303 East 8th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1S1 Canada
Tuesday to Saturday Noon to 5:00 pm PST
1 604 876 9343 front.bc.ca
SCrIveNer’S MoNthly
exhIbItIoN
Continuum Model Sylvain Sailly
Peter Culley oct 3 @ 8pm
Sept 13 → oct 26 opening thursday Sept 12 @ 7pm Western Front is pleased to present a solo exhibition by vancouver based artist Sylvain Sailly. Presenting an entirely new body of work, the exhibition will feature new animated works (produced while working with barry Doupé), in concert with sculptural objects, sound works and architectural interventions.
Peter Culley will be reading from Parkway, the third & final book of his hammertown trilogy & projecting images taken from the daily walks he took during the period of its composition.
SCrIveNer’S MoNthly
Moyra Davey Nov 5 @ 8pm
SCreeNING
Continuum Model —Sylvain Sailly
Dim Cinema: Calculated Movements
Moyra Davey will present and discuss her film les Goddesses (2011) on tuesday November 5th at 8pm.
Sept 16 @ 7:30pm
Continuum Model is accompanied by a Dim Cinema screening of computer graphics in film and video, programmed by Sylvain Sailly.
Above Sylvain Sailly “Fracture (DFN)”, 2013. Digital animation still. Image Courtesy of the Artist
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Admi nistrative Of f i c e 200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 tel 604.688.8202 • fax 604.688.8204 Email: info@theCinematheque.ca Web: theCinematheque.ca Staff Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Amber Orchard Communications Manager: steve chow Education Manager: Liz Schulze Operations & Marketing: Kate Ladyshewsky Venue Operations Manager: Heather Johnston Assistant Theatre Managers: Shaun Inouye, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Jackie Hoffart, Amanda Thomson, Ben Redhead Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Amanda Thomson, Stuart Carl, Ron Lacheur, Stephanie Patterson Board o f DIRECTO RS President: Mark Ostry Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Secretary: Mark Tomek Treasurer: Wynford Owen Members: Jim Bindon, Elizabeth Collyer, Kim Guise, Moshe Mastai Volu nte e rs Theatre Volunteers: Pouya Alagheband, Mark Beley, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nadia Chiu, Andrew Clark, Rob Danielson, Steve Devereux, Bill Dovhey, Ryan Ermacora, Toni-Lynn Frederick, Kevin Frew, Shokei Green, Joe Haigh, Andrew Hallman, Jeanne Jabbour, Annie Jensen, Jessica Johnson, Savannah Kemp, Beng Khoo, Narada Kiondo, Michael Kling, Ray Lai, Shannon Lentz, Claudette Lovencin, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Taylor Gray Moore, Cat Moore, Linton Murphy, Danuta Musial, Julia Patey, Micha Pringle, Kailash Ragupathy, Chahram Riazi, RJ Rudd, Hisayo Saito, Paloma Salas, Anthony Santiago, Paula Schneider, Paige Smith, Derek Thomas, Stephen Tweedale, Diane Wood. Distribution: Harry Wong, Scott Babakaiff, Michael Demers, Martin Lohmann, Hazel Ackner, John William, Lynn Martin, Horacio Bach, Miriam Spinner, Jeff Halladay, Allan Kollins, Shane Bourdage, Kevin Kling
Experience Essential Cinema
contents
SEPTEMBER+ OCTOBER 2013
The Cinematheque Program Guide, v37.1
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FRAMES OF MIND
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DIM CINEMA
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VISIBLE VERSE 2013 FESTIVAL
In Our Name Tyrannosaur
Calculated Movements Reconnaissance: Exploring French Territory in Recent Artist Film and Video
La signora di tutti Presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery
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Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips, Zac Cocciolo
Mariza and the Story of Fado Presented with Chan Centre Connects Series
Hail the New Puritan
Education: Zac Cocciolo, Michael van den Bos
Presented with Wrong Wave 2013
And a special thanks to all our spares! THE CINEMAT H E QUE Program G u i d e Art Direction + Graphic Design: steve chow Program Notes: Jim Sinclair Advertising: Kate Ladyshewsky Proofreading: Amber Orchard
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The Cinematheqe is a not-for-profit arts society. We rely on financial support from public and private sources. Donations are gratefully accepted — a tax receipt will be issued for all donations of $30 or more. To make a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202. The Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies:
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
TELUS SUMMER VISIONS Gala Screenings & Awards
Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 10,00015,000. Printed by Van Press Printers. ADVERTISIN G To advertise in this Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please call 604.688.8202.
CINEMA SUNDAY
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BLUE, WHITE, AND RED: The Three Colours Trilogy
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Now Playing Calendar
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Nostalghia L’Avventura
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Wings of Desire Orphée Nosferatu
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GIRL MEETS BOY: THE ECSTATIC CINEMA OF LEOS CARAX
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Les amours imaginaires: Xavier Dolan x3
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Casting By Radioman
Cover: illustration by Juliette Binoche, Les amants du Pont-Neuf
A M o n thl y Me n t a l H e a lth F i l m Se r i e s 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.
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Series directed by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Programmed by Caroline Coutts, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.
In Our Name
Great Britain 2010. Director: Brian Welsh Cast: Joanne Froggatt, Mel Raido, Chloe Jayne Wilkinson, Andrew Knott, Janine Leigh
A stellar performance from Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey) anchors In Our Name, the first British film to deal with the issue of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the perspective of a female soldier. Froggatt plays Suzy, a young private in the British Army recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and struggling to readapt to civilian life in small-town England. Nine-year-old daughter Cass (Chloe Jayne Wilkinson), angry at her mother’s prolonged absence, won’t even speak to her; and volatile husband Mark (Mel Raido), also a solider, seems to think that all problems can be solved in the bedroom. Troubled by flashbacks and haunted by the responsibility she feels for the death of an Iraqi girl the same age as her daughter, Suzy becomes increasingly unhinged. Refusing any help for fear it might endanger a promised promotion, and now convinced that her daughter is in imminent danger, Suzy’s war of the mind threatens to overwhelm them all. Best Feature, Montreal World Film Festival. Most Promising Newcomer (Froggatt), British Independent Film Awards. “Anchored by Froggatt’s powerful performance, this is stark social realism steeped in honesty and humanity” (Tom Dawson, TotalFilm.com). Colour, HDCAM. 90 mins.
Post-screening discussion with Marvin Westwood, PhD, Professor, Department of Counselling Psychology and Special Education, UBC. Dr. Westwood runs the Veterans Transition Program at UBC, a group-based therapeutic program (the only one of its kind in Canada) that assists former members of the Canadian military in their transition back to civilian life. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Wednesday, September 18 – 7:30 pm
Tyrannosaur Great Britain 2011. Director: Paddy Considine Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan, Ned Dennehy, Sally Carman
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In his first feature as a writer-director, British actor Paddy Considine plumbs the depths of human fallibility (not to mention his own straitened childhood on a Midlands council estate) in an auspicious debut that references the “kitchen-sink” realism of directors such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. Set in gritty blue-collar Leeds, Tyrannosaur stars Scottish actor Peter Mullan as Joseph, an unemployed, hard-drinking widower whose inchoate rage leads him to commit acts of unspeakable violence. One afternoon, on the run from a fight, Joseph ducks into the closest refuge — an empty thrift shop — where he meets Hannah (Olivia Colman) a gentle Christian woman who offers to pray for him. Convinced she is nothing but a smug middle-class do-gooder, Joseph angrily rebuffs her, yet finds himself drawn back to her shop the next day. A tentative friendship develops, one that is challenged when Joseph learns the truth about Hannah’s relationship with her abusive husband James (Eddie Marsan). From this least likely of places, a story of grace and possible redemption gradually emerges. “A visceral, considered dissection of abuse and rage ... The performances of Mullan, Colman, and Marsan are excellent and create a compelling human drama” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). Colour, HDCAM. 92 mins.
Post-screening discussion with Joanne Baker, PhD, Manager of Special Programs and Projects at the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia. Dr. Baker has worked for anti-violence organizations in the U.K., Australia, and Canada and as a social policy and social work academic at three Australian universities. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Co-sponsored by the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia (EVA BC), a charitable, non-profit organization that provides services to over 200 funded anti-violence programs across the province. Wednesday, October 16 – 7:30 pm
Warning: Contains scenes that may be upsetting to sensitive viewers. L ib ertad
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FRAM E SOFMIN D . C A 4 L ib ertad
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C I N E M A
$38.99 Paper 378 pages 1 b/w illus. 978-1-55458-843-5 Environmental Humanities series
DIM presents moving-image art in dialogue with cinema. Programmed by Amy Kazymerchyk, Aaron Peck, Michèle Smith, and Sarah Todd. DIMCINEMA.CA
Avatar and Nature Spirituality Bron Taylor, editor “ If … a film is not only what happens between the dimming and brightening of theatre lights, if it is also what happens in our discussions about it, then this collection brilliantly takes the measure of the conversations surrounding the highest-grossing blockbuster of all time.” – Joni Adamson
calculated movements Programmed by Sylvain Sailly and Sarah Todd “Calculated Movements” presents a broad range of short films and videos that trace the development of computer graphics within moving images. Presented parallel to “Continuum Model,” Sylvain Sailly’s solo exhibition at the Western Front, this program brings together advertising, historical film, internet art, and single channel video, offering an intuitive account of digital sensibilities and cinema. “Calculated Movements” takes Larry Cuba’s 1985 abstract animated video of the same name as a point of departure, positioning the act of calculation as an essential and elemental process inherent to the production of computer graphics. Here artists, filmmakers, and designers are implicated in the unrelenting needs of technology as innovators, technicians, and often reluctant and sceptical participants in the processes of industrial research and development. From Tony Conrad’s Cycles of 3s and 7s (1976), which he describes as “a story: about numbers, the kind machines should like to hear and tell, if they liked,” to Sara Ludy’s laptop-based online dérives in Rooms (2012), “Calculated Movements” is concerned with investigating the craft of digital image-making across industrial and independent modes of production in an effort to better understand the conditions of our contemporary digital environment. Loie Fuller - Danse serpentine | Lumiere Brothers/France 1896. 3 mins. (excerpt) Cycles of 3s and 7s | Tony Conrad/USA 1976. 12 mins. Vinyl Silk | Abel & Associates/USA 1976. 1 min. Symphonie Diagonale | Viking Eggeling/Sweden 1924. 7 mins. Form Phases II | Robert Breer/USA 1953. 4 mins. Not Fiction | Elizabeth Vander Zaag/Canada 1975. 4 mins. Calculated Movements | Larry Cuba/USA 1985. 6 mins. 1-2-3-4 | Steina Vasulka/USA 1974. 8 mins. Rooms | Sara Ludy/Canada 2012. 4 mins. Le chant du styrène | Alain Resnais/France 1958. 13 mins. Mechanical Principles | Ralph Steiner/USA 1930. 5 mins. (excerpt) Digit Porn | Elizabeth Vander Zaag/Canada 1977. 2 mins. Green Giant | Abel & Associates/USA 1979. 1 mins. Spheres | Norman McLaren, René Jodoin/Canada 1969. 3 mins. MATRIX III | John Whitney/USA 1972. 11 mins. Total running time: approx. 85 mins. Sylvain Sailly is a French artist currently residing in Vancouver. He has been exhibiting his animations, drawings, and installations recently at Mains d’Œuvres, Paris; Today Art Museum, Beijing; the Jakarta Biennale XIII; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver. Sailly’s practice poetically explores contemporary information systems through the intersection of technology and sculpture. His work investigates industrial modes of production, bringing form to otherwise intangible socio-economic realities. Presented in collaboration with the Western Front.
reconnaissance exploring french territory in recent artist film and video
$48.99 Paper 432 pages 8 b/w illus. 978-1-55458-905-0 Environmental Humanities series
Programmed by Michèle Smith
Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature Adrian J. Ivakhiv
A falcon equipped with a tiny camera hovers over the desert like a living drone. Auguries are taken from the flight of starlings above the roofs of the Vatican. At ground level, a magician-mime uses conjuring tricks to interpret abstract art, shepherds watch over Glenn Gould practising a Chopin étude, and a prisoner secretly records his daily life on a smuggled phone in exchange for short video clips of the world outside. This month we’re mapping the conceptual terrain crossed by French artists in the past decade, from art and aesthetics to politics, philosophy, race, and citizenship. An irresistible cinematic amuse-bouche and digéstif will be served by Laure Prouvost, whose recent video installation Wantee, about the artistic friendship between her late (entirely fictional) grandfather and the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, earned her a nomination for this year’s Turner Prize — winner to be announced in early December (Go Laure!). Owt | Laure Prouvost/Great Britain 2007. 3 mins. Abstract Telling | Olivier Dollinger/France 2010. 16 mins. Le Berger | Benoît Maire/France 2011. 15 mins. Temps Mort | Mohamed Bourouissa/ France 2009. 18 mins. Les Oiseaux | Laurent Grasso/ France 2008. 9 mins. Pruitt-Igoe Falls | Cyprien Gaillard/France 2009. 7 mins. A Study of the Nature of Things | Laurent Montaron/ France 2011. 12 mins. On Air | Laurent Grasso/ France 2009. 9 mins. Wantee | Laure Prouvost/Great Britain 2013. 15 mins. Total running time: approx. 103 mins. Monday, October 21 – 7:30 pm
This book presents an ecophilosophy of cinema: an account of the moving image in relation to the lived ecologies—the material, social, and perceptual relations—within which movies are produced, consumed, and incorporated into cultural life.
$85.00 Hardcover 342 pages 6 b/w illus. 978-1-55458-914-2
The Memory Effect: The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film Russell J.A. Kilbourn and Eleanor Ty, editors In this collection of essays on the status of memory—individual and collective, cultural and transcultural—in contemporary literature, film, and other visual media, contributors look at memory’s representation, adaptation, translation, and appropriation, as well as its mediation and remediation. WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS
Monday, September 23 – 7:30 pm
Available from your favourite bookseller or call 1-800-565-9523 (UTP Distribution) www.wlupress.wlu.ca facebook.com/wlupress | twitter.com/wlupress
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Curated & Hosted by Heather Haley The Cinematheque presents
Visible Verse, The Cinematheque’s annual festival of video poetry, is back! Vancouver poet, author, musician, and media artist Heather Haley curates and hosts our celebration of this hybrid creative form, which integrates verse with mediaart visuals produced by a camera or a computer. The 2013 festival will be selected from more than 150 entries received from artists around the world. As well, we are happy to host Colorado poet and filmmaker R.W. Perkins, who will give an artist’s talk on video poetry and filmmaking. Video poetry and poetry film festivals and sites continue to pop up all over the world; The Cinematheque’s Visible Verse Festival is proud to maintain its position as North America’s sustaining venue for artistically significant video poetry. As founder of both the original Vancouver Videopoem Festival and Visible Verse, Heather Haley has provided a platform for the genre since 1999, and has also vigorously contributed to the theoretical knowledge of the form. Ms. Haley was honoured for her work with a 2012 Pandora’s Literary Award.
On Stage
Literary Movement
Heather Haley is a Vancouver poet, author, musician, and artist who pushes boundaries by creating across disciplines, genres, and media. She is author of the poetry collections Sideways (2003) and Three Blocks West of Wonderland (2009); director of the video poems Dying for the Pleasure (2003), Purple Lipstick (2006), Bushwhack (2010), and Whore in the Eddy (2012); and as a musical artist has released a CD of spoken-word songs, Princess Nut (2008). Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, her video poems screened at many international film festivals, and she has performed her poetry and music around the world.
A discussion with R.W. Perkins on the process of creating videopoems and the integration of modern filmmaking techniques. Q&A to follow R.W. Perkins is a poet and filmmaker from Fort Collins, Colorado. His work has been published in the Atticus Review, Moving Poems, The Denver Egotist, The Connotation Press, and The Huffington Post Denver. Perkins’s work has been featured at film festivals all over the world, including an 18-state U.S. tour with the New Belgium Brewery’s Clips of Faith Beer & Film Tour in 2012 and at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, Germany. Perkins is also the creator and director of The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival, Colorado’s first poetry film festival, which held its inaugural event in May of this year. For more information on Perkins and his work, visit www.rw-perkins.com.
On Screen
Visible Verse 2013 Festival Visit thecinematheque.ca for the complete line-up of films screening in the festival. Full details will be posted closer to the date. Saturday, October 12 – 7:00 pm
Saturday, October 12 – 4:00 pm Free Admission to this afternoon event
Mark Lewis – Offsite
Free Admission
October 17-March 30
presents
Imported 35mm Print!
La signora di tutti (Everybody’s Woman)
Introduction & Artist’s Talk by
Mark Lewis
On the occasion of his exhibition at Offsite, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s outdoor public art space, film-based media artist Mark Lewis has selected a film that is influential to his practice and his thinking around cinema: Max Ophüls’s 1934 film La signora di tutti. Before the screening the artist will discuss his practice and introduce the film.
Italy 1934. Director: Max Ophüls Cast: Isa Miranda, Memo Benassi, Tatiana Pavlova, Friedrich Benfer, Franco Coop
“If the cinema had produced no other artists except Ophüls and Renoir,” America critic Andrew Sarris once wrote, “it would still be an art form of profundity and splendour.” La signora di tutti (Everybody’s Woman) — rarely available, and screening here in a 35mm print imported from Europe — was the only Italian film made by the peripatetic German-born director Max Ophüls (La Ronde, The Earrings of Madame de…, Lola Montès), a supreme master of mobile camera and opulent mise-en-scène. Many rank it among his best and most beautiful works. La signora di tutti explores the tragic fate of Gaby Doriot (Isa Miranda), a famous film star and European adventuress beset by romantic entanglements — men can’t stop falling in love with her. Female sexuality, the oppression of women, doomed romance — all were hallmark themes of Ophüls’s sublime films. With its elegant tracking shots and a playful use of mise-en-scène, La signora di tutti is also a clear example of Ophüls’s obsession with the cinema as a machine. “A masterpiece ... The intoxicating tracking shots, the long takes, the heavily-charged décor, the evocative use of music, the musical quality of the editing — characteristics of the director’s later, better-known films — are already in force here” (Film Comment). B&W, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 97 mins. Tuesday, October 15 – 7:00 pm
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The films of Mark Lewis captivate viewers using the formalist language of cinema to explore experience. The Offsite exhibition features a selection of works in which the artist uses a poetic view of everyday situations and non-narrative, slow-motion images that unfold slowly on a screening surface to focus on foreign urban environments. The modes of pictorial choreography used in the work bring the emphasis to the movement of the camera rather than the subject matter of the films. The Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite outdoor exhibition space is located on West Georgia Street between Thurlow and Bute Streets.
www.vanartgallery.bc.ca Born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1958, Mark Lewis lives and works primarily in the United Kingdom. He began his career as a photographer, but his interest turned to cinema in the mid-1990s. He has participated in solo exhibitions throughout Europe and Canada and in 2009 he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. Lewis currently teaches at Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and is also cofounder and co-editor of Afterall, a publication and research organization located at Saint Martins.
The Chan Centre Connects Series and The Cinematheque present
Mariza and the Story of Fado Great Britain 2006. Director: Simon Broughton With: Mariza
Photo: Isabel Pinto
This special screening of Mariza and the Story of Fado is organized in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of Mariza in concert on Sunday, October 27, at 7:00 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.
www.chancentre.com
Captivating and internationally-acclaimed PortugueseMozambican singer Mariza stars in this compelling documentary film that traces the history of fado back to its origins in the streets of Lisbon during the early 19th century. Often referred to as the “Portuguese Blues,” this beautiful and evocative traditional music conveys the poetry of love through song rich with sorrow and longing. Mariza and the Story of Fado features performances by Mariza both in traditional concert halls and informal Lisbon clubs, archival footage of Amália Rodrigues and other fado performers, interviews with historians, and the first broadcast of fado on TV. 58 mins. Thursday, October 17 – 7:00 pm
Wrong Wave 2013: Revenge of the New Puritan October 24-27, 2013 various venues
Curated by Sydney Hermant
Image: video still, Charles Atlas, Hail the New Puritan (1985-86), courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York - www.eai.org
Wrong Wave 2013: Revenge of the New Puritan and The Cinematheque present
Hail the New Puritan Great Britain 1985-86. Director: Charles Atlas With: Michael Clark, Gaby Agis, Leslie Bryant, Matthew Hawkins, Julie Hood, Ellen van Schuylenburch.
Hail the New Puritan is video artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas’s 1985-86 fictionalized documentary of British dancer/choreographer Michael Clark as he prepares for his punk ballet production Hail the New Puritan. “Exuberant and witty ... Atlas’s fictive portrait of the charismatic choreographer serves as a vivid invocation of the studied decadence of the 1980s post-punk London subculture. Contriving a faux cinéma-vérité format in which to stage his stylized fiction, Atlas seamlessly integrates Clark’s extraordinary dance performances into the docu-narrative flow” (Electronic Arts Intermix). Featuring music by The Fall, with dance production design by Leigh Bowery, this landmark film features modern dance, music, and art sharing the stage in a jarring mix of post-punk and New Romanticism. Colour, DVD. 85 mins.
The Cinematheque’s screening of Hail the New Puritan kicks off Wrong Wave 2013: Revenge of the New Puritan, the third annual Wrong Wave Music Festival since its revival in 2011. Wrong Wave 2013 looks to Wrong Wave’s post-punk and New Romantic roots with new works by Jen Weih, Yuriko Iga, music and film by Kensington Gore, White Poppy, Orphans and Dogs, and others. Wrong Wave 2013 is brought to you by Unit/Pitt, curated by Sydney Hermant, with co-producers The Western Front and co-presenters The Cinematheque and the SFU Vancity Office for Community Engagement.
Wrong Wave had its original incarnation in February 1984, with two full nights of music and performance by 11 multidisciplinary sound and theatrical groups, nine from Vancouver and one each from Seattle and Bellingham, none of them recipients of government funding. Presented to sell-out crowds, the festival was another example of the Unit/Pitt’s efforts to bring new talent to the public at large. In 2011, Unit/Pitt’s director Keith Higgins revived the festival with Wrong Wave 2: Art rock is dead, long live art rock (curated by the Music Appreciation Society), followed by Wrong Wave 2012: Art Rock Believes in Reincarnation (curated by the Research and Presentation Collective).
For festival events, updates, and ticket info, please visit www.unitpitt.ca.
Thursday, October 24 – 7:00 pm
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Many of us share childhood movie memories of a moment when the safe world of a family film transformed and started to seem dangerous! An image or a soundscape created an impressionistic, hazy sense of a character or a scene viscerally reminded us that life has its perils. These moments and memories have inspired Cinema Sunday 2013: Family Frights. We’ve assembled a year of family films sure to resurrect those childhood movie moments that haunt you still — films that walk the line between the happy universe of the kids’ movie and the nerve-wracking memories of childhood nightmares past. In the manner of Old World fairy tales, these stories prepare children for the hazardous transition into adolescence and the grown-up world. They’re not for the faintest of heart, but these creative, masterful stories give new meaning to the idea of the family film and family fun. We invite you and your kids to enjoy the artistry and magic of the some of the edgiest children’s films of the past.
USA 1953. Director: Roy Rowland Cast: Tommy Rettig, Hans Conried, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, John Heasley
September’s Family Frights showcases the fantastically bizarre musical family adventure 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, the only feature penned by famed children’s author and illustrator Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess (The Cat in the Hat). Ten-year old Bart (Lassie’s Tommy Rettig) dreads lessons with his strict piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried), and wishes he could just play outside or hang around with the friendly neighbourhood plumber (Peter Lind Hayes). One day at the piano, Bart drifts into a long dream - and finds himself prisoner inside a surreal musical institute, with villainous Dr. T in charge! Learning that he and 499 other little boys will be forced to practice day and night for a special performance on a mile-long piano, Bart takes flight, encountering strange and frightening obstacles along the way, including roller-skating twins conjoined by a beard, and a multi-level dungeon for non-piano players. 5,000 Fingers explores themes central to all the wondrous movies in our Family Frights by transforming the safe and familiar into the strange and unknown. “The film is offered as Bart’s nightmare, a pure distillation of a ten-year-old boy’s grasp of his world and his sense of the degree to which adults occupy and control it” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). It’s also characteristically Suess-like — that is, zany family fun! Colour, 35mm. 89 mins.
Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher, critic, and children’s movie enthusiast Michael van den Bos.
CHILDREN
&YOUTHS (under 18) Cinematheque Membership not required
USA 1948. Director: Charles Barton Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange
Cinema Sunday gets spooky in October as the celebrated comic duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello faces off against Universal Studio’s most famous classic monsters in the 1948 comedy-horror hit Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. While making a special delivery to the “House of Horrors” wax museum, Wilbur (Costello) opens a crate and comes face-to-face with Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi)! The Count has risen with a plan — to re-animate Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) — but he needs a “simple, pliable” human brain — and hapless Wilbur has the perfect noggin for the job. Wilbur’s partner Chick (Abbott) doesn’t believe a word of the tale, and, despite warnings from the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), the pair soon slips into monstrous danger. Beyond the endless goofs and laughs, the situations are spooky, and the presence of Universal’s classic horror stars adds enough thrills and chills to make Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein a fun and frightening Halloween adventure for all ages. B&W, 35mm. 115 mins.
Sunday, September 15 – 1:00 pm
Sunday, October 20 – 1:00 pm
GALA SCREENINGS & AWARDS
The TELUS Summer Visions Film Institute is an awardwinning digital filmmaking program for youth ages 1119 offered by The Cinematheque in partnership with Dream Big Productions at Vancouver’s Templeton Secondary. This summer, more than 120 young filmmakers from across the Lower Mainland worked in production teams during one- and two-week sessions to write, shoot, and edit their own short videos. Always entertaining, frequently inspiring, and often provocative, these videos will premiere at our 14th annual TELUS Summer Visions Gala. Each evening concludes with an awards ceremony and reception to celebrate this next generation of emerging filmmakers in B.C.
Tuesday, September 24 – 7:00 pm Wednesday, September 25 – 7:00 pm
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Blue, White, and Red
The Three Colours Trilogy
The late Polish master Krzysztof Kies´lowski (19411996) had a lengthy and prolific career in his native Poland before emerging as one of the most fêted international directors of the last decade of the 20th century. The celebrated trilogy of Blue, White, and Red stands (with The Decalogue, his remarkable 10-part opus) as one of Kies´lowski’s peak achievements; fate decreed — or perhaps it was chance (both were always important elements in his work) — that it would be his final testament. Based on the three colours of the French flag and their symbolic representation of the French Revolution’s ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, Blue, White, and Red are moody, mysterious, strangely metaphysical films of mesmerizing beauty and great emotional power. All three became huge international sensations. Kies´lowski, at the height of his worldwide success, died unexpectedly in 1996, at the age of 54, following cardiac surgery.
“Kies´lowski’s masterwork.” Richard Armstrong, The Rough Guide to Film
Three Colours: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) France/Poland/Switzerland 1994. Director: Krzysztof Kies´ lowski Cast: Irène Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frédérique Feder, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Samuel Lebihan
Three Colours: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu) France/Poland/Switzerland 1993. Director: Krzysztof Kies´ lowski Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Régent, Hélène Vincent, Florence Pernel, Emmanuelle Riva
Blue is the first film in the much-admired Kies´lowski trilogy based on the French tricolour flag, and on the French Revolution’s three tenets of Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité. An enigmatic, metaphysical study of liberty, it stars Juliette Binoche as a young woman whose world comes crashing down around her when her composer husband and small daughter are killed in a car accident. In the aftermath of the tragedy, she seizes the opportunity to create a new existence for herself, “free” from the past and its relationships, but her old life proves impossible to simply deny. “Blue is a film of mood and atmosphere, shadow and light, music and gesture. Like all great cinema, it offers up revelations, re-arranging the way we see things. Utilizing the pictorial brilliance of Slawomir Idziak, cinematographer for A Short Film About Killing and The Double Life of Véronique, Blue dazzles with its succinct emotional power, insights, and technical genius — culminating, in the final moments, in an overwhelming spiritual climax” (Piers Handling, Toronto I.F.F.). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 98 mins. Monday, September 9 – 6:30 pm Thursday, September 12 – 8:25 pm
Three Colours: White (Trois couleurs: Blanc) France/Poland/Switzerland 1993. Director: Krzysztof Kies´ lowski Cast: Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr, Juliette Binoche
The second film in Kies´lowski’s “Three Colours Trilogy,” the entertaining White is a black comedy based on the tricolour tenet of egalité. Polish actor Zbigniew Zamachowski gives a wonderfully Chaplinesque performance as Karol, a bumbling hairdresser left penniless on the streets of Paris after he is divorced by his beautiful French wife (Julie Delpy). Kies´lowski’s unpredictable rags-to-riches tale has Karol returning, in rather ignominious fashion, to his native Poland, where an unexpected adeptness at the prevailing cutthroat capitalism leads to a fantastic scheme to get his exwife’s attention. “A droll black comedy that takes a scalpel to the impoverished ethics of the new moneyobsessed Poland, and to the selfish impulses tied up with our desires for a balanced sexual relationship, White is at times reminiscent of the satire of the last episode of The Decalogue [which also featured actors Zamachowski and Jerzy Stuhr playing brothers]. It’s often cruel, of course, and cool as an ice-pick, but it’s still endowed with enough unsentimental humanity to end with a touching, lyrical admission of the power of love. Essential viewing” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in Polish and French with English subtitles. 92 mins.
Red, the exquisite conclusion of the “Three Colours Trilogy,” proved to be Kies´lowski’s final film; the director died suddenly in March 1996, at the age of 54, of a heart attack shortly after undergoing bypass surgery. “The last and best film in the trilogy ... here all the skills of the director, Krzysztof Kies´lowski, are brought into melancholy play. Blind chance or benign fate (according to your point of view) brings Valentine (Irène Jacob), a young model living alone in Geneva, into contact with a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with a predilection for eavesdropping on telephone conversations. (It’s the most authentic route he can find into the mysteries of human behaviour.) In time Valentine’s repulsion shades into curiosity, and from there into affection. And the movie itself shades from coldness and contrivance into a story as touching and mysterious as anything Kies´lowski has ever made. Trintignant’s performance as the misanthropic old man is a portrait of heartbreak, all the more convincing for his character’s last-ditch efforts to mend other hearts. At the end, Kies´lowski, too, assumes the mantle of Prospero, magically (and rather absurdly) assembling the trilogy’s main players, and it’s hard to begrudge the master his final flourish” (Anthony Lane, The New Yorker). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. Wednesday, September 11 – 8:20 pm Thursday, September 12 – 6:30 pm
Monday, September 9 – 8:30 pm Wednesday, September 11 – 6:30 pm
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The Film Arts Program: Jan - Aug 2014 www.langara.bc.ca/filmarts
Screenwriting
Write here. SUNDAY
29
6
7:00pm
14th Annual TELUS Summer Visions GAla Screenings and Awards (p 8)
7
4
THURSDAY
24
1
7:00pm
vIff.org
14th Annual TELUS Summer Visions GAla Screenings and Awards (p 8)
In Our Name (p 4)
7:30pm
Frames of Mind
2
25
18
11
I Killed My Mother (p 17)
8:30pm
8
9
10
3
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (p 15)
9:00pm Heartbeats (p 17)
6:30pm
LEOS CARAX
Mauvais sang (p 15)
8:30pm
Boy Meets Girl (p 14)
6:30pm
LEOS CARAX
Pola X (p 15)
26
19 18
12
5
FRIDAY
6:30pm
XAVIER DOLAN
Three Colours: Blue (p 9)
8:25pm
Three Colours: Red (p 9)
6:30pm
KIES´LOWSKI
vancouver INTERNATIONAL film festival
30 OCTOBER
Calculated Movements (p 5)
Holy Motors (p 15)
9:00pm
DIM CINEMA
23
Pola X (p 15)
7:30pm
Heartbeats (p 17)
Boy Meets Girl (p 14)
6:30pm
8:20pm
8:50pm
LEOS CARAX
I Killed My Mother (p 17)
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (p 15)
6:30pm
Three Colours: Red (p 9)
Three Colours: White (p 9)
16
8:20pm
6:30pm
KIES´LOWSKI
8:30pm
XAVIER DOLAN
22
15
vlaff.org
Three Colours: White (p 9)
6:30pm
LEOS CARAX
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (p 8)
1:00pm
Cinema Sunday
3
WEDNESDAY
vancouver latin american film festival
TUESDAY
Three Colours: Blue (p 9)
6:30pm
9
8
KIES´LOWSKI
2
1
MONDAY
11
4
27
20
13
6
Visible Verse 2013 Festival
Holy Motors (p 15)
9:00pm
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (p 15)
6:30pm
LEOS CARAX
Boy Meets Girl (p 14)
8:50pm
Mauvais sang (p 15)
6:30pm
LEOS CARAX
SATURDAY
NOW PLAYING
SEPTEMBER
SEPT+OCT
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28
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7
1131 HOWE STREET
th eCinemat hequ e.ca
UP D ATES & A D V ANCE T I C K ETS
Cinema Sunday
27
Orphée (p 13)
Radioman (p 18)
8:50pm
6:30pm
8:15pm
29
15
Wings of Desire (p 13)
7:00pm
La signora di tutti (p 6)
Vancouver Art GallerY Presents
6:30pm
Casting By (p 18)
28
Reconnaissance: Exploring French Territory in Recent Artist Film and Video (p 5)
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
21
14
8:40pm
8:20pm
Orphée (p 13)
6:30pm
Nosferatu (p 13)
7:00pm
Hail the New Puritan (p 7)
Wrong Wave 2013 PRESENTS
7:00pm
Mariza and the Story of Fado (p 7)
Chan Centre Connects PRESENTS
31
24
17
Andrew Pyper
George Packer
Abdellah Taïa
Tomson Highway
Michel Tremblay
Anne Michaels
26
19
Wings of Desire (p 13)
6:30pm
4:30pm
Casting By (p 18)
3:00pm
Radioman (p 18)
9:10pm
Nostalghia (p 12)
L’Avventura (p 12)
6:30pm
4:00pm
Nostalghia (p 12)
On Screen (p 6)
The Cinematheque’s theatre can be rented on Tuesday nights and during the day seven days a week.
writersfest.bc.ca
Tickets on sale September 9 vancouvertix.com 604 629 8849
More info: theCinematheque.ca/venue 604.688.8202 • theatre@theCinematheque.ca
Six days of engaging discussions, interviews, readings and performances on Granville Island.
OCT 22 –27, 2013
Sahar Delijani
Margaret Atwood
25
18
host your event here!
8:15pm
Radioman (p 18)
6:30pm
Casting By (p 18)
8:50pm
L’Avventura (p 12)
6:30pm
Nostalghia (p 12)
Great stories live on stage.
November 22-December 5
30
23
16
Wings of Desire (p 13)
6:30pm
Orphée (p 13)
9:10pm
Nostalghia (p 12)
6:30pm
L’Avventura (p 12)
Tyrannosaur (p 4)
7:30pm
Frames of Mind
European Union Film Festival
8:00pm
Casting By (p 18)
6:30pm
Radioman (p 18)
7:00pm
Nostalghia (p 12)
4:00pm
L’Avventura (p 12)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (p 8)
1:00pm
20
Laurence Anyways (p 17)
Laurence Anyways (p 17)
6:30pm
XAVIER DOLAN
6:30pm
XAVIER DOLAN
13
7:00pm
On Stage (p 6)
4:00pm
e x p e r i e n c e
e s s e n t i a l
“Transcendental ... Tarkovsky was able to depict soul-searching better than perhaps any other director ... His films remain so important today because of their ineffable spirituality, which has all but vanished in today’s technological world.”
“A masterpiece ... Images of surpassing beauty ... Visions, memories, riddles, curious encounters, and a slow crescendo of spiritual longing ... And then there’s one of cinema’s great endings.”
Kalvin Henely, Slant
Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
Time Out New York
“No one makes movies like this anymore.” Joshua Rothkopf,
Tarkovsky
Nostalghia
“Extraordinary ... There had been nothing like it before ... There’s something great here, a new mood, a new emotional rhythm.” Pauline Kael “Why don’t we have movies like L’Avventura anymore? Because we don’t ask the same kinds of questions anymore.” Roger Ebert
“Changed my perception of cinema and the world around me, and made both seem limitless ... L’Avventura gave me one of the most profound shocks I have ever had at the movies.” Martin Scorsese
Antonioni
30 th Anniversary! New 35mm Print!
Italy/USSR 1983. Director: Andrei Tarkovsky Cast: Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano, Erland Josephson, Patrizia Terreno, Delia Boccardo
A true gift to cinephiles: a new 35mm print of an unsurpassably gorgeous film by one of cinema’s greatest visionaries! We’re pleased to present the Canadian premiere of this deluxe 30th-anniversary re-release of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia. Shot in Tuscany, and co-written with prolific Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra (who also co-wrote Antonioni’s L’Avventura), Nostalghia was Tarkovsky’s first film made outside the USSR — he had finally tired of Soviet censorship — and proved to be his penultimate work. (1986’s The Sacrifice, made in Sweden, would be his last film.) While in Italy researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who died there, a Soviet musicologist has a sexually-charged but unconsummated relationship with his beautiful translator, and meets a mysterious madman (played by Bergman regular and Sacrifice star Erland Josephson) who is convinced that the world is about to end. Nostalghia is suffused with an almost overwhelming sense of longing and homesickness, and is composed of some of Tarkovsky’s most astonishing imagery. It shared, with Robert Bresson’s L’Argent, a special Grand Prize for Creative Cinema at Cannes in 1983 (given that year in lieu of the best director award). “Extraordinary ... Nostalghia is not so much a movie as a place to inhabit for two hours ... A world of fantastic textures, sumptuously muted colours, and terrarium-like humidity. This is a film that turns the spectacle of an ancient, leaky cellar into an image as memorable as any this century” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). Colour and B&W, 35mm, in Italian and Russian with English subtitles. 125 mins. Friday, October 18 – 6:30 pm Saturday, October 19 – 4:00 pm & 9:10 pm Sunday, October 20 – 7:00 pm Wednesday, October 23 – 9:10 pm
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c i n e m a
L’Avventura
New, Restored 35mm Print!
(The Adventure) Italy 1960. Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Cast: Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, Renzo Ricci
Heck, it’s only the film that forever changed our notions of what movies can accomplish! One of modern cinema’s trailblazing works, and often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, L’Avventura was initially booed but ultimately fêted at Cannes, winning a Special Jury Prize for its beauty and “for seeking to create a new film language.” Antonioni’s “adventure,” co-written with Tonino Guerra, has a yachting party of wealthy Italians landing on a deserted volcanic island, where Anna (Lea Massari) disappears after quarrelling with her fiancé Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti). Sandro and Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) then spend the rest of the film looking for her — and falling for each other. Antonioni departed from conventional plot, narrative, and resolution in favour of a new, reflective aesthetic that uses cinematic time and space to impart psychology and metaphysics. L’Avventura demonstrates his great mastery of composition, long-take sequence shots, and real time; his linkage of his characters to architecture and landscape; his unusual use of absence and irresolution. All is put to startling, unsettling effect: L’Avventura expressed “the great emotional sickness” of the modern era — spiritual malaise; a society adrift; men and women unable to communicate — like no film had before it. Its influence has been such that what seemed elusive and incomprehensible in 1960 can seem overloaded with meaning today! “There is about it the unmistakable exhilaration of watching a major artist reaching the height of his powers” (Penelope Houston). B&W, 35mm, in Italian with English subtitles. 143 mins. A Janus Films release. Restoration negative courtesy of Cinématographique Lyre, Mediaset, Compass Film, and Cineteca Nazionale – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Friday, October 18 – 8:50 pm Saturday, October 19 – 6:30 pm Sunday, October 20 – 4:00 pm
e x p e r i e n c e
e s s e n t i a l
c i n e m a
WENDERS
Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) West Germany/France 1987. Director: Wim Wenders Cast: Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander, Solveig Dommartin, Curt Bois, Peter Falk
Angels perched atop the buildings of Berlin listen in to the innermost thoughts of mere mortals in Wim Wenders’s lovely, lyrical Wings of Desire, a soaring high-point of the famed German director’s cinema, and a highly moving, melancholic elegy to a Berlin still divided. Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are two brooding, compassionate angels who eavesdrop on the secret pains and fears of ordinary peopled going about their daily business in the city. When Damiel falls for a beautiful trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), he decides to renounce his immortality to return to earth as a human, hoping to attain a love that will transcend life in the heavens. The stunning cinematography – crisp black-and-white, lurid Technicolor – is by French great Henri Alekan, whose many credits include Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Inspired by the poems of Rilke, and dedicated to Ozu, Truffaut, and “other fallen angels,” Wings of Desire earned Wenders Best Director honours at Cannes in 1987. “Remarkable ... A film about the Fall and the Wall, it’s full of astonishingly hypnotic images ... Few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). B&W and colour, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 127 mins. Saturday, October 26 – 6:30 pm Tuesday, October 29 – 6:30 pm Wednesday, October 30 – 8:40 pm
COCTEAU
Orphée (Orpheus) France 1950. Director: Jean Cocteau Cast: Jean Marais, Marie Déa, Maria Casarès, François Périer, Edouard Dermithe
Poet, playwright, and novelist Jean Cocteau’s astonishing re-working of the Orpheus myth is widely considered his finest achievement in cinema – a perfect marriage between Greek legend and the director’s own personal mythology. Jean Marais (Cocteau’s favourite actor) plays the hero, a young poet who frequents the sidewalk cafes of a Paris only recently freed from the dark cloud of Occupation. Marie Déa is Eurydice, Orphée’s pregnant wife. Maria Casarès is the Princess of Death, a mysterious figure with whom Orphée falls in love. After the Princess has the neglected Eurydice killed, Orphée – grief-stricken, but still obsessed with the Princess – passes through the looking glass in an attempt to rescue his wife from the Underworld. Cocteau renders Orphée’s journey into the unknown with a bag of cinematic tricks worthy of Georges Méliès. Effectively contrasting this fantastic realm with Orphée’s mundane domestic existence, he suggests that the plight of his poet-protagonist – and of all creative artists – is to be forever caught between the real world and the world of the imagination. “Orphée is one of the French cinema’s supreme masterpieces, magnificently acted and photographed, and expressing the very quintessence of Cocteau’s vision and genius” (Tom Milne). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 112 mins.
MURNAU
Nosferatu Germany 1922. Director: F.W. Murnau Cast: Max Schreck, Gustav Von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach
One of the greatest of all horror films, and one of the key works of German Expressionist cinema, Murnau’s silentera vampire classic was the first — and is still frequently cited as the best — screen version of Bram Stoker’s oft-adapted Dracula. Featuring the spine-tingling Max Schreck in the title role, Nosferatu combines expressive camera angles, lighting, editing, composition, and trick effects with an extraordinary naturalism to create an utterly convincing “symphony of horror” (the film’s original subtitle), with every frame permeated by “a chilly draft from doomsday” (Béla Balázs). American composer Aaron Copland’s first ballet, Grohg, was inspired by Murnau’s masterpiece, while Werner Herzog’s 1979 film Nosferatu was both a remake and an hommage. (There’s also the eccentric Shadow of the Vampire, released in 2000 and starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, in which Schreck is as an actual vampire recruited by Murnau for the part!) Murnau’s original is “superbly loathsome ... [with] more spectral atmosphere, more ingenuity, and more imaginative ghoulish ghastliness than any of its successors” (Pauline Kael). This gorgeous 2007 digital restoration was derived from a pristine first-generation print from 1922 and is backed by an orchestral recording of Hans Erdmann’s original 1922 score. B&W with colour tinting, DVD, silent with musical score and English intertitles. 94 mins. Thursday, October 31 – 6:30 pm
Tuesday, October 29 – 8:50 pm Wednesday, October 30 – 6:30 pm Thursday, October 31 – 8:20 pm
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“French cinema’s reigning mad romantic.” New York Times
An audacious, ambitious, romantic, poetic, and dazzlingly pyrotechnic filmmaker whose films are noted for their flamboyant cinephilia and extravagant explorations of amour fou, the French filmmaker Leos Carax has directed but five (astonishing) feature films in an unusual directorial career that now spans three decades — a slender output that has made each new work by this controversial, reclusive artist an event! (Carax, now 52, directed three features in his twenties — and only two since.)
Carax was born Alex Christophe Dupont in Paris in 1960 to a French father an American mother. “Leos Carax,” his nom-de-cinéma, is an anagram of Alex, his first name, and Oscar, as in Academy Award. (It has been suggested that “Leos Carax” can also be read as “Le Oscar à X,” French for “The Oscar goes to X”’!) A Cahiers du Cinéma critic-turned-cineaste in the fashion of the French New Wave filmmakers he so admires, Carax first came to wide attention at 24, when Boy Meets Girl (1984), his highly- impressive debut feature, premiered at Cannes. A moody black-and-white tale of amour fou set in a nouvellevague-stylized Paris, the film’s rapturous reception saw Carax hailed as a prodigy, an enfant terrible, a new cinematic Rimbaud — maybe even the new Godard!
“Arguably the most talented French filmmaker of his generation ... His ability to create rich and dizzy images, and to explore the far reaches of amour fou, remains excitingly intact.”
Both Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais sang (1986), its follow-up (and the first of Carax’s two films with the young Juliette Binoche, with whom he was romantically involved for several years), saw Carax identified with a flashy, highlyvisual French “New New Wave” — the socalled cinéma du look — that included JeanJacques Beineix (Diva, Betty Blue) and Luc Robert Horton, filmreference.com Besson (Subway, La femme Nikita). For many, Carax was always the most talented and significant filmmaker of that cohort, even as he proved the least prolific and least commercially successful. The young Carax’s work was also compared to that of another contemporary wunderkind, the delirious Dane Lars von Trier, for its “determination to restore the purity and beauty of silent film to the debased cinema of today” (James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario).
Carax’s utterly spectacular third feature, Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), was a film maudit (literally “accursed film”) of legendary — and, in France, unprecedented —proportions. Its budget spiralled wildly out of control (the production included as a full-sized replica, built at great expense in southern France, of Paris’s famous Pont-Neuf bridge), it was beset by numerous production delays and funding problems, and it was a major disaster at the box office. The film has been called the “Carax is a great self-fabulist, Heaven’s Gate of French Cinema; it was something like a mixture of certainly a folie de grandeur that effectively Tarantino and Godard of the derailed Carax’s career.
’60s, thoroughly caught up in the melodrama of being a Great Moviemaker ... His best work is burning with a feeling for tragedy and apocalypse.”
It would be another eight years before Carax directed another feature: 1999’s Pola X, a strange, often shocking adaptation and update of Herman Melville’s strange 1852 novel Pierre, or The Ambiguities. Pola X was David Thomson, Carax’s first feature without his regular onNew Biographical Dictionary of Film screen alter-ego Denis Lavant, the distinctivelooking actor who stands in relation to Carax’s cinema as Jean-Pierre Léaud does to François Truffaut’s. Lavant has starred in four of Carax’s five features to date, always as a character named either Alex or Oscar! Thirteen more years would pass before Holy Motors (2012), Carax’s exuberant fifth feature, a sensational return to form and fame that wowed critics and became a surprise hit on the art-house circuit (it was the first of Carax’s films to be commercially distributed in Canada). Leos Carax, we can only hope, is back!
Boy Meets Girl France 1984. Director: Leos Carax Cast: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Carroll Brooks, Elie Poicard, Maïté Nahyr
Boy Meets Girl, Leos Carax’s first feature, was rapturously received: it was widely hailed as one of the most impressive and original debuts in French cinema since Breathless, and raised hopes that a new Godard had emerged! A moody, black-andwhite meander through nocturnal Paris, the film mixes punk sensibility and nouvelle vague aesthetics into a droll tale of doomed love. The startling Denis Lavant — Carax’s regular on-screen alter ego — is alienated Alex, the Boy. Mireille Perrier is suicidal model Mireille, the Girl. The sumptuous cinematography is by Jean-Yves Escoffier, who would also shoot Carax’s Mauvais sang and Les amants du PontNeuf. Like most of Carax’s subsequent films, Boy Meets Girl was never released in Canada; we presented its Vancouver premiere, in an imported print, back in 1993. “The film captures an inextricable entangling of Eros and Thanatos that has haunted all of Carax’s feature films to date ... [Escoffier’s] luminous black-and-white images match a soundtrack alternately erudite and rebellious: David Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg, the Dead Kennedys” (Harvard Film Archive). “The alternately surreal and expressionist imagery is reminiscent of silent cinema at its most elegant” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). “Meteoric ... Ecstatic cinema and ecstatic living join together in a pressurized promise of glory and misery” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 100 mins. Friday, September 13 – 6:30 pm Saturday, September 14 – 8:50 pm Sunday, September 15 – 8:50 pm
The Cinematheque is grateful to the Institut Français, the Embassy of France in Ottawa, and the Consulates General of France in Toronto and Vancouver for their assistance in making this rare retrospective of Leos Carax’s work — the first ever presented in Vancouver — possible.
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Mauvais sang
Pola X
(Bad Blood aka The Night Is Young)
France/Switzerland/Germany/Japan 1999. Director: Leos Carax Cast: Guillaume Depardieu, Katerina Golubeva, Catherine Deneuve, Delphine Chuillot, Petruta Catana
France 1986. Director: Leos Carax Cast: Michel Piccoli, Juliette Binoche, Denis Lavant, Hans Meyer, Julie Delpy
Leos Carax described his eagerly-anticipated follow-up to Boy Meets Girl as “a film which loves cinema but which does not love the cinema of today.” Part love story and part thriller, Mauvais Sang (named after the poem by Rimbaud) is a dazzling, ultra-stylish hommage to silent cinema and to early Godard. Something of an Alphaville for the AIDS era, it is set in a Paris of the near future, and concerns a plot to steal the only antidote to STBO, a deadly virus spread by “making love to those you don’t love.” Denis Lavant is Alex, a footloose petty thief drawn into the caper by Marc (veteran actor Michel Piccoli), an old gangster friend of his dead father. The great Juliette Binoche, in one of her early lead roles (she was 22 when she gave the César Award-nominated performance here), is Anna, the beautiful young lover of Marc who becomes the object of Alex’s desire. Much celebrated is the exhilarating sequence in which a smitten Alex prances and dances down the street, tracked by Carax’s sprinting camera, to the strains of David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” “Visually exuberant, Mauvais Sang blows most contemporary movies from any culture out of the water” (Katherine Dieckmann, Village Voice). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 116 mins. Friday, September 13 – 8:30 pm Saturday, September 14 – 6:30 pm
Herman Melville, Catherine Deneuve, music legend Scott Walker — they’re all part of the mad mix in the intoxicating, incendiary, often sexually-explicit Pola X, Leos Carax’s fourth feature (and his first since Les amants du Pont-Neuf eight years before). The film is adapted from Pierre, or The Ambiguities, the mysterious, muchmaligned 1852 novel that was Melville’s follow-up to Moby Dick. Contemporary critics suggested Melville had gone crazy; Carax’s ravishing, insanely romantic, rock-operatic update (featuring an original score by Walker) is set in present-day Normandy, where Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), born to wealth and a hit novelist to boot, resides with his mother Marie (Deneuve) and prepares to wed golden-girl Lucie (Delphine Chuillot). After meeting a strange, spectral young woman (Katerina Golubeva) who may be his half-sister, Pierre throws everything away for a love dreamy, dark, and doomed. Carax’s cryptic title, Pola X, is an acronym of the Melville novel’s French title (Pierre ou les ambiguïtés), plus the Roman numeral X, marking Carax’s tenth draft of the screenplay. A harbinger of the New French Extremism associated with transgressive filmmakers Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Bruno Dumont, and others, Pola X deeply divided critics — and still does! One prominent fan was Roger Ebert, who wrote, “I have an affection for raving lunatics and am grateful for films that break free of the dismal bonds of formula to cartwheel into overwrought passionate excess.” Which is Carax and his cinema in a nutshell! Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 134 mins. Friday, September 20 – 6:30 pm Sunday, September 22 – 6:30 pm
Vancouver Premiere
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge)
France 1991. Director: Leos Carax Cast: Juliette Binoche, Denis Lavant, Daniel Buain, Klaus-Michael Grüber, Marion Stalens
Truly spectacular! Leos Carax’s third feature, made in the midst of France’s bicentennial celebrations, is a vivid, visionary, pyrotechnic valentine to Paris. It’s also one of French cinema’s most notorious boondoggles — a massively overbudget, much-delayed, mega-money-losing folie de grandeur the likes of which France had never seen before! (Few people in our part of the world got to see at all; it has never before screened in Vancouver.) Denis Lavant, Carax’s on-screen alter ego, and Juliette Binoche, in her second Carax film, are young vagrants who meet on Paris’s famed Pont-Neuf bridge. Alex (the name of Lavant’s character in each of Carax’s first three films) is a fire-eating street performer and addict. Michèle is a heartbroken painter who is slowly going blind. Carax’s dazzling, delirious chronicle of their amour fou is exhilarating filmmaking. Much of it was shot an on a life-size replica of the Pont-Neuf and its environs, built at great expense in southern France. Expect fireworks — both literal and cinematic! “Amazing ... Must be seen on the big screen to savour all its mad Caraxian extravagance ... Drawing on everything from the romantic fatalism of forties French cinema to the gaudy excess of Hollywood musicals, Les amants tops each spectacular set-piece with an even showier one” (TIFF Cinematheque). “A movie that explodes in your head for days after you see it” (Robert Horton, Film Comment). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 125 mins.
Holy Motors France/Germany 2012. Director: Leos Carax Cast: Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Elise Lhomeau
Voted the best film of 2012 in polls conducted by Film Comment and indiewire — and ranking third in the Village Voice and fourth in Sight and Sound — Holy Motors marked the ecstatic return, after a long absence, of Leos Carax. The dazzling French director and notorious provocateur hadn’t directed a feature since 1999’s Pola X, and had released but one short (Merde, part of the 2008 anthology film Tokyo!) in the interim. “Carax has roared back to form, and maybe even surpassed himself. This full-throttle cinematic fever dream stars Carax’s longtime muse Denis Lavant as 11 different characters — or maybe one character with 11 different identities — who crisscross Paris in a white stretch limousine over the course of one long, Borgesian, Lynchian day. There’s no mistaking the true location of the movie, however, for anywhere but Carax’s own feverish, movie-mad imagination ... In fact, one could argue that the ‘story’ of Holy Motors is that of cinema itself, as the form of the film hopscotches wildly from fairy tale to thriller to musical to melodrama ... around the streets of a nighttime Paris that has scarcely seemed more alive with narrative possibilities” (Scott Foundas, Film Comment). “A gift for moviegoers ... Exhilarating ... It’s cinema reloaded” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 115 mins. Saturday, September 21 – 9:00 pm Sunday, September 22 – 9:00 pm
Sunday, September 15 – 6:30 pm Friday, September 20 – 9:00 pm Saturday, September 21 – 6:30 pm
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“I have just seen Carax’s Holy Motors, which I thought was genius. I loved it so much I almost shat my pants out of jealousy.” Xavier Dolan
“Xavier Dolan may not be the new Jean-Luc Godard, but he could be the new Leos Carax. And Laurence Anyways could be his Les amants du Pont-Neuf ... The Québécois enfant terrible dazzlingly demonstrates his prodigious talent as a metteur-en-scène and director of actors.” theartsdesk.com
Les amours IMAGINAIRES:
Xavier
Dolan x3 In a programming cycle in which we celebrate, with a major retrospective, the dazzling talents of French provocateur and former enfant terrible Leos Carax, we thought it might be a fitting time to also spotlight the wondrous films of Québécois wunderkind Xavier Dolan, whose own precocious career and rapid international ascendancy have many parallels with Carax’s thirty years before. Both Dolan and Carax were darlings of Cannes at a tender age; both have an artistic sensibility that is extravagantly romantic and melodramatic and informed by a surpassing, self-conscious love of movies, in particular the meta-cinematic stylizations of the classic French New Wave; both have an especial love of (and saw their early films compared to) the films of Jean-Luc Godard. (In Dolan’s case, here and elsewhere, the comparisons have been to Carax’s films as well.) Dolan, now 24, has been admirably, preternaturally prolific: his fourth feature, Tom at the Farm (Tom à la ferme), is slated to debut at Venice and elsewhere on the festival circuit this fall. We revisit here his first three features, all of them among the most discussed and most honoured Canadian films of the last five years.
Photo: Robbie Fimmano
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Laurence Anyways
I Killed My Mother
Heartbeats
Canada 2009. Director: Xavier Dolan Cast: Anne Dorval, Xavier Dolan, Suzanne Clément, François Arnaud, Patricia Tulasne
Canada/France 2010. Director: Xavier Dolan Cast: Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider, Xavier Dolan, Anne Dorval, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé
The precocious, provocative first film of 20-yearold enfant terrible Xavier Dolan — doing triplethreat duty as writer, director, and star — was one of the most talked-about debuts in recent cinema. I Killed My Mother won a host of national and international honours, including three prizes at Cannes and the Best Canadian Feature award at Vancouver, and was Canada’s official foreignlanguage submission to the Oscars. Montrealer Dolan wrote this stylish, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale when he was 16, so it’s no surprise he was still wearing his influences — Godard, Rimbaud, Wong Kar-Wai — on his sleeve. Dolan plays Hubert, an angry, angsty, just-out-of-the-closet gay teenager locked in perpetual take-no-prisoners battle with his difficult mom (Anne Dorval). Hubert despises everything about his mother, not least her kitschy, lower-middle-class taste. She, for her part, is manipulative and occasionally monstrous — every inch her son’s match in vicious, volcanic confrontation. Their toxic relationship comes to a head when mom decides to exile Hubert to the Our Lady of Sorrows boarding school. “Riveting ... A film rather like its young protagonist — erratic yet sensitive, screaming trouble and talent at high decibels” (Rick Groen, Globe and Mail). “Sit up and take note of this poignant, scorching, utterly hilarious film: Dolan is a force to be reckoned with (Vancouver I.F.F.). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 96 mins.
After taking Cannes by storm with his celebrated debut I Killed My Mother, wunderkind director Xavier Dolan roared right back the next year with this sumptuous, buoyant, sophomore-jinxavoiding follow-up, selected for the festival’s Un Certain Regard section. “Heartbeats is a stylish tale of unrequited love and beautiful cheekbones. Dolan plays the role of Francis, a sweet young gay man whose best friend is the bookish, acerbic Marie (Monia Chokri), who devotes herself to dressing like Audrey Hepburn. They both meet the Adonis-like Nicholas (Niels Schneider) at a party and share a crush on the young man. Nicholas, charismatic and gracious, keeps them both in a tizzy ... Fauxdocumentary interviews with various young folk reveal other romantic miscues. Filled with slomo, fantasy scenes and lushly saturated images ... Heartbeats is a prettily-wrapped if modest cadeau from a 22-year-old writer-director who continues to expand his palette as a filmmaker” (Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail). “A kind of postadolescent Jules and Jim ... The new movie confirms Dolan as a wildly talented, carelessly extravagant filmmaker nakedly in thrall to idols like Wong Kar-Wai, Godard, Truffaut, Bertolucci, and Almodóvar ... The movie is a gush of gorgeous images and music” (Stephen Holden, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 101 mins.
All three of youthful director Xavier Dolan’s super-stylish features to date — I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, and Laurence Anyways — debuted at Cannes and were voted to Canada’s Top Ten. Laurence, Dolan’s most monumental undertaking yet, is a striking love story charting the decade-long efforts of a Montreal couple — Laurence, a writer and teacher, and girlfriend Frédérique, a film producer — to maintain their relationship after Laurence announces he is to undergo a sex change. “Shot in a kind of hyperflorid style to capture the vicissitudes of an untenable love affair, the epic romance Laurence Anyways — winner of the Best Canadian Feature prize at TIFF in 2012 — feels like Wuthering Heights relocated to the streets of Montreal, with a transgender Heathcliff and a punky Catherine ... Driven by gutsy performances, particularly by leads Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clément, Laurence Anyways, Dolan’s most stylish and mature work to date, may be the most audacious and searing meditation on love and sexuality ever made in this country” (Steve Gravestock, Toronto I.F.F.). “An astonishing achievement for a filmmaker who is only 24. Yet the recklessness of youth may be the movie’s salvation: where an older director might have muted some of the more operatic scenes, fearing accusations of affectation, Dolan fearlessly lets fly” (Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 161 mins.
Monday, September 16 – 8:20 pm Thursday, September 19 – 6:30 pm
Sunday, October 13 – 6:30 pm Monday, October 14 – 6:30 pm
(J’ai tué ma mère)
Monday, September 16 – 6:30 pm Thursday, September 19 – 8:30 pm
(Les amours imaginaires)
Canada/France 2012. Director: Xavier Dolan Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Suzanne Clément, Nathalie Baye, Monia Chokri, Sophie Faucher
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about casting
The art of movie casting is in the spotlight in two irresistible — and star-studded — documentaries! Casting By, directed by Tom Donahue, argues that casting is the most underappreciated and unfairly unrecognized of the collaborative arts that make up filmmaking. (The credit “casting by” is only main-title credit in movies that does not have its own Oscar category). Radioman, directed by Mary Kerr, a former casting assistant, isn’t about casting per se, but its eccentric subject — an indigent, sometimes homeless New York man whose obsession with location film sets and film stars has led to “friendships” with celebrities and cameos in more than 100 movies and TV shows — makes it a perfect companion piece to Casting By.
(and casting about)
Casting By USA 2012. Director: Tom Donahue With: Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Al Pacino, Bette Midler
“Highly entertaining ... An illuminating close-up on a vital clog in the moviemaking machine.” David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
“An engrossing documentary ... A cinephile’s treat.” Beth Hanna, Indiewire
Did you know that “casting by” is the only opening, main-title credit in movie credits that doesn’t have its own Academy Award category? Casting By, an irresistible documentary, makes the case for casting as an Oscar-worthy art — and for casting directors as the unsung heroes of Hollywood. “A fast-paced journey through the last half century of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Pioneers like Marion Dougherty [the film’s principal subject] and Lynn Stalmaster were iconoclasts whose exquisite taste and gut instincts helped to put the final nail in the coffin of the old studio system and usher in the New Hollywood with movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, and Bonnie and Clyde ... They broke away from the traditional typecasting of Hollywood and brought a new kind of leading man and leading lady to the screen. Filmmaker Tom Donahue combines personal narratives from countless actors and directors (including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Lane, Jon Voight, Bette Midler, and John Travolta) with extensive archival material to reconstruct the untold tale of Hollywood’s most invisible and unheralded profession. Through an investigation of the Hollywood power dynamics that continue to belittle their work, this film seeks to grant casting directors the credit they have long been denied” (Films We Like). Colour, HDCAM, 89 mins.
Friday, October 25 – 6:30 pm Saturday, October 26 – 4:30 pm Sunday, October 27 – 8:00 pm Monday, October 28 – 6:30 pm
Vancouver Premiere
Great Britain 2012. Director: Mary Kerr With: Craig Castaldo, George Clooney, Robin Williams, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Jude Law
“British filmmaker Mary Kerr has given us a shrewd insight into the sentimentality and superstition of the film business, and the brittle world of movie status and prestige. The subject is a gentle New York vagrant named Craig Castaldo, bearded and wild-haired, with matted and dirty clothes but intelligent and articulate. He is nicknamed ‘Radioman’ on account of the radio he keeps on a string around his neck. Over the past 20 years, Radioman has become a cult figure in the New York film industry for always hanging around Manhattan film sets, and since striking up a boozy conversation with Bruce Willis on the set of The Bonfire of the Vanities, he keeps getting cast in tiny non-speaking parts, almost as a talisman. Scorsese used him quite prominently in Shutter Island, and everyone knows who he is: there are tributes from George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Robin Williams (whom Radioman rather resembles). But Kerr shows that the tolerant, affectionate indulgence of these A-listers is not infinite. James Gandolfini and Ricky Gervais are not especially enamoured of the liberties taken by this guy, and when he goes to L.A. and tries to get into Oscar parties, poor, dishevelled Radioman is given a brutal reality check about where he actually is on the food chain. A bittersweet vignette” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 75 mins.
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“A fascinating, rather discomforting documentary.” Philip French, The Observer
Friday, October 25 – 8:15 pm Saturday, October 26 – 3:00 pm Sunday, October 27 – 6:30 pm Monday, October 28 – 8:15 pm
Surrey Art Gallery Presents Sarindar Dhaliwal: Narratives from the Beyond September 21 to December 15, 2013 Figuring Ground: Sylvia Grace Borda and Jeremy Herndl September 21 to December 15, 2013 Nancy Paterson: Stock Market Skirt Continues to December 8, 2013 Join us on Saturday, September 21 6:30pm Artist’s Talk with Sarindar Dhaliwal 7:30-9:30pm Opening Reception with live music mix (formal remarks 7:45pm) 13750–88 Avenue, Surrey, BC V3W 3L1 604.501.5566 | artgallery@surrey.ca | surrey.ca/artgallery | surreytechlab.ca Black
CMYK
Admission by donation
Campy, Creepy, Captivating, Contemporary 09.10
10.22
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
THE UNINVITED
09.24
09.17
3 FILMS BY ROBERTO ROSSELLINI STARRING INGRID BERMAN
SLACKER
Available at
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