The Best Night of Your Life: A Richard Linklater Double Feature
The Cognitive Film Society begins the summer with Before Sunrise and Dazed and Confused — Sunday, June 14 at 1:00 PM, Gold Theater, Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library
A train slows into Vienna, and a young American talks a French stranger into joining him for a walk through the city.
A bell rings in Austin, Texas, and school is out for the summer of 1976.
On Sunday, June 14, the Cognitive Film Society is proud to present Before Sunrise (1995) and Dazed and Confused (1993) to kick off the summer — because nobody in the history of movies has filmed beginnings like Richard Linklater.
Most films are about endings. The villain vanquished, the case closed, the wedding, the win. Linklater’s great subject has always been a threshold — hours when nothing has been decided yet and everything is still possible. Linklater’s films have always powerfully captured the stretch of time before life truly begins.
Before Sunrise is the best film ever made about a single conversation. Jesse and Céline step off the train in Vienna with no money, no plan, and one night. Possibility is the entire plot. The night in the film is dated June 16, 1994. We’re screening it on June 14 — close enough to call it an anniversary.
Dazed and Confused is the last day of school everyone wishes they had. It’s May 28, 1976, three weeks before America’s 200th birthday, and the kids of Lee High School couldn’t care less. The country is throwing itself a party; they just want to find one. We’ll be watching from the other side of the country’s 250th: the Class of ‘26, looking back at the Class of ‘76.
It’s no spoiler that both films end at daybreak — but like the best memories, the night before is truly all that matters. Linklater treats time itself as the subject. In these films he captures the feeling of being seventeen with an infinite summer ahead and the way one night with a stranger can outweigh years of childhood.
Nothing happens in these movies except everything.
That’s what we’ll dig into on Sunday. We’ll open with a short talk on early Linklater — the run from Slacker through Before Sunrise — and how time became the theme he’s built an entire career playing with: the single day, the single night, the years between.
Between the films, we’ll keep the conversation going with an audience Q&A. Then we time travel to 1976.
The Afternoon
Alright, alright, alright. The summer is about to begin.
1:00 PM — Program begins: a short talk on early Linklater and time
1:15 PM — Before Sunrise (1995)
~3:00 PM — Audience Q&A and intermission
3:15 PM — Dazed and Confused (1993)
Location: Gold Theater at the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library — 1125 Broadway, Hewlett, NY 11557.
Free and open to everyone, as always.
And keep an eye on your inbox: our full summer and fall 2026 schedule — six screenings, including a first for CFS that involves the Metropolitan Opera — is coming soon.
We hope you can join us on Sunday and at our other upcoming events!
It’d be a lot cooler if you did.
The Cognitive Film Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to cultivating film culture through educational programming and community engagement.
Personally, I prefer my double features to be further apart from each other, one time I rented (on VHS!) “Dazed & Confused” and “Mean Streets” and they balanced out perfectly.