Cine Fan Jan/Feb/Mar 2023 Programme

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Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre

灣仔港灣道2號

2 Harbour Road, Wan Chai

M+ 戲院 M+ Cinema 九龍博物館道38號

西九文化區 M+大樓LG層

LG, M+ Building, West Kowloon Cultural District, 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon

英皇戲院 尖沙咀iSQUARE

Emperor Cinemas iSQUARE 九龍尖沙咀彌敦道63號 國際廣場7樓

L7, iSQUARE, 63 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon

Emperor Cinemas Times Square 銅鑼灣勿地臣街1號 時代廣場13樓

13/F, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay

Evolving Beyond Surrealism

‘Surrealism taught me that man is never free, yet fights for what he can never be.’

This uncompromising spirit exemplifies the life and work of Luis Buñuel (1900-83), a master filmmaker who led avant-garde surrealism of our time. Born to a wealthy Spanish family, he however loathed conformism and the values that made up middleclass morality. Through combining surrealist non sequiturs with taboo-shattering attacks, he launched his battles against the bourgeoisie, the church, social confines and nationalism, aiming to dismantle the conventional ideas and established orders, all the

while driving people to see their existence and reality from a brand new perspective.

Ever since his debut short An Andalusian Dog, Buñuel has never ceased to shock the world with his provocative ideas and startling images. Though he and Dalí went on separate paths after The Golden Age, he always remained true to the fundamental surrealist principles: a spirit of rebellion, the power of subversion, a belief in the creativity of the unconscious, a taste for black humour, as well as an enduring contempt for institutions. His films were always banned, and led to his exile in Mexico for

20 years. Yet, it is Los Olvidados, an acclaimed film made during that difficult period, that opened his doors for international co-productions.

While devoted to the aesthetics of the irrational, Buñuel’s psychedelic, disjointed style is always under meticulous shaping. Through this directness and simplicity, he staged his outrageous, violent liberation of the mind. ‘The true originality of Buñuel’s cinema is that it slips into the mound of the most clichéridden type of filmmaking, and then destroys it by bursting out from within.’ In his most celebrated masterpieces including The Exterminating Angel,

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty, the auteur always begins with an elegant scene of bourgeoisie respectability, then proceeds to tear down its glamour and reveal its hypocrisy. In his sixties, Buñuel became a formidable director who effortlessly blurs the line between fantasy and reality, myth and mundanity, reaching the pinnacle of his career.

‘I’m still an atheist, thank God.’ Buñuel’s famous quote may sound paradoxical, yet it befittingly reflects his conviction: ‘In a world as badly made as ours, there is only one road – rebellion.’

in the hope of administering a revolutionary shock to society, the first collaboration between two geniuses, Buñuel and Dalí, has become the most famous surrealist film that exemplifies the movement in its form and content. Beginning with the notorious montage of a razor blade slicing through a woman’s eye and a cloud passing over the moon, the mavericks’ own dreams are transformed into searing and unforgettable images under free-association. Opening all doors to the irrational and refusing explanation of any kind, this Andalusian dog still bites with its quiet provocation and enduring inspiration. Screening with The Golden Age

The insanities of modern life, and the hypocrisy of the sexual mores of bourgeois society are laid bare in this series of tightly interlinked surrealist vignettes of extreme images. Starting off as a documentary about scorpion attacks, it soon descends into a scandalous essay on Eros and civilisation, wherein a couple is constantly torn apart from passionate lovemaking by the police, high society and the church. Denounced by extremists and banned for decades for its outright blasphemy, Buñuel’s feature debut is gleefully inventive and wickedly funny –though Dalí would disagree.

Screening with An Andalusian Dog

法國 France 1929 20min

Cast: Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí

法國 France 1930 64min

Cast: Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, Max Ernst

Film restored by Les Grands Films Classiques and La Cinémathèque française at the Hiventy laboratory with the assistance of the Filmoteca española and the support of the European Commission.

The 4K restoration of The Golden Age was carried out by La Cinémathèque française and the Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Experimental Cinema Service, at the Hiventy laboratory for the image and at the L.E. Diapason studio for the sound, thanks to the support of Pathé and the House of Champagne Piper-Heidsieck, patrons of La Cinémathèque française.

Fascinated by the graceless mountains and the struggle for survival of its impoverished inhabitants, Buñuel ventured into the remote Las Hurdes region in this parodic manipulation of documentary style. Exposing the squalor of a people ignored by the regime, the director delivers his political statement by rendering a bitter reality via contrived representation in savage imagery – dead babies, deformed midgets, a goat tumbling to its demise, and a mule stung to death by bees. Despite its distortions, this banned film remains a fabulous open text that questions humanity’s notion of progress. Screening with Simon of the Desert (p.9)

西班牙 Spain 1933 28min

Buñuel’s crude vision of juvenile crime, and the marginal lives of children in a Mexico City slum, is steadfast in its realism, yet operatic in its tragedy. A stunning dream sequence is imbued with flourishes of surreal, transcendental insight into the emotional turmoil of a street kid, revealing his fear of violence, craving for sustenance, and desire for a mother’s love. The film’s controlled passion sets it apart from the genre, as Buñuel’s poetic departure from reality captivates with its horror at the world’s cruelty, and earned him Best Director at Cannes amidst controversy.

墨西哥 Mexico 1950 81min

Cast: Alfonso Mejía, Roberto Cobo, Estela Inda, Miguel Inclán 康城影展最佳導演獎

Cannes Film Festival: Best Director

When a greedy landlord fails to evict his slum tenants for plans to build a house for himself, he hires slaughterhouse worker Pedro, nicknamed El Bruto, to terrorise the residents. However, Pedro changes his ways when he falls for one of the residents. Katy Jurado steals the show as the landlord’s fiery young wife whom Pedro has an affair with. At the core of this melodramatic narrative is a potent social commentary about greed and toxicity of masculinity. It may not look exclusively ‘Buñuelian,’ but its powerful images including a night-time chase sequence are unforgettable.

For Buñuel, adapting Mercedes Pinto’s novel about the toxic relationship between a paranoid aristocrat and his wife is more than just a marital drama about gaslighting, but a psychological study of a man’s obsession and madness, whose sadism is inseparable from his high social position. Partly autobiographical, the director infused his memories of dealing with his sister’s paranoid husband. Though met with disappointment upon release, the film has received overwhelming praise in the ensuing years, with Cahiers du Cinéma naming it one of the most essential films of all time.

Is it a crime to merely think about killing someone? With Archibaldo de la Cruz, Buñuel may have invented the most diabolical serial killer who never actually kills. When a nun dies after Archibaldo threatened to kill her, the would-be criminal recounts to a judge how he elaborately planned to murder several women throughout his life without ever putting those plans in motion. With this satiric and psychologically probing thriller, Buñuel has made a great ’perfect murder’ film that would be a quintessential companion piece to Hitchcock’s Vertigo 作為其中一部最受歡迎的布紐爾電影，《拿

墨西哥 Mexico 1955 90min

Cast: Ernesto Alonso, Miroslava, Rita Macedo

墨西哥 Mexico 1959 95min Cast: Francisco Rabal, Marga López, Rita Macedo 康城影展國際大奬

Cannes Film Festival: International Prize

This unflinchingly cynical film – named by Andrei Tarkovsky as one of his favourite films – follows Nazario, a righteous Catholic priest who is forced to go on a pilgrimage after hiding a murderous prostitute puts him in trouble with the law. Along his journey, he is worshipped as a miracle worker, called a heretic and finally, stigmatised as a criminal. Buñuel may have left the Jesuits and became an atheist at the age of 16, but it’s clear that religion – or precisely, religious skepticism –remained a prevailing theme throughout his career.

Televisa S.A. de C.V. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Fundación Televisa.

Returning to Spain at the invitation of Franco, Buñuel delivered an audacious and provocative masterpiece that was banned in Spain, denounced by the Vatican, yet received the Palme d’Or at Cannes. His heroine, the novice nun Viridiana, does her utmost to be pious, but her virtue is thrown back in her face when she has to confront her libidinous uncle and the grasping paupers she took under her wings. The vandalised feast mirroring The Last Supper, and the tacit implication of ménage à trois are no blasphemy, but a merciless look at a world that cannot be saved.

walking into a mansion for dinner, a group of high-society friends inexplicably find themselves unable to walk out. When the guests stay on for days, etiquette soon transforms into panic, as they resort to increasingly primal instincts in order to survive. By constructing a situation in which logic does not operate, Buñuel traps the guests and the viewers in his absurd universe, where we are constantly confronted with repetitions, inconsistencies, contradictions – and are ultimately forced to see the systematic corruption of frivolous upper class, and the destruction of civilisation.

A crucial turning point in Buñuel’s career, this delightful saucy comedy ushered in his golden era in France and his long-term collaboration with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Shifting to the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, his wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau’s novel allows for political unrest to run parallel to the story’s sexual perversions. Starring as the beautiful Parisian maid who becomes entangled in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her provincial employer, Jeanne Moreau’s baleful charisma impeccably complements Buñuel’s satirical elegance in this unsettling mood piece 與柏索里尼一樣鄙視天主教廷的虛偽，布紐

法國 France／意大利 Italy 1964 97min

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Michel Piccoli

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: Best Actress

This Buñuel film proved to be one of the most important religious films in the same league as Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, though ironically both master filmmakers are known for despising the Catholic Church. Spending his life atop a pillar in the desert, Simon is steadfast to prove his dedication to Christ; yet he is constantly tempted by the devil disguised as seductive women, who finally lead to his fall. The sudden flight from the medieval desert to ’60s New York may look abrupt, but befittingly evokes a sense of cool irony on the absurdity of religious fanaticism. Screening with Land Without Bread (p.5).

墨西哥 Mexico 1965 44 min

Cast: Claudio Brook, Silvia Pinal, Enrique Álvarez Félix

Venice Film Festival: Special Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize

In Buñuel’s feverish surreality, the exquisite Catherine Deneuve secretly transgresses to become a prostitute in the afternoons. From frigid housewife to masochist voluptuary, her life and fantasies betray a total separation of flesh and spirit. Dream and reality blend into an indissoluble whole, becoming a shrewd commentary on the hypocrisy of social relations and sexual politics. With virtually no nudity and absolutely no onscreen sex, this Golden Lion winner invites us into sensual and erotic imagination that still captivates over half a century.

Buñuel’s religious parable follows two pilgrims who make their way from France to Spain. En route they come across a series of extraordinary personages from the history of Catholicism, including Priscillian, the Virgin Mary and the devil. Through all the miracles and magical encounters, the absurd discussions of theology, and the nonsensical debates on the true meaning of Trinity, Buñuel blends his sense of creative revolt and comedic disrespect in this across-time pilgrimage that grapples with the contradictions between faith and faithfulness, while denouncing the dogmatic certitudes of both the orthodox and the heretical.

Sadomasochism, a subject of Buñuel’s lifelong obsession, is perfectly embodied in the convoluted relationship between Fernando Rey’s feisty guardian and Catherine Deneuve’s docile adopted daughter. That is, until the power changes hands, when she falls ill and decides to revenge on the man who took her virginity. In reversing the trauma of sexuality, Buñuel takes pleasure in tearing apart the duplicities of a patriarchal Spanish society, while revealing his atheist's nightmare in the surrealist vision of an amputated head becoming a clapper on a church bell.

Unlike The Exterminating Angel, the six bourgeois characters are trapped on the other side of the mirror: they are never able to have their dinner. They either arrive on the wrong night, are scared off by the corpse of the restaurant owner, or get interrupted by military manoeuvres. The bizarre turn of events evolves into dreams-within-dreams of savagery and criminality, marvellous and banal in equal measure. Exposing the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of decaying European aristocracy, this Oscar winner saw Buñuel hit his highest pitch with both commercial and critical success.

Made up of a series of interlocking yet disconnected stories, this savage comedy embraces cheerfully bizarre coincidences while challenging the inherent absurdity of social rituals and moral codes. Unbound by narrative logic, one wacky parable effortlessly leads to the next, each confronting a crisis of insanity, fetishism or human folly – the most famous sequence is turning defecation into a charming social ritual and dining into a shameful act to be performed in private. A nod to The Milky Way and also a tribute to Marx, the film’s title speaks it all – liberty is only a phantom!

ultimate representation of all great Buñuel characters (and maybe the director himself), the respectable Mathieu is trapped in the perversity of his erotic desire, oblivious to the terrorist outrages. Likewise, Conchita, his ‘object of desire,’ is ambiguous as ever – a tantalising elusiveness dramatised by having her played by two strikingly different actresses. Enshrining an authentic and surprising beauty, Buñuel’s swan song is cynical about human nature, embracing his flames of imagination and his vision of a world, as surreal as dreams, and as outrageous as desires.

Breaking into the Playground:

The MV Generation hit a high note as a new creative power in the Hollywood dream factory. This breed of music video directors emerged in the ’80s and ’90s, and eventually moved into the world of feature filmmaking. A sensation in pop culture, videos augment the dynamics of songs to create electrifying audio-visual experiences that gained huge popularity during the ’80s. From Michael Jackson’s Thriller, a-ha’s Take On Me to Madonna’s Vogue, these music promos are turned into new culture force with their groundbreaking concepts and galvanising vibe.

The creative experimentation that MV allows, provides a fertile ground for a new generation of young directors, whose artistic expressions flourish

to a far greater degree. Graduating from the ‘other film school,’ these adroit talents show their distinctive cinematic styles that are largely different from that of traditional filmmaking. Coming from the fast food generation, they excel in fusing sound and visual to create stylised works in mass quantity. Constructing their worldview ingrained in pop culture, they form an idiosyncratic MV aesthetics, opening up new frontiers of storytelling with visual flair and creative vigor.

Moving on to the big screen, these helmers bring in their reflections on feature filmmaking. With a gaming mindset, while engaging in pop culture with a serious attitude, they venture into new forms of narrative and

unleash a surge of wildly imaginative and fascinating ideas. Formerly a visual effect assistant at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic), David Fincher co-founded Propaganda Films, enlisting Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry to direct MVs. Together with Paul Thomas Anderson who emerged from independent cinema, these mavericks usher in a tremendous impact on Hollywood with their strong, distinctive flair. Playwright Charlie Kaufman came in perfect timing to provide the most important ingredient into the mix. His visual imagination and oddball sensibility make him an ideal match for Jonze (on Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.) and Gondry (on Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). On the

other hand, Fincher’s darkly alluring visuals perfectly complement his adaptation in Fight Club and Zodiac And from his debut Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson started his exploration on narrative structure, achieving his grand slam of best director in Cannes, Venice and the Berlinale.

‘I thought maybe you were a nut. But you were exciting.’ This line from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind exemplifies the works of these four MV auteurs: by subverting Hollywood’s conventional form of storytelling, they left their footprints in the history of cinema. Only when the four walls are torn down, we can see new possibilities arise.

With Boogie Nights, a 27-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson was thrust into the limelight and hailed as one of the most gifted filmmakers of his generation. Recreating ’70s and ’80s San Fernando Valley, he marshals an all-star cast to relate the rise and fall of the adult film industry through the personal stories of its performers and producers, centering around the well-endowed porn actor Dirk Diggler (based on the real-life John Holmes). Energetically told with bravura filmmaking, the ensemble drama is also Anderson’s homage to Altman and Scorsese, both of whom have deeply influenced his work.

two sprawling ensemble dramas (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), Anderson returns to the intimate scale of his debut with a self-described ‘art-house Adam Sandler movie.’ Sandler plays Barry, a timid small business owner with anger management issues who finds himself extorted by a phone sex operator. Bullied by family and strangers alike, he only gains courage and strength when miraculously finds love. More an unclassifiable vehicle for its star than a conventional rom-com, Punch-Drunk Love invites comparisons with Anderson’s later romances, while featuring widescreen cinematography that finds unexpected poetry in suburban America.

A white-collar professional alienated from corporate life meets his macho doppelganger – the charismatic Tyler Durden – who urges him to rebel against consumer society by organising and taking part in illegal underground fights. The stakes are raised, however, when Fight Club morphs into Project Mayhem, a terrorist movement spreading across America without the protagonist’s knowledge but seemingly under his leadership. Fincher’s darkly alluring visuals bring to life novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive vision of masculinity under siege in Y2K America. Met with controversy upon its release, Fight Club has since become a cult classic.

on the true story of the manhunt for the serial killer known as Zodiac – whose murders in ’60s and ’70s San Francisco remain to this day unsolved –Fincher’s procedural is marked by its patient, slowburn narrative and painstaking attention to detail that accurately reflect the frustrations and openendedness of the investigative process. Featuring the lean, stripped-back, no-nonsense classical direction – privileging actors’ performances above all – Fincher’s suspense thriller also pays tribute to New Hollywood with its many references to All the President’s Men as the greatest of all films about investigative journalism.

Not recognised for his gifts, a talented but luckless puppeteer gets a temp job as a filing clerk at a mysterious company located on the 7½ floor of a building, where he discovers a hidden portal to the mind of actor John Malkovich – a discovery that has profound consequences for him, his wife, an attractive co-worker, and Malkovich himself. Charlie Kaufman’s highly original and wildly inventive script has one reaching for adjectives like ‘absurdist,’ ‘metaphysical,’ ‘surrealist,’ or ‘Kafkaesque,’ but Jonze’s breezy direction avoids pretension by keeping things light and playful with off-the-cuff humour and effortless visual panache.

Hired to adapt Susan Orlean’s nonfiction book

The Orchid Thief, Charlie Kaufman suffers writer’s block and transforms his script into a freewheeling fantasy about the difficulties he encountered crafting the screenplay alongside his fictitious twin brother Donald. A hilarious yet profound meditation on the creative process, Adaptation also presents us with Kaufman’s typically neurotic worldview, as his tortured on-screen persona struggles to find artistic success and make human connections, while everything comes easily to his worldly, simple-minded brother Donald. Jonze’s gift for comedy keeps proceedings buoyant, preventing any lapses into morbid self-pity.

Living an animal existence in a forest away from civilisation, an ape-like man is discovered by a couple – a male psychologist who wants to condition him to act as humans do, and a female writer suffering from abnormal bodily hair growth. The involvement of the psychologist’s seductive assistant complicates matters for everyone involved. For his feature debut, Michel Gondry gives a quaintly retro vibe to Charlie Kaufman’s script that characteristically addresses the mind-body problem in a quirky, distinctive way, neurotically anticipating that man’s baser instincts will get the better of him.

Following his Oscar win with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (p.20), Gondry returned to France to write and direct one of his most memorable films showcasing his whimsical, childlike sensibility and inventively low-fi, DIY aesthetic. After his father’s death, Stéphane moves into his childhood home and begins working at a wacky calendar publishing, while falling in love with his neighbor Stéphanie. An oddball inventor, Stéphane shares his many gadgets with Stéphanie even as dreams intrude upon reality and he begins having trouble telling them apart from waking life. Gondry’s romance develops in unexpected ways, humourous and poignant in equal measure.

Following their breakup, ex-lovers Joel and Clementine independently get their memories of each other erased at Lacuna, Inc., only to find traces of longing that remain. In filming Charlie Kaufman’s complex script, the ever-inventive Michel Gondry chose to avoid CGI where possible in favour of in-camera optical effects (aided by tricks in editing and set design) to depict the workings of time and memory, shooting with naturalistic lighting amidst surrealist flights of fancy. Cast against type as the heartbroken protagonist Joel, Jim Carrey delivers a career-best performance that provides the film its emotional core.

Philip Seymour Hoffman gives one of his most affecting performances in Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut as Caden Cotard, a theatre director based in New York. After his wife left with their young child, he loses himself in the creation of a magnum opus that aspires to recreate its participants’ real-life existence. As life imitates art imitating life in a selfreflexive mise en abyme, Cotard finds his own existence being swallowed up by his theatrical project, as he struggles to realise his artistic ambitions amidst failing personal relationships and the onset of sickness and death.

Jean Renoir’s loose but spirited adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s decadent novel features the electrifying Paulette Goddard as Celestine, the eponymous heroine, whose efforts to claw her way into French high society destroys the bourgeois household where she is employed. Burgess Meredith writes, produces and stars as the eccentric Captain Mauger, one of many men to fall under Celestine’s hypnotic spell, but it is the central rivalry between the sickly aristocrat and the sinister valet that truly gives the film its dramatic framework. Descending from comic romance to class-conscious cynicism, Renoir’s Hollywood production is easily recognisable for its dreamlike quality, imbued with decadent aristocracy, possessive passion and an optimistic ending of self-liberation, an interesting contrast with Buñuel’s version of a surrealistic dark fable.

Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.

a rare collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, this award-winning psychological thriller broke new ground with its exploration of the subconscious and dreams beneath the typical Hitchcockian role reversal. Psychoanalyst Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) falls for her new colleague Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck), but he may not be all that he appears. Seeking answers for Dr. Edwardes’ peculiar visual phobia and amnesia, she further interrogates his dreams – a lurid landscape of disturbing imagery and symbolism designed by the master Dalí. Only by penetrating the frontier of the subconscious can they unravel the mystery of Dr. Edwardes’ identity.

Headlined by the star presence of Ava Gardner and James Mason, this pastiche of ancient folklore and coastal European idyll centres on American nightclub singer Pandora, who, like her namesake, is a troublemaker, enchanting a series of frustrated men who fail to win her favour. Her fated love is a Dutch gentleman whose moroseness hides a terrible secret: he is the fabled Flying Dutchman, a 16thcentury sailor cursed by God to forever roam the seas alone until he finds a woman willing to die for him. With surreal storytelling and mise-en-scène, Albert Lewin’s ambitious romance-fantasy-tragedy unfolds like a dream, at once unpredictable, elusive and intoxicating.

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Images Courtesy of Park Circus/Revolution Studios