the audi festival of german film - National Film and Sound Archive

Transcription

May/
June
nfsa.gov.au
2012
SUN 6 MAY 4.30PM
AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS
SLEEPING SICKNESS
(Schlafkrankheit) Dir: Ulrich Köhler, Germany/
France/ Netherlands, 2010, 91 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
cinemacalendar
Arc at the NFSA
National Film
and Sound Archive,
McCoy Circuit, Acton,
Canberra
Enquiries:
02 6248 2000
nfsa.gov.au
Enjoy cinema’s greatest experiences at Arc,
the state-of-the-art venue at the National Film and
Sound Archive.
TICKETS:
(except where special prices noted)
$11 / $9 concession
Max pass – 10 tickets for just $80.
Thursday Matinees – all tickets $5
Special ticket prices may apply to individual sessions,
events and seasons
After years of working in Cameroon, a German
doctor has become a weary African ‘old hand’;
increasingly cynical, imperial and off-handed in his
personal relationships with the locals. Over time, he
has abandoned his family and his status – and his
administration of EU medical aid has become “…
unsound”. European health authorities send a young
doctor to investigate – little suspecting the force of
the older doctor’s personality. Director Köhler’s take
on Heart of Darkness is the most startling adaptation
of Conrad since Apocalypse Now, and built on a
brilliant conceit: its Marlow-like character is a naïve
Afro-Belgium who has never been to Africa. Part
black-satire, part Henri Rousseau-like dreamscape, it’s
most of all an allegory of how modern European aid
policy, social democratic ideals and cash still colonise
the continent. Presented by the Goethe-Institut
Australien.
THE AUDI
FESTIVAL OF
GERMAN FILM
Doors open for 30 mins before screening.
Admission to venue capacity only.
No admission after the session has
been running for 20 mins.
Disabled access via Liversidge Street.
THE BEST OF NEW GERMAN
CINEMA AT ARC CINEMA
Advanced general admission ticket sales are
available from 9am Monday for the coming
week’s sessions, either at the box office or a
credit card purchase via telephone on
6248 2000.
Tickets must be collected at least 15 minutes
before the session or they may be resold.
Tickets will only be refunded up to 20 mins
after the commencement of the screening.
Pre purchased tickets cannot be replaced if
lost or stolen.
For the last few years, Australia’s showcase of
new German cinema has been sadly missing from
Canberra. We have asked; and now the Audi
Festival of German Films finally returns to Canberra,
for the very first time coming to the NFSA’s Arc
Cinema.
6 – 9 MAY
This year’s package includes two Berlin Film Festival
major prize winners: Cloud 9 director Andres
Dresen’s disturbing Stopped on Track and
Ulrich Köhler’s brilliantly unusual take on Joseph
Conrad, Sleeping Sickness. There’s also two
elegiac new documentaries where vision speaks
Mahler On The Couch
very much louder than words, including Corinna
Belz’s study of normally media-shy painter Gerhard
Richter; a welcome return from Percy Aldon – the
maker of 1980s and ‘90s art house charmers like
Salomonberries and Bagdad Cafe, but whose
recent films have rarely reached Australia; and
cool examples of how young German filmmakers
are reworking Hollywood genres, like the combat
movie 4 Days in May or the sci-fi Hell.
A day of screenings for school and family audiences
will also include Hermine Huntgeburth’s take on
Mark Twain’s American classic, Tom Sawyer.
Presented by the Goethe-Institut Australien.
Special ticket prices to all sessions. School
inquiries for sessions on Thursday 6 May to
6248 2000.
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia
SUN 6 MAY 6.30PM
GERHARD RICHTER –
PAINTING
Dir: Corinna Belz, Germany, 2011, 97 mins,
35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Reclusive German painter Gerhard Richter has
long expressed a hatred of being interviewed or
photographed. After years of loyalty and discretion,
filmmaker Corinna Belz was allowed to infiltrate his
sanctum, and to film his painting processes. There
is rare archival footage of his work and of the few,
previous to-camera interviews he has granted over
the past decades. However the revelation is not
through Richter’s words – he continues to remain
wary and taciturn throughout the film. It’s in
watching the deliberation that precedes his art – and
sometimes even follows on from its completion.
THU 10 MAY 2PM
ONCE UPON A
TIME IN ANATOLIA
(Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da) Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan,
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
All tickets $5.
THU 10 MAY 7PM
ONCE UPON A
TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
Robert Bression
Free for Max Pass holders.
MAY
THU 3 MAY 1PM
TOM SAWYER
Dir: Hermine Huntgeburth, 110 mins, Germany/
Romania, 2011, digital, (unclassified 15+)
Just as with Italian cinema, German cinema and
culture has its own local tradition of tales of the
American West, going back to the 19th century
novels of Karl May. So it’s just right for German
filmmaker Hermine Huntgeburth to rework Mark
Twain’s iconic tale of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn, and their river journey into the heartland of
America. With the great river valleys of Germany
and Romania standing in the Mississippi, it’s an
adaptation that proves the timeless and global
meanings of Twain’s wisdom, his character’s modest
dreams of travel and their conflicts with adult rules.
Special screening for schools, open to the
public. Educational inquires on 6248 2000.
THU 3 MAY 7PM
4 DAYS IN MAY
(4 Tage im Mai) Dir: Achim von Borries,
Germany/ Ukraine/ Russia, 2011, 97 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
It’s May 1945 and the merciless, final days of the war
on Germany’s receding Eastern Front. An advanced
platoon of Russian soldiers is surrounded by a larger
force of Germans, near an orphanage on the Baltic
coast. The Germans know the war is lost, but are
only willing to surrender on their own terms. A 13
year old orphan builds a friendship with the Russian
captain and slowly the lines between friend and
enemy begin to blur. There have been more than
enough Russian or German movies which allow pity
only for just one side of World War Two’s grimmest
frontline. Von Borries' film is more rarely concerned
with what the soldiers of both sides had in common,
and the sharp differences of purpose that exists as
much within armies as between them. Presented by
the Goethe-Institut Australien.
FRI 4 MAY 12.30PM
SPECIAL EVENT
MRS CAREY'S CONCERT
Dir: Bob Connolly/Sophie Raymond, Aust., 2011,
95 mins, digital, (PG)
Bob Connolly visits the NFSA to present his AACTA
Award-winning documentary that looks at Karen
Carey, the music teacher at a private girl's school,
and her students in the two year lead up to a concert
at the Sydney Opera House. A presentation and
audience Q&A will follow the screening (duration
approx 60 mins). Presented in collaboration with
the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.
Free screening, bookings recommended by
calling 6248 2000.
FRI 4 MAY 6.15PM
CRACKS IN THE SHELL
(Die Unsichtbare) Dir: Christian Schwochow,
Denmark/ Germany, 113 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
A young, Danish acting student moves from
Denmark to Berlin to further her studies. In tow
come her troubled mother and intellectually disabled
sister. The would-be actress is shy and invisible to her
fellow drama students. Yet this very reserve draws
the attention of an obsessive and unconventional
theatre director, and gets her in the lead of his radical
interpretation of Camille. With echoes of Black Swan,
director Schwochow’s film gets into the psychological
crawlspace between theatrical illusions of female
sexual allure and the stage trickery that conjures it
up. Danish actress Stine Fischer Christensen (After the
Wedding) stars. Presented by the Goethe-Institut
Australien.
FRI 4 MAY 8.30PM
STOPPED ON TRACK
(Halt auf freier Strecke) Dir: Andreas Dresen,
Germany/ France, 110 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Andreas Dresen’s career is one of the most
fascinating of the new, New German cinema. Initially
working in the mainstream, Dresen has recently
turned his filmmaking in a much rawer direction –
as those who caught his eighty-something drama,
Cloud 9 (seen in our 2011 survey series of recent
German cinema) will know. Having outed some of
Germany’s sexual taboos, Dresen’s 2011 Berlin Film
Festival-winner focuses on those of death and dying,
in a frank account of an everyman character, Frank
Lange (Milan Peschel) diagnosed with a brain tumour
that’s slowly stripping away not just his physical
functions but his personality. Casting actual health
professionals in many of the support roles, Dresen
is frank and occasional bleakly funny about our not
always dignified journey towards death, and the
pretenses that modern, state-run health care systems
are in control of its inevitability. Presented by the
Goethe-Institut Australien.
SAT 5 MAY 2PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA’S
MIDDLE EAST
THE PRESIDENT VERSUS
DAVID HICKS
Dir: Curtis Levy, Aust., 2004, 81 mins, digital, (M)
David Hicks was an early home-grown manifestation
of the complexities of the War on Terror – and that it
was also a conflict between personal belief-systems
irrespective of national borders. The only Australian
captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in
the months after 9/11, the official narrative that
Hicks was a traitor, a dupe or brainwashed grew
more uncertain as issues of what he was doing in
Afghanistan, how he was captured and the legality
of his detention were unpacked. One of Australia
documentary’s veterans, Curtis Levy, followed
Hicks' first years in detention, and especially the
passion and indignation of his Adelaide father as he
attempted to get due process for his son. From the
NFSA Collection.
SAT 5 MAY 4.30PM
PEAK
Dir: Hannes Lang, Germany, 2011, 86 mins,
Europe’s Alps mountain range continues to attract
millions of visitors each year, has a cultural and
social history that has evolved over the past three
centuries and still inspires national imaginations
across the continent. But now climate change and
the overwhelming number of tourists are asserting
themselves, transforming the alpine environment in
ways that require man-made responses – including
surprising high-tech solutions to preserve nature.
Filmed over 12 months, Peak highlights the
sublime beauty that still exists, and the paradoxes
of environmental transformation and continuity in
alpine Europe. Presented by the Goethe-Institut
Australien.
SAT 5 MAY 6.30PM
HELL
Dir: Tim Fehlbaum, Germany/ Switzerland,
89 mins, 2011, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
The German word ‘Hell’ literally translates as ‘bright’.
It’s a title that evokes the nightmarish atmosphere of
Fehlbaum’s apocalyptical sci-fi thriller and its future
world where food is scarce, drought constant and
the sun a burning, withering force. Two sisters and a
male companion survive in this tough environment.
Then they encounter another man – and in this
hell new encounters are more an existential threat
than a relief from loneliness. Fehlbaum’s debut
feature has its own particularly ambiguous take
on themes normal associated with Hollywood (or
even Ozploitation) message movies – all the more
interesting considering it's produced by Roland
Emmerich. And it also features an unexpected pair of
assertive and impressive lead roles for two actresses
(Hannah Herzsprung and Angela Winkler) in what’s
normally a male-orientated genre. Presented by the
Goethe-Institut Australien.
SAT 5 MAY 8.30PM
MAHLER ON THE COUCH
BRESSON…
THE BRESSONIAN
ONCE UPON A
TIME IN ANATOLIA
FROM 26 MAY
10 – 24 MAY
“Robert Bresson is French cinema, as
Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart
is the German music” (Jean-Luc Godard)
Somewhere in the twilight of the badlands of
Anatolia, a motorcade of official vehicles weaves
along a potholed highway. Inside the crowded
lead police car junior detectives gossip and their
boss issues out tough love and putdowns. The
local prosecutor (Taner Birsel) – who fancies
himself as resembling Clark Gable – is quietly
doing the political calculus on the crime under
investigation. The local medical examiner Cemal
(Muhammet Uzuner) wishes he was elsewhere.
Only the suspect, Kenan, sits mute – hinting that
something deeper is happening here. They are
all driving to the scene of a crime that has been
committed somewhere out in the darkness of
steppes. But as the chief inspector says when he
phones home, it’s going to be a long night.
“I am only interested in the views of two
people: one is called Bresson…” (Andrei
Tarkovsky)
Robert Bresson (1901-1999) is one of just a few
master filmmakers to have an adjective to describe
his signature cinema and style. But to make
‘Bressonian’ cinema is to enter into a mystique
of filmmaking that having – say – a ‘Fordian’ or
‘Chaplinesque’ quality could never match. It’s
more total than a style or theme. It’s a belief
system: in cinema’s capacity as an art form to
manifest the sublime.
After two films made in the French studio system
in the mid-1940s, Bresson broke away from
commercial production, in order to take his own,
uncompromising path; beginning with the film
that became one of the first defining works
of post-World War Two Art cinema, Diary of a
Country Priest (1951). Just 10 features followed
over the following four decades – most under
90 minutes; a body of work where austerity of
words and sounds exactly complement rather than
contrast with an intense flow of feeling. Bresson
began making films in the era when realism and
melodrama seemed to be the best cinema could
be. By the 1960s, his late career works seemed
in the vanguard of the new waves and new
filmmaking crashing over cinemas world-wide. Its
apparent simplicity, its minimalism, its naturalism
of style was just as revolutionary a language of
film expression as the work of the younger French
filmmakers from the Nouvelle vague. And whilst
the other superstars of ‘60s European art cinema
– Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni – seemed to be
dazzled with the ephemeral, modish zeitgeist of
modern society, the more Robert Bresson seemed
to refuse, simplify and withdraw his cinema inward,
to a search for the soul.
Whilst some of Bresson’s films have been available
in Australia in poor quality 16mm prints, this is the
first chance in many years to experience a selection
of his films and their beauty in 35mm.
To honour the occasion, we will also begin a
small, defining survey series of the many films and
filmmakers who have honoured Robert Bresson. For
those who don’t know his cinema, the director’s
influence is surprisingly recurrent and astonishingly
diverse. So many of his filmmaking peers and
successors were also his greatest fans; and for many
the Bressonian described their aspiration to make
cinema without compromise. Bresson has been
name-checked by European greats like Tarkovsky,
Bergman, Aki Kaurismäki, the Dardenne brothers
and Alexander Sokurov; by New Hollywood and
American Indie masters like Coppola, Scorsese,
Jim Jarmush and – especially – Paul Schrader
(who has written frequently on Bresson and who
repeatedly references films such as Pickpocket);
and by Asian (Hou Hsiao-hsien, ‘Beat’ Takeshi) and
African cinema auteurs. The selection explores
how the stylistic and spiritual influence of one great
filmmaker can move the work and feelings of many
– and in many different ways.
Presented with the support of the Embassy
of France and the Institut Français.
(Mahler auf der couch) Dirs: Percy Adlon/ Felix O
Adlon, Germany/ Austria, 2011, 98 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Early 20th century Vienna was a place for constant,
potential meetings of great minds. That one day in
1910, composer Gustav Mahler might have come
to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s consulting rooms
could have been one of them. Veteran co-director
Percy Adlon (working with his regular collaborator
and son Felix) made his art house cinema reputation
30 years ago with Céleste; his 1981 film about Marcel
Proust’s maid that also offered a similarly lively, half
historic, half-mythic speculation about the private
life of another great artist. For Australian audiences,
this is a welcome return of a filmmaker and a witty,
delicate filmmaking touch long inaccessible to
Australian audiences – and a fascinating contrast with
David Cronenberg’s take on Freud and Freudianism in
A Dangerous Method. Presented by the GoetheInstitut Australien.
SUN 6 MAY 2PM
IF NOT US, WHO?
(Wer wenn nicht wir?) Dir: Andres Veiel, Germany,
2011, 124 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper were the
intellectual core of West Germany’ notorious Red
Army Faction in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
Both were brilliant but troubled when they met at
university in 1962. Ensslin was a classic rebel. Vesper
was the conflicted son of a controversial pro-Nazi,
turned militantly socialist poet. Lena Lauzemis and
August Diehl play Ensslin and Vesper as study of
how the personal and the political mesh, in their
love and hate. Alexander Fehling plays their cohort
Andreas Baader as alternately big brother, seducer,
and eventual nemesis. The contrast between former
documentary director Veiel’s tight and personal
focus, and other cinematic retellings of these events
(from Stammheim to the recent The Baader-Meinhof
Complex) couldn’t be more instructive. Presented
by the Goethe-Institut Australien.
The Kid Who Lies
AUTEURS FROM
THE OTHER
AMERICAS
NEW DIRECTORS,
NEW FILMS
MAY
The new cinemas that have emerged to the south of
the Hollywood border in the 21st century are often
the work of small communities of auteur filmmakers.
Trained in the US or Europe – if not, in local TV –
it’s a generation that smartly grasps what pleases
international filmmaking markets and audiences.
Yet it’s also one aware of taking back the tradition
of independent, politically feisty, socially aware and
collaborative cinema making so critical to the region’s
filmmaking tradition.
The latest in our on-going new Latin American
cinema survey picks a selection of some of the
exciting, recent feature films from first- or secondtime Latin American filmmakers. The emphasis is
on films made away from the Brazilian/Argentine
‘mainstream’, representing emerging cinemas from
Colombia, Peru and the smaller regions of the nation.
Although this is somewhere in modern Turkey,
the set-up could be from any hard boiled
Hollywood noir procedural movie. But over this
one long night and morning after of the criminal
investigation, the new film from Turkey’s most
acclaimed contemporary filmmaker, Nuri Bilge
Ceylan (Distant, Three Monkeys) seeks out the
metaphysical place where film noir and the
transcendent cinema of Bresson, Tarkovsky and
Ceylan’s own films come together.
“…I can only say it is a kind of masterpiece:
audacious, uncompromising and possessed
of a mysterious grandeur in its wintry
pessimism. Ceylan has showed himself a
superb film-maker. This is his greatest so far.”
(Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2010,
145 mins, 35mm, (M). A Madman
Entertainment release.
Limited Season:
THU 10 MAY 2PM & 7PM, SAT 12 MAY 7.30PM
SUN 13 MAY 4.30PM, THU 17 MAY 2PM & 7PM,
SAT 19 MAY 7.30PM, SUN 20 MAY 4.30PM.
Land Mines: A Love Story
SAT 12 MAY 2PM
MIDDLE EAST
LAND MINES: A LOVE STORY
Dir: Dennis O'Rourke, Aust., 2005, 73 mins,
digital, (PG)
Dennis O’Rourke’s AFI Best Documentary-award
winner exemplified the engagement with modern
Middle Eastern societies many of Australia’s leading
documentary filmmakers have felt compelled towards
after 9/11. As deeply immersed as he was in films
like The Good Woman of Bangkok and Cunnamulla,
O’Rourke here keeps close but respectful company
with Habiba: a Kabul young woman dealing – like
thousands of local civilians – with the traumatic
consequences of stepping on a landmine. For many
Afghani women, the trauma is also social; outcasts
from their families, street begging and humiliation
are often the only option. But as the title says, this
is also the story of Habiba’s love for Shah, a soldier
who shares her fate as a “…flower from the same
garden”. From the NFSA Collection.
SAT 12 MAY 4.30PM
AMERICAN MOVIES TREASURES:
ELIA KAZAN’S AMERICA
THE VISITORS
Dir: Elia Kazan, USA, 1972, 88 mins, 35mm, (M)
Two men arrive at an isolated, snow-bound house.
Inside, two others wait for them. The younger
(James Woods, in his debut role) sits resigned to
their retribution. The older – his father – is torn
between his love for his son and distain for his
betrayal of military honour and the American dream.
Disillusioned with commercial filmmaking, Kazan
was tempted back by a script from his own son
Chris, and the sort of intimate, naturalist filmmaking
being suggested by the New Hollywood filmmaking
generation. The result was one of the first films to
explore the dislocation of Vietnam veterans ‘coming
home’ – but also Kazan’s last great, personal work,
resonant with the themes that had obsessed him
since On the Waterfront. Presented with the
support of the Embassy of the United States.
SAT 12 MAY 7.30PM
ONCE UPON A
TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
SUN 13 MAY 2PM
AUTEURS FROM THE OTHER
AMERICAS
THE KID WHO LIES
(El Chico que miente) Dir: Marité Ugás,
Venezuela/ Peru/ Germany, 2011, 99 mins,
format tbc, (unclassified 18+)
AUSTRALIAN
CINEMA’S MIDDLE
EAST – AFTER 9/11
MAY – jUNE
The first season in this series (presented in late
2011) reached back to the beginnings of this
Australian cinema engagement with the Middle
East, to Frank Hurley’s images of the region shot
during the First and Second World Wars and to the
echoes of 19th century ‘Ghan’ traders in mid-20th
century Australian cinema.
This new season explores the remarkably central
role Middle Eastern politics, culture, society and
immigration have played in Australian cinema since
2001. That the events of 9/11 loom over our local
cinema is unsurprising. However, much of the best
local documentary filmmaking of the past decade
has been pre-occupied with the stories which
connect Australia to the Middle East and Asian
Islamic world: whether looking at the presence
of Australian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; the
arrival and detention of refugees from the region;
the increasingly visible presence of Islamic religious
belief and social custom; or episodes of communal
tension and resentment in our big cities. These
issues and themes have generated some of the
best films from veteran documentarians such
as Tom Zubrycki, George Gittoes, and Dennis
O’Rourke. It’s also drawn out new talent, often
filmmakers themselves from an Arab-immigrant
background, as well as new stories informing
recent dramatic filmmaking for our features, shorts
and TV drama.
NOW OPEN
TEATRO FELLINI
The NFSA’s café provides a delicious range
of light meals and snacks and hot and cold
beverages. Teatro Fellini is also open before all
Arc cinema screenings, so why not treat yourself
and complete your visit to the National Film and
Sound Archive of Australia.
Opening HOURS
Mon − Wed 9am to 5pm, Thur 9am − 7pm
Fri 9am − 5pm, Sat 11.30am − 7.30pm*,
Sun 10am − 4.30 pm
Also open before Arc Cinema screenings.
*Please note: no main meals after 6.30pm
In 1999 mudslides along the Venezuelan coast killed
over 10,000 and destroyed the lives of 100,000s
more. Ten years after ‘El Deslave’, a 13-year-old street
kid journeys along the coast, living off whatever
sympathy, free food and rides his stories about the
tragic death of his parents can buy him. But – as his
dreams and flashbacks make apparent – his father
is still alive, crippled with post-traumatic stress. And
people tell him the mother he barely remembers
might be working as an oyster catcher along the
coast. Chasing her idealised memory and images
created mostly by his freakish dreams, he follows
her ghostly presence. Venezuelan director Marité
Ugás’s evocation of rite-of-passage as deep psychic
trauma is behind the dramatic power of one of most
acclaimed of new films from Venezuela.
Canberra premiere.
SUN 13 MAY 4.30PM
ONCE UPON
A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
THU 17 MAY 2PM
ONCE UPON
A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
All tickets $5.
THU 17 MAY 7PM
ONCE UPON
A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
SAT 19 MAY 2PM
MIDDLE EAST
LETTERS TO ALI
Dir: Clara Law, Aust., 2004, 106 mins, digital, (M)
As the politics and principles of Australian refugee
policy played out in the early 2000s, Australianbased, but Hong Kong originated filmmaking team
Clara Law and Eddie Fong (Floating Life, Like a
Dream) increasingly saw the similarities and contrasts
between the treatment of the new generation of
‘Boat People’ and their own arrival and integration
into Australian society in the 1990s. Letters to Ali
documents their own relationship with one young
refugee Arab man in detention and their own
emotional and political responses to being ‘refugees’
of a sort. From the NFSA Collection.
SAT 19 MAY 4.30PM
ROBERT BRESSON
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
Dir: Robert Bresson, France, 1966, 95 mins,
35mm, (PG)
Balthazar is just a poor country donkey. He’s not
really what Bresson’s film is – what any film should be
– ‘about’. Born into the stable of a struggling peasant
farmer, as a foal he’s loved by the farmer’s naïve
daughter – and mute witness when she is raped by
local boys. Afterward, when his grief-stricken owner
loses the will to live, Balthazar is passed through a
series of increasingly callous hands, until he’s just a
pack animal over-worked by a group of smugglers.
In its intense imagery and virtual silence – its few,
spare sound effects (a transistor radio, the bell
around Balthazar’s neck) toll with significance – the
passion of a simple, innocent animal becomes one
of the most aching expressions of religious feeling
in cinema. Presented with the support of the
Embassy of France and the Institut Français.
SAT 19 MAY 7.30PM
ONCE UPON
A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 145 mins, 35mm, (M)
SUN 20 MAY 2PM
AUTEURS FROM
THE OTHER AMERICAS
THE MAID
(La nana) Dir Sebastián Silva, Chile, 2009,
95 mins, digital, (unclassified 18+)
Housemaid Raquel has served her family loyally
and without complaint for over 20 years. Yet too
many years of chlorine bleach is starting to make
her just a little cranky. The family hire in some
additional part time help. They mean well; but little
realise the kitchen is the one small bit of domain
over which Raquel’s power is absolute. Since Luis
Bunuel, domestic servants have long been an
agency for cinema to get inside the values, anxieties
and pretensions of any society. First time director
Sebastián Silva uses Raquel’s kitchen as a microcosm
of Chilean class relations. And she’s the best sort
of insider – because the only way anyone is taking
Raquel out is over her dead body.
SUN 20 MAY 4.30PM
ONCE UPON
A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Turkey, 2010, 150 mins, 35mm, (M)
THU 24 MAY 2PM
ROBERT BRESSON
PICKPOCKET
35mm, (M)
Presented with the support of the Embassy of
France and the Institut Français. All Tickets $5.
THU 24 MAY 7PM
NEW HEROES –
RECENT HONG KONG CINEMA
LET THE BULLETS FLY
(让子弹飞/ Rang zidan fei) Dir: Jiang Wen, HK/
China, 2011, 132 mins, 35mm, (MA15+)
It’s the chaotic era of Warlord-dominated China of
the 1920s. Bandit ‘Pocky’ Zhang Mazi wrestles for
control of Goosetown with his rival, mobster Master
Huang. Their power struggle gets dangerous, and
there are games of deception, illusion, violence
and high con artistry as both sides manipulate the
official but sham authority of local governor Ma
Bangde (so insignificant people keep impersonating
him and no one seems to notice). Sixth Generation
actor/director Jiang Wen’s shift in the Chinese
pop cinema mainstream has been one of modern
cinema’s smoothest transitions from the art house
to the multiplex. The highest grossing local Chinese
movie of all time, it’s also got respect, with critics
and fans dazzled by its repertory of crash zooming
camerawork, slapstick visuals, screwball wordplay
and sly allegory of contemporary Chinese politics.
SAT 26 MAY 2PM
MIDDLE EAST
DONKEY IN LAHORE
Dir: Faramarz K.Rahber, Aust., 2008, 117 mins,
digital, (unclassified 18+)
In 2000, Brisbane puppeteer Brian travelled to an
arts festival in the Pakistan city of Lahore. The son of
hippies, Goth by dress, gothic by outlook, perhaps
he’d inevitably fall for someone as hard to obtain as
17-year-old Amber, daughter of devout local Muslim
family. Brian converts to Islam to win her family’s
approval; but his marriage proposals are lost in crosscultural confusion and he can’t support Amber in
the way her parents think appropriate. The more the
couple learn about the other’s values, the more they
have second thoughts. Iran born filmmaker K.Rahber
tracks this cross-cultural romantic comedy over a
period of five years; with the wisdom of knowing
that a happy ending might not necessarily be the
best outcome. From the NFSA Collection.
SAT 26 MAY 4.30PM
ROBERT BRESSON
PICKPOCKET AND THE TRIAL
OF JOAN OF ARC
Total running time approx. 140 mins, 35mm, (M)
A cinema diptych that exemplifies the ‘Bressonian’.
Pickpocket (1959, 75 mins, (M)) is the director’s
Dostoyevskian tale of a habitual petty thief, his
pride in his craft and his slim hope of redemption
through love. Maybe because of its brevity – but
clearly because of its purity of cinematic language
– it’s been one of the most influential works on
modern cinema since the 1960s. The Trial of Joan
of Arc ([Procès de Jeanne d'Arc], 1962, 65 mins,
35mm, (G)) inevitably echoes the work on the same
subject by another master of the transcendental in
cinema: Carl Dreyer. Like Dreyer, it’s a cloistered,
tightly photographed and sublimely poised drama of
ideals, religious faith and world-weariness on trial.
But Bresson’s Jeanne is less tragic figure than wilful
holy fool, in the manner of so many of its director’s
teenage ingénues. Presented with the support of
the Embassy of France and the Institut Français.
SAT 26 MAY 7.30PM
NEW HEROES – RECENT HONG
KONG CINEMA
LET THE BULLETS FLY
(让子弹飞/ Rang zidan fei) Dir: Jiang Wen, HK/
China, 2011, 132 mins, 35mm, (MA15+)
SUN 27 MAY 2PM
NEW HEROES – RECENT HONG
KONG CINEMA
THE VIRAL FACTOR
(逆战 / Jik zin) Dir: Dante Lam, Hong Kong, 2012,
35mm, 122 mins, (MA15+)
A crack Hong Kong police flying squad hunts a rogue
scientist who’s armed himself with a hyper-lethal
strain of smallpox. But one cop has money trouble
and mixed motives, hoping to steal the virus so he
can profit from the mass panic its release will cause.
The police operation falls apart; team members are
either killed in the shootout or – like senior officer
Jon Man – mortally infected with the virus. In the few
weeks he has left to live, Man seeks revenge and an
end to the bio-weapon’s global menace – but also
discovers a personal stake on both sides. Jay Chou
and Nicholas Tse star in the latest from Dante Lam –
Hong Kong cinema’s one true filmmaking successor
to John Woo.
SUN 27 MAY 4.30PM
ROBERT BRESSON
MOUCHETTE
35mm, (M)
Mouchette is the adolescent daughter, drudge and
carer of an abusive father, sickly mother and infant
brother. Her teachers beat her, the few friendships
she develops are either slapped down by her father
or betrayed by those who find her naiveté easy to
exploit. When the little spare love that her mother can
offer is finally snuffed out, Mouchette’s desperation
becomes utter. For maybe his most heart-wrenching
examination of emotional and spiritual desolation,
Bresson returned to the same source he’d drawn
on for his milestone Diary of a Country Priest –
the austere writings of Catholic mystic Georges
Bernanos. “Mouchette… is found everywhere: wars,
concentration camps, tortures, assassinations” (Robert
Bresson). Presented with the support of the
THU 31 MAY 2PM
ROBERT BRESSON
MOUCHETTE
35mm, (M)
All tickets $5.
THU 31 MAY, 6.15PM
NATIONAL RECONCILIATION WEEK
MABO: LIFE OF AN
ISLAND MAN
(Dir: Trevor Graham, Aust., 1997, 87 mins, 35mm, (G)
The NFSA's Indigenous Collections Branch and Black
Screen present a special screening of Trevor Graham's
AFI Award-winning documentary Mabo: Life of an
Island Man to mark National Reconciliation Week
for 2012. Plus, a selection of items from the NFSA
Collection and performance by local Torres Strait
Islander dance troupe Zendah Kes Mari. Free event,
bookings recommended by calling 6248 2000.
JUNE
SAT 2 JUN 2PM
MIDDLE EAST
SON OF A LION
Dir: Benjamin Gilmour, Aust./Pakistan, 2007,
92 mins, digital, (PG)
Pashtun boy Niaz Afridi lives in the village of Darra, in
Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He seems
doomed to follow the trade his family have practiced
for generations: gun making. But Niaz wants to go to
school and learn a little more about the world. The
closest Australian Benjamin Gilmour had previously
been to filmmaking was as a film production unit
nurse. But a mid-2001 backpacking trip through
Pakistan, then the events of September that year,
convinced him that the people of the region needed a
filmmaking voice. Many observational documentaries
have come from such ambition. However, Gilmour did
something very different; choosing instead to work
with the people of Darra and to make (for less than
$5000) a deeply passionate, ‘embedded’ neo-realist
digital feature, about their lives and aspirations. From
the NFSA Collection.
SAT 2 JUN 4.30PM
ROBERT BRESSON
L’ARGENT
35mm, (M)
A dissolute young man from France’s upper classes
demands money from his father. Rejected, he sells his
watch to a friend. The friend pays with a counterfeit
note. In the days afterward, we follow the money,
fake and real, as the outcome of one petty crime and
act of betrayal escalates and exposes the worst of
human nature. Bresson’s final film returned to Russian
literature (in this case Tolstoy) for inspiration. But the
achievement of essaying a sweeping, multi-character
treatise on the moral corruption of socio-economic
forces – and in just under 90 minutes – was purely
Bressonian. Presented with the support of the
SAT 2 JUN 7.30PM
NEW HEROES –
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
(奪命金/Dyut meng gam) Dir: Johnnie To, HK,
2011, 107 mins, 35mm, (M)
Investment advisor Teresa is failing to meet her
quota. Small time Triad member Buzzard needs to
raise bail for a friend, and so takes a long shot on
a gambling scheme. Police Inspector Cheung has
just discovered his wife has signed onto a property
investment portfolio he can’t afford. When there’s a
run on the local banks all three are in deep trouble.
Johnnie To had a modest year in 2011, directing a
mere three films. But with the other two romantic
comedies aimed largely at the mainland Chinese
market, this was the most anticipated: a nerve-jangling
sample of life after the 2008 global economic crisis
for his money-obsessed fellow Hong Kongers. It’s a
film-going investment worth every cent. Canberra
premiere.
SUN 3 JUN 2PM
NEW HEROES –
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
(奪命金/Dyut meng gam) Dir: Johnnie To, HK,
2011, 107 mins, 35mm, (M)
SUN 3 JUN 4.30PM
NEW HEROES –
GALLANTS
(打擂台/ Da lui toi) Dirs: Clement Sze-kit cheng/
Chi-kin Kwok, Hong Kong, 2010, 98 mins,
35mm, (M)
In his youth Cheung was a Kung-fu couldabeen. Now
a bored, middle-aged real estate agent, sent to evict
the few remaining occupants of an old-fashion martial
arts school, he realises his real sympathies are for
these underdogs and their now comatose old master.
Anyway, one of his fellow bad guys is the very same
boy he used beat-up as a teen Kung-fu hero. So it’s a
matter of self-respect. The sleeper hit of recent Hong
Kong cinema joyously celebrates the Fu of old time
Shaw Brothers action cinema of the 1970s. Plus many
of the great names who starred in it, including Chen
Kuan-Tai, Leung Siu-Lung, Goo Goon-Chung Siu YamYam and the scene-stealing (even if mostly asleep)
Teddy Robin.
THU 7 JUN 2PM
NEW HEROES –
LET THE BULLETS FLY
(让子弹飞/ Rang zi dan fei) Dir: Jiang Wen, HK/
China, 2011, 132 mins, 35mm, (MA15+)
All tickets $5.
THU 7 JUN 7PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA
WOW FILM FESTIVAL
PROGRAM ONE
Total running time approx 100 mins, digital,
(unclassified 18+)
The World of Women Film Festival touring program
returns with a new program for 2012, with WIFT
New South Wales presenting two programs from the
18th WOW Festival and some of the best new short
films and documentaries made by Australian women
filmmakers. For more details of these programs,
see www.nfsa.gov.au. Presented by Women in
Film and Television (WIFT) NSW. Presented with
the support of Screen Australia and ScreenNSW.
SAT 9 JUN 2PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA
WOW FILM FESTIVAL
PROGRAM TWO
SUN 17 JUN 4.30PM
HOME by CHRISTMAS
Total running time approx 100 mins, digital,
(unclassified 18+)
The second of two programs selected from the best
of WIFT New South Wales World of Women Film
Festival 2012, showcasing some of the best short
films and documentaries made by Australian women
filmmakers. For more details of these programs,
see www.nfsa.gov.au. Presented by Women
in Film and Television (WIFT) NSW. Presented
with the support of Screen Australia and
ScreenNSW.
SAT 9 JUN 4.30PM
ROBERT BRESSON
LES DAMES DU BOIS
DE BOULOGne
The jaded and embittered ex-mistress of one of
Boulogne’s most eminent bachelors exacts her
revenge, using a naïve young local prostitute as
emotional bait. When her ex is finally caught in
the trap, his only injury is loss of face; but for the
young girl, it means so much more – and not just a
broken heart. Bresson’s second film was his last to
be professionally cast and conventionally produced
within France’s studio system. It shows his rapid
mastery of French “cinema of quality”, its décor
and facades. But scripted in collaboration with Jean
Cocteau, and modernising Diderot's late 1700s
story Jacques le fataliste et son maître, it also clearly
showed that the director would soon be taking
literary adaptation to more mystic and personal ends.
France and the Institut Français.
NEW HEROES
RECENT HONG
KONG CINEMA
24 MAY – 28 JUNE
Our biennial catch-up of some of the latest from
the traditional headquarters of Asian action cinema
clearly shows signs of Mainland China’s looming
power. The big question for every HK filmmaker
seems “to Beijing or not Beijing” – to orientate away
from local HK and Cantonese stories and source
of finance, towards the mainland markets and
Mandarin-speaking audiences. Most of the industry’s
respected director/producers (Johnnie To, Tsui Hark,
Peter Ho-Sun Chan) have forayed into Mandarin
language, mainland co-productions; the Infernal
Affairs and Overheard series team of Alan Mak and
Felix Chong being the (probably temporary) main
holdbacks.
SAT 9 JUN 7.30PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
HEAD
SUN 10 JUN 2PM
NEW HEROES –
GALLANTS
(打擂台/ Da lui toi) Dirs: Clement Sze-kit cheng/
Chi-kin Kwok, Hong Kong, 2010, 98 mins,
35mm, (M)
SUN 10 JUN 4.30PM
THE BRESSONIAN
THE SACRIFICE
(Offret) Dir: Andrey Tarkovskiy, Sweden,
1986, 142 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Retired actor and writer Alexander has gathered
all that he loves around him in his country estate:
his books and art, his younger second wife, an
adored young son. But the rest of the world lacks
this harmony and there are rumours of impending
nuclear war. Alexander becomes desperate and
makes a talismanic personal offering to a God he’s
barely previously acknowledged. The next morning
all is right again with the world. Yet Alexander knows
God must be paid off. Made in exile in Sweden,
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film is often
compared to Ingmar Bergman and drew on many
of his regular cast and crew, including star Erland
Josephson. But signs of Tarkovsky’s other great
influence – Robert Bresson – are also manifest: in its
sense of the vulnerability of all material things and
the foolishness of religious certainty.
THU 14 JUN 2PM & 7PM
HOME by CHRISTMAS
Dir: Gaylene Preston, NZ, 2010, 92 mins,
Canberra premiere. All tickets $5 at 2PM
session. Max Pass holders FREE at 7PM session.
SAT 16 JUN 2PM
MIDDLE EAST
THE COMBINATION
Dir: David Field, Aust., 2008, 96 mins,
35mm, (MA15+)
It’s 2005 and racial tensions are rising in Sydney’s
Western suburbs. Lebanese -Australian John is
just out of jail and getting his life back together
by working at a boxing gym. There’s even a new
girlfriend in his life (although her mother doesn’t like
her seeing a Lebanese boy). But younger brother
Charlie is spending too much time with mates like
Zeus, who’s dealing for local gangster Ibo. It all falls
apart when Zeus gets into a lethal fight at a local
nightclub. Actor turned director David Field and
actor/screenwriter George Basha nurtured their
tale of racial tension and gang violence for nearly
a decade. Brief notoriety and episodes of audience
violence on the film’s release shouldn’t obscure its
raw effectiveness, especially in support performances
from Firass Dirani and Ali Haider.
SAT 16 JUN 4.30PM
THE BRESSONIAN
APUDA
Dir: He Yuan, China, 2011, 145 mins, digital,
(unclassified 18+)
Apuda is an orchard farmer from the Naxi ethnic
minority in China’s Yunnan province. His austere life
has one constant: caring for the elderly father he
shares a single room flat with, dressing, washing and
preparing his cigarettes. Apuda’s resignation and
lack of aspiration to any other life seems fatalistic,
and the serene but illusive way he describes his
existence almost mystical. The most acclaimed of the
new wave of documentary coming out of Yunnan
(alongside Ghost Town, screened in last year’s Docs
with Style series) has a veiled style and essence that’s
drawn critics to compare it not to documentary
models, but to the transcendent films of directors
such as Pedro Costa or Robert Bresson. Canberra
premiere.
SAT 16 JUN 7.30PM
HOME by CHRISTMAS
SUN 17 JUN 2PM
THE BRESSONIAN
ROSETTA
Dirs: Jean-Pierre Dardennes/ Luc Dardennes,
Belgium, 1999, 95 mins, 35mm, (M)
17 year old Rosetta lives in a caravan with her
drunken mother. She’s fiercely determined to achieve
a simple goal: getting and keep a job. But being a
wild girl with no fixed abode doesn’t make it easy.
In their breakthrough, Cannes Film Festival-winning
movie, Belgium filmmaking brothers Jean and Luc
Dardennes shadow Rosetta through every scene with
their now trademark intimacy, mesmerised by their
young actress Émilie Dequenne. Rosetta is a tougher
update of the teenage protagonists that figure in
the films of the Dardennes’ acknowledged influence,
Robert Bresson. But distinctly, she seems to be trying
to outrun her fate and looming tragedy. From the
NFSA Collection.
But in all cases, there is a sense of the commercial
and censorship constraints of Mainland coproduction and their limited creative latitude. For the
moment, the sly allegory of the mainland produced,
but partially HK-funded Let the Bullets Fly seems
to be about as risky as it gets. As new films from
Dante Lam and Johnnie To show, when its leading
filmmakers have a seriousness of intent and theme,
their work is still intrinsically made in Hong Kong
– especially in their still trend-setting, corruptiondrenched action/ policers, and in their allegories of
the city’s winner-takes-all brand of capitalism.
Surprisingly, the crisis is actually producing some of
the most self-consciously Hong Kong ‘nationalist’
films since the anxieties of the pre-handover 1990s.
Never before has there been such a sense of the
passing and loss of Hong Kong’s local heritage, from
a society normally in a rush to pull down and rebuild
everything. Ann Hui’s new film A Simple Life sees
something deeper: a loss of human heritage, and
an end of an era of particular Cantonese traditional
social values and family loyalties.
My Colt Is My Passport
Dir: Bob Rafelson, USA, 1968, total running time
approx 120 mins, 35mm, (PG)
“Hey, hey, we’re The Monkees / You know we
love to please / A manufactured image / With no
philosophies…” By 1968, the lustre was coming off
their success, and the stars and creative team of the
hit US TV sitcom The Monkees decided they needed
the credibility of a feature film. The free-associations,
self-deprecating philosophical musings, hallucinatory
freakiness and brooding new sounds that were cut
loose (in large part by a then screenwriter/ character
actor named Jack Nicholson) bewildered fans. It
might also have been the greatest act of rebellion
(or of self-loathing?) by pop stars against pop music.
Head screens not just in tribute to The Monkees
lead singer Davy Jones, but also their co-creator, Bert
Schneider – whose success with the mock-rock group
led to revolutionary New Hollywood productions
like Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. From the NFSA
Collection.
THU 21 JUN 2PM
HOME by CHRISTMAS
THU 28 JUN 2PM
AMERICAN MOVIE TREaSURES:
UNIVERSAL’S HORROR MOVIES
THE INVISIBLE MAN
Let The Bullets Fly
100 YEARS
NIKKATSU AND
UNIVERSAL
THE OLDEST SURVIVING STUDIOS
OF TWO NATIONAL CINEMAS
CELEBRATE THEIR CENTENNIAL
FROM 23 JUN
As the 21st century moves on, we are increasingly
marking the centennials of the formative events
and births in cinema history. Some are of master
filmmakers; but a century ago the essential industrial
structures and systems of ‘classic’ cinema were also
falling into place. And as well as the workflows of
the movie business, the first household names in
film production were also beginning to appear.
Hollywood’s Universal Studios and Japan’s Nikkatsu
both came into being in 1912. Although both are
the oldest surviving ‘major’ studios in their respective
national filmmaking industries, both have been
through many of changes of ownership, business
models and not a few brushes with bankruptcy.
And whilst no two film national cinemas could be
more different than those of Hollywood and Japan,
Universal and Nikkatsu have taken oddly similar
journeys. For the remainder of 2012 and into 2013
we’ll selectively and all-too-briefly survey the best
and the typical of both studios.
NIKKATSU:
THE CLASSICS AND
THE REVOLUTION
12 – 29 APR
Dracula
AMERICAN MOVIE
TREASURES:
UNIVERSAL’S
MOVIES
FROM 23 JUN
Part of our on-going American Movie Treasures
series (presented with the support of the Embassy of
the United States) Universal’s Movies also focuses
on the less prestigious, ‘B’ genre movies that have
come to define the studio’s filmmaking; from the
1910s to early ‘30s under boss Carl Laemmle Snr.,
then up until its sale to the talent agency MCA in the
early 1960s, when it arguably became the first of the
Hollywood majors to move on from a classic studio
production system.
June begins with a look at a selection of a few of the
classics from Universal’s probably most renowned
and critically appreciated house genre: its fantasy/
horror movies of the 1930s, from directors like Tod
Browning, James Whale and Robert Florey. Later in
2012-13, we’ll move onto the key works from the
studio’s specialist melodramas, noir and comedy
franchise producers. The choices won’t always
be obvious. Yet they’ll always be deserving and
respectful of a studio history equally about the curios
and anonymous pop delights of its ‘programmer’
and franchise productions – its Ma and Pa Kettle and
Abbot and Costello comedies, the Lon Chaney (Sr.
and Jr.) horrors, the Deanna Durbin musicals – as the
certified Hollywood ‘classics’ of prestige directors
like James Whale, John Stahl, Alfred Hitchcock or
Anthony Mann.
American Movie Treasures: Universal’s Movies
is presented with the support of the Embassy
of the United States. Presented with the
assistance of Universal Studios.
Nikkatsu’s story has been a stop-start, coming and
going one throughout Japanese screen history. By
the late 1910s and ‘20s, it was the prestige home
of the first great stars and the first master makers
of historical martial arts dramas, like Makino Shozo
and Ito Daisuke. In the late 1920s it was where
two Japanese cinema greats, Mizoguchi Kenji and
Yamanaka Sadao, served their apprenticeships.
However in 1941, government wartime film policy
and film industry power play forcibly nationalised
its production division – the first of Nikkatsu’s two
enforced hiatuses from film production.
Revival in 1951, under new boss Hori Kyusaku,
led to its first international art cinema success
with The Harp of Burma; made by one of the
rising young directors Hori had poached from rival
studios – Ichikawa Kon. But it was domestic smash
hit successes in the late 1950s that took Nikkatsu
and Japanese cinema in a whole new direction.
Adaptations of and borrowings from writer Ishihara
Shintaro's racey youth novels, beginning with 1957’s
Season of the Sun, not only initiated the Japanese
New Wave. It transformed the studio’s business
model and artistic legacy.
Nikkatsu continued to serve other demographics,
including family audiences. It was also the home of
the searing political art cinema of one of Japan’s
most internationally respected directors of the
1960s, Imamura Shoei. But from the late 1950s
until the mid’70s Nikkatsu was defined by its key
house genres: its ‘Sun Tribe’ and ‘Speed Tribe’ youth
movies, its Yakuza bullet ballets, its erotic fables and
trashy exploitation flicks. Coarse, excessive, alienated,
sometimes surreal and often crypto-political, they
served the sub-cultural margins and lowest common
denominators of Japanese audience taste – but did
so with maximum style and subtext. They needed
to make money. They needed to be true to studio’s
oddly sincere motto, of “We make Fun films”.
Otherwise, the aspiring new-comers and crafty
veteran hacks of the studio’s directing roister (like
Nakahira Ko, Hasebe Yasuharu, Kurahara Koreyoshi
– and the director who eventually went too far, even
for Nikkatsu, Suzuki Seijun) could experiment as they
wished with style, sensation and even allegorical – or
overt – political commentary.
But Nikkatsu’s revolt through style could only last as
long as the ’60 lasted. Television took its toll in the
1970s and Nikkatsu retreated to serving the only
demographic TV couldn’t service: soft porn. Yet even
here, in its ‘Roman Porno,” slate there was latitude
to experiment, with some of its more baroque titles
crossing over into art house and critical success.
Bankruptcy was inevitable by the early 1990s; more
surprising was the revival of the Nikkatsu brand by
new owners in the 2000s, and its reemergence
as a studio supporting some of Japan’s wildest
contemporary filmmaking spirits, such Sono Shion.
Our celebration of this unique studio screens in
two parts. Nikkatsu Classics is a sample of the
studio’s pre-late 1950 classics (regrettably from
the limited number of pre-1940 titles that have
survived), including masterpieces by Ito, Mizoguchi
and Ichikawa. In July, Nikkatsu Revolt will select just
a few of the wildest genre films and most inspired
directing from the late 1950s until the mid-‘70s
Presented with the support of The Japan
Foundation, with the assistance of the Embassy
of Japan, the National Film Center (Tokyo) and
the Nikkatsu Corporation.
Home By Christmas
HOME by
CHRISTMAS
NZ DIRECTOR GAYLENE PRESTON’S
ODE TO A LOST GENERATION OF
WORLD WAR TWO VETERANS
14 – 24 JUN
In the late 1980s New Zealand filmmaker Gaylene
Preston began researching the lives of local NZ
women during World War Two. She began with
the stories she thought she knew best: those of her
own parents. Although her focus was initially on the
women’s war and would evolve into her acclaimed
film War Stories, conversations with her father Ed
increasingly made her aware of how little she knew
of his experiences. A feature film companion to War
Stories began to emerge; not the usual nostalgic
fantasy of home front community life, but a memoir
of the quotidian, private and sometimes humiliating
experiences of being an ordinary soldier in wartime.
Home By Christmas’ impact is precisely the result
of the modesty of its aims and of the life it recounts,
as Ed begins his war as a raw recruit and ends it in
the wretched conditions – and boredom – of a POW
camp. Gaylene Preston herself is a moving presence,
as a mostly off-camera interviewer (as is also Chelsie
Preston-Crayford – the director’s daughter – as Ed’s
young, wartime bride). But Home By Christmas’
lack of much exposure to Australian audiences is all
the more shameful and undeserving because of its
great, warm centre: iconic Australian actor Tony Barry
as Preston’s elderly, understated but occasional still
fiery father.
"Sometimes one hears people wondering
wistfully why New Zealand films are often
stronger than Australia’s. I leave the question
open, while strongly commending Gaylene
Preston’s excellent Home by Christmas. The
main actor is, however, one of our boys; Tony
Barry gives a wonderful performance as the
director’s father." (Sylvia Lawson)
Dir: Gaylene Preston, NZ, 2010, 92 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Limited season:
THU 14 JUN 2PM & 7PM, SAT 16 JUNE 7.30PM,
SUN 17 JUN 4.30PM, THU 21 JUNE 2PM,
SUN 24 JUN 4.30PM.
SUN 24 JUN 4.30PM
HOME by CHRISTMAS
All tickets $5.
Dir: James Whale, USA, 1933, 71 mins, 35mm, (PG)
THU 21 JUN 7PM
NEW HEROES –
A SIMPLE LIFE
All tickets $5.
(桃姐/ Tao jie) Dir: Ann Hui, HK/China, 2011,
117 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Although not related by blood, Ah Tao and Roger
Leung represent something central, traditional – and
rapidly vanishing – in Hong Kong middle class family
life. Ah Tao is an ‘amah’; the last of a long line of
Chinese nannies who’ve worked for the Leung family.
And with the Leungs now scattered worldwide,
film producer Roger is in a way the last of his line
as well. But it’s only when a stroke paralyses Ah
Tao that Roger realises he is more her adopted son
than her master. Acting superstar Andy Lau has also
known co-stars Deanie Ip all his life; she is his real-life
godmother. Out of their natural chemistry director
Ann Hui has made her best film in years. Canberra
premiere.
FRI 22 JUN FROM 5.30PM
THE LONGEST NIGHT
AT THE NFSA
Session rated (u/c 15+)
To mark our Extreme Film and Sound Exhibition,
the centennial of Australia’s engagement with the
Antarctic continent, plus the traditional polar explorer’s
Longest Night festivities, the NFSA will become the
ultimate in Canberra chill-out zones.
THU 28 JUN 7PM
NEW HEROES –
LOVE IN THE BUFF
(Chun gio yu chi ming) Dir: Pang Ho-Cheung,
HK/China, 2011, digital, 112 mins, (M)
Love in a Puff – director Pang Ho-Cheung’s nicotinestained comedy of mismatched love amongst the
ashtrays – was the surprise hit of Hong Kong cinema
in 2010. When we last met ad man Jimmy and
beautician Cherrie, it seemed they’d finally bonded
over Hong Kong’s rising cigarette taxes. But in the
much anticipated sequel, its 159 days on and the
love seems to have been stubbed out. He couldn’t
stop listening to his inner child; she to the ticking of
her inner biological clock. Then new job assignments
shift both to Beijing and new lovers – until they
realise they’ve got the same habit for each other
as they once had for cigarettes. “It is with a huge,
tar-free sigh of uncontaminated relief… that Love in
the Buff reveals itself to be just as crude, pottymouthed and flat-out hilarious as its predecessor….”
(twitich.com).
SAT 30 JUN 2PM
WAR STORIES
35mm, (PG)
From 5.30pm our theatrette will be screening a
selection of filmic experiments beyond the circles of
the Antarctic and the Arctic, including diverse works
made by Stan Brakhage, Peter Hutton and Ralph
Steiner. And from 8:30pm in Arc, a screening program
of the chilling and the sublime, featuring The Thing
from Another World (1951, USA, 87 mins, 35mm);
director Christian Nyby and producer Howard Hawks’
classic Arctic paranoid horror thriller.
In 1986 director Gaylene Preston began the research
that led to this mid-‘90s documentary (and over 20
years later, to her feature Home By Christmas):
the stories of civilian New Zealand women and their
lives in World War Two. From 65 initially interviewed,
her seven on-screen subjects revealed experiences
probably very different from the stories they’d been
telling their families for years. Rita’s husband was
in jail for his pacifist convictions. Neva personally
experienced how brutal life could be on the home
front. Tui struggled to find much love for her
returning husband. Preston thought the final film
was too local and wouldn’t travel much beyond her
home country. Instead, it became one of the most
internationally acclaimed documentaries ever to
come out of New Zealand.
The event is produced in collaboration with
the Austrian Embassy Canberra. Concession
admission price to those wearing tuxedos
(and other penguin suits). For more details
see www.nfsa.gov.au/arc and http://www.
dafeldecker.net/projects/above-below.html
SAT 30 JUN 4.30PM
AMERICAN MOVIE TREASURES:
MURDERS IN THE RUE
MORGUE
The NFSA courtyard will feature the Australian
premiere of Monolith – a major new work by
Austrian artist Werner Dafeldecker and his
Australian collaborators Lawrence English and Scott
Morrison featuring dual video projection and live
soundscapes captured in Antarctica (7pm).
SAT 23 JUN 2PM
AUSTRALIA’S MIDDLE EAST
CEDAR BOYS
Dir: Serhat Caradee, Aust., 2009, 100 mins,
35mm, (MA15+)
Western suburban Lebanese-Australian Tarek (Les
Chantery) is trying to avoid the fate of his imprisoned
older brother, Jamal. But his relationship with highlife loving Anglo girl Amie is increasingly expensive to
maintain and so he falls for mate Nabil’s scheme to
rob a pharmacy. One of a pair of 2009 feature films
created and driven by passionate Lebanese-Australian
filmmaking first timers, Cedar Boys draws effectively
on personal experience, the influence of Scorsese’s
Mean Streets and seven years of nurturing by director
Caradee to get inside the aspirations, frustrations
and chips on the shoulder of young Middle EasternAustralian men in urban Australia.
SAT 23 JUN 4.30PM
NIKKATSU CLASSICS
A DIARY OF CHUJI'S TRAVELS,
PART TWO & THREE
(忠次旅日記/ Chuji tabi nikki) Dir: Ito Daisuke,
Japan, 1927, 107 mins @22fps, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Chuji Kunisada was the most legendary of the
bakuto – the Edo-period class of gambler/bandits
who were precursors to modern-day yakuza. In
1959 Japan’s esteemed Kinema Junpo magazine
voted director Ito Daisuke’s four-hour long version
of his adventures the greatest Japanese film of
all time – even though the film was then thought
long lost. Then, in the ‘70s two-thirds of … Chuji’s
Travels re-emerged. Depicting Chuji’s attempt to
save his reputation, the surviving episodes prove
Kinema Junpo’s hunch to be pretty right, revealing
Ito’s frenetic action style – and also a subtle political
radicalism. Preceded by the surviving reel of Ito’s
Chokon: Unforgettable Grudge (1926, 13 mins
@20fps, 35mm). Live musical accompaniment.
Presented with the support of The Japan
Foundation, with the assistance of the Embassy
of Japan, the National Film Center (Tokyo) and
the Nikkatsu Corporation.
SAT 23 JUN 7.30PM
THE MUMMY AND THE
INVISiBLE MAN
Total running time approx. 165 mins, (PG)
Dir: Robert Florey, USA, 1932, 61 mins (total
running time approx. 100 mins), 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Parisian mad scientist Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi)
causes a wave of scandal and panic with a series of
abductions and murders, all motivated by his dream
of finding a mate for his lusty talking sideshow
ape. Bela Lugosi returns in Universal’s take on
Edgar Allan Poe’s weird, proto-genetic engineering
thriller; working again with the expressive shadows
of German cameraman Karl Freund but this time
directed by French émigré Robert Florey. Preceded
by two more exciting episodes from Flash Gordon:
Flash Gordon: Ch 02: The Tunnel Of Terror (Dir:
Frederick Stephani, USA, 1936, 16mm, 20 mins);
and Ch 03: Captured By Shark Men (USA, 1936,
16mm, 20 mins). Presented with the support of
the Embassy of the United States and with the
assistance of Universal Studios.
SAT 30 JUN 7.30PM
DRACULA
Dir: Tod Browning, 1931, 75 mins (total running
time approx. 94 mins), 35mm, (PG)
The first ‘authorised’ adaptation of Bram Stoker’s
novel became the best known outing at Universal
for Tod Browning – the most baroque director
of Hollywood’s late Silent and early Sound era.
Originally a vehicle for Browning’s frequent
collaborator Lon Chaney Snr, Bela Lugosi stepped
in after Chaney’s premature death. His Count was
more urbane and aristocratically plausible than
Stoker’s original and Chaney’s take probably would
have been. But it was perhaps just the right for a
film made in the depths of the Great Depression.
Preceded by another exciting episode from Flash
Gordon: Ch 04. Battling The Sea Beast (Dir:
Frederick Stephani, USA, 1936, 16mm, 19 mins).
the United States and with the assistance of
Universal Studios.
cinemacalendar
Our survey of the best of Universal’s most famous
movie cycle begins with a classic double-bill: first
outings for a pair of the studio’s most famous ghouls
– and some of the most chilling work from two of
its best European import directors. Boris Karloff and
genius German cinematographer, turned Hollywood
director Karl Freud first awoke a character still being
revived in the 2000s in The Mummy (USA, 1932,
72 mins, 35mm). James Whale moved from the
Gothic irrationalities of his Frankenstein series to the
rationalist parables of H G Wells, with Claude Rains
as The Invisible Man (USA, 1933, 71 mins, 35mm).
Preceded by the first exciting episode of Universal’s
most famous fantasy serial, Flash Gordon, with
Ch. 01: The Planet Of Pearl (Dir: Frederick Stephani,
1936, 21 mins, 16mm) introducing Buster Crabbe
as Flash and his battles with Emperor Ming the
Merciless of the planet Mongo. Presented with the
support of the Embassy of the United States.
SUN 24 JUN 2PM
NIKKATSU CLASSICS
SAZEN TANGE AND THE POT
WORTH A MILLION RYO
(丹下左膳余話百萬両の壺/ Tange Sazen yowa:
Hyakuman ryo no tsubo) Dir: Yamanaka Sadao,
Japan, 1935, total running time approx 113 mins,
A favourite of early Japanese cinema, the one-eyed,
one-armed Tange Sazen was the prototype for all
the gruff and flea-bitten samurai seen since, from
Yojimbo to Lone Wolf and Cub. The earliest of
the just three surviving feature films of a director
certain to have joined the ranks of Kurosawa, Ozu,
and Mizoguchi – had he survived Japan’s war in
Manchuria – Yamanaka’s Tange is sometimes even
his own worst enemy, as he accidentally throws
away and tries to get back a fortune. Here is a wry
disregard to the solemnities of the samurai movie,
but also an affecting approach to its gallery of
characters that would influence filmmakers from
Kurosawa to ‘Beat’ Takeshi. Preceded by Jiraiya the
Ninja ([Goketsu Jiraiya], Japan, 1921, 35mm, 21 mins
@20fps, (unclassified 18+); one of the few surviving
fragments of the work of Nikkatsu’s first star director,
Makino Shozo. Presented with the support of
The Japan Foundation, with the assistance of
the Embassy of Japan, the National Film Center
(Tokyo) and the Nikkatsu Corporation.
The National Film and Sound
Archive is a member of the
International Federation of
Film Archives
The Arc cinema program is curated by NFSA Cinema Programming
(Quentin Turnour, Cynthia Piromalli). NFSA Chief Projectionist: Reece
Black. The Audi Festival of German Films by the Goethe - Institute
Australien
While every effort is made to provide accurate information, the NFSA
reserves the right to alter, without notice, advertised Arc screening
programs or starting times.
To sign up for the NFSA’s email news or receive a copy of the calendar
in the post, email arc@nfsa.gov.au
nfsa.gov.au

the audi festival of german film - National Film and Sound Archive

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