transformed screen performance in his six‑part series, 6 Takes on American Screen Acting, at VIFF Centre.

His final two talks focus on Robert Altman’s ensemble comedy Nashville (August  6) and Robert De Niro’s Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (August 20), which he calls a benchmark in the history of method acting.

The Straight caught up with Killas to talk about why this era stil

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