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SamulNori with Kim Duk Soo SAT MAR 15 / 8pm
BĂŠla Fleck and Abigail Washburn
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SAT MAY 10 / 8pm
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CONTENTS
MARCH + APRIL 2014
CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS SERIES 3 UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION 4-5 CINEMA SUNDAY 6 DIM CINEMA 6 EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUNS 7
ASPHALT WATCHES, THE HUSBAND, STRANGER BY THE LAKE, A FIELD IN ENGLAND
FRAMES OF MIND 7 DIVERCINÉ 2014 10-11 FROM WITHIN 12-14
THE FILMS OF DAVID CRONENBERG
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The Chan Centre Connects Series and The Cinematheque present
Intangible Asset No. 82 Australia 2008. Dir: Emma Franz. 90 min.
What lengths will people go to for their music? How do they discover the tools of self-expression and develop an individual voice? What does it mean to be a musician in modern times? Australian jazz singer Emma Franz explores these themes via friend and colleague Simon Barker’s seven-year search for the enigmatic Korean shaman Kim SeokChul. Believing the shaman to be one of the world’s great – if largely unknown and undocumented – improvising musicians, jazz drummer Barker has committed himself to finding and learning from him. Yet despite Kim’s official designation as South Korea’s 82nd Intangible Asset, he has for years remained elusive. THURSDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:00 PM This special screening of Intangible Asset No. 82 is presented in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of SamulNori with Kim Duk-Soo on Saturday, March 15, at 8:00 pm (at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC).
Give Me the Banjo USA 2011. Dir: Marc Fields. 90 min.
The banjo has been called America’s quintessential instrument, perhaps because its long and contested history has encompassed so many popular musical forms, from black folk styles and the 19th-century minstrel show to blues, ragtime, early jazz, country, and bluegrass. Narrated by Steve Martin, this collaboration between documentarian Marc Fields and banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka brings together contemporary banjo players with folklorists, historians, instrument makers, and passionate amateurs to tell the story of the instrument in all its richness and diversity. With Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Béla Fleck, Mike Seeger, Don Vappie, John Cohen, Abigail Washburn, and The Carolina Chocolate Drops. THURSDAY, MAY 1 – 7:00 PM This special screening of Give Me the Banjo is presented in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn on Saturday, May 10, at 8:00 pm (at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC).
The Chan Centre Connects Series presents outreach activities related to visiting artists performing in the annual concert season at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC. Please visit chancentre.com/connects for more information on these events. www.chancentre.com
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s part of our ongoing programming, The Cinematheque takes pleasure in showcasing the important preservation and restoration work being done by other cinema archives, film studios, and specialty distribution companies around the globe — providing our audience with the essential cinema experience of seeing great film classics and treasures the way they were meant to be seen and enjoyed: on the big screen, projected from beautiful, pristine celluloid prints or (increasingly) digital restorations. Organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, the biennial UCLA Festival
of Preservation offers a true embarrassment of such riches, presenting, in sparkling new 35mm prints, a wide range of restored classics, rediscovered rarities, and contemporary gems spanning the spectrum of American film history. This year’s stellar event — making its only Canadian stop at The Cinematheque — includes film noir favourites, classic comedies, spooky thrillers, silent-era landmarks, important documentaries, and a neglected Robert Altman masterpiece. Clara Bow, Cary Grant, Carol Lombard, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Peter Lorre, George Burns, and other Hollywood luminaries make onscreen appearances.
Acknowledgements: All prints are courtesy the UCLA Film and Television Archive. We are grateful to Shannon Kelley, Steven Hill, Nina Rao, and Todd Weiner at UCLA for their kind assistance in making this Vancouver presentation possible.
“There is so much to discover here.” LEONARD MALTIN “Arguably the most hyper-charged, adrenaline-fuelled B-movie of all-time.” American Cinematheque.
Gun Crazy (aka Deadly is the Female) USA 1949. Dir: Joseph H. Lewis. 86 min. 35mm
That Cold Day in the Park USA 1969. Dir: Robert Altman. 112 min. 35mm
A much-loved film noir classic, Joseph H. Lewis’s legendary B-movie, made for Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures, was an inspiration for Godard’s Breathless – and, as one of archetypal “fugitive couple” films, the progenitor of Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands, and Natural Born Killers! Lewis shapes the cheesy clichés of 1940s crime melodrama into a manic tour-deforce of technique and deadly eroticism. John Dall, as a gun-obsessed sap, and Peggy Cummins, as a predatory femme fatale, are the film’s pistol-packing doomed-couple-on-the-run. Admired by the French surrealists as a rare illustration of genuine amour fou, this off-beat, original, and utterly stylish work now stands as both cult-movie masterpiece and American cinema landmark. Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.
Robert Altman’s second studio picture and first truly personal work was this undervalued rarity, shot in Vancouver in 1968, and made just before M*A*S*H, his commercial breakthrough. A take on the psychological horror film, and an unsettling study of sexual repression and obsession, it’s one of a number of idiosyncratic Altman works (including Images and Three Women) exploring the psychopathology of lonely women. Sandy Dennis, fresh off her Oscar win for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, plays a frustrated spinster who invites a young drifter (Michael Burns) into her home, only to then make him her prisoner. Altman would also shoot 1971’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller in Vancouver. Preservation funded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.
FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 8 – 8:40 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 6:30 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 8 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 4:00 PM
Classic film noir!
The Chase
USA 1946. Dir: Arthur D. Ripley. 86 min. 35mm
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A neglected Robert Altman masterpiece!
RESTORED 35mm prin ts!
Carole Lombard in a chilling horror film from the makers of White Zombie!
Supernatural
USA 1933. Dir: Victor Halperin. 65 min. 35mm
In this highly original, memorably nightmarish film noir, a down-and-out WWII vet (Robert Cummings) tormented by bizarre dreams lands a much-needed job as chauffeur to a mysterious Miami businessman (Steve Cochran), only to discover that his new boss is a sadistic gangster. Probably not a great idea, then, to run off (to Havana) with the boss’s suicidal wife (Michèle Morgan)! Peter Lorre co-stars as the mobster’s henchman. Based on a novel by quintessential noir author Cornell Woolrich, shot by German Expressionist cameraman Franz Planer, and featuring some delirious plot twists, The Chase is one of the most determinedly dream-like of vintage films noir! Preservation funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.
Coming off the success of their horror drama White Zombie (with Bela Lugosi), low-budget moviemaking brothers Victor (director) and Edward (producer) Halperin landed a one-picture deal with Paramount and made the only major-studio film of their careers. Carol Lombard stars in an eerie, artful tale of fake spiritualists and real spirits. She plays Roma, a grieving heiress being swindled by a fake medium. When the vengeance-seeking ghost of an executed murderess takes possession of Roma for real, the charlatan is in big trouble. The luminous Lombard, celebrated for screwball comedies, thought she was miscast here and clashed frequently with the director. Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.
FRIDAY, MARCH 7 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 9 – 8:15 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 6:30 PM
“Today’s audiences can experience the most unusual, the most entertaining and exciting treasures from the entire range of cinema’s past, all brought back to life by the Archive’s team of crack preservationists.” Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
A cat-and-mouse thriller from Gilda director Charles Vidor!
Double Door
USA 1934. Dir: Charles Vidor. 75 min. 35mm
A gothic melodrama/thriller inspired by a notoriously eccentric, reclusive Manhattan family, Double Door features a fabulous performance by Broadway great Mary Morris in her only screen role. She plays demented, monstrously-domineering spinster Victoria Van Brett, who lords it over her neurotic sister and demoralized half-brother in their spooky Fifth Avenue mansion. When brother takes a bride, ferociouslyrepressed Victoria goes into overdrive to destroy the marriage. The title refers to a secret soundproofed chamber used by Victoria for sinister purposes. The film is adapted from a hit stage production billed as “The Play That Made Broadway Gasp!” Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute. MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:50 PM
W. C. Fields and an all-star cast in a boisterous, bawdy pre-Code comedy!
International House
USA 1933. Dir: Edward Sutherland. 68 min. 35mm
An anything-goes comedy in the manic, Marx Brothers-style popular in the Depression, International House sends W. C. Fields, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Bela Lugosi, and scandalous showgirl Peggy Hopkins Joyce to a swanky hotel in Wuhu, China, where an eccentric Chinese inventor is seeking to sell his wondrous “radioscope,” a form of television. Archetypal Hollywood “nance” Franklin Pangborn is the hotel’s campy manager. The censorious Hays Office declared that “the whole picture is vulgar and borders constantly on the salacious.” Nonetheless, in those days before the Production Code was fully enforced, Paramount released the film without cuts – not to Field’s famous “pussy” joke, nor to Cab Calloway performing “Reefer Man”! Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.
preceded by Laurel and Hardy short!
Busy Bodies
USA 1933. Dir: Lloyd French. 19 min. 35mm
The beloved duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are bumbling sawmill workers in this masterpiece of physical comedy. Preservation funded by Turner Classic Movies, Jeff Joseph/SabuCat, the Packard Humanities Institute, and the Laurel & Hardy Preservation Fund. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 13 – 8:00 PM
Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney in a switched-identities rom-com!
Thirty Day Princess
Documentaries by two visionary directors!
Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World USA 1963. Dir: Shirley Clarke. 51 min. 35mm
Shirley Clarke’s 1963 portrait of the iconic American poet won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Frost’s “road less travelled” was very near its end; Clarke’s graceful, intimate film, shot just months before the poet’s death, captures Frost at public engagements and in private moments. Restorations of The Connection and Ornette: Made in America, two other films by Clarke, a key American independent cinema pioneer, were presented at The Cinematheque in 2012. Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Intermission (10 min.)
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer USA 1975. Dir: Thom Andersen. 59 min. 35mm
Thom Andersen, who later made the superb Los Angeles Plays Itself, directs a revelatory documentary study of the pioneering 19th-century photographer and proto-filmmaker. “At once a biography of Muybridge, a re-animation of his historic sequential photographs, and an inspired examination of their philosophical implications . . . Andersen’s first feature announced the arrival of one of America’s most significant documentary auteurs” (UCLA). “One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute. THURSDAY, MARCH 20 – 6:30 PM
Silent-era sex-symbol Clara Bow in a breakthrough role!
Mantrap
USA 1926. Dir: Victor Fleming. 75 min. 35mm
Celebrated Jazz Age flapper Clara Bow sizzles in this 1926 silent based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winner Sinclair Lewis and directed by Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind). The comic love-triangle tale is set in remote Mantrap, Canada, where city-slicker divorce lawyer Prescott (Percy Marmont), camping with a pal, is seeking a respite from women. Instead, he encounters erotic whirlwind Alverna (Bow), the flirtatious, bored new wife of the local trading-post owner. The film is shot by noted cinematographer James Wong Howe. “Clara Bow! And how! What a ‘mantrap’ she is!” (Variety). Preservation funded by David Stenn. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26 – 6:30 PM
Long-lost silent melodrama recently rediscovered!
Midnight Madness
USA 1928. Dir: F. Harmon Weight. 65 min. 35mm
USA 1934. Dir: Marion Gering. 74 min. 35mm
Gary Grant, still a rising star, and sad-eyed Depressionera heroine Sylvia Sidney, in a rare comic role, are the leads in this charming satirical romp. Sidney plays Princess Zizzi of Taronia, in New York seeking U.S. loans for her impoverished country. When she falls ill, starving actress and look-alike Nancy Lane (Sidney again) is hired to impersonate her – and to persuade handsome newspaper publisher Porter Madison III (Grant), an opponent of the loans, to change his mind. Comic master Preston Sturges gets a screenplay credit, but later said that “not much” of his stuff was actually used. Sidney headlined Hitchcock’s Sabotage two years later. Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.
Midnight Madness, made by Cecile B. DeMille’s short-lived independent production company, was long thought lost; a print was unearthed in a New Zealand archive in 2010. Little-remembered F. Harmon Weight directs a marital melodrama loosely inspired by The Taming of the Shrew. When a wealthy diamond miner (Clive Brook) discovers that his new bride (Jacqueline Logan) is a gold-digger, he resolves to teach her a lesson: by convincing her that he is actually poor, and transporting her to a new life of hardship in the African jungle. The film’s suspenseful climax involves a lion. Logan was Mary Magdalene in DeMille’s The King of Kings the year before. Preservation funded by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 – 8:15 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 13 – 6:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26 – 8:00 PM
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The Cinematheque’s Education Department presents
All Ages Welcome
SUNDAY, MARCH 16 – 1:00 PM USA 1982. Dir: John Huston. 127 min. DCP
An Afternoon Film Program for Children and Their Families
“Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!” That’s what characters from the wonderful world of movie musicals sing when mere words can’t express their feelings and rhythm takes hold of their feet. The movie musical has sent spirits soaring since the advent of sound films, when performer Al Jolson, in the 1927 Warner Bros. musical The Jazz Singer, teased his rapturous audience with the line, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” The best of these glittering musical gems appeal to all ages and have inspired our allsinging, all-dancing Cinema Sunday 2014: What A Glorious Feeling! This scintillating selection of note-for-noteworthy musical films will have the whole family jumping for joy. With just the right mix of engaging performers, lilting songs, graceful choreography, springy stories, and deft direction, the musical experience is an intoxicating cocktail that will have you leaving the theatre dancing on air.
Adapted from the hit Broadway play — itself based on Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie comic strip — Huston’s movie musical tells the tale of a carrot-topped New York City orphan (Aileen Quinn), her scruffy canine Sandy, and her determination to find a better tomorrow outside the orphanage walls. Luck strikes when politician-billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney) sends his secretary in search of a child to help salvage his public image, and Annie’s “hard-knock life” is suddenly turned upside down. Brimming with memorable songs and chin-up optimism, this all-ages musical is a sure fire way to leave you smiling all day! Join us after the screening for a sneak preview of the Royal City Musical Theatre’s upcoming production of Annie. Visit their website at www.royalcitymusicaltheatre.com
USA 1948. Dir: Charles Walters. 107 min. Blu-ray Disc
The legendary Judy Garland and Fred Astaire make their first appearance in our “What a Glorious Feeling!” series with this toe-tapping zinger of a musical from MGM. When Nadine Hale (Ann Miller) leaves her dancing partner Don Hewes (Fred Astaire) for dreams of solo success, a winded and despairing Don looks to chorus girl Hannah Brown (Judy Garland) to fill her shoes, and his heart. Featuring seventeen mesmerizing musical numbers — with songs written by Hollywood anthem-maker Irving Berlin — Easter Parade is a showcase of Garland and Astaire in top form, and an absolute feast for fans of song ‘n’ dance on the silver screen.
Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher, critic, and movie musical maven Michael van den Bos. Blu-ray Disc giveaways courtesy Cinema Sunday community sponsor Videomatica Sales
$6
Cinematheque membership is not required for this program.
Children & Youths (under 18)
All Ages Welcome
SUNDAY, APRIL 20 – 1:00 PM
$9
Join us after the screening for a tap dance performance and mini-class with Tapco, the Tap Dance Society of Vancouver’s youth group. Visit their website at www.vantapdance.com
Adults
Moving-image art in dialogue with cinema
dimcinema.ca
SOCIAL SURREALISM: THREE FILMS BY JEREMY DELLER
I
n 1986, a 20-year-old art history student from London spent a couple of weeks hanging out in Andy Warhol’s Factory and had a life-changing epiphany: art could be made out of whatever you were interested in. Nearly three decades later, Jeremy Deller is arguably one of the most influential artists of his generation, celebrated as “an enabler, intermediary, collaborator and all-round enlightenment artist … whose material is drawn straight from the life around him, from people’s
experiences, from writing and history almost as it happens” (Laura Cumming, The Guardian). Tonight’s program includes two feature-length documentaries the artist made with filmmaker Nick Abrahams, one about a pop-culture Renaissance man, the other about Depeche Mode fans, and a short biopic of Adrian Street, a coal miner’s son whose wrestling persona inspired Glam Rock and early performance art, a man Deller thinks “needs to be seen as the hero of his own life.”
The Bruce Lacey Experience
Great Britain 2012. Dirs: Jeremy Deller, Nick Abrahams. 67 min.
MONDAY, MARCH 17 - 7:30 PM
So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life and Times of Adrian Street) Great Britain 2010. Dir: Jeremy Deller. 28 min.
Our Hobby is Depeche Mode
Great Britain 2008. Dirs: Jeremy Deller, Nick Abrahams. 65 min.
“I thought I would try to get by on my wits creatively, whatever that meant.” JEREMY DELLER
MONDAY, MARCH 17 – 9:00 PM
Programmed by Michèle Smith Jeremy Deller (b. 1966, London) studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and University of Sussex. He had his first solo exhibition at his parents’ house while they were away on vacation and subsequent ones in Paris (2008), New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles (2009). In 2012, the Hayward Gallery, London, organized a touring mid-career retrospective, 6
Joy in People. Deller received the Turner Prize in 2004 and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Nick Abrahams studied art and English literature at Exeter University and Art School. He came to filmmaking as a director of pop videos for Stereolab, Manic Street Preachers, Sigur Ros, and many others. He is currently working on his first feature.
Vater und Sohn/Father and Son/父与子 Canada 2014. Dir: Casey Wei. 75 min. HDCAM
Programmed by Sarah Todd
U
sing E. O. Plauen’s comic strip of the same name as an entry point, Vater und Sohn/Father and Son/父与子 is a video essay in which Vancouver-based artist Casey Wei combines documentary and travelogue footage with appropriated images to trace the migration of this comic strip from Nazi Germany through Maoist China to the present day. As a child growing up in Shanghai, Wei read collections of the comic and assumed it was Chinese. In 2012, she stumbled across an image of it online in German, and was shocked to discover its true origins. Wei traveled to Germany and China to conduct interviews with people who have encountered the comic strip in various contexts. The film presents the failed utopian strategies of the 20th century through the lens of this comic and provokes thoughts about memory, influence, time, and history. Casey Wei (b. 1985, Shanghai) is a Vancouver-based artist working in film/video and text. In 2012, she graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University, where her thesis work was the video Murky Colors. Vater und Sohn/Father and Son/父与子 is her second video and her first feature-length work. MONDAY, APRIL 14 – 7:30 PM
EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUNS
Asphalt Watches
Vancouver Premiere!
Canada 2013. Dirs: Shayne Ehman, Seth Scriver. 94 min. DCP
The Husband Canada 2013. Dir: Bruce McDonald. 80 min. DCP
Best Canadian First Feature, TIFF 2013
Borsos Award, Whistler Film Festival 2013
Canada’s Top Ten, 2013 “A funny, authentically strange trip . . . A film whose weirdness is so slippery and mercurial it’s truly tricky to get a bead on.” John Semley, Now Co-directed by Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman (a former Cinematheque staffer), this trippy animated road movie won Best Canadian First Feature honours at TIFF last fall and was the hit of our Canada’s Top Ten program in January. Based on the artists’ own hitchhiking misadventures, Asphalt Watches has oddball duo Bucktooth Cloud and Skeleton Hat embarking from Chilliwack, B.C., on a crazed, often caustically-funny journey across Canada. Scriver and Ehman spent eight years crafting the psychedelic hand-drawn Flash animation and impressive original score. “An hilarious, grotesque, and utterly original adult animated feature . . . Though reminiscent of the gleefully rude late-night animated fare of South Park and the Adult Swim empire, Scriver and Ehman’s vision is daringly experimental and wholly unique” (Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, Toronto I.F.F.). FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 16 – 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM
“The Husband walks a tightrope of pain and absurdity . . . An unsettling drama-comedy.” Globe and Mail The latest from ever-surprising Canadian maverick Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, Pontypool) won top honours – the Borsos Award for best Canadian feature, with a cash prize of $15,000 – at December’s Whistler Film Festival. Maxwell McCabeLokos co-wrote and stars in this gutsy, blackly-comic drama. He’s Henry, carrying the burden of single-parenting while his wife Alyssa (Sarah Allen), a teacher, serves out a jail sentence. She’s been imprisoned for sleeping with a 14-year student. Henry, struggling with feelings of humiliation and anger, and an ad-agency job he loathes, begins acting out in inappropriate ways. “Defiantly unpredictable . . . Slyly funny . . . McDonald turns in what may be his most subtle piece of direction to date” (Steve Gravestock, Toronto I.F.F.). WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM
(Frames of Mind screening – See below for details)
FRIDAY, MARCH 21 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 22 – 8:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 23 – 2:45 PM & 6:30 PM MONDAY, MARCH 24 – 8:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 27 – 8:30 PM
Vancouver Premiere!
Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac)
France 2013. Dir: Alain Guiraudie. 97 min. DCP
Best Director, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2013 Best Film of the Year, Cahiers du Cinéma Top Ten Films of the Year, Gavin Smith, editor, Film Comment The lesbian drama Blue is the Warmest Colour garnered much of the Frenchcinema buzz this past year, but Alain Guiraudie, a highly individualistic director whose previous work is little-known here, also caused a splash with the sex-filled Stranger by the Lake, his international breakthrough. A homoerotic Hitchcockian thriller, Stranger won a directing prize at Cannes and was named best film of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma. Guiraudie’s slow-burning, tightly-structured exploration of desire and danger is set over ten days at a lakeside cruising spot for gay men. There, protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) falls for moustachioed, possibly lethal Michel (Christophe Paou), while also befriending Henri (Patrick d’Assumçao), a portly, middle-aged man uncertain of his sexuality. Occasionally sexually explicit, always matter-of-fact about nudity, eroticism, and hedonism, Stranger has generated much chatter! FRIDAY, MARCH 21 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 22 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 23 – 4:30 PM & 8:10 PM MONDAY, MARCH 24 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 27 – 6:30 PM
A Field in England Great Britain 2013. Dir: Ben Wheatley. 91 min. DCP “Strikingly original . . . A rich, strange, hauntingly intense work.” Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter “Extraordinary . . . Confirms Ben Wheatley as Britain’s most thrilling young director.” Robbie Collin, The Telegraph Whoa! One of Britain’s most arresting filmmakers, Ben Wheatley, director of Down Terrace, Kill List, and Sightseers, is gaining a devoted cult following. His latest, scripted by wife Amy Jump, is a new departure: a period piece, but still marked by Wheatley’s pitch-black humour, graphic violence, and resolutely independent spirit. During the English Civil War of the mid-1600s, a trio of deserting soldiers and an alchemist’s assistant (Reece Shearsmith) are commandeered by sinister Irishman O’Neil (Wheatley regular Michael Smiley) and forced to join a bizarre hunt for buried treasure. Sorcery and psychedelic mushrooms are ingredients in Wheatley’s genre-bending brew of folk horror, historical thriller, potty humour, Shakespearean dialogue, and hallucinogenic freak-out – all rendered in breathtaking monochrome visuals. Unique and unclassifiable, the film suggests an unholy hybrid of Monty Python, David Lynch, and Ingmar Bergman. FRIDAY, APRIL 25 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 26 – 4:30 PM & 8:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 27 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, APRIL 28 – 8:30 PM
A Monthly Mental Health Film Series Presented by The Cinematheque and the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry The Cinematheque is pleased to join with the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting “Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings, accompanied by presentations and audience discussions, are held on the third Wednesday of each month.
Series directed by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
The Husband
Hotell
This very black comedy from iconoclastic director Bruce McDonald tells the story of Henry (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a sad-sack advertising copywriter saddled with raising his infant son while his teacher wife Alyssa (Sarah Allen) does time for sleeping with a 14-year-old student. Henry is barely getting by – he hates his job, his co-workers, his trips to the prison to visit his wife – but most of all he hates the pitying glances he receives and the feeling he can’t shake that he’s been completely emasculated. Bolstered by impotent, internalized rage, Henry’s search for answers leads him to begin following the schoolboy with whom his wife was involved – with disastrous results.
Beautiful, successful Erika (A Royal Affair’s Alicia Vikander) has it all, but when her first child is delivered prematurely and with what appears to be severe brain damage, her carefully planned life unravels and she falls into a serious depression. Group therapy sessions prove unhelpful until Erika remembers a woman who saw herself as a hotel, a place where you could “take a break from yourself” and be whoever you wanted to be. Erika and four members of her therapy group decamp to a series of hotels, where they engage in their own brand of unconventional group therapy, with both comedic and profoundly moving results.
Canada 2013. Dir: Bruce McDonald. 80 min. DCP
Programmed by Caroline Coutts, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.
Sweden/Denmark 2013. Dir: Lisa Langseth. 100 min. Digibeta video
Post-screening discussion TBA.
Post-screening discussion TBA.
Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 – 7:30 PM
FRAMESOFMIND.CA 7
Tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening. Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca. Events, times, and prices are
HOW TO BUY TICKETS
Weekend
Far From Vietnam
THURSDAY
1
19
DIVERCINÉ
6:30 pm
DIVERCINÉ
6:00 pm
6:30 pm
DIVERCINÉ
Midnight Madness (p 5)
8:30 pm
4:30 pm + 8:10 pm
31 APRIL
8:00 pm THE HUSBAND (p 7)
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (p 7)
30
Mantrap (p 5)
6:30 pm
2:45 pm + 6:30 pm
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
6:30 pm
24
26
2 DAVID CRONENBERG OPENING NIGHT 6:30 pm – Doors
8:30 pm
THE HUSBAND (p 7)
6:30 pm
3
27
20
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (p 7)
Zoopraxographer (p 5)
Eadweard Muybridge,
7:30 pm The Husband (p 7)
Quarrel with the World +
Robert Frost: A Lover’s
6:30 pm
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
FRAMES OF MIND
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (p 7)
23
So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life and Times of Adrian Street) + Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (p 6)
9:00 pm
The Bruce Lacey Experience (p 6)
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA SOCIAL SURREALISM: THREE FILMS BY JEREMY DELLER
THE HUSBAND (p 7)
6:30 pm + 8:30 pm
ASPHALT WATCHES (p 7)
Annie (p 6)
1:00pm
CINEMA SUNDAY
+ Busy Bodies (p 5)
International House
Double Door (p 5)
The Chase (p 4)
Thirty Day Princess (p 5)
8:00 pm
8:15 pm
7:50 pm
8:15 pm
Thirty Day Princess (p 5)
+ Busy Bodies (p 5)
Supernatural (p 4)
Gun Crazy (p 4)
6:30 pm
International House
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (p 7)
6:30 pm THE HUSBAND (p 7)
8:30 pm
STRANGER BY THE LAKE (p 7)
8:10 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
6:30 pm
Domestic (p 11)
6:30 pm
8:15 pm Rock the Casbah (p 10)
DAVID CRONENBERG
9 Month Stretch (p 10)
8:15 pm
6:30 pm
6:30 pm Longwave (p 10)
DIVERCINÉ
DIVERCINÉ
4
28
15
8
1
5
29
22
6:30 pm
6:30 pm + 8:30 pm
THE HUSBAND (p 7)
ASPHALT WATCHES (p 7)
6:30 pm + 8:30 pm
21
14
Gun Crazy (p 4)
8:40 pm
That Cold Day in the Park (p 4)
ASPHALT WATCHES (p 7)
The Chase (p 4)
Intangible Asset No. 82 (p 3)
13
8:15 pm
7:00 pm
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
Masculine Feminine
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
7
8:30 pm
Bande à part
6:30 pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
MARCH
SATURDAY
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION Gun Crazy (p 4)
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
12
6
FRIDAY
CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
La Chinoise
8:30 pm
Weekend
6:30 pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
55
theCinematheque.ca
Program Guide magazine or visit our website:
For film descriptions, please consult the previous
March 1–5
WEDNESDAY
That Cold Day in the Park (p 4)
17
10
3
TUESDAY
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
4:00 pm
16
8:25 pm
8:30 pm
9
La Chinoise
Weekend
UCLA FESTIVAL OF PRESERVATION
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
2
MONDAY
JEAN-LUC GODARD
SUNDAY
JEAN-LUC GODARD
MAR+ APR
1131 HOWE STREET
th eC in emath eque.ca
U P D AT E S & A D VA N C E T I C K E T S
THE CINEMATHEQUE IS RECOGNIZED AS AN EXCEMPT NON-PROFIT FILM SOCIETY UNDER THE B.C. MOTION PICTURE ACT, AND AS SUCH IS ABLE TO SCREN FILMS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN REVIEWED BY THE B.C. FILM CLASSIFICATION OFFICE. UNDER THE ACT, ALL PERSONS ATTENDING CINEMATHEQUE SCREENINGS MUST BE MEMBERS OF THE PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE PACIFIQUE SOCIETY AND BE 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER.
subject to change without notice.
8:30 pm The Dead Zone (p 13)
M. Butterfly (p 14)
A History of Violence (p 14)
8:20 pm 8:30 pm
A FIELD IN ENGLAND (p 7)
Eastern Promises (p 14)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
6:30 pm
A FIELD IN ENGLAND (p 7)
DAVID CRONENBERG
M. Butterfly (p 14)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
8:40 pm
27
20
Naked Lunch (p 14)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
Easter Parade (p 6)
1:00pm
CINEMA SUNDAY
The Dead Zone (p 13)
8:30 pm
Scanners (p 13)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
28
21
Crash (p 14)
8:30 pm
Spider (p 14)
8:30 pm
8:30 pm Cosmopolis (p 14)
7:00 pm Give Me the Banjo (p 3)
8:25 pm Eastern Promises (p 14)
A Dangerous Method (p 14)
CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS
A History of Violence (p 14)
26
19
12
THE GARDEN LOVERS
eXistenZ (p 14)
6:30 pm
6:30 pm Crash (p 14)
DAVID CRONENBERG
DAVID CRONENBERG
8:20 pm
4:30 pm + 8:30 pm DAVID CRONENBERG
A FIELD IN ENGLAND (p 7) A FIELD IN ENGLAND (p 7)
2
25
Naked Lunch (p 14)
8:45 pm
Dead Ringers (p 14)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
Scanners (p 13)
8:30 pm
The Brood + Camera (p 13)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
6:30 pm
Dead Ringers (p 14)
8:30 pm
6:30 pm
1
18
The Fly + At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World at the Last Cinema in the World (p 13)
6:30 pm
The Dead Zone (p 13)
4:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
The Brood + Camera (p 13)
8:20 pm
Videodrome (p 12)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
Shivers (p 12)
11
8:20 pm
Rabid (p 13)
Rabid (p 13)
8:15 pm
Shivers (p 12)
DAVID CRONENBERG
30 MAY
Spider (p 14)
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
eXistenZ (p 14)
DAVID CRONENBERG
DAVID CRONENBERG
24
Last Cinema in the World (p 13)
Hotell (p 7)
7:30 pm
The Fly + At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World at the
8:30 pm
The Dead Zone (p 13)
6:30 pm
DAVID CRONENBERG
17
10
FRAMES OF MIND
23
16
Stereo + Transfer (p 13)
From the Drain (p 13)
14
8:15 pm
8:20 pm
8:15 pm
Crimes of the Future +
13
Shivers (p 12)
Fast Company (p 13)
From the Drain (p 13)
8:00 pm Fast Company (p 13)
6:30 pm
6:30 pm
Crimes of the Future +
Shivers (p 12)
DAVID CRONENBERG
DAVID CRONENBERG
6:30 pm
9
Mathijs (p 12)
Stereo + Transfer (p 13)
8
The Missing Picture (p 11)
7:30 pm – Videodrome Introduced by Ernest
DAVID CRONENBERG
7
6:00 pm
8:40 pm
The Auction (p 11)
6:30 pm
The Auction (p 11)
Three Kids (p 11)
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
THE CINEMATHEQUE’S 41st
DAVID CRONENBERG
8:15 pm
7:50 pm
6
The Missing Picture (p 11)
The Fairy (p 11)
Vancouver Premiere!
Vancouver Premiere!
Vancouver Premiere!
Longwave (Les grandes ondes [à l’ouest])
Rock the Casbah
9 Month Stretch (9 mois ferme)
Switzerland 2013. Dir: Lionel Baier. 85 min. DCP
Two mismatched Swiss radio reporters chance upon Portugal’s 1974 revolution in director Lionel Baier’s charming, cinema-savvy screwball comedy. Assigned a pointless puff-piece on Swiss foreign aid, feminist upand-comer Julie (Valérie Donzelli) and crusty veteran Cauvin (Michel Vuillermoz) are sharing a VW van with their soundman and a translator when history gives them a shot at a real scoop. “Perfectly capturing the buoyant spirit (and aesthetics) of 1970s comedies, Longwave’s screwball humour derives its heart from the actors’ warm and genial performances. Rousing Gershwin tunes, a delightful impromptu musical number, and a script cleverly lined with deadpan jokes to balance out the nostalgic sight gags give the movie its irresistible energy” (Palm Springs I.F.F.). FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – 6:30 PM
Compliments of the Embassy (Ottawa) and Consulate General (Vancouver) of Switzerland.
Morocco/France 2013. Dir: Laïla Marrakchi. 100 min. DCP
Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi’s Marock, a controversial tale of youthful rebellion and ArabJewish romance, was a box-office smash at home and a worldwide festival hit (it screened in our 2007 DiverCiné). Her stirring follow-up features some of the Arab world’s finest actresses, plus icon Omar Sharif as a recentlydeceased man! After the death of the family patriarch, his relatives gather in an upper-class Tangiers villa to mourn. The solemnity is disrupted by the surprise return of the wayward youngest daughter, who defied dad to pursue an acting career in America. Recriminations fly, values clash, and revelations emerge in this engaging, often amusing drama laced with sharp observations about the role of women. FRIDAY, MARCH 28 – 8:15 PM
France 2013. Dir: Albert Dupontel. 82 min. DCP
An uptight French judge finds herself pregnant – but can’t remember having sex – in comedian-actor-director Albert Dupontel’s highly-stylized farce. Sandrine Kiberlain plays jurist Ariane, who figures she must have let her guard down the previous New Year’s. She’s in for a major surprise, and some professional trouble, when she finally works out who the father must be. Terry Gilliam and The Artist’s Jean Dujardin have cameos. “A crowd-pleasing black comedy . . . A solid cast, lots of attention to the visuals, and a defiantly unsophisticated sense of humour are the hallmarks. . . On the visual side it’s like Amelie on steroids” (Jonathan Holland, Hollywood Reporter). SATURDAY, MARCH 29 – 6:30 PM
DiverCiné 2014
World Cinema from la Francophonie Les écrans de la francophonie du monde
P
resented in Vancouver by The Cinematheque and the Consulate General of France, DiverCiné is an annual cooperation between the Embassy of France in Canada and Canadian Heritage / Patrimoine canadien. It is designed to celebrate and promote la Francophonie, the international community of countries and governments that use French as a common language; express the identities, imaginings, and cultures of the French-speaking world in all their diversity; and showcase the range and abundance of film production in the francophone nations of the world. DiverCiné programming gives prominence to films selected for major international festivals, and provides Canadian audiences with an opportunity to see exceptional films that, in many cases, they would otherwise not be able to see. Our 2014 program is made up of award-winning features from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Acknowledgements: The Cinematheque is grateful to Jerrett Zaroski, Programmer, Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa), for his assistance in organizing this year’s DiverCiné program.
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Vancouver Premiere!
All Ages Screening!
Vancouver Premiere! All Ages Screening!
Domestic
The Fairy (La fée)
People and their pets are the stuff of sly, surreal humour in this quirky dispatch from the vaunted Romanian New Wave. Set in a working-class apartment building, and largely shot from single fixed-camera setups, Domestic revolves around three households. “The intrusion of different animals into a domestic space – a dog, a chicken, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a cat – sets off rapidfire arguments, negotiations, recriminations, and reconciliations. Sitaru, best known for his award-winning shorts, constructs the film as a series of tragicomic vignettes. Filled with vivid characters anxious to impose their confused vision on the chaos around them, the film finds both pathos and humour in absurdity” (Ronnie Scheib, Variety).
There are sight gags and slapstick antics galore in The Fairy, a good-hearted comic romp in the best old-school tradition of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Jacques Tati. The candy-coloured tale, the latest from the popular Belgian-based trio of Able, Gordon, and Romy (Iceberg, Rumba), is set in gloomy Le Havre, where a hotel night clerk becomes smitten with the beautiful fairy who offers to make his three wishes come true. When she disappears after granting only two, he sets out to find her. This anarchic, irreverent, irrepressible delight debuted as the opening-night film of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2011.
Three Kids (Twa timoun)
Romania 2013. Dir: Adrian Sitaru. 82 min. DCP
SATURDAY, MARCH 29 – 8:15 PM
Belgium/France 2011. Dirs: Dominique Able, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy. 93 min. DCP
All Ages Welcome May not be suitable for younger children. Subtitles. Membership required for those 18+ SUNDAY, MARCH 30 – 6:00 PM
Haiti/Belgium 2012. Dir: Jonas d’Adesky. 81 min. DCP
African-Belgian filmmaker Jonas d’Adesky was inspired to make his debut feature while volunteering in Haiti. Three 12-year-old boys, residents of a Port-au-Prince orphanage, dream of freedom. When the 2010 Haiti earthquake devastates the city, their wish is granted, but they must cope with surviving in the aftermath of a terrible catastrophe. The Creole-language film, selected for Berlin and Toronto, has a documentary feel and a non-pro cast; the three leads play characters bearing their own names. “An intimate coming-of-age story . . . Few from outside the country have seen post-earthquake Haiti in as clear a light as d’Adesky” (Cameron Bailey, Toronto I.F.F.).
All Ages Welcome Persons under 14 must be accompanied by adult. Subtitles. Membership required for those 18+ SUNDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:50 PM
Best Film, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2013 2014 Academy Award Nominee, Best Foreign Language Film
The Missing Picture (L’image manquante) Cambodia 2013. Dir: Rithy Panh. 90 min. DCP
The Phnom Penh-born, Paris-based documentary director Rithy Panh – subject of a Cinematheque retrospective in 2005 – has made a life’s work of enshrining in memory the tragedy that befell the Cambodian people in the latter decades of the 20th century. His latest work won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year and is an Oscar nominee this year. A mesmerizing, mixed-media memoir of Panh’s own experiences under Pol Pot, the film sets out to counter the fact that all extant images of those terrible times derive from Khmer Rouge propaganda. Panh’s startling, eerily beautiful solution: to visualize the “missing picture” using intricate hand-crafted clay figurines and evocative doll-house dioramas. MONDAY, MARCH 31 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 – 8:40 PM
Nominated for Five Canadian Screen Awards!
The Auction aka The Dismantling
(Le démantèlement) Canada 2013. Dir: Sébastien Pilote. 111 min. DCP
Writer-director Sébastien Pilote impressed with his debut feature Le vendeur (Canada’s Top Ten 2011) and impresses again with The Auction, another sensitive portrait of provincial life and the current economic malaise. Nominated for five 2014 Canadian Screen Awards (best picture, director, actor, original screenplay, and art direction), it casts noted Quebec actor Gabriel Arcand as Gaby, a stoic sheep farmer who soldiers on while his neighbours abandon farming. When eldest daughter Marie (Lucie Laurier) arrives seeking a large loan to get herself through a divorce, Gaby decides to sell the farm – without telling his daughter. “Pilote has quietly emerged as one of the most important new voices in Quebec feature cinema” (Toronto I.F.F.). MONDAY, MARCH 31 – 8:15 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 – 6:30 PM
11
Long Live the New Flesh!
THE FILMS OF DAVID CRONENBERG rom pariah in Parliament – his shocking debut feature Shivers (1975), supported by the Canadian Film Development Corporation (forerunner of Telefilm Canada), sparked a national furor – to acclaimed international master, David Cronenberg has had an astonishing career. The Torontoborn director has produced one of the most distinctive (and debated) bodies of work in cinema. Now in his fifth decade of filmmaking, he continues to impress with each new movie. “Beginning with Dead Ringers (1988), or even The Fly (1986),” argues prominent American film critic and Cronenberg champion J. Hoberman, “Cronenberg has been, film for film, the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world.” From his earliest, most scandalously subversive films – likened by another admirer to “grindhouse trash by an intellectual” – the great subject of Cronenberg’s often highly visceral cinema has been the body, and body horror – the inescapable corporeality that defines our humanity; the flesh-andblood body in revolt or out of control; the battle between spirit and flesh, mind and body; body modification and mutation (by science and technology, or by disease and decay); sexual transgression and sexual dread. “For me,” Cronenberg has said, “the body is the first fact of human existence.” This complete retrospective of Cronenberg’s film works was organized by the Toronto International Film Festival as part of “The Cronenberg Project,” a multi-platform initiative devoted to Cronenberg’s world and world view. The retrospective’s name, “From Within,” derives from the title under which Shivers, that contentious early shocker, was originally released in the United States: They Came From Within – an apt descriptor of the major Cronenberg thematic! The retrospective includes new 35mm prints or new digital restorations of many of this singular artist’s signature works. Acknowledgments: From Within: The Films of David Cronenberg was curated by Noah Cowan and Piers Handling of the Toronto International Film Festival. We are grateful to TIFF for support in making this Vancouver presentation possible. Thirteen of the feature films and all four short films screening in the retrospective are courtesy TIFF’s Film Reference Library. Special thanks to Brad Deane (Manager, Film Programmes) and Samuel La France (Coordinator, Film Programmes) of TIFF Bell Lightbox for their kind assistance. 12
Newly Restored Director’s Cut!
Videodrome
Canada 1983. Dir: David Cronenberg. 87 min. 35mm
THURSDAY, APRIL 3 Refreshments and Special Introduction
6:30 pm – Doors 7:30 pm – Screening of Videodrome / Introduced by Ernest Mathijs Ernest Mathijs is a Professor of Film Studies at UBC whose areas of specialization include cult cinema and horror cinema. He is the author of The Cinema of David Cronenberg: From Baron of Blood to Cultural Hero and the co-author of 100 Cult Films and Cult Cinema.
Long live the new flesh! Long live Cronenberg’s most influential and conceptually ingenious film! James Woods stars as Max Renn, owner of a sleazy Toronto cable-TV channel. Discovering mysterious satellite transmissions of graphic, plotless sexual violence, Max figures it’s the perfect thing to boost his station’s ratings – and soon finds himself enmeshed in a sinister global conspiracy to control minds. Deborah Harry co-stars as a sadomasochistic psychiatrist. Max’s transformation into a fleshand-blood VCR is one of the quintessential representations of body horror, and of the fusion of man and machine, in Cronenberg. Andy Warhol described Videodrome as “A Clockwork Orange of the ’80s.” Truly visionary! THURSDAY, APRIL 3 - Opening Night with Refreshments and Special Introduction DOORS 6:30 PM / SCREENING 7:30 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 11 – 6:30 PM
New Digital Restoration!
Shivers
Canada 1975. Dir: David Cronenberg. 87 min. DCP
Seeking to create “a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will hopefully turn the world into one beautiful, mindless orgy,” a misguided scientist unleashes a deadly parasite that transforms the residents of a Montreal apartment complex into sex-crazed homicidal maniacs! Also known as They Came from Within and The Parasite Murders, Cronenberg’s first commercial feature offers a sly, subversive, sensationalistic take on the sexual revolution. It was famously attacked – as “an atrocity” and a disgrace to taxpayers – by Robert Fulford in Saturday Night magazine, and was the subject of debate in Parliament. The brouhaha, said Cronenberg, made it harder to fund future projects – even though Shivers was the first profitable CFDC-financed feature! FRIDAY, APRIL 4 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 5 – 8:20 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 – 8:20 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 10 – 6:30 PM
New 35mm Print!
New 35mm Print! Rare Cronenberg Feature!
Rabid
Canada 1977. Dir: David Cronenberg. 91 min. 35mm
Porn star Marilyn Chambers – fetchingly equipped with a phalluslike stinger in her armpit! – heads the cast of Cronenberg’s second commercial feature. She is Rose, a young Quebec woman horribly disfigured in a motorcycle accident. An experimental skin-grafting procedure restores her beauty but has horrific side effects, unleashing a rabies-like plague that has crazed, foaming-at-the-mouth murderers roaming the streets! In an echo of 1970’s October Crisis, Montreal is soon under martial law. Cataclysm, paranoia, body horror, overreaching scientists, mutation, sex linked with disease – key Cronenberg motifs abound in this shocking cult favourite. “None of the other recent apocalyptic movies has shown so much political or cinematic sophistication” (Time Out). FRIDAY, APRIL 4 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 5 – 6:30 PM
Stereo
Canada 1969. Dir: David Cronenberg. 65 min. 35mm
Cronenberg described his futuristic first experimental feature as “an investigation of the inadequacy of current sexuality.” Stereo presents itself as a report from the Canadian Academy of Erotic Enquiry. Seven young adults volunteer for a series of experiments in which, after undergoing surgery to enhance their telepathic potential, they are encouraged to explore pure, polymorphously perverse sexuality! Often blackly comic, Stereo employs non-sync sound, highly formalized visuals, and stark, sterile architecture (courtesy the U of T’s Scarborough campus). Many pet Cronenberg themes and concerns are in evidence: amoral science; the inescapable corporeality of human nature; alienating technology; and a simultaneous attraction and revulsion towards sex.
Transfer
Preceded by
Canada 1966. Dir: David Cronenberg. 7 min. HDCAM
Cronenberg’s first film, made for $300 while he was a U of T undergrad, is a surreal short about a psychiatrist pursued by an obsessive patient. SUNDAY, APRIL 6 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, APRIL 7 – 8:15 PM
Crimes of the Future
Canada 1970. Dir: David Cronenberg. 70 min. 35mm
Cronenberg’s second experimental feature is set in a dystopian near-future where an epidemic spread by cosmetics has killed all sexually-mature women and left the surviving men mutating into atavistic forms. The disease is called “Rouge’s Malady,” after the mad dermatologist who discovered it. Rouge has disappeared; his clinic, the House of Skin, is now being managed by his desperate disciple Adrian Tripod (Ronald Mlodzik, also the lead in Stereo). “Cronenberg amplifies and extends all the most striking characteristics of Stereo: the lucid visual style, the unusual counterpointing of sound and image, the thematic preoccupation with overcoming orthodox concepts of human sexuality, the blacker-than-sick humour” (Tony Rayns, Monthly Film Bulletin ).
preceded by
From the Drain
Canada 1967. Dir: David Cronenberg. 13 min. HDCAM
In Cronenberg’s second short, a bizarre, Samuel Beckett-like sketch set in the near future, two clothed men in a bathtub discuss the use of biological and chemical weapons in a recent war. SUNDAY, APRIL 6 – 8:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 7 – 6:30 PM
Fast Company
Canada 1979. Dir: David Cronenberg. 91 min. 35mm
The anomaly in Cronenberg’s filmography is this razzmatazz-filled drag-racing drama, made between Rabid and The Brood, and shot in Edmonton. The plot has an exchampion, on the comeback trail after an accident, locking horns with an up-andcoming rival and a villainous corporate sponsor. The cast includes character actor William Smith; B-movie queen Claudia Jennings (in her last role); Enter the Dragon’s John Saxon; and Nicholas Campbell (Da Vinci’s Inquest). The director, a known auto enthusiast, lavishes his love on cars here; still, despite the obsession with sex and fast machines on abundant display, it’d be a stretch to say that this colourful action movie is anything more than distant cousin to Cronenberg’s controversial 1996 feature Crash. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 10 – 8:15 PM
New 35mm Print!
The Brood
Canada 1979. Dir: David Cronenberg. 92 min. 35mm
Cronenberg took a small step towards mainstream acceptance with The Brood, still one of his most personal works. Undergoing experimental psychotherapy after the failure of her marriage, a disturbed woman’s subconscious mind produces violent “psychoplasmic” children who avenge her feelings of anger. Described by Cronenberg as his version of Kramer vs. Kramer, and inspired by the painful end of his first marriage, The Brood was the director’s first film to feature established international actors (Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar) and his first with composer Howard Shore, hereafter a regular. “The scariest, smartest, most original horror movie of the ’70s, and the richest emotionally” (David Chute, Film Comment).
Camera
preceded by
Canada 2000. Dir: David Cronenberg. 6 min. 35mm
An aging actor (Les Carlson), about to appear in a film directed by children, ponders the relationship of cinema and death. Commissioned by TIFF for its 25th edition in 2000. FRIDAY, APRIL 11 – 8:20 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 12 – 6:30 PM
Scanners
Canada 1981. Dir: David Cronenberg. 103 min. 35mm
Cronenberg’s growing international reputation as an estimable auteur was cemented with this visceral conspiracy thriller about powerful telepaths (“scanners”) who take mind-blowing all too literally. Pitched between sci-fi and horror, Scanners is distinguished by spectacular set pieces, impressive special effects, and fine performances. The cast includes Jennifer O’Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, and Michael Ironside. The film finds Cronenberg’s cinema moving into a more politicized realm of corporate and military-industrial malfeasance; the director himself wryly described Scanners as a movie “very much about heads.” “Cronenberg is our greatest director, and Scanners should be the first in a long line of commercial and artistic masterpieces” (John Harkness, Cinema Canada, 1981).
The Dead Zone
USA 1983. Dir: David Cronenberg. 103 min. DCP
The Dead Zone, based on Stephen King’s bestseller, was Cronenberg’s first film for a Hollywood studio and first feature (the anomalous Fast Company aside) not from an original Cronenberg screenplay. Christopher Walken, superb, is shy schoolteacher Johnny Smith, who emerges from a lengthy coma with a frightening capacity to foresee the future of anyone he touches. The “gift” proves a curse, sending Johnny into seclusion, until an encounter with an ambitious rightwing politician (played by Martin Sheen) shapes the direction of Johnny’s own future. Emotionally affecting and admirably restrained (especially for Cronenberg), this moody, wintry psychological thriller ranks amongst cinema’s finest Stephen King adaptations. SUNDAY, APRIL 13 – 8:30 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 17 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 18 – 4:30 PM MONDAY, APRIL 21 – 8:30 PM
New 35mm Print!
The Fly
USA 1986. Dir: David Cronenberg. 96 min. 35mm
Cronenberg’s superb AIDS-era remake of the 1958 horror/sci-fi classic stars Jeff Goldblum as a brilliant scientist whose genetic material is accidentally fused with that of a fly during the testing of a revolutionary new teleportation device. Geena Davis co-stars as the journalist with whom he has recently begun a relationship. Goldblum’s metamorphosis from mildmannered mensch to monster can be read as a parable about violent amour fou and loss of self – The Fly, for all its visceral grisliness, is an intensely moving love story – and also as an allegory for the ravages of disease. With the subsequent Dead Ringers, it provided stellar proof of a mature and increasingly masterful Cronenberg.
preceded by
At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World at the Last Cinema in the World
France 2007. Dir: David Cronenberg. 4 min. HDCAM
Cronenberg himself plays a man preparing to shoot himself on TV, while commentators discuss the role of Jews in cinema. Made as part of an anthology of shorts commissioned for the 60th Cannes Film Festival. THURSDAY, APRIL 17 – 8:30 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 18 – 6:30 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 12 – 8:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 13 – 6:30 PM
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New 35mm Print!
Dead Ringers
Canada/USA 1988. Dir: David Cronenberg. 116 min. 35mm
When Jeremy Irons won the Best Actor Oscar for 1990’s Reversal of Fortune, he thanked David Cronenberg; Cronenberg hadn’t directed the film, but had directed Irons two years earlier in an astounding and, many thought, truly Oscardeserving dual performance in Dead Ringers, one of Cronenberg’s pinnacle achievements. Irons plays identical-twin gynaecologists who, unbeknownst to their lovers, occasionally switch identities. Geneviève Bujold is the troubled actress who comes between them. Cronenberg’s disturbing drama won 11 Genies Awards and was voted one of the top ten Canadians films of all time in a 2004 TIFF poll. “Powerful, moving, and rich in ideas . . . Cronenberg has matured into a truly great filmmaker” (James Monaco, The Movie Guide). FRIDAY, APRIL 18 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 19 – 6:30 PM
Naked Lunch
Canada/Great Britain/Japan 1991. Dir: David Cronenberg. 115 min. 35mm
William S. Burroughs’s “unfilmable” cult novel gets a suitably unconventional, appropriately transgressive adaptation. Naked Lunch à la Cronenberg mixes original literary source with biographical elements of Burroughs’s life and the director’s own audacious cinematic imagination. The phantasmagoric result is a portrait of a writer, and of the creative process, like no other. Peter Weller is Burroughs alter-ego William Lee, an insect exterminator and junkie in 1953 New York. He and wife Joan (Judy Davis) like to mainline his bug powder. A tragic turn of events sends Lee into the hallucinatory Interzone. Noted Quebec actress Monique Mercure shows up as both person and prosthetic, while reptilian Mugwumps and beetle-like talking typewriters make memorable appearances. SATURDAY, APRIL 19 – 8:45 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 20 – 6:30 PM
M. Butterfly
USA 1993. Dir: David Cronenberg. 111 min. 35mm
Perhaps the most underappreciated film of Cronenberg’s mature period, M. Butterfly adapts the gender-bending hit play by David Henry Hwang. In 1960s Beijing, a French diplomat (Jeremy Irons) embarks on a lengthy affair with a Chinese opera star, seemingly unaware of the fact that she is actually a he – and that he/she is also a spy! John Lone plays the deceptive diva. The tale is loosely based on actual events. “Though seemingly uncharacteristic, this opulent yet intimate period drama in fact speaks to some of Cronenberg’s key themes: transgressive sexuality, the divided self, and the ability of the mind to transcend (or transform) biological reality” (Toronto I.F.F.). SUNDAY, APRIL 20 – 8:40 PM MONDAY, APRIL 21 – 6:30 PM
Spider
Canada/Great Britain 2002. Dir: David Cronenberg. 98 min. 35mm
Cronenberg’s first feature of the new century found the director hitting new heights of maturity, confidence, and accomplishment. Adapted from Patrick McGrath’s novel, with a standout lead performance by Ralph Fiennes, the daring film unfolds from subjective perspective of Dennis “Spider” Cleg, a schizophrenic released onto the grim streets of East London after decades in an asylum. Spider is assailed by traumatic
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childhood memories involving his father, mother, and father’s mistress, and his already-tenuous grip on reality becomes even shakier. The superior cast includes Lynn Redgrave, Gabriel Byrne, and, in an impressive double role, Miranda Richardson. “Cronenberg creates his most meticulously controlled and, perhaps, his finest film to date” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 24 – 8:30 PM
eXistenZ
Canada/Great Britain/France 1999. Dir: David Cronenberg. 97 min. 35mm
“Dark, delirious fun” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out), Cronenberg’s mind-warping virtual-reality adventure is set in a near future where video gamers have bio-ports surgically implanted in their spinal columns in order to plug themselves directly into organic gaming pods. Superstar gamedesigner Jennifer Jason Leigh, unveiling her latest creation, is attacked by “realist” terrorists opposed to gaming’s “deforming of reality.” Security man Jude Law comes to her aid. Made from the director’s first original screenplay since Videodrome, and featuring, in the best visceral Cronenberg tradition, an array of gooey, glistening biotech gizmos (including a “gristle gun”), eXistenZ won Berlin’s Silver Bear for outstanding artistic achievement. It was released just three weeks after The Matrix. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 26 – 6:30 PM
Crash
Canada/Great Britain 1996. Dir: David Cronenberg. 100 min. 35mm
Deadly car crashes are the stuff of intense sexual arousal in Cronenberg’s highly controversial, eminently faithful adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s fetishistic novel. The film was awarded a Special Jury Prize at Cannes for its “audacity,” but ran into censorship troubles in many places for its graphic sex and disturbing violence. In the aftermath of a traumatizing vehicular accident, James Spader and Holly Hunter begin a kinky, car-focused affair, which brings them into the orbit of a carcrash sex cult headed by Elias Koteas. “Masterful . . . Ranking with Videodrome as Cronenberg’s most radical meditation on the interconnectedness of body, mind, machine, and desire” (Toronto I.F.F.). THURSDAY, APRIL 24 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 25 – 8:20 PM
A History of Violence
USA/Canada 2005. Dir: David Cronenberg. 96 min. 35mm
David Cronenberg tackles violence, human nature, and the treasured American myth of self-reinvention in this masterful psychological thriller, one of the best films of the past decade. Viggo Mortensen plays a small-town family man who proves shockingly adept at deadly force when two sadistic thugs turn up at his modest diner. His lethal actions suggest a secret past; his wife (Maria Bello) and kids see him with new eyes; and there is unwanted attention from the national media – and from a scar-faced Philadelphia gangster (Ed Harris) with a grudge. Cronenberg’s most universally-acclaimed film received Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay (Josh Olson) and Best Supporting Actor (William Hurt). SUNDAY, APRIL 27 – 8:20 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30 – 6:30 PM
Eastern Promises
Canada/Great Britain 2007. Dir: David Cronenberg. 100 min. 35mm
David Cronenberg’s extraordinary follow-up and companion piece to 2005’s much-acclaimed A History of Violence is another dark, disturbing, and complex tale of the ties that bind and brutalize. Naomi Watts plays Anna, a London midwife innocently drawn into a demimonde of ethnic Russian mobsters after a young prostitute dies in childbirth. Viggo Mortensen, in an Oscar-nominated performance, is thuggish Nikolai, a mobster’s driver who, for morally-ambiguous reasons, wants to protect Anna. Armin Mueller-Stahl is a Russian godfather; Vincent Cassel is his mess of a son. The eruptions of unsettling Cronenbergian violence include, notoriously, a ballsy bathhouse brawl – “one of the most electrifying fight scenes in modern movie history” (Toronto I.F.F.). MONDAY, APRIL 28 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30 – 8:25 PM
A Dangerous Method Canada/Germany/Great Britain 2011. Dir: David Cronenberg. 99 min. DCP
David Cronenberg’s methods have always been dangerous – and highly provocative, and more than a little concerned with sexuality, the body, and the eruption of the repressed. How fitting, then, that he should turn his distinctive attention to an historical subject central to modern thought and Cronenberg’s pet themes: the story of Freud, Jung, and the birth of psychoanalysis. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his play The Talking Cure, and set on the eve of WWI, A Dangerous Method casts Viggo Mortensen (in his third-consecutive Cronenberg film) as Freud; Michael Fassbender as his disciple Jung, and Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, the sexually-alluring hysteric who brings them into conflict. FRIDAY, MAY 2 – 6:30 PM
Cosmopolis
Canada/France 2012. Dir: David Cronenberg. 109 min. DCP
David Cronenberg’s high-style, highconcept adaptation of novelist Don DeLillo’s apocalyptic satire features Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson as young New York billionaire Eric Packer, whose life of One Percent privilege may be entering meltdown. Packer insists on being driven across Manhattan for a haircut despite the gridlock caused by a presidential visit and an explosion of anti-capitalist protests. As his stretch-limo inches through traffic, Packer has a series of encounters within its outlandishly luxurious backseat, headed to a rendezvous with his fate. Juliette Binoche makes a provocative appearance. “Diamondhard and dazzlingly brilliant, Cosmopolis plays like a deeply perverse, darkly comic successor to Videodrome” (Budd Wilkins, Slant). FRIDAY, MAY 2 – 8:30 PM
The Cinematheque’s 41st Annual General Meeting
Tuesday, April 1 6:00pm The Cinematheque theatre 1131 Howe Street All members are invited to attend. Please bring your valid Cinematheque membership card
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