Visual and Performing Arts   

Saddle up for a journey into the world of the Spaghetti Western—the Italian reinvention of America's most iconic film genre. In this course, we'll explore how directors like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci transformed the classic Western into something darker, grittier, and far more stylized. With unforgettable music by Ennio Morricone, stark landscapes, and morally ambiguous antiheroes, these films redefined what it meant to ride into the sunset. Each session will feature a screening and discussion focusing on cinematic style, cultural context, and the enduring influence of the Spaghetti Western on global cinema. We'll look at Leone's classics like A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Corbucci's eerily gripping The Great Silence, plus some others. We show each film in its entirety with English subtitles. Longer films will be spread across two class periods to allow ample discussion time. Be advised that these films contain violent content.

"Before Monet, there was Pissarro," writes the Denver Art Museum in its announcement of the extraordinary exhibition "Camille Pissarro: The Honest Eye," open from October 24, 2025, to February 8, 2026. This course will focus on the life and times of Camille Pissarro, his unusual background, and how he became the supporter and mentor to the famed painters of his milieu: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt, Sisley, and Morisot—the Impressionists known as the painters of "soft skies and radical ideas." Also included in the six PowerPoint presentations will be those painters who influenced Pissarro and how he in turn influenced those who followed him. The course will be presented in two formats: Tuesday mornings in person at Jefferson Unitarian Church and Wednesday mornings via Zoom. Participants may attend either or both presentations.

Participants will pay for only six classes, but the facilitator is offering two bonus sessions: a morning at the museum on Tuesday, January 27, and an all-French breakfast on Tuesday, March 3.

"Before Monet, there was Pissarro," writes the Denver Art Museum in its announcement of the extraordinary exhibition "Camille Pissarro: The Honest Eye," open from October 24, 2025, to February 8, 2026. This course will focus on the life and times of Camille Pissarro, his unusual background, and how he became the supporter and mentor to the famed painters of his milieu: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt, Sisley, and Morisot - the Impressionists known as the painters of "soft skies and radical ideas."Also included in the six PowerPoint presentations will be those painters who influenced Pissarro and how he in turn influenced those who followed him. The course will be presented in two formats: Tuesday mornings in person at Jefferson Unitarian Church and Wednesday mornings via Zoom. Participants may attend either or both presentations.

Participants will pay for only six classes, but the facilitator is offering two bonus sessions: a morning at the museum on Tuesday, January 27, and an all-French breakfast on Tuesday, March 3.

There will be weekly handouts sent by email.

There will be no class on January 28 or March 4.

Camille Pissarro earned the title "Father of Impressionism" through his influence on younger artists and his remarkable kindness toward fellow painters, including Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, and Berthe Morisot. Born on St. Thomas in a prominent Jewish community, Pissarro and his brother attended a Moravian missionary school with predominantly Black students after a family dispute with the synagogue. This unique education gave him fluency in English and an unusual immunity to prejudice—qualities that shaped his inclusive approach to art and life.

After studying in France, Pissarro settled near Paris with his family, becoming the only artist to exhibit at all ten Impressionist exhibitions. He led these radical painters in challenging the rigid Paris Salon with fresh, impressionistic views of nature and the world.

As the Denver Art Museum presents its Pissarro exhibit (October 26, 2025--February 8, 2026), join Walling for a detailed exploration of Pissarro's life, work, and artistic impact.

Text: Anka Muhlstein, Camille Pissarro The Audacity of Impressionism (Other Press 2023).

Unlock your artistic potential and explore the captivating world of colored pencils in this comprehensive course. Whether you are a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this course offers an immersive experience in the art of colored pencils. The fundamental technique of blending and how to mix colors together will be taught to achieve a realistic 3D look with colored pencils. We will learn color-mixing concepts and how to color objects with the color pencils. Participants will also learn how to look at light and shadow in an object, and how to look at details in a reference photo to make drawings realistic. At the end of class, they will have a better understanding of shading and blending with colored pencils. Join Mitra and let your creativity flourish!

Required materials: pencil, eraser, set of 36 or 48 Color pencils (Mitra has Prisma color soft core color pencils), Canson vellum paper.

Each week a foreign film will be viewed, followed by a class discussion. Before each class, the facilitator will send to participants the name of the film that will be shown in the next class. None of the films will have been shown in the facilitator's prior classes.

The music of Broadway and Hollywood musicals is an art form in and of itself. It takes a team of multi-talented performers and an orchestra to produce these entertainment extravaganzas. At the heart are creative geniuses who set the whole thing in motion: the songwriters! In this multimedia course, we will cover Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Alan Jay Lerner, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerome Kern, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, and George Gershwin. Much attention will be paid to their collaborators as well. The facilitator will share many videos to demonstrate the songs as they appear on stage and screen.

Some directors have an identifiable brash style that we can all appreciate; some strive to be invisible—if you can see their efforts, they feel they have usurped the story. Whichever way, the great directors with long, successful lists of films to their credit are, in reality, supreme artists of film that can make you laugh through tears and surprise you with unexpected film twists. How do they do that? What direction and what film grammar do they know and use on you to tell their stories in compelling ways? Take this course and begin to see how they do it. We will look at a range of directing techniques, then a series of great directors: Steven Spielberg, Sidney Pollack, Joel and Ethan Coen, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino. We'll see excerpts of their work, biographic info and interviews with them, and detailed commentaries on their techniques, mostly in the form of YouTube videos. Two hours per session, eight sessions. Come see, learn, and discuss. Warning: Many of these films are violent (Tarantino, Scorsese, and Kubrick especially), so know this before you sign up. No texts are required—information will be emailed as needed.

Explore the foundations of music in this fun and accessible course designed for lifelong learners. We’ll cover the basics of rhythm, melody, harmony, and musical form, using familiar examples and interactive exercises. You'll also have the chance to try your hand at simple composition, with guidance and feedback in a supportive environment. No prior music experience is necessary—just curiosity and a love of music!

Participants should have a laptop with the ability to run musescore (a free program that needs Windows 10 or higher, Mac OS 11.5 or higher, or recent Linux distributions). The facilitator prefers that participants load musescore before the first class.

"Film Noir," as the French called the American movies that emerged from World War II, implies dark film or black movie. It refers not only to the fact that movies were in black and white but also to the plot, actors, and film production. This time we meet a murderer for hire, a lonely professor and a femme fatale, an actress helping Scotland Yard, a gang that commits the perfect crime, a jaded ex-con, a party girl who wakes up with a corpse, a bride who loses her husband on an ocean cruise, and an Army officer who rescues a soldier from East Germany. Along with our movies we will have weekly action-packed serial episodes. We will have a short discussion before and after each movie to discuss the stars, plot, and why the movie was successful. Due to movie lengths, the class will start at 12:30.

This course will have the same format as Spring Term 2024, but with different composers and historic events. This class is for lovers of music and history. During each session, we will learn about one particular time in a composer's life and the composition it inspired. Our chosen composers are Mozart, Beethoven, Glinka, Wagner, Shostakovich, and Crumb. Histories will cover the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, France during and after the Revolution, Russia and its tsars, Germany and the industrial revolution, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the United States during the Vietnam War. Each session is selected from "Music as a Mirror of History," a lecture series by Professor Robert Greenberg, a prolific presenter of music-related topics for Great Courses who presents in a lively, engaging style. Here he turns to connections between specific compositions and their historical context. Many of these topics will have somber backstories. We will hear and view one lecture per session, leaving ample time for discussion and further exploration.

“What really matters is the work.” Robert Redford

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made Robert Redford a star as a lovable rogue—but he immediately shattered that image with Downhill Racer, creating a coolly unsympathetic portrait of ambition. Such risk-taking began a career that became a laboratory for artistic innovation.

During his mid-career, he followed his moral compass to create two true explorations of scandal, both hinging on the ethics of journalism and entertainment and showing how institutions protect deception: All the President’s Men, as actor and producer, and twenty years later, Quiz Show, as director. He brought his journey full circle with The Old Man and the Gun, a graceful farewell to his own persona, a man who can’t stop practicing his craft.

Join us for behind-the-scenes revelations, full screenings, and spirited discussions. We'll celebrate Redford’s lifelong commitment to hard work, innovation, and the pleasure of doing something well. “Work keeps me going.”

“What really matters is the work.” Robert Redford

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made Robert Redford a star as a lovable rogue—but he immediately shattered that image with Downhill Racer, creating a coolly unsympathetic portrait of ambition. Such risk-taking began a career that became a laboratory for artistic innovation.

During his mid-career, he followed his moral compass to create two true explorations of scandal, both hinging on the ethics of journalism and entertainment and showing how institutions protect deception: All the President’s Men, as actor and producer, and twenty years later, Quiz Show, as director. He brought his journey full circle with The Old Man and the Gun, a graceful farewell to his own persona, a man who can’t stop practicing his craft.

Join us for behind-the-scenes revelations, full screenings, and spirited discussions. We'll celebrate Redford’s lifelong commitment to hard work, innovation, and the pleasure of doing something well. “Work keeps me going.”

Hamlet and Luke Skywalker may not have much in common—other than father issues! However, both characters become more vivid to audiences with musical support. Is he thoughtful or anguished? Ready for action or fearful of failure? The script may hint at the answers, but music brings it home to us. In this six-session Zoom course, music historian and frequent OLLI presenter Betsy Schwarm explores the subject. She'll consider music for stage plays, from Shakespeare to Peer Gynt. Then it's operetta and musical theater, including Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Sondheim. Film music gets two sessions: one for John Williams and another for other great names. After all, Robin Hood's Merry Men and the Titanic's tragic lovers require very different music. Then there's that shark and those Jedi! How does great music add to what we see on the stage or screen? That's Betsy's topic for the winter term of 2026 with OLLI!

Let's go back and enjoy some of Hollywood's best song and dance scenes. We will see some classical dance scenes with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Donald O'Connor, Chayanne, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, Vanessa Williams, Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Beals, John Travolta, Bob Fosse, Gwen Verdon, and many more. Much of the music will come from well-known musicals such as Damn Yankees, On the Town, Swing Time, Hellzapoppin, Fiddler on the Roof, Mamma Mia, Rocketman, Singing in the Rain, Andrew Lloyd Webber shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, Cole Porter, Lerner and Loewe, and George M. Cohan. This is a class to sit back and enjoy.

Join former professional dancers Joy and Jeffrey Engel for an insider's view of the life of a professional ballet dancer. The Engels will share their experiences and insights using videos and discussions to explore how young ballet students develop into professional dancers. The first class will focus on the different training styles and student progress using videos of classes from some of the world's major ballet academies. The next class will feature dancers auditioning and in competitions. The last two classes will explore the challenging career of a professional ballet dancer with videos of rehearsals and onstage performances. Comments and questions from class members are always appreciated.

As with so many aspects of life, women have traditionally been marginalized by men. The field of music, and for our purposes, jazz, is no different. This course is designed to bring women out of the shadows of the patriarchy and discover their immense talent, not only as singers (the most traditional role) and swingers, but as instrumentalists, composers, and bandleaders. We will explore the origins of jazz beginning in the 19th century and the evolution of this African-American art form through the women who influenced it. Instruction will be multi-media, including PowerPoint presentation, audio, and video. All sessions are designed to stimulate interaction with participants, including commentaries, questions, and perhaps even relating personal experiences.

The Blues: Roots and Branches, Part 2 continues to explore The Blues, its origins, evolution and expansion into other musical genres, particularly rock 'n' roll. This course is independent of The Blues, Part 1 and can be taken and enjoyed without one having taken Part 1. The class includes lectures, music, music video, documentaries and class discussion. The class will focus upon the important and influential musicians of The Blues and its branches, as well as others whose contributions helped the genre and its "branches" to grow, evolve and branch out. There will also be lecture and discussion regarding the connections between The Blues and its branches and the socioeconomic and historical influences upon The Blues and the musical genres that evolved out of The Blues. The class will conclude with an examination of the recent and current state of The Blues, including some recent video of current Blues musicians, such as Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Kingfish Ingram.

Among the important and influential musicians and contributors to be discussed in Part 2 will be (not in the following order) Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley, the Chess Brothers, Chuck Berry, Lonnie Donegan, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Jimmie Page, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Guy, Albert King, Freddie King, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Joe Bonamassa.

Take the mystery out of digital photography and start creating images you're proud of. This interactive, hands-on course introduces you to the fundamentals of using your digital camera (point-and-shoot, mirrorless, hybrid, DSLR—this is NOT a smartphone camera course), selecting lenses, and mastering light with portable flash units. Whether you're new to photography or seeking a creative refresher, you'll gain confidence, technical understanding, and an artistic eye through guided instruction and practice on the University of Denver campus.

Required materials: Point-and-shoot, mirrorless, hybrid, DSLR type camera– this is NOT a smartphone camera course. Recommended materials: Portable or attached flash unit.

This engaging, video-rich course tells the story of American television—from its 1920s origins to today’s streaming era. We will explore decades of iconic shows, genres, and cultural moments that shaped the medium and its audiences. From sitcoms and dramas to news and sports, we will rediscover how TV evolved, adapted, and transformed American culture—one broadcast, cable channel, and streaming service at a time.

This Osher Online course, offered through the Osher National Resource Center, lets you learn with fellow lifelong learners nationwide, guided by a world-class expert. After enrolling, you’ll receive and email inviting you to a Member Orientation on January 7 at noon to review course materials, access your Zoom classroom, and prepare for your first class.

Embark on a virtual photography journey through the awe-inspiring landscapes of the American West. From the rugged frontier of Yellowstone to California's coastal cliffs and Joshua Trees, this online course explores both iconic and lesser-known locations across Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and surrounding regions. You'll learn how to capture the essence of place through light, composition, and timing—while discovering insider tips from a "been there" photographer's perspective. Each session features practical shooting advice, visual storytelling techniques, and location-specific insights that inspire creativity for photographers of all levels. Whether you're planning your next trip or simply love to explore from home, you'll come away ready to turn your travels into powerful visual and oral stories.

Required materials: Digital camera or Smartphone camera, curiosity, and a notebook

Recommended materials: Regional Map

This course covers the panorama of Westerns in cinema. We'll watch classic Westerns and discuss them. Why have Westerns resonated so powerfully with audiences? Why did they dominate the large and small screen, and why did they become less popular? What makes Westerns endure, and how have they adapted into other genres and cultures? Who were the important directors, writers, and actors of Western cinema? How do Westerns depict or distort history? How have Westerns influenced our culture and politics? Course sessions will include a mix of presentation and discussion. The facilitator will give some background on that week's topic, followed by a discussion of the movie of the week.

Each week, we will watch a movie before class and discuss. Rental of movies on streaming services will be required.

Note: Because of streaming availability changes, we may replace the planned movie for a particular week.