JAN+FEB2014
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303 East 8th Avenue Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1S1 Canada
Tuesday to Saturday Noon to 5:00 pm PST
EXHIBITION
1 604 876 9343 front.bc.ca
RESIDENCY
Julia Feyrer
Barry Doupé
January 17 – Feb 22 Opening January 16 at 7pm
February 10 – March 14
A solo exhibition of new work by Vancouver based artist Julia Feyrer including 16mm film, sculpture, photography and sound.
CONCERT
Music From the New Wilderness SCRIVENER’S MONTHLY
Ariana Reines
The Cultch
February 28 at 8pm
$40/$31/$18
New York poet, playwright and translator Ariana Reines reads from her most recent book of poems Mercury (2011).
Image — Julia Feyrer, “Scene of the Crime”, drawing, 2013.
February 11 – 15 at 8pm Matinee February 15 at 2pm
Tickets at thecultch.com Winner of the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award for 2014, Music From the New Wilderness is co-presented by The Cultch.
ADM IN ISTRATIVE O F F I C E 200 Howe StreetO F F I C E AD–M1131 IN ISTRATIVE Vancouver, V6Z Street 2L7 200 – 1131BCHowe telVancouver, 604.688.8202 • fax BC V6Z 2L7604.688.8204 Email: info@theCinematheque.ca tel 604.688.8202 • fax 604.688.8204 Web: theCinematheque.ca Email: info@theCinematheque.ca Web: theCinematheque.ca STAFF Executive STAFF and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Acting Managing Director: Kate Ladyshewsky Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Director: Amber Orchard (on maternity leave) Acting Managing Kate Ladyshewsky Communications Manager: chow Managing Director: Ambersteve Orchard (on maternity leave) Education Manager:Manager: Liz Schulze Communications steve chow Education Hagan EducationCoordinator: Manager: LizTyler Schulze Operations Marketing: Tyler ShaunHagan Inouye Education&Coordinator: Venue Operations Manager:Shaun Heather Johnston Operations & Marketing: Inouye Assistant Theatre Managers: Venue Operations Manager: Jelena HeatherPopovic, JohnstonBen Redhead, Katia Tynan,Theatre Jarin Schexnider Assistant Managers: Jelena Popovic, Ben Redhead, Head Reid KatiaProjectionist: Tynan, Jarin AlSchexnider Relief HeadProjectionists: Projectionist: AlAmanda Reid Thomson, Stuart Carl, Ron Lacheur, TimRelief Fernandes, CassidyAmanda Penner Thomson, Stuart Carl, Ron Lacheur, Projectionists: Tim Fernandes, Cassidy Penner BOARD OF DIRECTO RS President: Ostry RS BOARD Mark OF DIRECTO Vice-President: Kassaris President: MarkEleni Ostry Secretary: Mark Tomek Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Treasurer: Owen Secretary:Wynford Mark Tomek Members: Bindon, Devon Cross, Elizabeth Collyer, Kim Guise, Treasurer:Jim Wynford Owen Moshe MastaiJim Bindon, Devon Cross, Elizabeth Collyer, Kim Guise, Members: Moshe Mastai V O LUNTEERS Theatre Volunteers: Pouya Alagheband, Taylor Bishop, Mark Beley, V OLUNTEERS Eileen Jeremy Buhler, Nadia Chiu, TheatreBrosnan, Volunteers: Pouya Alagheband, TaylorAndrew Bishop,Clark, MarkSteve Beley, Devereux, Bill Dovhey, RyanBuhler, Ermacora, Shokei Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy NadiaKevin Chiu,Frew, Andrew Clark,Green, Steve Joe Haigh, Andrew Hallman, Annie Jensen,Kevin Jessica Johnson, Devereux, Bill Dovhey, Ryan Ermacora, Frew, ShokeiAlthea Green, Kaye, Savannah Kemp, Beng Annie Khoo, Jensen, Narada Jessica Kiondo, Michael Joe Haigh, Andrew Hallman, Johnson,Kling, Althea Ray Lai,Savannah Claudette Kemp, Lovencin, Mlcoch, KelleyKiondo, Montgomery, Kaye, BengVitKhoo, Narada MichaelTaylor Kling, Gray Cat Moore, Linton Murphy, Danuta Musial, Micha Pringle, RayMoore, Lai, Claudette Lovencin, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Taylor Chahram Riazi,CatSara Saghaei, Paula Schneider, Paige Gray Moore, Moore, LintonPaloma Murphy,Salas, Danuta Musial, Micha Pringle, Smith, DerekRiazi, Thomas, Stephen Tweedale, DianePaula Wood.Schneider, Paige Chahram Sara Saghaei, Paloma Salas, Smith, Derek Thomas, Stephen Tweedale, Diane Wood. And a special thanks to all our spares! And a special thanks to all our spares! Distribution: Harry Wong, Michael Demers, Martin Lohmann, Hazel Ackner, John William, Lynn Martin, Horacio Bach,Martin MiriamLohmann, Spinner, Jeff Distribution: Harry Wong, Michael Demers, Hazel Halladay, AllanWilliam, Kollins,Lynn Shane Bourdage, Dehzad Ackner, John Martin, HoracioKevin Bach,Kling, MiriamNina Spinner, Jeff Halladay, Allan Kollins, Shane Bourdage, Kevin Kling, Nina Dehzad Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips Education: Michael van den Bos Education: Michael van den Bos And a special thanks to all our spares! And a special thanks to all our spares! T HE C IN E MATH E Q U E PR O G RAM G U I D E + Graphic ArtT HDirection E C IN E MATH E Q UDesign: E PR O steve G RAMchow GUIDE Program Notes:+Jim Sinclair Art Direction Graphic Design: steve chow Advertising: ShaunJimInouye Program Notes: Sinclair Proofreading: Advertising: Kate ShaunLadyshewsky Inouye Proofreading: Kate Ladyshewsky Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 10,00015,000. Printed Van aPress Published six by times year Printers. with a bi-monthly circulation of 10,00015,000. Printed by Van Press Printers. ADVE RTISIN G ToADVE advertise in this RTISIN G Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, 604.688.8202. To advertiseplease in thiscall Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please call 604.688.8202.
The Cinematheqe is a not-for-profit arts society. We rely on financial support from publicis and private sources. Donations are ongratefully The Cinematheqe a not-for-profit arts society. We rely financial accepted receipt be issued for all donations $30 or support — froma tax public andwill private sources. Donations areofgratefully more. To make information, please call ouror accepted — aataxdonation receiptorwillforbemore issued for all donations of $30 administration at 604.688.8202. more. To makeoffice a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202. The Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of The Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of
EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA
CONTENTS CONTENTS JANUARY+ JANUARY+2014 FEBRUARY FEBRUARY2014
THE CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM GUIDE, V37.3 THE CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM GUIDE, V37.3
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CINEMA SUNDAY CINEMA SUNDAY Singin’ in the Rain
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FRAMES OF MIND FRAMES MIND 15 ReasonsOF to Live
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SUBCULTURAL REVOLUTION: REVOLUTION: ASUBCULTURAL TRIBUTE TO ZEV ASHER A TRIBUTE TO ZEV ASHER ZOMBIE SWIM MEET AND OTHER ZOMBIE SWIM MEET AND OTHER AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RAXLENALIA: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RAXLENALIA: FILM WORKS BY RICK RAXLEN FILM WORKS BY RICK RAXLEN DIM CINEMA DIM CINEMA Interludes: Aurélien Froment
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Singin’ in theBang RainBang Chitty Chitty Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
15 Reasons to Live Hidden Pictures: A Personal Journey Hidden Pictures: Personal Journey into Global MentalAHealth into Global Mental Health
Interludes: Aurélien Froment Synthetic Properties: Helen Marten Synthetic Properties: Helen Marten and Zoe Tissandier and Zoe Tissandier
CLAIRE DENIS X3 CLAIRE DENIS X3 CANADA’S TOP TEN CANADA’S TOP TEN VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR THE VISITOR THE VISITOR NOW PLAYING NOW PLAYING CALENDAR CALENDAR FAMILY TIES: THE SUBLIME CINEMA FAMILY TIES: OZU THE SUBLIME CINEMA OF YASUJIRO OF YASUJIRO OZU INDEPENDENT OF REALITY: INDEPENDENT OF REALITY: THE FILMS OF JAN NEˇ MEC THE FILMS OF JAN NEˇ MEC JEAN-LUC CINÉMA GODARD JEAN-LUC CINÉMA GODARD
The Cinematheque’s Education Department presents
“What a Glorious Feeling!” “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 all-singing, 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.
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Children & Youths (under 18)
9
$
Adults
Cinematheque Membership Not Required Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher, critic, and movie musical maven Michael van den Bos.
“There is no movie musical more fun than Singin’ in the Rain, and few that remain as fresh over the years.” ROGER EBERT
USA 1952. Directors: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell
What a glorious feeling indeed! The kickoff film to our yearlong celebration of song ‘n dance is the unimpeachable musical masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain, “just about the best Hollywood musical of all time!” (Pauline Kael). A comic satire on the real-life plight faced by movie studios during the transition to sound, Singin’ stars Gene Kelly as the dashing silent film star Don Lockwood, one half of the famous onscreen romantic duo Lockwood and Lamont. He can barely tolerate his vapid, downright despicable other half, Lena Lamont (Jean Hagan). When the studio decides to transform their latest swashbuckling production into a “talkie,” microphone mishaps, out-of-synch audio, and Lena’s nails-to-a-chalkboard voice risk jeopardizing the picture and their careers to boot. That is until Don, his best bud Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor), and blossoming love interest and aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) decide to make the film into a musical, and dub Kathy’s voice for Lena’s. A perfect mélange of songs from music maven Arthur Freed’s MGM catalogue — including the irresistibly hummable title track — Singin’ in the Rain remains one of the most beloved movie musicals, and a jubilant reminder that, as our rainy city well knows, “Come rain, come shine, come snow, come sleet, the show MUST go on!” Colour, DCP. 103 mins.
“One of the shiny glories of the American musical.” DAVE KEHR, CHICAGO READER
After the screening, youths between the ages of 10 and 19 are invited to stay for a FREE Film Criticism workshop, taught by Vancouver Film School instructor and award-winning director Jessica Bradford. During this interactive workshop, participants will sharpen their critical eye, gain an appreciation for different genres, and learn what makes a film great! Those who attend the workshop can also join the 2014 Youth Jury for the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth, taking place April 4-11, 2014. For details, go to www.r2rfestival.org. SUNDAY, JANUARY 19 – 1:00 PM
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
“The most phantasmagorical musical entertainment contains about the best in the history of everything!” An adaptation of two-hour children’s movie James Bond-writer Ian Fleming’s children’s novel you could hope for, with a of the same name, and scripted for the screen marvellous magical auto by storytelling wizard Roald Dahl, this high-flying musical adventure touches down in England circa and lots of adventure.” 1910, where hapless inventor and widowed father ROGER EBERT Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) struggles to make ends meet selling his oddball gizmos. Spurred on by his children and the lovely Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes) to rebuild the broken-down race car in the garage, Caractacus earns enough in tips during a show-stopping song-and-dance routine to transform the heap into the fantastical “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” — a very special automobile that, it transpires the nefarious Baron Bomburst (Gert Fröbe) from the kingdom of Vulgaria has set his sights on. Filled with fun, sing-along songs by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Bedknobs and Broomsticks) and a spirit-lifting performance by Van Dyke, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a truly scrumptious musical treat for the whole family. Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 144 mins. Great Britain 1968. Director: Ken Hughes Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Fröbe, Benny Hill
After the screening, join The Cinematheque’s Education Department for your chance to ride — virtually, at least — in the Potts’ fine four-fendered friend, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 1:00 PM
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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
Series directed by DR. HARRY KARLINSKY,
Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting
Director of Public Education, Department of
“Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video
Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings,
Programmed by CAROLINE COUTTS, film curator,
accompanied by presentations and audience discussions,
filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind”
are held on the third Wednesday of each month.
since its inception in September 2002.
15 Reasons to Live Canada 2013. Director: Alan Zweig
Having weathered a lengthy episode of depression, Toronto author Ray Robertson was inspired “to write a book that explored two of life’s most central and enduring questions: What makes human beings happy? What makes life worth living?” Why Not? 15 Reasons to Live is Robertson’s personal and highly-relatable memoir of what brought meaning and happiness to his life: Love, Solitude, Critical Mind, Art, Individuality, Home, Work, Humour, Friendship, Intoxication, Praise, Meaning, The Body, Duty, and Death. A chance meeting between Robertson and his neighbour, acclaimed documentary maker Alan Zweig (Vinyl, A Hard Name, When Jews Were Funny), set the stage for a cinematic interpretation. Using the same chapter headings as Robertson, but introducing his own cast of unique characters, Zweig brings each reason to life with poignancy, grace, and compassion. In his story on “Love,” a man confronts a mid-life crisis by walking around the world. In “Duty,” two couples risk their lives to rescue a humpback whale. In “Meaning,” a selfdestructive musician finds fulfillment in an urban aviary. Interspersed with these stories are two personal tales of Zweig’s own, told with effectively dramatic animation. “A heart-warming argument in favour of striving to find happiness in life” (Dave McGinn, Globe and Mail) Official selection, 2013 Hot Docs and Vancouver I.F.F. Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 83 mins. Post-screening discussion with Dr. Rene Weideman, a registered psychologist with interests in psychotherapy training and individual and group psychotherapy. Dr. Weideman is the Director of the Clinical Psychology Centre in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University and the Associate Director (Faculty Affairs) of the Psychotherapy Training Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. He also has a part-time private practice. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15 – 7:30 PM
VANCOUVER PREMIERE
Hidden Pictures: A Personal Journey into Global Mental Health USA 2013. Director: Delaney Ruston
The statistics are staggering. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 450 million people worldwide suffer from mental illness. Access to care depends on where you reside: in the developing world, fully 80% of those experiencing a severe mental disorder receive no treatment at all. Lack of funding, education, and the prevalence of stigma all contribute to this dire state of affairs — a situation compassionately explored in physician/filmmaker Delaney Ruston’s latest film, Hidden Pictures. Travelling to four continents, Ruston uncovers some unforgettable stories. In India, a family ashamed of their adult daughter’s schizophrenia keep her a virtual prisoner in their home. In South Africa, traditional beliefs in possession by evil spirits as the cause of mental illness still hold sway. In China, a family abandons their (seemingly sane) son to a mental institution for eight years against his will. In France, a man recovered from a severe depression finds it impossible to find work or acceptance. And in the United States, a man homeless for ten years receives life-changing help not from “the system,” but from a total stranger. Concluding with an exploration of how people around the globe are working towards positive change, Hidden Pictures is a wake-up call to the world. Colour, in English and multiple languages with English subtitles. 57 mins. Post screening discussion with Delaney Ruston, MD, a Seattle-based, Stanford-trained physician, documentary filmmaker, and nationally recognized mental health advocate. Her previous film, the award-winning PBS documentary Unlisted: A Story of Schizophrenia, chronicles her experience of reconnecting with her father, who has schizophrenia, after hiding from him for ten years. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19 – 7:30 PM
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a tRibutE To “He shocked audiences around the world,” read the headline last fall of a feature obituary in the Globe and Mail devoted to the Canadian documentary filmmaker and experimental musician Zev Asher, who died in his native Montreal on August 7 at the age of 50 (of complications from his treatment for leukemia). Zev was a resident of Vancouver in the 1990s and made many friends here. During that time he was also a volunteer at The Cinematheque. As a musician, Zev was known for his noise-bands Nimrod and Roughage (as well as other projects). His interest in noise music also found expression in his first featurelength documentary, What About Me: The Rise of Nihilist Spasm Band. A boisterous portrait of the pioneering noise band from London, Ontario, the film debuted at TIFF and VIFF in 2000. Zev’s other documentaries also focused on provocative underground and avant-garde artists working on the edges and extremes. He gained notoriety for his (misunderstood) second documentary feature, Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat, an account of an infamous Toronto case in which an art student and two other young men videotaped the killing of a cat, apparently as part of an “art project.” Zev’s thoughtful film was hardly an endorsement of animal cruelty, but its inclusion at TIFF in 2004 resulted in protests and death threats. (Zev would later observe, wryly, “I think harming certain animal-rights activists for the sake of art could be okay.) The Cinematheque and Zev’s friends and admirers in Vancouver pay tribute to Zev Asher with this special evening featuring three of his films. Guests in attendance! ............ SINGLE TICKET PRICE FOR THE EVENING
$11 Adults/ $9 Students & Seniors $3 Annual Membership Required
1963-2013 PROGRAM INCLUDES:
What About Me: The Rise of the Nihilist Spasm Band Canada 2000. Director Zev Asher
Zev Asher’s exuberant documentary lovingly profiles the Nihilist Spasm Band, trailblazing avant-garde noisemakers who formed in London, Ontario, in 1965, toiled for decades in obscurity, and stayed together long enough to be “rediscovered” and internationally fêted in the 1990s as the pioneers of a genre. (And they’re still together today!) 76 mins. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16 – 6:30 PM
Subcultural Revolution: Shanghai
Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat Canada 2004: Director Zev Asher
Zev Asher’s second documentary feature caused a major commotion with its title alone. The film chronicles, in complex, morally-slippery fashion, a notorious Toronto case in which three young men were criminally prosecuted for videotaping the killing of cat. The indefensible act may have been a misguided “art project” intended to protest our society’s mass slaughter of animals. Animal rights activities targeted Zev’s documentary without having seen it. “Asher’s film is likely to leave viewers eager to discuss the limits of artistic freedom and the extension of human rights to animals” (Dana Stevens, New York Times). “Plays like the punk B-side of an Errol Morris film” (Sean Farnel, Toronto I.F.F.). 78 mins. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16 – 9:30 PM
Canada 2010. Director: Zev Asher
Zev Asher’s final documentary feature focuses on Torturing Nurse, a ferocious noise- and performance-art band from Shanghai. The young musicians are part of a major underground arts scene in the Chinese city. The barrage of images in this visually arresting documentary is characteristic of Zev’s film works. 71 mins. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16 – 8:00 PM
Zombie Swim Meet and other AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
Raxlenalia: (+./ 914-5 $;
The infectious, rambunctious animated shorts of Canadian film artist Rick Raxlen often employ found materials, original illustration, multiple animation methods, structuralist techniques, Dadaist text, absurdist humour, and jazz music. Winningly, whimsically perched between animation, underground, and experimental forms, they also have about them a lovingly handcrafted feel that suggests cinematic folk-art. Raxlen has said that film should be more like jazz — more about mood, sensation, and feeling than narrative or story. He has also said that he is “happy to have discovered the lactiferous, floriferous demimonde of animation.” We think that means he is having fun. Works such as Everything Remind Me of My Dog and Zombie Swim Meet, both screening here, ensure that you will too. A native of Toronto, and formerly with the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, Raxlen has been situated for most of the last two decades on Vancouver Island. His films have been screened at festivals around the world. A showcase of his work was last presented at The Cinematheque in 2006.
Raxlen directed two features films earlier in his career, before going “underground” to become a self-described “beacon of avant-garde filmmaking in the tiny English-like village of Victoria, B.C.” It was the recent 25th anniversary of the first of his features, Horses in Winter, that provided one of the impetuses for tonight’s screenings. The highly-personal Horses will be the second program of the evening. The first will be a retrospective selection of shorts, chosen by Raxlen for this presentation, on a “personal narrative” theme. Did we mention that one of them is entitled Zombie Swim Meet? ............ SINGLE TICKET PRICE FOR THE EVENING
$11 Adults/ $9 Students & Seniors $3 Annual Membership Required
I. Shorts Program
Deadpan (2000, 8 mins.) • Autobiographical Juvenilia (1983, 7 mins.) • Leaving Montreal Behind (1992, 25 mins.) • Fish Don’t Talk (2003, 11 mins.) • Everything Reminds Me of My Dog (2012, 4 mins.) • In the New World (2009, 8 mins.) • Zombie Swim Meet (2005, 4 mins.) THURSDAY, JANUARY 30 – 7:00 PM
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IN PERSON II. 25TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING!
HORSES IN WINTER
Canada 1988. Directors: Rick Raxlen, Patrick Vallely Cast: Jacob Tierney, Rick Raxlen, Victoria Barkoff, Colin Kish, Elizabeth Bellm, Lucie Dorion
Victoria underground animator Rick Raxlen once said that he decided to “stop trying to make meaningful feature films with government help and start making meaningless short films with government help.” A sterling example of 1980s independent Canadian cinema, Raxlen’s Montrealmade Horses in Winter — named one of the best films of the 1980s by the Cinémathèque Québécoise — was one of those “meaningful” feature films. The movie is a poetic remembrance-of-things-past in which a man in the midst of painful middle-age looks back to his boyhood and a perfect summer spent at his family’s cottage in the 1950s. Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky), now one of Canada’s notable film talents as an actor and writer-director, has an early role here as nine-year-old Ben Waxman. This highly-personal film was almost a one-man Raxlen show: he produced, co-directed, wrote, co-edited, and starred as the mature Ben. Colour, 90 mins. THURSDAY, JANUARY 30 – 8:30 PM
belkin.ubc.ca
THE SPACES BETWEEN
CONTEMPORARY ART FROM HAVANA
January 10 – April 13, 2014
For complete program information, including a Film Series, Concert, Conversations and Catalogue Launch, visit belkin.ubc.ca.
FREE ADMISSION
The exhibition is curated by Antonio Eligio (Tonel) and Keith Wallace and co-produced by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, and the Bildmuseet, Umeå University, with support from The Canada Council for the Arts. Image: Juan Carlos Alom, Las plantas medicinales florecen de nuevo / Medicinal Plants Flourish Again (detail), 2011, black and white photograph, 40.0 x 40.0 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
1825 Main Mall l Vancouver BC V6T 1Z2 l 604 822 2759 l belkin.gallery@ubc.ca Open 10-5 Tue-Fri l 12-5 Sat-Sun l Closed Mondays and Holidays
EARLY MUSIC VANCOUVER PRESENTS
HEBREO Profeti della Quinta performed the music for the documentary film “Hebreo: The Search for Salomone Rossi” (Joseph Rochlitz, 2012) which was featured with great success at the 2012 Vancouver International Film Festival. Early Music Vancouver’s presentation combines a screening of this film with a live performance of music by Rossi, including Italian madrigals and Hebrew prayers:
“Il Mantovano Hebreo” PROFETI DELLA QUINTA (ISRAEL): Doron Schleifer & David Feldman cantus, Lior Leibovici & Dan Dunkelblum tenor, Elam Roten bassus, harpsichord & musical direction - with Orí Harmelin chitarrone
Sunday matinée 2 February 2014 at 3:00 pm Pre-concert chat with host Matthew White at 2:15 pm
Vancouver Playhouse Tickets & Information at Early Music Vancouver: 604 732-1610 or www.earlymusic.bc.ca
DIM presents moving-image art in dialogue with cinema. Programmed by Michèle Smith and Sarah Todd. DIMCINEMA.CA
“As ideas are the principal forms of things, according to which all is formed, so we should form in us the shadows of ideas. We form them in us, as in the revolution of wheels.” OLWEN FOUÉRÉ IN CAMILLO’S IDEA
INTERLUDES:
AURÉLIEN FROMENT AURÉLIEN FROMENT IN ATTENDANCE To launch its 2014 season, DIM Cinema is hosting an evening of videos by the French artist Aurélien Froment, in advance of his first Canadian solo exhibition. Froment often uses theatrical devices and the format of instructional films to draw in his audience as participants in these cleverly-crafted investigations into the transmission of ideas. Some of the videos take a specific object or practice as subject matter — a jellyfish, a boating knot, a yoga pose — and examine it through language, revealing the elusive relationship between images and words. Others follow the shifts of perspective witnessed by forgotten historical objects as their uses and meanings change over time from those envisioned by their designers. Still others are concerned with the mental processes involved in the construction of narrative and memory. Q & A between the artist and audience after the screening.
SYNTHETIC PROPERTIES:
Opening Speech | 2011. HD video, colour, sound. 5 mins. Fondation | 2002. HD video, colour, sound. 2 mins. The Apse and the Bell | 2005. HD video, colour, sound. 27 mins. Pulmo Marina | 2010. HD video, colour, sound. 5 mins. Fourdrinier Machine Interlude | 2010. HD video, colour, sound. 7 mins. Théâtre de poche | 2007. HD video, colour, sound. 12 mins. Camillo’s Idea | 2012. HD video, colour, sound. 25 mins. Running Time: approx. 83 mins MONDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM
Aurélien Froment (b. 1976 in Angers, France) is a visual artist based in Dublin. After graduating from École Régionale des Beaux Arts, Nantes, he worked as a part-time projectionist at MK2 Parnasse in Paris. The cinema continues to be an important space for his practice. His work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions and in screenings, most recently at the ICA in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and at the 55th Venice Biennale. Programmed by Michèle Smith, in conjunction with the exhibition Fröbel Fröbeled at Contemporary Art Gallery (January 24-March 15, 2014) and PuSh International Festival of Performing Arts (January 14-February 2, 2014).
HELEN MARTEN AND ZOE TISSANDIER “Synthetic Properties” brings together two recent films that illustrate the simultaneous banality and wonder of contemporary image- and object-making technology. Helen Marten’s Evian Disease exploits the medium of digital animation. Structured by six narrators floating through a modern apartment, the spectacularly artificial composition investigates the absurd materiality of digital artifice and the sanitized but seductive formal vocabulary of CGI animation. Zoe Tissandier’s new work In Praise of Scribes focuses a similarly meditative gaze upon an advanced 3D printing machine. An in-depth visual analysis of the 3D printing process produces an allegory around the potentiality and complexity of the endlessly reproducible object, drawing the printing process’s resultant object as both banal artifact and fetishistic talisman. Evian Disease (2012) by Helen Marten Animation by Adam Sinclair Digital animation, 29 mins. Courtesy of the artist In Praise of Scribes (2013) by Zoe Tissandier HD Video, 26 mins. Courtesy of the Artist.
Helen Marten lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Evian Disease, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Park Nights: Dust and Piranhas, Serpentine Gallery (2011); Take a stick and make it sharp, Johann König, Berlin (2011); and Wicked Patterns, T293, Naples (2010). Marten participated in the 2013 Venice Biennale. Recent group exhibitions include New pictures of common objects, MoMA PS1, New York (2012). Zoe Tissandier is an artist based between Vancouver and London, UK. Tissandier has had recent exhibitions at Exeter Phoenix (Exeter, UK), Satellite Gallery (Vancouver), and the Surrey Art Gallery (Surrey, BC). She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia MFA program. Programmed by Sarah Todd. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 7:30 PM
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CLAIRE
DENIS 35mm PRINTS
“Claire Denis is one of the most original and daring directors to emerge from France.”
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LLOYD HUGHES, THE ROUGH GUIDE TO FILM
“An important career ... Claire Denis reminds us not just of the wonder of French film, but of its sense of history.” DAVID THOMSON, THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM
“There’s no better filmmaker working in the world right now.” NICK JAMES, SIGHT AND SOUND
TROUBLE EVERY DAY France 2001. Director: Claire Denis Cast: Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle, Alex Descas, Florence Loiret Caille
NEW 35mm PRINT *
CHOCOLAT France/West Germany/Cameroon 1998. Director: Claire Denis Cast: Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, Cécile Ducasse, François Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin
Claire Denis’s evocative and intimate debut feature brought her to international attention when it premiered at Cannes in 1988. The director spent her childhood as a French colonial in West Africa, where her father was stationed. The semi-autobiographical Chocolat is structured as the memories of a woman who, as a young girl in the 1950s, lived with her family in French Cameroon. The film focuses on the relationship between 8-year-old France (Cécile Ducasse) and the family’s Cameroonian “houseboy” Protée (Isaach De Bankolé) — and on the sexual tension simmering between Protée and France’s beautiful mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi). The delicate balance of the household is upset by the arrival of a group of strangers, stranded by a nearby plane crash. The themes of this meditative, intricatelyobserved work — race, class, sex, desire, eroticism, colonialism, family, “Otherness” — have become signature Claire Denis concerns. The punning title references both skin colour and French slang for “to be cheated.” The score is by South African Abdullah Ibrahim. “One of those rare films with an entirely mature, adult sensibility; it is made with the complexity and subtlety of a great short story ... Chocolat evokes Africa better than any other film I have ever seen” (Roger Ebert). Colour, in French with English subtitles. 105 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 10 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 – 4:00 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 12 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 13 – 8:30 PM
* New 35mm print courtesy of The Film Desk
BEAU TRAVAIL
France 1999. Director: Claire Denis Cast: Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Richard Courcet, Nicolas Duvauchelle
“Prepare to be blown away” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Claire Denis’s consensus masterpiece is the haunting, hypnotic Beau Travail, a re-imagining of Melville’s Billy Budd as a tale of erotic desire, repression, and jealousy set in the French Foreign Legion. Leos Carax regular Denis Lavant is strict drill sergeant Galoup, overseeing raw recruits at an output in Djibouti. Galoup secretly harbours feelings for his commander, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor). The arrival of Sentain (Grégoire Colin), an attractive young solder, arouses further feelings of desire — but also envy and jealous obsession. Denis’s elliptical approach to storytelling renders this all-male world with well-etched small details. The soundtrack features excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s opera of Billy Budd, while elements of dance inform Denis’s strikingly balletic choreography of certain scenes. Beau Travail is a stunning, shimmering work of uncommon poetry and visual beauty. The Bruno character first appeared in Godard’s 1960 film Le petit soldat (screening at The Cinematheque in February), where he was also played by Subor! “A gorgeous mirage of a movie” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). “Spellbinding ... None of this gifted French filmmaker’s previous work has prepared us for the voluptuous austerity of Beau Travail” (Stephen Holden, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 90 mins.
Claire Denis’s controversial follow-up to her worldwide success Beau Travail was a cannibalistic erotic shocker that scandalized Cannes. The Brown Bunny’s Vincent Gallo and Betty Blue’s Béatrice Dalle star as unfortunates afflicted with a condition that turns sexual hunger into, literally, hunger for flesh. He’s an American newlywed honeymooning in Paris. She’s a Frenchwoman married to a doctor. Denis’s freak-out movie, an outré meeting of art film and splatter film, is named after a Frank Zappa song from the album Freak Out! “Featuring impressionistic cinematography by acclaimed DP Agnès Godard and music by British chamber pop band Tindersticks (both frequent Denis collaborators), this elliptical and polarizing film maudit is a heady and haunting exploration of desire taken to its disturbing extreme. Trouble Every Day is ripe for reappraisal” (BAMcinématek, Brooklyn). “A hypnotic, unsettling work by one of the most sensuous filmmakers of the last 25 years ... This initially castigated movie fits in with the tantamount themes that have dominated Denis’s work since Beau Travail: madness, desire, and power ... But no critical reassessment is needed to make the case for the most unimpeachable aspect of Trouble Every Day, or any of Denis’s films: They know how to get on the inside of you” (Melissa Anderson, Village Voice). Colour, 35mm, in English and French with English subtitles. 101 mins. SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 – 8:15 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 13 – 6:30 PM TUESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 8:15 PM
FRIDAY, JANUARY 10 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 11 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 12 – 8:30 PM TUESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 6:30 PM
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CANADA’S TOP TEN The year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of Canada’s Top Ten. Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, this celebration of excellence in our national cinema showcases the year’s ten best Canadian featurelength films and ten best Canadian short films as chosen by two separate independent panels of filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, academics, and industry professionals drawn from across the country. The Cinematheque is pleased to present the panels’ distinguished selections for 2013.
Members of this year’s feature panel were: Daniel Cockburn, Toronto-based filmmaker, writer, and video artist; Liz Czach, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and a former Canadian film programmer at TIFF; Simon Ennis, Toronto-based writer-director of the feature You Might as Well Live and the documentary Lunarcy!; Martin Katz, Torontobased film producer and founder of Prospero Pictures; Anita Lee, producer with the National Film Board of Canada and the founder of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival; Jason Ryle, Executive Director of Toronto’s imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival; and Alison Zimmer, Coordinator for Film Circuit, TIFF’s programming outreach division. Panellists for this year’s selection of short films were: Rafael Katigbak, Montreal-born writer and Canadian editor of Vice magazine; Nathan Morlando, Toronto writer-director of Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster and co-founder of Euclid 431 Pictures; Magali Simard, Manager of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox; Mazdak Taebi, Toronto-based writer-director of Mercy and the forthcoming Mitra; and David Weaver, Toronto-based writer-director of Century Hotel and The Samaritan.
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Please Note: Two features chosen for Canada’s Top Ten 2013, The F Word and Gabrielle, were not available for our presentation due to conflicts with their theatrical release plans. Acknowledgments: For their very kind assistance in making the Vancouver presentation of Canada’s Top Ten possible, The Cinematheque is grateful to Steve Gravestock, Senior Programmer; Meaghan Brander, Manager, Film Circuit; Alex Rogalski and Magali Simard, Short Cuts Canada Programmers; and Lisa Goldberg, Coordinator, Festival Programming, of the Toronto International Film Festival. Program notes adapted from texts provided by TIFF.
TOM AT THE FARM RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS
Canada 2013. Director: Jeff Barnaby Cast: Kawennahere Devery Jacobs, Glen Gould, Brandon Oakes, Mark Antony Krupa, Roseanne Supernault
Those familiar with Jeff Barnaby’s short films (including The Colony — Canada’s Top Ten 2007) already know that he is one of the most unique voices in contemporary Canadian cinema. Set against the backdrop of the residential schools tragedy — when thousands of Aboriginal children were separated from their families, culture, and language — his muchanticipated debut feature Rhymes for Young Ghouls resembles an S.E. Hinton novel re-imagined as a surreal, righteously furious thriller. At the tender age of 15, Aila (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs) has taken over the drug business of her father Joseph (Glen Gould) while he serves a stint in prison. Joseph’s return signals an abrupt end to Aila’s reign as the reservation’s drug queen; it also piques the interest of Popper (Mark Antony Krupa), the reserve’s corrupt and sadistic Indian agent. The bloody tragedy that unfolds becomes an angry and poetic howl for lost lives, lost opportunities, and lost loved ones — a fever dream whose terrifying fictions are grounded in even more terrible fact. The film shared the Best Canadian First Feature prize at VIFF in 2013. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF. Colour, in English and Mi’gMaq with English subtitles. 88 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 17 – 6:30 PM
ASPHALT WATCHES Canada 2013. Directors: Shayne Ehman, Seth Scriver
Winner of Best Canadian First Feature honours at TIFF in 2013, Asphalt Watches offers a bizarre and loopy road trip across Canada as it’s never been seen before! Visual artists Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman [a former Cinematheque employee] spent seven years turning their adventures hitchhiking along the Trans-Canada Highway into this hilarious, grotesque, and utterly original adult animated feature. Using flash animation to transform real people and settings into surreal abstractions, Scriver and Ehman craft a playful yet dark commentary on the dull violence, rampant consumerism, unhealthy consumption, and bizarre eccentricities of small-town Canada. 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. As with all the best road movies, it’s not about the destination but the journey itself — and Asphalt Watches is a trip in every sense of the word. – Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, TIFF. Colour. 94 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 17 – 8:20 PM
(Tom à la ferme)
Canada/France 2013. Director: Xavier Dolan Cast: Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy, Evelyne Brochu, Manuel Tadros
With only three features under his belt, writer-director-actor Xavier Dolan has already established himself as Canada’s cinematic poet of desire, tracing its polymorphous pleasures through the Oedipal drama of I Killed My Mother, the love triangle of Heartbeats, and the transgendered Wuthering Heights of Laurence Anyways. With Tom at the Farm, Dolan brilliantly riffs on the psychological thriller as he explores the darker reaches of ardour and attachment. Travelling to the countryside to attend the funeral of his lover Guy, bottle-blond Montrealer Tom (Dolan) meets Guy’s mother Agathe and his older brother Francis, a monstrous (and ferociously repressed) embodiment of rural machismo. As it gradually becomes clear to Tom that Francis may not let him leave, Dolan masterfully unravels a moving (and sometimes terrifying) story of loss and longing that reminds us how lethal desire can be. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF. Colour, in French with English subtitles. 102 mins. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18 – 6:30 PM
VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR (Vic + Flo ont vu un ours)
Canada 2013. Director: Denis Côté Cast: Pierrette Robitaille, Romane Bohringer, Marc-André Grondin, Marie Brassard, Georges Molnar
Veteran Quebecois filmmaker Denis Côté, director of Carcasses and Curling (and subject of a retrospective at The Cinematheque in 2013), returns to Canada’s Top Ten with Vic + Flo Saw a Bear. Freshly released from prison, Vic (Romane Bohringer) and her lover and fellow ex-con Flo (Pierrette Robitaille) take up residence in a remote farmhouse to care for Vic’s aging, ailing uncle Emil. Viewed with suspicion both by the locals, who have their own plans for Emil’s lands, and Vic’s parole agent (Marc-André Grondin), Vic and Flo soon find there are far more menacing beasts lurking in the woods. Part allegory, part redemptive love story, Vic + Flo boasts all the virtues one expects in a film by Côté — a remarkable sense of place, transfixing performances, and a lingering, palpable sense of dread — along with an overpowering sense of regret for lost opportunities and horizons limited by the actions of the past. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF. Colour, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18 – 8:30 PM ............. ADDITIONAL SCREENINGS • EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN See page 13 for details. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22 – 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 26 – 8:30 PM
CANADA’S TOP TEN SHORTS 2013 Subconscious Password • Like a surrealist version of the classic game show Password, the new film from the Oscar-winning director of Ryan journeys into the recesses of the brain as its protagonist desperately attempts to recall a forgotten name at a party. Chris Landreth/11 mins. The End of Pinky • Adapting Heather O’Neill’s noir fiction, this animated tale set in Montreal’s seedy Lower Main follows amoral Johnny as he goes to a shadowy strip club to settle a score. Claire Blanchet/8 mins. The Chaperone • One memorable night in the 1970s, a motorcycle gang crashed a Montreal middle-school dance. This animated documentary tells a story too crazy not to be true. Fraser Munden, Neil Rathbone/11 mins. A Grand Canal • A hardworking Chinese boat captain on Gaoyou’s Grand Canal escapes drudgery with melodramatic 1990s Chinese pop music in this poetic tragedy from Vancouverite Ma. Johnny Ma/19 mins. Yellowhead • Lonely days in his pickup and sleepless nights in strange beds take their toll on a middle-aged site-safety inspector in this contemplative character piece set against forever-altered northern landscapes. Kevan Funk/19 mins. Nous Avions • Readings from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet propel this affecting poetic story of a Pakistani teen and his family who spend their Sundays watching planes land at the Montreal airport. Stéphane Moukarzel/18 mins. Intermission (15 mins.) Paradise Falls • Wes Anderson meets the Brothers Grimm in Edmonton-born Fritz’s ambitious coming-ofage tale of two boys occupying a mansion abandoned by a suburban developer. Fantavious Fritz/17 mins. Noah • Playing out entirely on a teen’s computer screen, this fascinating study of life — and romance — in the digital age follows protagonist Noah as his relationship takes a rapid turn for the worse. Walter Woodman, Patrick Cederberg/17 mins. An Extraordinary Person (Quelqu’un d’extraordinaire) • Hungover Sarah is forced to attend a bachelorette party, where one outed secret transforms the festivities into a bitter war of words. Quebec actress Chokri’s directorial debut mixes style, humour, and a forceful vision. Monia Chokri/29 mins. In Guns We Trust • Quebec filmmaker Lévesque’s stunning short-form documentary visits Kennesaw, Georgia, where a 1982 law requires every household to own a gun and ammunition. Nicolas Lévesque/12 mins. SUNDAY, JANUARY 19 – 6:30 PM
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WATERMARK
Canada 2013. Directors: Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky
Following their triumphant collaboration on Manufactured Landscapes, award-winning documentary filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and acclaimed environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky reunite to explore the ways in which humanity has shaped, manipulated, and depleted one of its most vital and compromised resources: water. Transporting us all over the world — from the man-made All-American Canal on the Colorado River to the sacred waters of the Allahabad in India to the immense Xiluodu Dam in China — Watermark explores the massive impact that human intervention has had on the world’s water supply with images of astonishing (and sometimes terrifying) beauty. Poetic, thought-provoking, and visually stunning, Watermark is a timely and urgent reflection on one of the world’s most precious and essential resources. – Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, TIFF. Colour. 90 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 27 – 8:20 PM Membership required for those 18+
ENEMY
Canada/Spain 2013. Director: Denis Villeneuve Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini, Stephen R. Hart
Based on the 2002 novel The Double by late Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago, the brilliant new film from Denis Villeneuve, director of the Oscar-nominated Incendies, breathes new life into the doppelgänger tale — and confirms the Quebec filmmaker as one of our most skilled cinematic storytellers. Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a glum Toronto history professor who seems disinterested in everything, even in sex with his beautiful girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent). While watching a movie on the recommendation of a colleague, Adam spots his exact double, an actor named Anthony Clair, in a bit part, and decides to track him down. When the two men meet, they find their lives becoming bizarrely and irrevocably intertwined. With masterly control, Villeneuve takes us on a gripping journey through a world that is both familiar and strange, creating a hypnotic, haunting, and surreal atmosphere that will remain with you long after the film’s final, unnerving image. Villeneuve’s U.S.shot Prisoners, also from 2013, also stars Gyllenhaal. – Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, TIFF. Colour. 90 mins. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 – 6:30 PM
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SARAH PREFERS TO RUN (Sarah préfère la course)
Canada 2013. Director: Chloé Robichaud Cast: Sophie Desmarais, Jean-Sébastien Courchesne, Geneviève Boivin-Roussy, Eve Duranceau, Hélène Florent
Introverted and obsessively single-minded, Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) lives to run. When she is accepted into the athletic training program at Montreal’s McGill University, she is determined to leave Quebec City and go, despite her mother’s surprising lack of support, both emotional and financial. A solution comes from an unexpected source, her friend Antoine (Jean-Sébastien Courchesne), who offers to move in with her to help her save money—he even proposes they wed to access funding for married university students. Already outside her comfort zone, Sarah has her world nearly upended by two dramatic developments: an unexpected sexual attraction to fellow runner Zoey (Geneviève Boivin-Roussy), and the emergence of a medical condition that could affect her running career. A subtle and stylish comedy-drama about the consequences of chasing one’s desires, writerdirector Chloé Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers to Run is one of the best directorial debuts to come out of Quebec in recent years. It won the 2013 Women in Film and Television Artistic Merit Award at VIFF. – Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, TIFF. Colour, in French with English subtitles. 97 mins. SUNDAY, JANUARY 26 – 6:30 PM SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE SCENES ALL AGES WELCOME
Persons under 14 must be accompanied by adult.
Membership required for those 18+
WHEN JEWS WERE FUNNY
Canada 2013. Director: Alan Zweig With: Howie Mandel, Shelley Berman, Norm Crosby, Shecky Greene, Jack Carter
A thoughtful exploration of Jewish identity couched in a charmingly casual history of Jewish stand-up comedy, the new documentary from Alan Zweig (Vinyl, the Genie-winning A Hard Name) was named Best Canadian Feature at TIFF in 2013. When Jews Were Funny begins with the veteran filmmaker speculating on how Jewish his infant daughter will be, given his own apostate status. Asking himself what he most cherishes and wants to pass on from his heritage, Zweig is led back to the Jewish comics he grew up watching on television in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the thread through to the present — and along the way interviewing such influential comedians as Shelly Berman, Jack Carter, and Shecky Greene, while throwing in some amazing archival footage to boot (including a phenomenal bit by the legendary Jackie Mason) — Zweig shuttles from the universal to the particular and back again as he gets ever closer to his real subject: the unanswerable, but essential, question of what it means to be Jewish. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF. Colour. 90 mins. MONDAY, JANUARY 27 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29 – 8:35 PM
EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN “Outstanding ... Leaves one traumatized, uplifted, and utterly breathless.” GIOVANNI MARCHINI CAMIA, FILM COMMENT
“Sublime ... Côté once again demonstrates his mastery of teasing out the fascinating in the banal – to unnerving effect.”
“It’s a challenging piece of work. It’s also brilliant ... A phenomenal performance by Robitaille.”
CRAIG TAKEUCHI, GEORGIA STRAIGHT
BRENDAN KELLY, MONTREAL GAZETTE
SAW A BEAR (Vic + Flo ont vu un ours)
VANCOUVER PREMIERE “The world wasn’t ready for this film in 1979, and it still may not be. Regardless, we are ecstatic to be able to reintroduce cinema’s most colossally bizarro achievement. Ever.” EVAN HUSNEY, DRAFTHOUSE FILMS
“Holy cow, what a weird movie! Instantly earning a place in my personal ‘WTF Hall of Fame,’ The Visitor is a work of cracked genius.”
“Ladies and gentleman, this is the Mount Everest of insane ’70s Italian movies.” NATHANIEL THOMPSON, MONDO DIGITAL
PETER MARTIN, TWITCH
(St ridulum)
Canada 2013. Director: Denis Côté Cast: Pierrette Robitaille, Romane Bohringer, Marc-André Grondin, Marie Brassard, Georges Molnar
USA/Italy 1979. Director: Giulio Paradisi Cast: John Huston, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Joanne Nail, Paige Conner, Mel Ferrer, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters
There’s good reason Denis Côté (subject of a Cinematheque retrospective last March) is one of Canada’s most internationally-admired filmmakers. The New Brunswick-born, Quebec-based director impresses and surprises again with Vic + Flo Saw a Bear, his latest – which also screens, deservedly, in our Canada’s Top Ten program (see page 11). Vic is 61-year-old lesbian Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille), just released from prison and trying to start life anew in rural Quebec (Côté’s favoured setting). Flo is Florence (Romane Bohringer), Vic’s lover, who also enjoys a fling or two with men. Keeping a close eye on things is Guillaume (Marc-André Grondin), Vic’s young, well-meaning parole officer. As ghosts from the past emerge to disturb the tranquility, Côté’s slow-burning, sumptuously photographed film shape-shifts from moving middle-aged love story into something much more menacing and dangerous. Like Curling, Côté’s previous drama, Vic + Flo reveals a terrific eye for quirky details and a Coen Brothers-like affinity for blending eccentric humour and cruelty. “Bizarre and original ... Vic + Flo Saw manages to mix the drollery of Wes Anderson, the genre swagger of Tarantino or the Coen Brothers, and the opaque narrative of a Bruno Dumont in one intriguing package ... A rich, humane, surprising film” (Lee Marshall, Screen International). Colour, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins.
“An intergalactic warrior joins a cosmic Christ figure in battle against an 8-year-old girl, and her pet hawk, while the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!” The latest cult-film rescue, restoration, and re-release from Austin, Texas’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Drafthouse Films – who last year boggled our minds (and then some) with Miami Connection – is this phantasmagorical 1979 mash-up of sci-fi, horror, action, and, uh, basketball, set in Atlanta, Georgia. The Visitor plays like some demented fusion of The Omen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby, The Fury, and Star Wars. Almost more baffling than the WTF plot – which could have been penned by L. Ron Hubbard – is the unlikely all-star cast, headed by Hollywood legend John Huston and including Glenn Ford, Shelley Winters, Lance Henriksen, Franco Nero, Mel Ferrer, and Sam Peckinpah! Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles), working here with Italian director Giulio Paradisi (credited as Michael J. Paradise), was part of a ’70s wave of Euro producers who came to America to make exploitation-picture knockoffs of Hollywood hits for the export and drive-in markets. “Contains the highest JDPM (jaw-drops-per-minute) ratio out of any movie we have ever encountered ... Truly one of the most joyfully delirious theatrical experiences we’ve unleashed on our audiences” (Evan Husney, Drafthouse Films). Colour, DCP, in English. 108 mins.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 18 – 8:30 PM (Canada’s Top Ten) WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22 – 6:30 PM & 8:30 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 26 – 8:30 PM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 – 8:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 – 8:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 – 9:35 PM
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DOUBLE BILL
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88
10 DOUBLE BILL PASS
SINGLE BILL
14
DOUBLE BILL
108
10 DOUBLE BILL PASS
HOW TO BUY TICKETS
unless otherwise indicated
RESTRICTED $ 3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED
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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 subject to change without notice.
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$
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11
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SENIOR/ STUDENT
ADULT (18+)
TICKET PRICES
6:30pm
(p 20)
Golden Sixties: Jan Neˇ mec
5:15pm
JAN NEˇ MEC
8:30pm
VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR (p 13)
2
26
Sarah Prefers to Run (p 12)
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2013 (p 11)
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
Singin’ in the Rain (p 4)
27
3
Late Night Talks with Mother
6:30pm
JAN NEˇ MEC
Watermark (p 12)
8:20pm
When Jews Were Funny (p 12)
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
(p 8)
Interludes: Aurélien Froment
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
Trouble Every Day (p 9)
Chocolat (p 9)
Beau travail (p 9)
1:00pm
8:15pm
8:30pm
8:30pm
CINEMA SUNDAY
Beau travail (p 9)
Trouble Every Day (p 9)
Chocolat (p 9)
20
6:30pm
6:30pm
6:30pm
19
CLAIRE DENIS
CLAIRE DENIS
CLAIRE DENIS
13 14
29
22
6:30pm
JAN NEˇ MEC
5
When Jews Were Funny (p 12)
8:35pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
6:30pm
THE VISITOR (p 13)
6:30pm + 8:30pm
VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR (p 13)
15 Reasons to Live (p 5)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
15
An Autumn Afternoon (p 17)
(p 17)
Good Morning (p 17)
12
8:00pm
16 6:30pm
ZEV ASHER
JEAN-LUC GODARD OPENING NIGHT
Horses in Winter (p 6)
8:30pm
Shorts Program (p 6)
7:00pm
RICK RAXLEN
8:30pm
THE VISITOR (p 13)
6:30pm
VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR (p 13)
6
30
23
Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat (p 6)
9:30pm
Subcultural Revolution: Shanghai (p 6)
8:00pm
What About Me: The Rise of the Nihilist Spasm Band (p 6)
17
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
9:35pm
THE VISITOR (p 13)
A Report on the Party and Guests (p 20)
8:00pm
8:30pm
THE VISITOR (p 13)
Enemy (p 12)
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
7
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Pearls of the Deep (p 21)
8:10pm
Martyrs of Love + Mother and Son (p 20)
6:30pm
(p 20)
Golden Sixties: Jan Neˇ mec
5:15pm
JAN NEˇ MEC
31 FEBRUARY Diamonds of the Night (p 19)
6:30pm
JAN NEˇ MEC
8:30pm
THE VISITOR (p 13)
Watermark (p 12)
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
Vic + Flow Saw a Bear (p 11)
8
1
25
8:30pm Asphalt Watches (p 11)
24
Tom at the Farm (p 11)
18
8:20pm
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
Trouble Every Day (p 9)
8:15pm
Beau travail (p 9)
6:30pm
Chocolat (p 9)
4:00pm
CLAIRE DENIS
4
11
An Autumn Afternoon (p 17)
8:20pm
Good Morning (p 17)
6:30pm
YASUJIRO OZU
SATURDAY
(p 11)
Rhymes for Young Ghouls
6:30pm
CANADA’S TOP TEN
Beau travail (p 9)
8:30pm
6:30pm
Tokyo Twilight (p 16)
Early Spring (p 16)
CLAIRE DENIS
8:40pm
8:45pm
3
10
An Autumn Afternoon (p 17)
Tokyo Twilight (p 16)
6:30pm
YASUJIRO OZU
Chocolat (p 9)
8
2
FRIDAY
YASUJIRO OZU
6:15pm
JANUARY
THURSDAY
(p 17)
What Did the Lady Forget?
6:30pm
YASUJIRO OZU
t w i t t e r. co m / t h e C i n e m at h e q u e
f a ce bo o k. co m/ t h e C i n e m at h e q u e
What Did the Lady Forget?
6
WEDNESDAY
KEEP IN TOUCH!
TUESDAY
8:40pm
8:20pm
An Autumn Afternoon (p 17)
6:30pm
YASUJIRO OZU Good Morning (p 17)
5
MONDAY
6:30pm
YASUJIRO OZU
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Made in USA (p 25)
Far From Vietnam (p 25)
6:30pm Weekend (p 26)
8:30pm
La Chinoise (p 26)
JEAN-LUC GODARD
6:30pm La Chinoise (p 26)
8:25pm Weekend (p 26)
Weekend (p 26)
8:30pm
Far From Vietnam (p 25)
JEAN-LUC GODARD
8:40pm
8:35pm
Masculine Feminine (p 25)
Pierrot le fou (p 24)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
JEAN-LUC GODARD
3
24
Hidden Pictures: A Personal Journey into Global Mental Health (p 5)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
6:30pm
2
23
17
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Les Carabiniers (p 24)
8:30pm
Contempt (p 24)
6:30pm
Une femme mariée (p 25)
4:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
(p 23)
6:30pm
Synthetic Properties: Helen Marten and Zoe Tissandier (p 8)
8:15pm
Une femme est une femme
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
Vivre sa vie (p 23)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (p 4)
1:00pm
CINEMA SUNDAY
12
5
26
19
27
20
13
8:30pm
Bande à part (p 26)
8:25pm
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (p 26)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Masculine Feminine (p 25)
8:30pm
Bande à part (p 26)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
28 MARCH
Alphaville (p 24)
Une femme mariée (p 25)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Vivre sa vie (p 23)
8:15pm
(p 23)
8:30pm Pierrot le fou (p 24)
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The Cinematheque’s theatre can be rented on Tuesday nights and during the day seven days a week.
1
22
Une femme est une femme
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Alphaville (p 24)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
21
14
Breathless (p 23)
8:20pm
Le petit soldat (p 23)
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Two or Three Things I Know About Her (p 26)
8:20pm
Made in USA (p 25)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Contempt (p 24)
8:10pm
Les Carabiniers (p 24)
6:30pm
JEAN-LUC GODARD
VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL www.vimff.org
11
Le petit soldat (p 23)
Breathless (p 23)
The Ferrari Dino Girl (p 21)
The Ferrari Dino Girl (p 21)
Toyen (p 21)
10
8:20pm
7:30pm
7:50pm
8:25pm
8:00pm
9
Breathless (p 23)
Doors Open @ 6:30pm
Toyen (p 21)
+ Oratorio for Prague (p 21)
Diamonds of the Night (p 19)
ݦ ៵ˎܜ ૦ૹ
ˢᎿ
Early Spring
Tokyo Twilight
Japan 1956. Director: Yasujiro Ozu Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Chikage Awashima, Keiko Kishi, Chishu Ryu, Daisuke Kato
Japan 1957. Director: Yasujiro Ozu Cast: Setsuko Hara, Isuzu Yamada, Ineko Arima, Chishu Ryu, Masami Taura
Ozu’s first-rate follow-up to 1953’s Tokyo Story, his acknowledged masterpiece, finds the director returning to a favourite milieu of his earlier, silent films: the workaday world of salaried office men. A discontented young white-collar worker, bored with his wife and his job, has a brief affair with the office flirt, and imperils his marriage. “I wanted to show the life of a man with such a job — his happiness over graduation and finally becoming a member of society, his hopes for the future gradually dissolving, his realizing that, even though he has worked for years, he has accomplished nothing ... I wanted to bring out what you might call the pathos of such a life” (Ozu). The sensitive tale is rendered with the formal beauty, economical style, and low-key sadness that are the great director’s hallmar k s . “I mp eccab ly act ed . . . O zu ’ s magnificent Early Spring seems utterly fresh and contemporary. This modest classic also conveys the claustrophobia of office life better than any other film I’ve seen” (Nora Sayre, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 145 mins.
One of Ozu’s darkest films (and his last in black-and-white), the intense Tokyo Twilight is set in a nocturnal, wintry Tokyo of tawdry bars and seedy mah-jong parlours. The atypically melodramatic plot has Ozu mainstay Chishu Ryu as an aging father, apparently widowed, living with his two adult daughters. The eldest daughter, played by Setsuko Hara, has recently fled an unhappy and abusive marriage. The youngest, played by Ineko Arima, has been impregnated and abandoned by a boyfriend, and is seeking an abortion. The discovery of a shocking family secret devastates both sisters. “The dialogue and acting are superb ... This is the nearest that Ozu ventured towards Western ideas of melodrama, although he is still more restrained than the plot suggests” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). “Ozu’s melodrama appears austere indeed by comparison with anyone else’s” (Donald Richie). “One of Ozu’s most profoundly modern works, sounding psychological and sociological depths that Ozu never probed so fearlessly before or since” (David Sterritt, Cineaste). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 141 mins.
(Soshun)
FAMILY TIES: THE SUBLIME CINEMA OF
YASUJIRO
OZU A SEASONAL CELEBRATION OF ONE OF CINEMA’S GREATEST MASTERS
Over the 2013-14 holiday season, The Cinematheque has been celebrating the sublime films of one of cinema’s greatest humanists and finest chroniclers of family (and family disappointments). Yasujiro Ozu (December 12, 1903-December 12, 1963) was master of a deceptively-simple, intensely-moving cinema that can be both heart warming and heart breaking. His subject was almost always the family, and his work captured, with a remarkable subtlety, wisdom, and benevolence, the everyday family crises invariably engendered by generational conflict, marriage, and death. His body of work is, in the opinion of many, one of cinema’s great treasures. Final screenings in the series January 2-8, 2014. Full series introduction/program notes can be found in our November/December 2013 Program Guide magazine and on our website, theCinematheque.ca.
ALL 35mm PRINTS
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27 – 8:45 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 30 – 6:15 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 2 – 8:45 PM
(Tokyo boshoku)
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29 – 8:45 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 2 – 6:15 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 3 – 8:40 PM
CONTINUED FROM DECEMBER
ჟФǬԧ
Lj૦ȆDŽ
ඕڜǭ̣ȐࢹȊǝlj
An Autumn Afternoon
Good Morning
What Did the Lady Forget?
(Sanma no aji)
Japan 1962. Director: Yasujiro Ozu Cast: Chishu Ryu, Shima Iwashita, Shinichiro Mikami, Keiji Sada
Ozu’s sublime valedictory film (the director’s 53rd feature) is now regarded as a fitting final summation of his supremely serene, intensely moving, deceptively simple, exquisitely rigorous, and always rewarding work — “the last panel in that great fresco which so completely captures Japan as it is” (Donald Richie). An Autumn Afternoon — the Japanese title translates literally as “The Taste of Autumn Mackerel” — tells a gentle, familiar, intensely autumnal tale of a widower (played, fittingly enough, by Chishu Ryu, Ozu’s chief male actor since 1930) who arranges the marriage of his devoted only daughter, and then must face the fact that he is aging and alone. “[Ozu] turns a lovingly malicious eye on ultra-modern Japan, where golf on the rooftops is the thing; where women are still bartered in marriage, yet rule their men with tongues of fire; where the American way of life gives way to rueful barroom speculation as to what might have been had they not lost the war. Shot in lovely colours, An Autumn Afternoon is Ozu at his most breathtakingly assured” (Tom Milne). “The simplicity of the picture is the result of a style brought to perfection. Nothing is wanting, nothing is extraneous ... Ozu’s regard was never kinder, never wiser” (Richie). Colour, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 112 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 3 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 4 – 8:20 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 5 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8 – 8:00 PM
(Ohayo)
Japan 1959. Director: Yasujiro Ozu Cast: Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, Yoshiko Kuga, Keiji Sada, Koji Tsuruta
A delight! Ozu’s 50th film, and his second in colour, is a mocking, masterful comedy of manners about small talk and social niceties, set against 1950s suburbia — and featuring flatulence as a major motif! Back in 1932, Ozu had made a silent comedy, I Was Born, But..., in which two young boys staged a hunger strike to protest against adult phoniness. Good Morning reworks that premise with its tale of two pint-sized rebels who take a vow of silence after their father refuses to buy them a television (TV, dad says, “will produce 100 million idiots”). The boys’ refusal to engage in even the customary morning greeting — ohayo — soon sparks a neighbourhood quarrel. The fart gags, Ozu claimed, were to show that he hadn’t gotten all serious after recently winning two of Japan’s highest distinctions, the Purple Ribbon Medal and the Academy of Fine Arts Prize. “One of the most charming, eccentric, and fleet-footed of all Ozu’s works” (Lloyd Hughes, The Rough Guide to Film). “Sensitive use of colour and fine performances make the film an all-around pleasure” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). “Enchanting ... A richly devious portrait of humanity being human” (Tom Milne, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 94 mins. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 5 – 8:40 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 6 – 6:30 PM
(Shukujo wa nani o wasuretaka) Japan 1937. Director: Yasujiro Ozu Cast: Sumiko Kurishima, Tatsuo Saito, Michiko Kuwano, Shuji Sano, Takeshi Sakamoto
Ozu’s 36th feature, but only his second talkie (1936’s The Only Son was the first), What Did the Lady Forget? is a piercing satire on the foibles of the Japanese bourgeoisie. A professor of medicine and his overbearing society wife play host to their niece from Osaka, who arrives determined to teach Tokyo what modern fun is all about. The hen-pecked hubby, claiming a prior golfing engagement, hightails it out of the home, but is soon discovered by his niece in a Ginza geisha house, where she insists on joining him in the drunken fun. Compared to the work of Jacques Tati and Ernst Lubitsch, and cited as one of Ozu’s most underrated sound films, the movie lampoons upperclass Japan’s “obsession with cleanliness; its eclectic bric-a-brac; its acquisitive conception of tradition; its bluntness. The social comedy of The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, Equinox Flower, Late Autumn, and An Autumn Afternoon can all be traced back to this film” (David Bordwell). “A sublime comedy of coming and going. Light, effortless, fresh, and truthful” (Nathaniel Dorsky). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 75 mins. MONDAY, JANUARY 6 – 8:20 PM WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8 – 6:30 PM
SPONSORED BY
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PETER HAMES, THE CZECHOSLOVAK NEW WAVE
FILMMAKING ... NĚMEC MADE NO CONCESSIONS IN HIS ATTEMPT TO DEVELOP A NONREALIST CINEMA.”
THE
REALITY:
“AN ENFANT TERRIBLE, DEDICATED TO THE CONCEPT OF A PERSONAL STYLE OF
FILMS OF
INDEPENDENT OF
“MEET THE BAD BOY OF THE CZECH NEW WAVE, JAN NĚMEC, IN HIS FIRST FULL-CAREER NORTH AMERICAN RETROSPECTIVE.”
JAN
DAVID EDELSTEIN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE
NĚMEC
“Independent of Reality: The Films of Jan Němec” is the rst full-career retrospective of Czech director Jan Němec (b. 1936) to be presented in North America. Though Němec (pronounced Niemetz) was an instrumental player in the famed Czechoslovak New Wave alongside Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, and others, the enfant terrible of the movement is relatively unknown here. This long-overdue survey of Němec’s nearly 50-year career of uncompromising work is curated by Irena Kovarova and produced by the Comeback Company in partnership with the National Film Archive (Prague), and Aerolms. It premiered at BAMcinématek in Brooklyn in November and is now on a North American tour. The triumvirate of Němec, Forman, and Menzel became the face of a new cinema rushing out of Czechoslovakia in the mid-1960s, with Chytilová, Ivan Passer, and Juraj Herz following close behind. Though heralded as a new generation of masters abroad, their work did not always garner immediate recognition — Czechoslovak state authorities controlled lm distribution to festivals and markets, and it could take two to three years before a lm was available internationally. Němec’s debut feature, Diamonds of the Night (1964), follows the escape of two concentration camp prisoners, depicting their existential journey through ashbacks and fantasies. Based on an autobiographical story by renowned Czech author Arnošt Lustig, this surrealist masterpiece premiered to instant acclaim and was invited to screen in Cannes’ Critics’ Week.
NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE, PRAGUE
Pearls of the Deep (1966), based on a book by celebrated writer Bohumil Hrabal and comprised of ve short lms by ve directors, was effectively a Czechoslovak New Wave manifesto, featuring segments by Němec, Chytilová, and Menzel, among others.
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Many lms in this series screen on rare, imported archival 35mm prints. – adapted from BAMcinématek (Brooklyn)
Acknowledgments: Curated by Irena Kovarova and produced by Comeback Company in partnership with the National Film Archive, Prague, Aerolms, and Jan Němec–Film. Program notes attributed to “IK” by Ms. Kovarova.
Forbidden from working in lm after the invasion, Němec was forced into exile in 1974 and left for Germany. He lived in the United States from 1977 to 1989, but his avant-garde lmmaking style and nonconformist personality made it difcult for him to break through in Hollywood. After several years spent teaching and working as a commercial videographer, Němec returned to his native country following the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE, PRAGUE
KRISTIN M. JONES, WALL STREET JOURNAL
The events of 1968 — the democratization process, the hopeful period of the Prague Spring, and the Warsaw Pact invasion that disrupted it — heightened the world’s attention toward Czech lmmaking. The Prague Spring allowed Němec’s A Report on the Party and Guests, Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball (1967), and Menzel’s Capricious Summer (1968) to be invited to compete at Cannes, but the French strikes and protests of May 1968 caused such turmoil that the festival was cancelled before the jury could announce the awards. All three lms were then presented in the main slate of the New York Film Festival along with Němec’s short lm Oratorio for Prague (1968), which depicts the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Unlike many of his New Wave peers, Němec has been even more prolic since 1989 than in his early career. He turned the camera on himself with Late Night Talks with Mother (2001), a masterful non-ction exploration of the director and his hometown of Prague. It won the prestigious Golden Leopard award at Locarno. Toyen (2005) is Němec’s meditative portrait of the surrealist Czech painter. The Ferrari Dino Girl (2009) looks back at the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia through staged dramatizations and Němec’s original footage of the events. Golden Sixties: Jan Němec (2011) — which screens for free — is an illuminating portrait of Němec from a 27-part television series about masters of the Czechoslovak New Wave.
“A REMARKABLE LIFE AND CAREER ... A CZECH MASTER REDISCOVERED ... THE WORK OF JAN NĚMEC DESERVES TO BE SEEN MORE WIDELY.”
Němec’s boldly absurdist second feature, A Report on the Party and Guests (1966), was a daring parable about the mechanics of power, and is perhaps his best-known work today. It outraged the authorities and was quickly banned. With a range of inuences from Robert Bresson to Alain Resnais, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Luis Buñuel, Report has been called “one of the best Czechoslovak lms ever made” (Renata Adler, New York Times). Němec’s third feature was the threepart surrealist cinephilic fantasy Martyrs of Love (1967).
NEW 35mm PRINT!
Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1964. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC CAST: LADISLAV JANSKÝ, ANTONÍN KUMBERA, ILSE BISCHOFOVÁ, IVAN ASIČ, AUGUST BISCHOF
The haunting, hallucinatory tale of two Jewish boys who escape a Nazi death train, Jan Němec’s debut feature, adapted from a novel by Arnošt Lustig, is a surrealist masterpiece — “a daring attempt to lm states of mind” (D. and A. J. Liehm) that evokes the early cinema of Buñuel (especially Un chien andalou). “Němec’s conviction that a director must create ‘a personal style’ and ‘a world independent of reality as it appears at the time’ was already evident in his rst feature. Diamonds follows the escape of two young concentration camp prisoners through the woods of Sudetenland and the ensuing pursuit of them. Moving freely between the present, dreams, and ashbacks, Němec employs an aesthetic of Pure Cinema to depict the state of the distressed human mind” (IK). “Best known as an early salvo of the Czech New Wave, Němec’s debut stunner feels even more potent now that it’s been freed of the expectations and delineations of a national movement. In 64 eet minutes, we’re utterly and overwhelmingly immersed ... It’s a torrent of life — and cinema — in the face of death” (Eric Hynes, Time Out New York). B&W, 35mm, in Czech and German with English subtitles. 64 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 6:30 PM
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NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE, PRAGUE
(O slavnosti a hostech)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1966. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC CAST: IVAN VYSKOČIL, JAN KLUSÁK, JIŘÍ NĚMEC, PAVEL BOŠEK, KAREL MAREŠ
“The most controversial lm ever produced by the Czech New Wave” (Peter Hames), Jan Němec’s best-known work is an absurdist satire on power relations, the imperative to be “happy” under totalitarianism, and the way people adapt themselves to a society’s prevailing ideology. It was banned for two years, released during the brief Prague Spring of 1968, then banned again — and later was one of four lms declared “banned forever” by the Czech authorities in 1973! A group of men and women enjoying an idyllic picnic in the woods are accosted and interrogated by several thuggish strangers, then rescued by a genial “host” who invites them all to a magnicent outdoor banquet. Němec co-wrote the script with then-wife Ester Krumbachová, who also contributed to Věra Chytilová’s Daisies. The cast is made up of noted Czech artists and writers — including, as the guest who ees, lmmaker Evald Schorm, whose 1968 lm The End of a Priest was also one of that quartet “banned forever.” “One of the most important masterpieces of the Czech lm renaissance ... As we watch its deceptive progress, Renoir turns into Buñuel and we discover a scathing, pessimistic statement about human conduct under totalitarianism” (Amos Vogel). B&W, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 70 mins. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31 – 8:00 PM
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1967. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC CAST: LINDSAY ANDERSON, HANA KUBEROVÁ, JOSEF KONÍČEK, PETR KOPŘIVA, JAN KLUSÁK
JAN NĚMEC
Rarely available! Surrealism, cinema history, and romantic fantasy mix and mingle in the trio of stories in Jan Němec’s dreamy, poetic Martyrs of Love, which proved to be the last feature he would make in his homeland for some decades. In the rst tale, a shy young clerk, dressed like a gure out of Magritte, has daydreams of erotic encounters. In the second, a young servant woman fantasizes about being wooed by aristocrats and ofcers. The third episode, inspired by slapstick silent lms, has an orphan imagining what it would be like to belong to a large family. “This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Němec’s vision of a lm world independent of reality. Mounting a defence of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Němec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology” (IK). “Lyrical ... If in Diamonds of the Night Němec lmed nightmares, here he captured daydreams, just as Buñuel lmed dreams” (Josef Škvorecký). B&W, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 71 mins. PR EC ED ED BY
Mother and Son (Moeder en zoon)
NETHERLANDS/CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1967. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC
VANCOUVER PREMIERE!
Commissioned by the Amsterdam Film Festival and made without the approval of the Czechoslovak authorities, Jan Němec’s absurdist short about the doting mother of a sadistic torturer went on to win the Grand Prize at the prestigious Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. B&W, Digibeta video, no dialogue. 10 mins.
Golden Sixties: Jan Němec
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 6:30 PM
FREE ADMISSION (Zlatá Šedesátá: Jan Němec)
CZECH REPUBLIC/SLOVAKIA 2011. DIRECTED: MARTIN ŠULÍK
This illuminating documentary portrait of Czech director Jan Němec — made by the acclaimed Slovak lmmaker Martin Šulík (subject of a Cinematheque retrospective in 2001) — comes from a 27-part Czech-Slovak television series about the leading talents of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s. Němec discusses his early recollections, his educational experience at the Prague Film Academy, the lms he made during the 1960s, and the impact of the Soviet invasion of 1968. Free Admission! B&W and Colour, Digibeta video, in Czech with English subtitles. 58 mins.
FREE SCREENINGS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 5:15 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 5:15 PM
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(Mučedníci lásky)
PRVNI VEREJNOPRAVNI
NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE, PRAGUE
A Report on the Party and Guests
Martyrs of Love
“THE DIRECTOR MUST CREATE HIS OWN WORLD, A WORLD INDEPENDENT OF REALITY AS IT APPEARS AT THE TIME. THE PAINTERS HAVE CREATED THEIR WORLDS, THE COMPOSERS TOO. BUT ONLY A FEW FILM DIRECTORS HAVE ACHIEVED THIS AIM: CERTAINLY CHAPLIN, CERTAINLY BRESSON, AND CERTAINLY BUÑUEL.”
© JAN NEMEC
NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE, PRAGUE
Pearls of the Deep (Perličky na dně)
“A manifesto of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this anthology of ve short lms by ve rising directors — Jan Němec, Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, and Evald Schorm — is based on a book by the celebrated writer Bohumil Hrabal. Absurdist in style, with a heightened attention to the individual, Hrabal’s work broke with the socialist realism that dominated the era. Němec’s story ‘The Impostors’ is the simplest stylistically, chronicling two elderly men who share stories of their illustrious life careers while spending time together in a hospital. Ultimately they reveal themselves to be masters of the art of embellishment” (IK). Menzel’s adaptation, the next year, of Hrabal’s novel Closely Watched Trains would win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. “Based on semisurrealist tales by national literary lion Hrabal ... all ve lms are compelling time capsules of deance and love ... Generally anarchist and scaldingly farcical, the lms look totalitarian life square in the eye, but they’re also living testaments to the era’s lovable, grungy Euro-slacker esprit” (Michael Atkinson, Village Voice). B&W and colour, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 107 mins.
© JAN NEMEC
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 8:10 PM
© JAN NEMEC
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1966. DIRECTORS: JAN NĚMEC, VĚRA CHYTILOVÁ, JAROMIL JIREŠ, JIŘÍ MENZEL, EVALD SCHORM CAST: PAVLA MARSÁLKOVÁ, FERDINAND KRŮTA, MILOŠ CIRNÁCTY, ALOIS VACHEK, FRANTIŠEK HAVEL
VANCOUVER PREMIERE!
Late Night Talks with Mother (Noční hovory s matkou)
CZECH REPUBLIC 2001. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC WITH: VÁCLAV HAVEL, ESTER KRUMBACHOVÁ, MARTA KUBIŠOVÁ, JAN NĚMEC, KAREL RODEN
Jan Němec won the Golden Leopard for best video at the Locarno festival for this highly-personal, highly-stylized lm essay and self-portrait. Inspired by Kafka’s Letter to Father, the work combines a ctional dialogue between Němec and his long-deceased mother (she died while he was in exile abroad) with a history of 20th-century Prague. “After his return from exile, Němec delved immediately into lmmaking. Unlike his generational peers, he did not rely on existing structures and began producing lms independently, continuing to develop a personal style without regard for generally accepted rules. Experimenting with digital video formats ... Němec turns a sh-eye lens on himself and his birthplace of Prague to create an experimental personal essay lm, an ‘autodocumentary’“ (IK). Popular Czech actor Karel Roden plays Němec; many of the director’s friends and acquaintances, including Václav Havel and Eric Clapton, have cameos. “A jewel” (Rotterdam I.F.F.). Colour, Digibeta video, in Czech with English subtitles. 68 mins. PR EC ED ED B Y
Oratorio for Prague CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC
VANCOUVER PREMIERE!
Toyen
CZECH REPUBLIC 2005. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC CAST: ZUZANA STIVÍNOVÁ, JAN BUDAŘ, TOBIÁŠ JIROUS, MAREK BOUDA
Jan Němec’s strange, striking lm renders in dreamlike fashion something of the art and life of Czech Surrealist painter Toyen, played here by actress Zuzana Stivínová. The impressionistic drama is set in wartime Prague, where Toyen hides poet Jindřich Heisler from the Gestapo. “In one of the most enigmatic lms of his career, Němec uses an abstract structure to create this portrait of Toyen, whose ambiguously-gendered name was given to her by fellow Surrealist Jindřich Štyrský. The lm, true to the subject’s own style ... disintegrates into hallucinatory visions, attempting to reveal the images that fuelled Toyen’s imagination through a series of associations” (IK). “An idiosyncratic vision on the theme of Toyen and her destiny. Němec is guided by the intuition and empathy of a poet, linking up fragments and details in such a way that, via association, he begins to reveal what red her imagination ... We sense the constant agitation of the artist’s creative spirit ... [and] the terrifying physical presence of two totalitarian regimes” (Karlovy Vary I.F.F.). Colour, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 63 mins.
Using foreign nancing, Jan Němec was making a documentary about the heady political freedoms of the 1968 Prague Spring when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. The lm became something else: a unique document of the invasion and the end of “socialism with a human face.” Němec’s footage, smuggled out of the country, was widely seen around the world, and was later incorporated into his 2009 lm The Ferrari Dino Girl (also screening in this series), which recounts his own experiences during that time. Oratorio for Prague effectively ended Němec’s lmmaking career in Communist Czechoslovakia. B&W, Digibeta video, in English. 29 mins.
VANCOUVER PREMIERE!
The Ferrari Dino Girl (Holka Ferrari Dino)
CZECH REPUBLIC 2009. DIRECTOR: JAN NĚMEC CAST: KAREL RODEN, TAMMY SUNDQUIST, JAN BUDAŘ
“Following on from his Late Night Talks with Mother, Jan Němec contributes another lm to a genre that has been called autodocumentary. In 1968, he lmed the rst footage of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to be smuggled out of the country. It subsequently appeared in television coverage throughout the world as well as in his own lm Oratorio for Prague and the Hollywood adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here he recounts how he lmed the material and smuggled it to Austria with the help of a girl called Jana, ‘the Ferrari Dino girl.’ The 16 minutes of unedited footage form the centrepiece of the lm, framed by semi-abstract images of buildings and city streets, with ‘guest appearances’ by Karel Roden as Němec and Tammy Sundquist as Jana. Despite being a lm ‘on the edge of experiment,’ The Ferrari Dino Girl provides a strangely direct and authentic document on one of the century’s key events. Shown without commentary or editorial intervention, the footage itself attains something of its original traumatic impact” (Peter Hames, London Film Festival). B&W and colour, Digibeta video, in Czech with English subtitles. 68 mins. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 8:25 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 7:50 PM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 6:30 PM
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2 – 8:00 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5 – 6:30 PM
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“One of the greatest artists at work in any medium ... Godard’s work, whether it’s on film, video, or HD, unfolds like no one else’s, and shocks the viewer into a new relationship with the world and with images.”
As one well-known estimation of JeanLuc Godard’s significance has it, “There is the cinema before Godard, and the cinema after.” Easily the most important and influential filmmaker of the past fifty years, Godard is also, more than any other director, the cinema’s great modernist — an innovative artist whose work has NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL, 2013 transformed and reinvented his medium. Young cineastes, generation after generation, continue to pay Godard tribute and acknowledge their indebtedness to him. Godard himself has continued, throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 21st-century, to create some of the most startling and original films in contemporary cinema. This later work will be the subject of a second Godard retrospective, a Part 2, we plan to present at The Cinematheque later in the year. But the spotlight here is on Godard’s first 15 features, from Breathless (1959) to Weekend (1967) — the films that bear much of the weight of the lofty claims to Godard’s importance and which continue to provide such astonishment and inspire such devotion. Iconoclastic, idiosyncratic, intellectual, allusive, elliptical, semiotic, self-conscious, confrontational, political, kaleidoscopic, mischievous, meta-cinematic, movie-obsessed, formally daring, and delirious, these 15 seminal, epochal films display Godard’s transformational talents in all their exhilarating splendour. All are key texts of the great French New Wave of 1960s of which Godard was a pre-eminent emissary.
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All reveal an artist gloriously deserving of the insouciance which had him once sign one of his films (it was the Quentin Tarantino favourite Bande à part) as “Jean-Luc Cinéma Godard.”
O P E N I N G N I G H T - T H U R S DAY, F E B R UA RY 6 Refreshments & Special Introduction D O O R S 6 : 3 0 P M S C R E E N I N G O F B R E AT H L E S S 7 : 3 0 P M
Acknowledgments: The Cinematheque is grateful to Florence Almozini, French Embassy and Cultural Services (New York); Sarah Arcache, Consulate General of France (Toronto); Jean-Sébastien Attié, Alliance Française (Vancouver); and Raynald Belay, Consulate General of France (Vancouver) for support and assistance in the presentation of this retrospective. Membership in The Cinematheque or the Alliance Française Vancouver will be accepted for this series.
PRESENTED WITH THE
“Cinema is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection.” JEAN-LUC GODARD
BREATHLESS (À bout de souffle)
Jean-Luc Godard’s great debut feature is one of the cinema’s watershed works: perhaps the most representative and important film of the French nouvelle vague, probably the most influential movie of the 1960s, and still a leading contender for the title of “Coolest Film Ever Made”! It screens here in the beautiful 50th-anniversary restoration — supervised by Raoul Coutard, the film’s cinematographer, and featuring newly revised, newly translated subtitles — we first presented in 2010. Simultaneously a playful parody of and sincere hommage to the American gangster film, Breathless stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michel, a charismatic small-time crook on the lam from the police in Paris, and Jean Seberg as Patricia, his ambivalent American girlfriend. The film’s use of handheld 35mm cameras, location shooting, and direct sound came to define New Wave aesthetics, as did its most radical technical innovation, the startling, disruptive use of elliptical editing and the jump cut. It is replete as well with the injokes, cinematic references, abrupt shifts of tone and mood, and Brechtian (soon to be known as Godardian) asides that would also become hallmarks of the New Wave. Five decades later, Breathless remains utterly engaging and remarkably vital cinema. “It stands apart from all that came before and has revolutionized all that followed” (James Monaco). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 89 mins.
France 1959. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6 Opening Night with Refreshments & Special Introduction DOORS 6:30 PM / SCREENING 7:30 PM
Godard’s follow-up to Breathless was the first French film to deal openly with the Algerian crisis then convulsing the country, and was promptly banned by the French government for three years. Both Left and Right condemned the movie for its political ambivalence; the irreverent, Breathless-like use of gangster-film conventions may not have endeared it to such critics either! Michel Subor stars as Bruno, an agent for a French fascist organization sent to assassinate an Algerian Liberation Front (FLN) sympathizer in Geneva. Anna Karina (the future Mrs. Godard, and a mainstay of his cinema through the mid-1960s) makes her screen debut as Véronica, a young informant for the FLN with whom the hero falls in love. The cinematography is by Godard regular Raoul Coutard. Claire Denis paid tribute to Le petit soldat in her 1999 masterpiece Beau Travail (screening at The Cinematheque in January), which cast Subor as an older Bruno. “Will my film be censored? I doubt it. It’s an adventure film. I could just as well have invented a story based on the theft of Sophia Loren’s jewels” (Godard, 1960). “Romance and political extremism and torture and talk of cinema all suspended in an existential mixture” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 88 mins. (The Little Soldier)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 8:20 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 6:30 PM
(A Woman is a Woman)
Godard’s exuberant third feature was his first in colour and in CinemaScope, and, with the banning of Le petit soldat, the first Godard feature to be released after Breathless. Anna Karina — named Best Actress at Berlin for her performance — is Angela, the femme of the title, a nightclub stripper who wants to have a baby and settle down with lover Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy). When he refuses, she turns her attentions to romantic Alfred (Jean-Claude Belmondo), Emile’s best friend. The film unfolds as a light-hearted, loving hommage to MGM musicals of the ’40s and ’50s, with a tip of the hat as well to Lubitsch’s Design for Living. It also introduces to Godard’s work the theme of prostitution, which became central to his analyses of the social roles of women. Jeanne Moreau has a cameo as herself. “A kind of movie that nobody had seen before. The result is brash, defiant, gaudy, and infinitely fragile” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “One of the few absolutely necessary films in Godard’s canon ... Altogether one of his most pleasing and vivacious films ... Godard’s purest celebration of both life and movies” (James Monaco). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 84 mins. France 1961. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, Marie Dubois, Nicole Paquin
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 8:15 PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 8:20 PM
LE PETiT SOLDAT France 1960. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Michel Subor, Anna Karina, HenriJacques Huet, Paul Beauvais, László Szabó
U N E F E M M E EST UNE FEMME
vivre sa vie (Her Life to Live / My Life to Live / It’s My Life)
Susan Sontag described Godard’s Vivre sa vie as “one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and France 1962. Director: Jean-Luc Godard original works of art that I know of ... A perfect Cast: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, André S. film.” The director’s fourth feature, and a key Labarthe, Guylaine Schlumberger, Gérard Hoffman work in his artistic evolution, Vivre sa vie has also been called “a passionate celluloid love letter” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide) to Godard’s then-wife Anna Karina. Karina plays Nana, a sales clerk and would-be actress whose descent into prostitution is chronicled in twelve Brechtian tableaux. Carefully, crisply photographed by Raoul Coutard, the film makes rigorous use of direct sound and the long take, and unfolds as a rich, provocative mélange of documentary essay, B-film pulp fiction, and New Wave formalism, with the characteristic wealth of literary and cinematic references along the Godardian way. One memorable scene has Nana/Karina weeping while watching Falconetti in Dreyer’s exquisite The Passion of Joan of Arc. The theme of prostitution and exploitation finds a self-conscious, uncomfortably autobiographical parallel in the director/actress, husband/wife relationship between Godard and Karina. “Godard at his most playful ... A masterpiece of inventiveness that’s as radically mindblowing today as it was four decades ago” (BBC). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 85 mins. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16 – 6:30 PM
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“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” JEAN-LUC GODARD
LES CARABiNIERS Godard’s odd, absurdist anti-war fable met with such extreme critical and popular hostility upon its original release that it was hastily withdrawn from Parisian cinemas! “Half a century later, it is one of Godard’s most curious films, as visually rich as it is tonally coarse and blunt” (New York Film Festival). The film has two simpleminded peasants — ironically named Ulysses and Michelangelo — gleefully going off to plunder and pillage for King and Country. They accumulate a hilarious collection of postcards of their conquests along the way — “the first of the great Godard catalogues, and its power is magical” (James Monaco) — and return as heroes, but things change after a peace treaty is signed. Les Carabiniers is shot in a grainy, high-contrast black-and-white style meant to evoke early cinema and old newsreels; there are wry references to the primitive movies of the Lumières, and definite echoes of Alfred Jarry’s absurdist masterpiece Ubu Roi. Roberto Rossellini collaborated on the script. “Godard’s strangest movie ... Perhaps the most usefully extreme film of its kind ever made” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 80 mins. (The Riflemen / The Soldiers)
France/Italy 1963. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Marino Masé, Albert Juross, Geneviève Galéa, Catherine Ribeiro, Barbet Schroeder
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 8:30 PM
ALPHAVILLE
France/Italy 1965. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Howard Vernon, Akim Tamiroff, László Szabó
Subtitled “A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution,” Godard’s hugelyinfluential mix of science fiction and film noir was originally called Tarzan vs. IBM, a title indicative of its pop art/pulp fiction sensibility and suggestive of its theme: the alienating, dehumanizing effects of contemporary corporate/computer culture. Lemmy Caution, Secret Agent .003 from the Outlands, travels through space in a Ford Galaxie to Alphaville, the city of the future, where love, art, and individuality are outlawed. His mission is to neutralize the dictatorial Professor Von Braun and destroy Alpha 60, the ruthless computer that demands mindless conformity. Cartoonballoon dialogue complements the comic-book plot, while the amazing visuals of cinematographer Raoul Coutard render the city of the title as a shadowy, menacing, harshly-lit world of concrete and glass — sort of a Cold War-era vision of a futuristic East Berlin. In fact, Alphaville was shot entirely on location in contemporary Paris, underscoring Godard’s point that the sterile, soulless world of Alphaville had already arrived. “The most influential movie of the genre next to Kubrick’s 2001” (Armond White). “Dazzling ... One of Godard’s most sheerly enjoyable movies” (Tom Milne, Time Out). B&W, DCP, in French with English subtitles. 98 mins. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 8:30 PM
CONTEMPT Lionized by Sight & Sound critic Colin MacCabe as “the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe,” the ingeniously self-reflexive Contempt is the first and finest of many Godard films about the making of a film. Both an obituary for the Hollywood cinema and a genuinely moving portrait of the breakdown of a marriage, the film features Michel Piccoli as Paul, a hired-gun screenwriter brought in as rewrite man on a big-budget adaptation of The Odyssey. The director of this movie-within-the-movie is no less than the great Fritz Lang, playing himself; Jack Palance is the project’s crass, interfering producer; while Brigitte Bardot is Paul’s bored wife Camille, who has grown to despise her husband for prostituting his talents. Godard, who appears as Lang’s assistant, described the characters as “survivors of the shipwreck of modernity.” Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, magnificently shot by Raoul Coutard, with a bold colour scheme of Mondrian reds and blues, Contempt is “a multi-layered odyssey of intelligence and sensuality [and] one of the masterworks of modern cinema” (Philip Lopate, New York Times). “Bardot + Godard = Movie Greatness” (Time Out New York). Colour, DCP, in French with English subtitles. 103 mins. (Le Mépris)
France/Italy 1963. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, Giorgia Moll
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 8:10 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 6:30 PM
P I E R R O T L E F O U “The most ravishing and romantic film ever made has only improved with age” (Amy Taubin, Village Voice). A work of giddy, glorious spontaneity and self-reflexivity, Pierrot le fou is one of the quintessential achievements of Godard’s most fertile period. It’s also something of a Godard compendium, referring back to earlier Godard films (the ironic gangster cool of Breathless and Bande à part) and anticipating future ones (the dazzling social analysis, the apocalyptic visions, of Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Weekend). After Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a jaded Parisian TV executive, abandons wife and child for Marianne (Anna Karina), the family baby-sitter, the two lovers set out on a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like trek to the south of France. Godard described Pierrot le fou as “the story of the last romantic couple.” The film abounds in explosive primary colours, Brechtian asides to the camera, abrupt shifts in tone and mood, and a characteristic catalogue of references (art, literature, advertising, politics, cinema). Filmmaker Sam Fuller, in a famous cameo, pops up to define cinema as “a battleground — love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion.” With its tragic exploration of amour fou and the transience of love, the sensational Pierrot is one of the most uncommonly emotional works in the Godard canon. Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 110 mins.
France 1965. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Dirk Sanders, Raymond Devos, Graziella Galvani
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – 8:30 PM MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 6:30 PM
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“The cinema is truth 24 times a second.” JEAN-LUC GODARD
UNE FEMME M A R I É E (A Married Woman)
“A seldom-seen masterwork” (Slant). Subtitled “Fragments of a film shot in 1964,” Godard’s Une femme mariée is a high-style, free-form exercise in the sociology of contemporary womanhood, centring on 24 hours in the life of adulterous Charlotte (Macha Méril), a Parisian woman who divides her affections between her airline-pilot husband (Philippe Leroy) and her lover (Bernard Noël). Charlotte learns that she is pregnant, and realizes she does not know who the father is. Godard dissects her situation with a dazzling collage of pop-art graphics, mock-ethnographic interviews, eroticism, dissertations on advertising and consumerism, women’s magazines (“How to Strip for Your Husband”), and a characteristic wealth of references and allusions (Hitchcock, Beethoven, Cocteau, Apollinaire). The film’s portrait of French womanhood — and of marriage as legalized prostitution — outraged French censors, who demanded (and received) cuts to the film and forced its title to be changed from the general (La femme mariée) to the particular (Une femme mariée). “A tour de force ... A shimmering network of inferences ... A passionate essay about women, men, and the culture of sex” (James Monaco). B&W, Blu-ray Disc, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. France 1964. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Macha Méril, Bernard Noël, Philippe Leroy, Roger Leenhardt, Christophe Bourseiller
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 4:30 PM
MASCULINE F E M I N I N E
(Masculin-féminin)
Godard is in full glory in the marvellous, essential Masculine Feminine, a disquisition on youth, sex, politics, sexual politics, and pop culture presented as a 15-point investigation into “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola” during “the era of James Bond and Vietnam.” Centring on young Left Bank Parisians in the winter of 1965, the film has Truffaut’s alter-ego Jean-Pierre Léaud — “in his first grownup and still finest performance” (Armond White) — doing an Antoine Doinel-like turn as Paul, who’s just out of the army and in love with Madeleine (Chantal Goya), an aspiring pop singer. Paul’s attempts to remain true to his youthful ideals prove difficult in a consumer society in which everything is commodified. Godard’s lively, inventive, eternally fresh film mixes cinéma vérité-style analyses of male-female relations, a wicked parody interview with a teenage beauty queen, random urban violence, a Brigitte Bardot cameo, philosophy, advertising, and youthful awkwardness and ennui. And, said Pauline Kael, Godard gets the way boys and girls are with each other. “Timeless ... More prophetic than ever ... Godard’s insight into the moods and idioms of comingof-age in the metropolitan West remains unsurpassed” (A. O. Scott, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 110 mins. France 1966. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert, Michel Debord, Catherine-Isabelle Duport
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 8:30 PM
FAR FROM VIETNAM New Restoration
(Loin du Vietnam)
“The cinema at last has its Guernica” (Richard Roud, The Guardian). This milestone political documentary, a collective protest against the U.S. war in Vietnam, features contributions from an array of (mostly) French cinema greats, including Godard. Chris Marker (Le Joli Mai, Sans Soleil) initiated and edited the project. Alain Resnais provides the only fictional episode, with Bernard Fresson playing a leftist intellectual trying to justify his reluctance to take a moral stand on Vietnam. Godard’s segment, in which the director explains why it is impossible for him to make a film about Vietnam, deals with the same moral dilemma, and includes excerpts from his 1967 feature La Chinoise. Other sections explore the role of image and media in a war heavily covered by television; the historical origins of the conflict; and the pro- and anti-war movements in the U.S. and abroad. Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh make appearances. “An important film, a beautiful film, a moving film” (Roud). “A landmark in the European cinema ... A new kind of film — not an anthologypiece in which each director contributes a sketch, but a real fusion of each individual’s material into a collective statement” (Michael Kustow, London Times). B&W and colour, DCP, in English and French with English subtitles. 115 mins.
One of the rarest features of Godard’s peak period, Made in USA is a widescreen, moviemad remake, of sorts, of Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, featuring Anna Karina in the Bogart role. Karina (Godard’s soon-to-be ex-wife) plays Paula Nelson, a privateeye investigating the murder of a former lover in Atlantic City. The Big Sleep’s legendary plot, convoluted and impenetrable, finds its Godardian analogue in Made in USA’s elliptical, self-reflexive, brilliantly polyphonic style — a dizzying popart clash of sounds and images, replete with wry observations on political violence and the “Coca-Colonization” of French life, nonsense dialogue, and eclectic music (including Marianne Faithful in a cameo). The film is dedicated to Nick Ray and Sam Fuller, and features characters named Aldrich, Widmark, and Siegel (as well as Nixon and McNamara). Funny, for all that, that Made in USA was made in the aftermath of Godard’s declaration that “Cinema is capitalism in its purest form ... There is only one solution, and that is to turn one’s back on the American cinema.” “A Molotov cocktail of American pulp and Parisian paranoia ... Essential for those interested in watching the filmmaker take cinema to new levels of allusion and modernist game playing” (David Fear, Time Out New York). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 8:35 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 2 – 8:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 8:40 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 6:30 PM
France 1967. Directors: Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais
France 1966. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó, Marianne Faithful, Yves Alfonso
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“A film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” JEAN-LUC GODARD
TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER Godard authority James Monaco calls Two or Three Things “arguably the greatest film made by arguably the most important world director to emerge since WWII.” He’s not alone in considering it Godard’s chef-d’oeuvre. Inspired by a newspaper article on prostitution amongst suburban Parisian housewives, Godard’s movie is a kinetic, kaleidoscopic treatise on the consumer society as brothel, offering a damning yet wildly exuberant indictment of systemic sexism and wanton materialism. Marina Vlady plays Juliette, a homemaker in an ugly suburban housing complex who begins moonlighting as a prostitute in order to afford more consumer goods. Gigantic (now-legendary) close-ups of coffee cups and cigarettes contend with giddy colours, bold inter-titles, numerous quotations, and the director’s self-doubting voice-over. Typical of Godard’s work of the period, sexual exploitation is equated with capitalist oppression — and, more specifically, American capitalism and imperialism. “One of the ten best films in the history of cinema” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). “A shock to the cinematic system ... Godard offers us multiple, intersecting, fragmented stories involving gender, language, consumerism, imperialism, and the topographies of desire represented by Paris and Juliette ... A must-see-now” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times). Colour, 35mm in French with English subtitles. 90 mins. (Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle) France 1966. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Marina Vlady, Roger Montsoret, Anny Duperey, Jean Narboni, Christophe Bourseiller
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 8:20 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 6:30 PM
B A N D E À P A R T
France 1967. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Anne Wiazemsky
Godard’s astonishing 15th feature, from 1967, is “the cumulative work of the first phase of Godard’s career” (Armond White) and one of the director’s pinnacle achievements. A self-described “film found on the scrapheap,” Weekend offers a savagely funny, surreal epic satire of our car-crash culture hurtling towards its apocalypse. Godard channels Buñuel and consumer capitalism runs amok as a murderous middle-class couple (played by Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne) sets out for a Sunday drive, encountering a series of increasingly elaborate, increasingly gruesome auto accidents. Only by merrily maiming and pillaging as they go can the unpleasant pair make their way safely through the hilarious, horrifying, hallucinatory scrapheap of Western civilization. In the meantime, a group of mindless Maoist cannibalistic hippie revolutionaries takes to the woods. The film’s stunning centrepiece — “one of the great sequences in all cinema” (James Monaco) — is a single-take, 10-minute tracking shot along a monumental traffic jam. Nouvelle vague mainstay Raoul Coutard was the cinematographer. “Extraordinary ... Godard’s vision of Hell and it ranks with the greatest” (Pauline Kael). “This is Godard’s best film, and his most inventive. It is almost pure movie” (Roger Ebert). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 105 mins. SUNDAY, MARCH 2 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, MARCH 3 – 8:25 PM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5 – 6:30 PM
LA CHINOISE
Quentin Tarantino named his production company after Godard’s Bande à part, one of the giddy glories of the French nouvelle vague — and “perhaps Godard’s most delicately charming film” (Pauline Kael). Described by Godard as “Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka,” the film was his first return to the gangster genre since Breathless. Three Parisian students meet in English class and, under the influence of far too many Hollywood movies, plot a potentially lucrative burglary. Bande à part features a playful blend of quotes from Shakespeare, musical numbers, and self-conscious references to the relationship (and confusion) between cinema and reality. Ironic voice-over narration by the director summarizes the plot, explains the characters’ motives, and comments on the action. The opening titles credit the film to “Jean-Luc/Cinéma/Godard.” One memorable sequence has the three protagonists attempting to “do” the Louvre in a high-speed nine minutes. The Madison dance scene inspired the John Travolta-Uma Thurman twist in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. “One of Godard’s most open and enjoyable films ... A fast and loose tale that continues his love affairs with Hollywood and with actress Anna Karina” (Chris Petit, Time Out). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins.
“Godard’s best film by far since Breathless” (Renata Adler, New York Times), La Chinoise offers a spectacularly colourful Pop-art collage-portrait of five student radicals, members of a Maoist cell, who spend a summer in a Paris apartment chanting from Mao’s Little Red Book and plotting an assassination. Godard regular Anne Wiazemsky (who married the director the same year) and nouvelle vague icon Jean-Pierre Léaud head the cast. The film was released nine months before the radical events of May ’68. Godard is at the height of his own revolutionary powers here, and his meta-narrative, aesthetically scattershot approach is exhilarating: La Chinoise is intercut with slogans, old photos, revolutionary posters, American comic book figures, and paintings, plus the obligatory Godardian catalogue of cinematic and literary references (including Johnny Guitar and Jean-Paul Sartre). As in his earlier Pierrot le fou, Godard also offers a comic re-enactment of the Vietnam War. “The movie is like a speed-freak’s anticipatory vision of the political horrors to come; it’s amazing” (Pauline Kael). “A brilliant dialectical farce ... A prophetic and remarkably acute analysis of the impulse behind the events of May 1968 in all their desperate sincerity and impossible naïveté” (Tom Milne, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 96 mins.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 8:25 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 1 – 6:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 3 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5 – 8:30 PM
(Band of Outsiders)
France 1964. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, Louisa Colpeyn, Danièle Girard
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WEEKEND
France 1967. Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Michel Semeniako, Lex de Bruijn
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