MA MAR A R CH C H + A PR P R IL PRI IL 20 0112 012 12
Jess + Moss Putty Hill You All Are Captains Hugo the Hippo The Ballad of Genesiss and Lady Jaye West Wind: The Vision off Tom Thomson
Bresson 1131 Howe Street • Vancouver • www.cinematheque.bc.ca • tw twitter wit itte itte ter + fa ffacebook cebook @theCinematheque ce
DESIGN BY: COPILOT DESIGN
The
presents
2011/12
SEASON CHANCENTRE.COM
A Sound Experience. FRIDAY MARCH 9 AT 8PM: TIEMPO LIBRE SATURDAY MARCH 24 AT 8PM: BERLIN NIGHTS/PARIS DAYS: THE ART OF CHANSON UTE LEMPER WITH VOGLER QUARTET AND STEFAN MALZEW SUNDAY APRIL 1 AT 7PM: ZAKIR HUSSAIN & MASTERS OF PERCUSSION
ORDER TODAY! chancentre.com Chan Centre Ticket Office (in person only) Tues to Sat 12pm - 5pm TICKETMASTER.CA / 1.855.985.ARTS (2787) (service charges apply)
Sponsored by:
ADMI N ISTRATIVE OF F I C E 200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 tel 604.688.8202 • fax 604.688.8204 Email: info@cinematheque.bc.ca Web: www.cinematheque.bc.ca
CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS SERIES p.4 Buena Vista Social Club Zakir and His Friends: A Rhythm Experience
STAF F Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Amber Orchard Communications Manager: steve chow Education Manager: Liz Schulze Operations & Marketing Coordinator: Sonya William Media Production Coordinator: Mitch Stookey Development Intern: Jessica Li Facility Manager: Sue Cormier Assistant Theatre Managers: Sharon Cohen, Lora Haber, Ann-Mary Mullen, Dawna Brown, Sonya William, Nadiya Chettiar, Jessica Parsons, David Emery Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Peter Boyle, Stuart Carl, Ron Lacheur, Cassidy Penner
CINEMA SUNDAY p.5 Hugo the Hippo The Flight of Dragons
10 YEARS OF FRAMES OF MIND p.6 Talhotblond Titicut Follies
DIM CINEMA p.7 Benjamin Smoke Gabriel
BOARD OF DIRECTO RS President: Mark Ostry Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Secretary: Luca Citton Treasurer: Wynford Owen Members: Moshe Mastai, Mark Tomek, Kathy Wang
THE NEW CINEMA p.8 Jess + Moss Putty Hill You All Are Captains George Washington
V O LUNTEERS Theatre Volunteers: Mike Archibald, Michael Begg, Mark Beley, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nishant Chadha, Emily Chia, Andrew Clark, Jessica Clarke, Adam Cook, Rob Danielson, Ben Daswani, Steve Devereux, Ray Don, Darin Fiorenza, Chantelle Gates, Paul Griffiths, Joe Haigh, Dora Ho, Brad Iles, Krisandra Janowicz, Michiko Higgins-Kato, Beng Khoo, Michael Kling, Ray Lai, Shannon Lentz, Liam McClure, Brittany McDuff, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Danuta Musial, Chahram Riazi, Marc Ronnie, Hisayo Saito, Polina Skvortsova, Derek Thomas, Amanda Thomson, Stephen Tweedale, Margaret West, Diane Wood, Jay Yoon, Natalie Zeoli
YELLOW SIGNAL: NEW MEDIA IN CHINA PRESENTS
Hometown Boy p.10
NEW DOCUMENTARY p.10 West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Distribution: Martin Lohmann, Harry Wong, John William, Michael Edillor, Chantal Cooke, Hazel Ackner, Lynn Martin, Michael Demers, Scott Banakaiff
TERENCE DAVIES + LIVERPOOL x 2 p.11 The Long Day Closes Of Time and the City
Office: Jo Bergstrand, Betty-Lou Phillips, Zac Cocciolo, Moya Hilliam
PETER GREENAWAY + REMBRANDT’S THE NIGHT WATCH x 2 p.11
Education: Michael Edillor, Wesley Houston, Chloe McKnight, Nick McLean, Pat McSherry, Jennifer Somerstein, Michael van den Bos, Matthew Vatta, Donna Welstein
Nightwatching Rembrandt’s J’Accuse
And a special thanks to all our spares!
NOW PLAYING CALENDAR p.12-13 PACIF I C C IN É MATH È Q U E PR O G RAM G U I D E Art Direction + Graphic Design: steve chow Program Notes: Jim Sinclair Advertising & Additional Ad Design: Sonya William Proofreading: Jim Sinclair, Amber Orchard
BOLLYWOOD’S GREAT SHOWMAN: RAJ KAPOOR AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF INDIAN CINEMA p.14
Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 15,000. Printed by Van Press Printers. ADVE RTISIN G To advertise in this Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please call 604.688.8202. Pacific Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit arts society. We rely on financial support from public and private sources. Donations are gratefully accepted — a tax receipt will be issued for all donations of $30 or more. To make a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202. Pacific Cinémathèque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies:
ROBERT BRESSON p.18
CONTENTS
EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA
P a ci fi c Ci n é ma t h è q ue Pr og r a m Gui de , v3 5 . 4
M A R C H + AP R I L 2 012
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND
TALHOTBLON
D
LADY JAYE
The CHAN CENTRE CONNECT SERIES and PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE present
Zakir
and His Friends
A Rhythm Experience
Switzerland/Germany 1998. Director: Lutz Leonhardt With: Zakir Hussain, Boys and Girls of Cahaou, Les Frères Coulibaly, Kodo
Part documentary portrait and part travelogue, German filmmaker Lutz Leonhardt’s propulsive, percussive film profiles legendary Indian tabla drums player and “musician without frontiers” Zakir Hussain, capturing the Bombay-born, California–based master percussionist, famous for his fleet fingers, in conversation, performance, and while teaching. Interspersed in this “rhythm experience” are colourful, beautifully shot vignettes of percussion performances from around the planet. “Leonhardt prefers the term ‘adventure film’ to documentary. His choice for this label is not so strange, because for Zakir and His Friends he has travelled across half the world — India, Indonesia, Japan, Venezuela, Trinidad, and Burkina Faso — in search of musical adventure and to capture rhythm experiments. The performance of a group of young ‘cheek clappers’, who use their face as their instruments, is one of the most phenomenal variations” (International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam). 88 mins.
Germany/USA 1999. Director: Wim Wenders With: Ry Cooder, Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo, Rubén González, Orlando ‘Cachaito’ López
In 1996, American guitarist Ry Cooder travelled to Havana to record Eliades Ochoa and other traditionalist Cuban musicians in collaboration with musicians from Mali. When visa problems prevented the Malians from making it to Cuba, Cooder salvaged the project by bringing together a number of aging Cuban musicians whose talents had been virtually forgotten in the aftermath of Castro’s revolution. The recording became the triumphant Buena Vista Social Club album, released in 1997. This 1999 film, directed by noted German filmmaker Wim Wenders and nominated for an Oscar, captures the legendary Buena Vista Social Club in their lives back in Cuba, in reunion in the recording studio, and in their Carnegie Hall performance in New York. “Moving, uplifting ... A film of ineffable sweetness and glorious music ... An achievement of both music scholarship and passionate humanity” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). 105 mins.
THURSDAY, MARCH 29 – 7:00 PM This special screening of Zakir and His Friends has been organized in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of Zakir Hussain and Masters of Percussion, performing at the Chan on Sunday, April 1 at 7:00 pm.
THURSDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:00 PM This special screening of Buena Vista Social Club has been organized in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of the three-time Grammy-nominated Cuban music group Tiempo Libre, who perform at the Chan on Friday, March 9 at 8:00 pm.
The Chan Centre Connects Series presents outreach activities related to visiting artists performing in the annual concert season at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC.
www.chancentre.com
C. 1983
Presented with Presentation House Gallery
FRIDAY, MAY 4 • FREE ADMISSION
Image: Ellie Epp, Notes in Origin, 1987, 16mm., 15 mins. silent, courtesy the artist.
7:30 pm A program of short films made in the 1980s by Vancouver experimental filmmakers
9:00 pm Image: Rodney Graham, Two Generators, 1984, 35mm, 4 mins. sound, courtesy the artist.
A 90-minute screening of Rodney Graham’s renowned film work Two Generators (1984).
www.presentationhousegallery.org
Produced in conjunction with the Presentation House Gallery exhibition C. 1983: Camera Art in Vancouver, Part I: January 28 to March 11, 2012, Part II: March 23 to May 6, 2012. Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver gallery hours: wed-sun, 12-5 pm. C. 1983 is presented in honour of Kitty Heller, with generous support from her estate.
4
Morna Edmundson, Artistic Director
Presented by Pacific Cinémathèque’s Education Department, Cinema Sunday is an afternoon film program for children and their families. We invite you to join us every month to watch outstanding movies and take part in follow-up discussions, activities, and games intended to be fun and stimulate critical and creative thinking. Our goal is to introduce you to some awesome new films, treasured classics, and other favourites — movies that keep you thinking and talking long after you leave the theatre. We hope you’ll join us and make Cinema Sunday a regular addition to your family outings!
PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE MEMBERSHIP IS NOT REQUIRED FOR THESE EVENTS.
Hugo the (Hugó, a víziló)
Hippo
Phantasmagorical! Little-known cult curio Hugo the Hippo is a psychedelic feature in the vein of Yellow Submarine, voiced by such stars as Burl Ives and Paul Lynde, and featuring groovy tunes from Marie and Jimmy Osmond! The wild tale takes place in Zanzibar, where a cigaretteVoices: Burl Ives, Paul Lynde, Robert smoking gang of mean sharks inhabits the Morley, Marie Osmond, Jimmy Osmond harbour. Twelve hippos are brought in to defeat the sharks; after the deed is done, the hippos too are deemed a nuisance and gotten rid of. Only little Hugo remains. Left to fend for himself, he faces countless (wacky) dangers, including a banana octopus, corncob artilleries, and a wizard who practices hippo-notism. Animated behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary, financed by the perfume company Fabergé, and directed by New York animation designer Bill Feigenbaum (his only film), this unusual production was simply never embraced by the American mainstream and so fell into obscurity. It is still without an official English digital release, leading lovers of Hugo to form online communities to share ALL in their search for the lost treasure. “About ten years ago, I started receiving AGES renewed interest in Hugo,” says Feigenbaum. “Now, almost every day I receive word from somebody who has loved the film.” Feigenbaum is lending us his personal 35mm copy to screen here. Colour, 35mm. 86 mins. SUNDAY, MARCH 18 – 1:00 PM
Pure
Elektra
By turns serene, gripping, beautiful, and surprising, Pure Elektra will surround you with beauty in a program of works full of the radiant “Elektra sound” that has captivated audiences for 25 years. Close your eyes, open your ears, and take a deep breath of Pure Elektra.
Sunday March 4, 2012 • 3 pm Ryerson United Church, 2195 W45 Ave, Vancouver
Adults $28 • Seniors $22
1.800.838.3006 Elektra.ca
Martha Lou Henley Charitable Foundation
the
Flight of Dragons
USA 1982. Directors: Jules Bass, Arthur Rankin Voices: Victor Buono, James Earl Jones, James Gregory, John Ritter, Harry Morgan
ALL AGES
Combine expert storytelling from Rankin/Bass (Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer, The Last Unicorn) and storybook-come-to-life animation from Japan’s Topcraft Studios — predecessor of Studio Ghibli (My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away) — and the result is a fantastical epic for all ages! The Flight of Dragons is set in the final days before humanity’s belief in logic and science would eradicate magical beings completely. Vile Red Wizard Ommadon (James Earl Jones, voice of Star Wars villain Darth Vader) declares he will use his remaining power to make men destroy the Earth and themselves. The good wizards summon Earth’s only hope: a man “of science and magic” from the future. Playing with lines of reality and fiction, the man who arrives is Peter Dickinson (voiced by John Ritter), real-life author of influential fantasy book The Flight of Dragons (1979), a speculative biology of dragons. Many Rankin/Bass films were shunted into obscurity after the studio’s doors closed; the rarity of Dragons led to a cult fascination in recent years, as many who grew up with the film became curious to see it again. A petition to re-release Dragons received more than 500 signatures; in 2009, Warner Brothers made it available as a madeto-order DVD (our source for the film). Colour, DVD. 96 mins. SUNDAY, APRIL 15 – 1:00 PM 5
10 YEARS OF
presented by PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE and the INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH, UBC DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY
Pacific Cinémathèque 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 Psychiatry,
“Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video
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 panel discussions,
filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind”
are held on the third Wednesday of each month.
since its inception in September 2002.
FRAMESOFMIND.CA
Frames of Mind began its 10th year in September. We’re celebrating with a year-long retrospective of some of the most memorable films screened in the series since its inception in 2002. This program’s selections are Talhotblond, first presented at Frames in October 2010, and Titicut Follies, first presented in May 2004.
Talhotblond USA 2009. Director: Barbara Schroeder
Titicut Follies USA 1967. Director: Frederick Wiseman
“Talhotblond” was the username of beautiful 18-yearold Jessi, a high-school senior from West Virginia. Jessi met Tommy, a buff, brave 18-year-old soldier (username: marinesniper) in an internet chat room, and the pair stuck up an intense, passionate, two-year on-line affair. Without ever meeting, the pair exchanged countless instant messages, phone calls, love letters, and photographs. Their relationship reached the point where Tommy proposed marriage. But Tommy, it transpired, was actually Tom, a balding, overweight 46-year-old factory worker and married father of two. Jessi was furious, but didn’t cut off communications. She exploited a new relationship with one of Tom’s co-workers, 22-year-old Brian (username: beefcake), whom she had also met online, to taunt Tom and inflame his jealousy. Pitting one man against the other, Jessi kept raising the stakes — until the day Brian was found dead in the factory parking lot. Tom was arrested; he pled guilty in a plea deal and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. It is only then that the true identity of Talhotblond was exposed — a revelation that rockets this true-life crime story of online identities, obsession, and deceit into the stratosphere of lurid tabloid tales. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, 2008 Seattle International Film Festival. Colour, HDCAM. 76 mins.
In his legendary first documentary, cinéma vérité master Frederick Wiseman leads us into the MCI-Bridgewater mental institution, a prison-hospital for the criminally insane run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. Wiseman shows us, without judgment, the incessant abuse of inmates as they are needlessly stripped bare, insulted, herded about, mocked, and taunted. His portrayal of the guards is equally intimate and disturbing; there’s a sense of horror that the daily routine can work with such good humour, efficiency, and brutality. “Titicut Follies is a documentary film that tells you more than you could possibly want to know — but no more than you should know — about life behind the walls of one of those institutions where we file and forget the criminal insane ... The repulsive reality revealed in Titicut Follies forces us to contemplate our capacity for callousness” (Richard Schickel, Life). The film’s release caused a huge outcry; the State of Massachusetts sought to prevent its further circulation, and ultimately obtained a court order that restricted its exhibition: only members of the healthcare, legal, or social work professions, or students in those fields, could legally see it. It was not until 1991 that Titicut Follies was released again to the general public. B&W, 16mm, 84 mins.
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Rob Tarzwell, a psychiatrist who practices at St. Paul’s and Lions Gate hospitals. Dr. Tarzwell’s practice includes emergency psychiatry. He has been a consultant for the Addiction Medicine Service, and is a Clinical Instructor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.
Post-screening discussion with Robert Menzies, a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University. Robert has published widely on the relationship between psychiatry and law, and on mental health history in British Columbia. He is currently involved with a collective of academics and activists in a website project entitled The History of Madness in Canada — historyofmadness.ca — and is co-editing a forthcoming book entitled Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies.
Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21 – 7:30 PM
Moderated by Dr Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18 – 7:30 PM
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A MONTHLY EVENING OF MOVING-IMAGE ART AND CINEMATIC EXPERIMENTS
DIM presents Canadian and international artists and their moving-image practices in dialogue with cinema. DIM is curated by Amy Lynn Kazymerchyk, a Vancouver filmmaker, writer, and curator. Amy is the Coordinator of Events + Exhibitions at VIVO Media Arts Centre and Curator of the Signal + Noise Media Arts Festival. WWW.DIMCINEMA.CA
Benjamin
SMOKE Lit by the glow of a bubbling fish tank diffused by a taffeta shawl, Benjamin Smoke lounges on a stack of pillows and asks, “What happens when you make music that gets you off like drugs, sex, or god? You tell me– what is it about having a great orgasm that’s so good . . .?” Benjamin (1960-1999) was a member of Atlanta’s underground and experimental music scenes in the 1980s, including the Opal Foxx Quartet. His yearning to write original music lead to the formation of Smoke, a band admired by the likes of Michael Stipe, Chan Marshall, and Patti Smith (who appears in the film). For 10 years, filmmakers Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen filmed Benjamin at his home in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighbourhood, opening a window onto his life with drugs, music, AIDS, queer drag, and his mother. Benjamin Smoke explores the life of a true American rebel in a little known, rapidly disappearing pocket of the U.S. South. “In the straw coloured light, in light rapidly changing, on a life rapidly fading; have you seen death singing, have you seen death singing, have you seen death singing?” (Patti Smith). “A haunting portrait of a lyricist-singer who is the very embodiment of the famous observation that burning the candle at both ends produces such a lovely light” (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times). B&W and colour, 16mm. 72 mins.
There is
NO HONOUR in HONOUR KILLINGS Read Jassi’s story at amazon.com
USA 2000. Directors: Jem Cohen, Peter Sillen With: Benjamin Smoke, Patti Smith, Tim Campion, Brian Halloran, Coleman Lewis, Bill Taft
MONDAY, MARCH 19 – 7:30 PM
“MOVIE IMAGES are DIM REFLECTIONS of the BEAUTY and FEROCITY in MANKIND” JAMES BROUGHTON
GABRIEL USA 1976. Director: Agnes Martin
Recently preserved by the Museum of Modern Art and The Pace Gallery in New York, Gabriel is the only completed film by the painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), a leading figure in American abstract art. (Martin was born in Saskatchewan and raised in Vancouver). “Gabriel [is] a historically unique work that both illuminates and complicates our understanding of the artist and her paintings. ‘My movie is about happiness, innocence, and beauty,’ Martin observed. ‘It’s about this little boy who climbs a mountain and all the beautiful things he sees.’ To those familiar with the luminous, tactile, exacting geometries of her paintings, Gabriel’s elusive style and structure may come as a surprise: the lack of logical continuity; the point of view that shifts between that of the boy and an unseen observer; the handheld camera that is rarely at rest, but instead feels its way across the landscape, meandering and contemplating. Whatever tension exists in Gabriel comes from transition, variation, and difference: between shore and land, snow and desert, silence and Bach, solidity and movement, abstraction and nature” (MOMA). Colour, 16mm transferred to DVD. 78 mins. Courtesy of The Pace Gallery. MONDAY, APRIL 16 – 7:30 PM
Now available at “Agnes Martin was born in Macklin, Saskatchewan in 1912 and grew up in Vancouver. She moved to the USA in 1932, taking American citizenship in 1940. Martin held her first one-woman exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1958. She constructed her paintings on a rational grid system, superimposing a network of pencilled lines and later coloured bands on fine-grained canvas stained with washes of colour. These paintings were influential on the development of Minimalism in the USA, although Martin regarded her use of grids as a development from the ‘all-over’ compositional methods of Abstract Expressionism. She persistently rejected the suggestion that her paintings were conceived in response to the landscape of New Mexico, where she settled again in 1967 and where she chose to work most of her life” (Oxford University Press).
amazon.com
To learn, contribute and petition go to
JusticeForJassi.com 7
THE NEW CINEMA
EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUNS
8
“VISUAL MAGIC ... A vivid collage of childhood and nature ... A portrait of the freshness and vulnerability of youth.”
“ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF 2011.” RICHARD BRODY, THE NEW YORKER
DAVID D’ARCY, SCREEN DAILY
“SMALL, QUIET, AND ENVELOPING ... Painful and complicated ... An impressive debut.” J.R. JONES, CHICAGO READER
“HAUNTING, MELANCHOLY BEAUTY ... A moody, elliptical fusion of fiction and documentary ... An impressionistic portrait of a place and its residents.” STEPHEN HOLDEN, NEW YORK TIMES
“DREAMLIKE, IMPRESSIONISTIC ... A mosaic of pieces that combine to form a quietly shattering whole ... Jess + Moss earned some good notices out of Sundance and deserved every one of them ... A high note of Berlin 2011.”
“SURPRISINGLY EFFECTIVE ... It looks with as much perception and sympathy as it is possible for a film to look ... In a way rarely seen, Putty Hill says all that can be said about a few days in the life of its characters.”
BRIAN BROOKS, INDIEWIRE
ROGER EBERT, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
JESS + MOSS
PUTTY HILL
USA 2011. Director: Clay Jeter Cast: Sarah Hagan, Austin Vickers, Haley Strode, Donald Fleming, Haley Parker
USA 2010. Director: Matt Porterfield Cast: Sky Ferreira, Zoe Vance, James Siebor Jr., Dustin Ray, Charles Sauers
“Evoking memories of moody American indies like David Gordon Green’s George Washington, Clay Jeter’s debut feature is a visually arresting and achingly melancholic tone poem. Jess, an 18-year-old girl, and Moss, a 12-year-old boy, while away the final days of summer on a picturesque Kentucky tobacco farm. Heartbreakingly reliant on one another, the second cousins seem to exist in a world of their own. Poking around a rotting farmhouse teeming with domestic debris (a gloriously surreal sight to behold), lighting off fireworks and lounging atop silos, they find themselves falling into the same conversations time and again (which only furthers the narrative’s hypnotic lure). Amidst the ennui, a sexual undercurrent pulses. Working with more than 30 different film stocks (some of them two decades old) and shooting on his family farm, Jeter cobbles together evocative scenes that unfold like fragments of faded memories. Possessing an enthralling fragility, Jess + Moss feels like it could disintegrate before your very eyes at any given moment. Consequently, every second spent with it becomes all the more precious” (Vancouver I.F.F.). “An art cinema gem ... Jeter’s film takes on the quality of a sustained dream, as if the theatrical conceits of Jean Genet were married to a children’s story retold via William Faulkner’s Southern brand of stream of consciousness” (Robert Koehler, Variety). Colour, HDCAM. 83 mins.
“Matt Porterfield’s second feature — which, like his first, Hamilton, is set in a nearly rural corner of his native Baltimore — digs deep beneath the surface of the quiet doings of everyday people to get at the solid roots that bind them to one another and to home. With breathtaking formal ingenuity and a rapturous eye, Porterfield follows the family and friends of Cory, a troubled young man, as they gather for his funeral after his death from a drug overdose. Intruding on the story to interview his characters as they go about their business, Porterfield draws their suppressed turmoil to the foreground. The action is propelled by Cory’s cousin, the teen-aged Jenny (the singer Sky Ferreira), who returns from California, visits her long-estranged father, a paroled killer, and faces a past that she thought she had left behind. Porterfield finds ecstatic moods in a strip mall, a karaoke bar, a modest kitchen; light (as captured by Jeremy Saulnier’s keen videography) plays a major role in bringing a loamy, Faulknerian world to life. Throughout this wondrous movie, visual experience itself conveys the muted joy of living despite unfathomable reaches of pain” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). “Raw and carefully crafted ... The acting is remarkable ... An artistically focused filmmaker who, like Kelly Reichardt [Wendy and Lucy], is no Hollywood wannabe” (Ronnie Scheib, Variety). Colour, HDCAM. 85 mins.
FRIDAY, MARCH 2 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 3 – 8:10 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 8 – 8:10 PM MONDAY, MARCH 12 – 6:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 2 – 8:10 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 3 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 4 – 8:15 PM MONDAY, MARCH 5 – 6:30 PM
“ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF 2011.” RICHARD BRODY, THE NEW YORKER
International Critics’ Prize, Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes 2010
YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS (Todos vós sodes capitáns)
Spain/Morocco 2010. Director: Oliver Laxe Cast: Oliver Laxe, Shakib Ben Omar, Nabil Dourgal, Mohamed Bablouh, Said Targhzaou, Asharaf Dourgal
“In his first feature, the young Spanish director Oliver Laxe achieves something remarkable ... Laxe stars in this tender and witty metafiction as Oliver, a Spanish director who arrives in Tangier, Morocco, to work with children in an orphanage on a blandly educational film. Instead, Oliver involves them in a politicized art film about their “situation,” and the bewildered kids — who expected something like Hollywood, yet also like home movies — revolt... Laxe self-deprecatingly captures both the grandeur and the folly of Oliver’s high-toned student exercise, all the while unfolding, calmly but relentlessly, in brisk but richly textured black-and-white images, the sights and sounds, as well as the mores and characters of Tangier and its environs. He also, modestly but incisively, contemplates the diverse essence of the cinema itself ... The movie’s scale is small, its subjects are intimate, its artistic reach is immense” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). “A fascinating combination of self-reflexivity, selfdeprecation, and documentary ... [This] further entry in the rapidly proliferating, rich vein of documentary/fiction hybrids channels the meta-textuality, genre bending, and sensitivity towards children found in the best work of Abbas Kiarostami and François Truffaut ... You All Are Captains is a mysterious, whimsical, and unique creation (Anthology Film Archives, New York). B&W, 35mm, in Arabic, French, and Spanish with English subtitles. 78 mins. MONDAY, MARCH 5 – 8:10 PM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 8 – 6:30 PM
PLUS – FROM THE VAULTS:
GEORGE WASHINGTON USA 2000. Director: David Gordon Green Cast: Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Curtis Cotton III, Eddie Rouse, Paul Schneider
An achingly beautiful, hauntingly lyrical tale of love, friendship, and childhood, David Gordon Green’s extraordinary debut announced the arrival of a major new talent in American independent cinema and a new film poet in the Terence Malick mode. (Malick, himself a fan, would produce Undertow, Green’s third feature; Green’s more recent move to commercial comedy, including the Judd Apatow-produced Pineapple Express, has raised a few critical eyebrows.) Set in a derelict North Carolina hamlet, and acted by a non-professional cast, George Washington centres on a group of impoverished preteens, black and white, headed by 12-year-old Nasia, the film’s wise-beyond-her-years narrator. Her new boyfriend is awkward, eccentric George; one of “God’s mysteries and mistakes,” he’s literally soft in the head. The non-linear plot takes a hard narrative turn with a tragedy at the midway point; the film is lush, bucolic, tender, and impressionistic, with an effective improvisational feel, an intense sense of intimacy, and poetic abstractions that approach the surreal. Reviewers invoked the likes of Faulkner, Truffaut, Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Harmony Korine’s Gummo to describe George Washington’s strong sense of place, ravishing CinemaScope landscapes, poetic approach to childhood, and odd, unsettling mix of documentary realism and allegory. “A unique film ... A breathtaking debut from a director capable of greatness” (Rick Groen, Globe and Mail). Colour, 35mm. 89 mins. SUNDAY, MARCH 4 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7 – 8:10 PM MONDAY, MARCH 12 – 8:10 PM
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SPECIAL
SCREENING
NEW DOCUMENTARY
Presented in conjunction with
Yellow Signal: New Media in China Yellow Signal: New Media in China is a city-wide exhibition of the best contemporary video and new media artwork made by Chinese artists in recent years. The project is initiated by Centre A –Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, with Shengtian Zheng, a Vancouver-based curator and internationally recognized expert on Chinese contemporary art. He is currently the managing editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. VANCOUVER PREMIERE!
“As gorgeous as the iconic artist’s paintings ... West Wind is a great story of a great artist.” CHRIS COBB, OTTAWA CITIZEN
The mystery surround the iconic Canadian painter Tom Thomson’s death in 1917 has sometimes overshadowed his great creative achievement. This gorgeous new documentary from the makers of the recent Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould gives precedence to Thomson’s life and, most importantly, his art, and makes the case that Thomson was truly a world-class talent. Shot in Algonquin Park, Georgian Bay, Seattle, and Toronto, West Wind unearths rare archival materials, never-before-seen Thomson works, and — the enduring Thomson mystery being impossible to avoid altogether — even some human remains. “Peter Raymont and Michèle Hozer investigate a genius and the nature Canada 2011. Directors: Michèle Hozer, Peter Raymont of his genius. What made Thomson one of the first to With: David Thomson, Ross King, David Silcox, Joanne Murray, Dennis Reid, Roy MacGregor recognize the beauty of the Canadian terroir, portraying our swamps, trees, and skies with such glorious energy? He witnessed the dramatic colours, moods, and intensity of the woods and responded with bold compositions, thick, rhythmic brushstrokes, and a shocking palette. Tom Thomson painted some 45 canvasses and over 300 sketches in an extraordinary creative burst in the last four years of his life. The directors have created a very enjoyable, visually stunning, and thoughtful reflection on that life” (Vancouver I.F.F.). Colour, HDCAM. 95 mins.
WEST WIND:
THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON
HOMETOWN BOY Taiwan 2011. Director: Yao Hung-I With: Liu Xiaodong
Directed and shot by Yao Hung-I – a protégé of the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who produced — Hometown Boy profiles the acclaimed contemporary Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong, known for his paintings of ordinary people. In 1980, Liu left his hometown of Jincheng, a small factory town in Liaoning province, to study painting in Beijing. Hometown Boy, winner of Best Documentary honours at the 2011 Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan’s Oscars), follows Liu on a return visit to Jincheng, where he visits family and old friends, contemplates the changes he encounters, and sets out to capture it all on canvas. Liu’s work was previously the subject of Dong, a 2006 documentary by pre-eminent Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke. “Yao’s agile camera produces a visually arresting portrait of Liu, who freely gives his ideas about art and life, while adding an idyllic charm to the village and its working-class residents who, in the painter’s view, have been long overlooked and forgotten” (Taipei Times). “Every one of Liu’s paintings is a part of the whole, a frozen moment infused with his childhood memories and current existence. He confronts the objects in his painting from an honest, independent, and daring point of view. In these moments, he comes out of himself and his personality and expression penetrate the surface of the painting. Hometown Boy hopes to record this process” (Hou Hsiao-Hsien). Colour, DVD, in Mandarin with English subtitles. 72 mins. FRIDAY, MARCH 30 – 7:00 PM ................. Yellow Signal: New Media in China is a multi-event celebration of contemporary Chinese video and new media artwork running March to September 2012 at various venues in the Vancouver area, including Centre A – Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Surrey Art Gallery, Republic Gallery, and the Charles H. Scott Gallery at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
www.centrea.org
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SUNDAY, APRIL 1 – 4:30 PM & 8:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 2 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 12 – 8:00 PM
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE USA/France 2011. Director: Marie Losier With: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, David Max, Tony Conrad, Caleigh Fisher
Art, love, and devotion are at radical extremes in director Marie Losier’s provocative, intimate, and ultimately highly affecting documentary, a portrait of British cult musician and transgressive performance artist Genesis P-Orridge (born Neil Megson). An iconic figure linking the pre- and post-punk eras, P-Orridge “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is was a major innovator and influence in the development both the most romantic and the saddest film of industrial music through his prolific work with COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, and Psychic TV. In I have seen in a long time.” the 1990s, P-Orridge embarked on his most subversive, SUKHDEV SANDHU, THE TELEGRAM (U.K.) boundary-defying artistic endeavour yet: After he met and married New York dominatrix Jacqueline “Lady Jaye” Beyer, a woman many years his junior, the two embarked on a body-modification project they called Pandrogeny, undergoing plastic surgeries (including his-and-her breast implants) to more closely resemble one another and merge into a single unified entity! Losier’s brisk, lively, and compelling film won two prizes at Berlin in 2011. “A touching story of love on the outer boundaries of identity and gender, as well as a secret underground history of an influential late 20th century subculture ... Losier uses home movies, archival photography and footage, P-Orridge’s music, and interviews to tell the couple’s fascinating story with depth, honesty, and intimacy” (Vancouver I.F.F). Colour and B&W, HDCAM. 70 mins. SUNDAY, APRIL 1 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, APRIL 2 – 8:20 PM WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11 – 8:20 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 12 – 6:30 PM
TERENCE DAVIES + LIVERPOOL x 2
PETER GREENAWAY + REMBRANDT’S THE NIGHT WATCH x 2
“A PHANTASMAGORIC CINEMATIC POEM ... Deeply personal and touching ... A quirky, captivating book of dreams. STEPHEN HOLDEN, NEW YORK TIMES
“MESMERIZING ... Haunted by the way in which movies get mixed up with life.” J. HOBERMAN, VILLAGE VOICE
NEW 35mm PRINT!
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
Great Britain 1992. Director: Terence Davies Cast: Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack, Anthony Watson, Nicholas Lamont, Ayse Owens
The second feature by Terence Davies, one of the great poets of British cinema (and director of the new Deep Blue Sea, scheduled to be released this month) is a gorgeous, visually elaborate paean to his sometimes difficult boyhood in 1950s Liverpool — and to the transcendent, transporting power of cinema and popular music. The impressionistic drama concerns 11-year-old Bud, a dreamy, sensitive boy growing up in a loving, working-class Catholic family. Occasionally bullied at his new school, Bud finds refuge in the local movie house. “Davies’s autobiographical film rings wholly true, due to the richness and the rightness of the allusions he makes through sets, costumes, dialogue, music, radio and cinema itself. Such is Davies’s artistry that he shapes his material into a poignant vision of a paradise lost ... It’s primarily about the small, innocent but very real joys of being alive, recreated with great skill and never smothered by sentimentality. The stately camera movements; the tableaux-like compositions; the evocative use of music and movie dialogue; the dreamy dissolves and lighting — all make this a movie which takes place in its young protagonist’s mind ... The film dazzles with its stylistic confidence, emotional honesty, terrific wit and all-round audacity” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, 35mm. 85 mins. FRIDAY, APRIL 27 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 28 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 29 – 3:30 PM MONDAY, APRIL 30 – 8:15 PM THURSDAY, MAY 3 – 6:30 PM
OF TIME AND THE CITY
Great Britain 2008. Director: Terence Davies With: Terence Davies
In this exquisite, evocative first-person film essay, commissioned by city of Liverpool, the great British director Terence Davies explores the lost Liverpool of his boyhood, the setting also of his masterful, much-admired autobiographical features Distance Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes (the latter also screens in this program). “Of Time and the City outshone the dramatic entries at this year’s [2008] Cannes Film Festival. Davies’s film purports to be about the director’s hometown of Liverpool, but it turns out to be much, much more. In fact, it is a poetic, heartfelt, and beautifully realized account of the filmmaker’s youth... . Reminiscent of Davies’s early films, Of Time and the City recalls the director as a boy as he struggles with poverty, Catholicism, the British monarchy, and his own sexuality while finding solace in cinema and music. It is an impeccably assembled scrapbook of archival footage, radio broadcasts, and pop and classical ditties, all served up with Davies’s intimate and impassioned narration. He claims the Liverpool of his youth — the 1950s and ‘60s — no longer exists. Luckily, immersing oneself in Of Time and the City is probably pretty close to strolling down Penny Lane at the dawn of the rock movement” (Martin Tsai, New York Sun). “As rich and exhilarating as anything Davies has done” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, HDCAM. 77 mins. MONDAY, APRIL 30 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MAY 3 – 8:15 PM
Canada/Great Britain/Poland/Netherlands 2007. Director: Peter Greenaway Cast: Martin Freeman, Emily Holmes, Eva Birthistle, Jodhi May, Natalie Press
Arch, idiosyncratic British filmmaker Peter Greenway has always had a thing for the Dutch and Flemish painters; his sumptuous films — including The Draughtsman’s Contract and A Zed and Two Noughts — are often noted for their Vermeer-like compositions. In Nightwatching, he fashions a droll, debauched conspiracy thriller/art-history drama around Rembrandt’s creation of The Night Watch. (Greenaway completed postproduction on the film in Vancouver, and gave a talk at Pacific Cinémathèque in 2007 while in the city). Nighwatching has a provocative premise (and a plot that recalls Draughtsman’s): that Rembrandt peppered his great masterpiece with clues about murder and malfeasance at the highest levels of Amsterdam society — and that the artist’s subsequent decline in circumstances was a consequence of this affront to the powers that be. “Intriguing and revelatory ... Impressively focused and accessible. In short, one of Greenaway’s best movies — shaped around a truly expressive balls-out performance from Martin Freeman as Rembrandt ... Greenaway went on to deconstruct The Night Watch in his companion film Rembrandt’s J’Accuse” (Trevor Johnston, Time Out). “A rollicking good watch ... Not since The Cook, The Thief, The Wife, and Her Lover has Greenaway thought his way into such an original and artistically poised film” (Andrew O’Hagan, London Evening Standard). Colour, 35mm. 140 mins. FRIDAY, APRIL 27 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 28 – 3:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 29 – 5:30 PM WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 – 8:15 PM
IMPORTED 35mm PRINT!
Rembrandt’s J’Accuse Netherlands/Great Britain/Finland/Germany 2008. Director: Peter Greenaway With: Peter Greenaway, Martin Freeman, Eva Birthistle, Jodhi May, Emily Holmes
It’s CSI: Rijksmuseum in British obsessive Peter Greenaway’s fascinating film essay/ illustrated lecture, a companion piece to his feature drama Nightwatching (and his multimedia installation “Nightwatching” at the famed Amsterdam museum). Rembrandt’s J’Accuse offers a radical forensic analysis of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, arguing, in ways both prosecutorial and playful, that the great painting offers evidence of conspiracy and murder! “The Rijksmuseum is introduced as a crime scene, with the filmmaker digitally inserted, front and center, using a 31-question countdown structure to interrogate The Night Watch’s mise-en-scène. Giving nearly as hammy a performance as Charles Laughton’s in the title role of the 1939 Brit biopic Rembrandt, Greenaway is also extremely convincing in his analysis of the painting’s mysteries ... Peering beneath the painted surface and searching in the shadows, tracking that which was cut from the canvas and mapping the network of glances that remain, the filmmaker uncovers a foul, lurid, corrupt, and perversely compelling conspiracy — which is to say, he successfully turns The Night Watch into a Peter Greenaway film” (J. Hoberman Village Voice). “Enthralling, cohesive, and witty ... The film brims with juicy conspiracy theories and forensic investigations worth of top-tier TV crime drama” (Richard Kuipers, Variety). Colour, 35mm. 90 mins. SATURDAY, APRIL 28 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 29 – 8:15 PM WEDNESDAY, MAY 2 – 6:30 PM
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SENIOR/ STUDENT
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 www.cinematheque.bc.ca. Events, times, and prices
HOW TO BUY TICKETS
unless otherwise indicated
ADULT (18+) (p 9)
(p 9)
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE (p 10)
WEST WIND: THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON (p 10) 4:30pm
APRIL
Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai - Where the Ganges Flows (p 17)
6:30pm
Satyam Shivam Sundaram - Love Sublime /Love, Truth and Beauty (p 16)
3:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
1
6:30pm
WEST WIND: THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON
(p 17)
(p 10)
5
2
26
19
12
Ram Teri Ganga Maili God, Your River is Tainted
6:30pm
RAJ KAPOOR
Benjamin Smoke (p 7)
7:30pm
8:10pm
(p 9)
(p 9)
GEORGE WASHINGTON
6:30pm
JESS + MOSS
8:10pm
(p 9)
YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS (p 9)
6:30pm
PUTTY HILL
Sangam (p 16)
25
18
11
4
6:00pm
Talhotblond (p 6)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
(p 15)
Jagte Raho - Stay Awake
7:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
8:10pm
GEORGE WASHINGTON
6:30pm
YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS (p 9)
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
My Name Is Joker (p 17)
PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE RAJ KAPOOR 39TH ANNUAL GENERAL 6:30pm MEETING Mera Naam Joker -
27
More info: www.cinematheque.bc.ca/venue 604.688.8202 • theatre@cinematheque.bc.ca
(p 9)
7
4
28
21
14
WEDNESDAY
Pacific Cinémathèque’s theatre can be rented on Tuesday nights and during the day seven days a week.
DIM CINEMA
6:30pm
TUESDAY
HOST YOUR EVENT HERE!
RAJ KAPOOR
Hugo the Hippo (p 5)
CINEMA SUNDAY 1:00pm
Aag - Fire (p 15)
6:30pm
RAJ KAPOOR
8:15pm
PUTTY HILL
6:30pm
GEORGE WASHINGTON
SUNDAY
MONDAY
1
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
Zakir and His Friends: A Rhythm Experience (p 4)
7:00pm
CHAN CENTRE CONNECT SERIES
5
29
4:30pm
6:30pm
Pickpocket (p 19)
ROBERT BRESSON
9
2
6
30
23
16
YELLOW SIGNAL: NEW MEDIA IN CHINA PRESENTS HOMETOWN BOY (p 10)
7:00pm
Shree 420 (p 16)
Kal Aaj Aur Kal - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (p 16)
6:30pm
RAJ KAPOOR
6:30pm
RAJ KAPOOR
(p 15)
6:30pm
RAJ KAPOOR (p 15)
22
15
Barsaat - Monsoon (p 15)
6:30pm
Awaara - The Vagabond
(p 9)
(p 9)
(p 9)
RAJ KAPOOR
8:10pm
PUTTY HILL
6:30pm
JESS + MOSS
FRIDAY
Jagte Raho - Stay Awake
7:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
8:10pm
JESS + MOSS
6:30pm
YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS (p 9)
8
Buena Vista Social Club (p 4)
7:00pm
CHAN CENTRE CONNECT SERIES
MARCH
THURSDAY
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
Bobby (p 17)
6:30pm
Mera Naam Joker My Name Is Joker (p 17)
2:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
3
24
17
10
7
31
Satyam Shivam Sundaram - Love Sublime /Love, Truth and Beauty (p 16)
6:30pm
Boot Polish (p 16)
3:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
(p 15)
Awaara - The Vagabond
6:30pm
Sangam (p 16)
3:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
Barsaat - Monsoon (p 15)
6:30pm
Aag - Fire (p 15)
3:00pm
RAJ KAPOOR
8:10pm
(p 9)
(p 9)
JESS + MOSS
6:30pm
PUTTY HILL
SATURDAY
NOW PLAYING
MAR+ APR
1131 HOWE STREET
www.cinematheque.b c.ca
U P D AT E S & A D V A N C E T I C K E T S
2
25
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
A Man Escaped (p 22)
8:20pm
(p 11)
8:15pm
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
8:15pm
NIGHTWATCHING
6:30pm
6:30pm
8:15pm
(p 11)
REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE (p 11)
(p 11)
REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE (p 11)
5:30pm
NIGHTWATCHING
3:30pm
(p 11)
MAY
Mouchette (p 22)
8:40pm
OF TIME AND THE CITY
A Man Escaped (p 22)
A Man Escaped (p 22)
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
6:30pm
8:20pm
(p 11)
3
8:15pm
(p 11)
OF TIME AND THE CITY
6:30pm
(p 11)
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
(p 22)
Diary of a Country Priest
19
26
Au Hasard Balthazar (p 21)
6:30pm
(p 10)
ROBERT BRESSON
8:10pm
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
Titicut Follies (p 6)
7:30pm
FRAMES OF MIND
18
8:00pm
WEST WIND: THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON
6:30pm
Mouchette (p 22)
22
(p 10)
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE (p 10)
20
13
27
7:30pm Two Generators (p 4)
9:00pm
Short films (p 4)
C. 1983
FREE ADMISSION!
8:15pm
NIGHTWATCHING
6:30pm
(p 11)
(p 11)
4
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
(p 22)
Four Nights of a Dreamer
8:30pm
A Man Escaped (p 22)
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
Une Femme Douce (p 21)
8:15pm
L’Argent (p 20)
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
Pickpocket (p 19)
(p 20)
12
8:20pm
Le Diable Probablement
(p 22)
30
23
16
8:20pm
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE (p 10)
6:30pm
WEST WIND: THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON
11
8:00pm
(p 20)
8:00pm
21
14
28 (p 11)
8:15pm
(p 11)
THE LONG DAY CLOSES
6:30pm
REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE (p 11)
3:30pm
NIGHTWATCHING
A Man Escaped (p 22)
8:20pm
(p 22)
Four Nights of a Dreamer
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
L’Argent (p 20)
8:15pm
Lancelot du Lac (p 21)
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
(p 20)
Le Diable Probablement
Pickpocket (p 19)
Le Diable Probablement
Pickpocket (p 19)
Au Hasard Balthazar (p 21)
ROBERT BRESSON
Gabriel (p 7)
7:30pm
DIM CINEMA
Trial of Joan of Arc (p 20)
6:30pm
(p 20)
Le Diable Probablement
4:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
9
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (p 19)
8:20pm
Les Anges du Péché (p 19)
Diary of a Country Priest
29
22
15
8
8:20pm
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE (p 10)
6:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
L’Argent (p 20)
8:15pm
Une Femme Douce (p 21)
6:30pm
L’Argent (p 20)
4:30pm
ROBERT BRESSON
The Flight of Dragons (p 5)
CINEMA SUNDAY 1:00pm
Les Anges du Péché (p 19)
8:15pm
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (p 19)
6:30pm
Trial of Joan of Arc (p 20)
5:00pm
ROBERT BRESSON
WEST WIND: THE VISION OF TOM THOMSON (p 10) 8:00pm
6:30pm
“My shoes are Japanese, These pants are English, The red hat on my heat is Russian, But still, my heart is Indian.” RAJ KAPOOR, “MERA JOOTA HAI JAPANI”, SHREE 420 [music by Shankar-Jaikishan, lyrics by Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri]
BOLLYWOOD’S GREAT SHOWMAN:
RAJ
KAPOOR AND THE
GOLDEN AGE OF INDIAN CINEMA Actor, director, and mogul Raj Kapoor (1924–1988) was one of the giants of Indian cinema, and is synonymous with the rise of the monolith known as “Bollywood.” Largely unknown in North America — except, of course, to millions and millions of fans of South Asian descent! — Kapoor is revered not only in India but throughout much of the rest of world for the films he made during the Golden Age of Indian cinema. Beginning his career as an actor with his father Prithviraj’s famed theatre company and then in small film roles beginning in 1935, Kapoor founded RK Films in 1948, the most important studio of India’s post-Independence era. He made his debut as a producer, director, and lead with the hit film Aag (Fire), in which he starred for the first time with his onscreen muse, the celebrated actress Nargis. Deriving his screen persona from the smirk and swagger of Clark Gable, the heightened emotions and showmanship of Gene Kelly, and, most importantly, Charlie Chaplin’s underdog heroism and sense of pathos, Kapoor rapidly became the biggest superstar of Indian cinema. Meanwhile, his stylistic innovations as a director — from the expressionism and gritty neorealism of his early films, to his introduction of epic-length musical numbers, to the eye-popping, Technicolor delirium of his more commercially-minded late period — helped set the template of the Bollywood film as it is today. Along with their modern-day, hyperromantic style, Kapoor’s films had another hallmark: a deeply felt concern with social issues that paralleled the reformist and nation-building efforts of Gandhi and Nehru. Kapoor himself saw his impact in more modest terms. He viewed his contribution as taking the latent romanticism of pre-war Indian commercial cinema and making it frank, intense, and personal, creating a new idiom for the expression of emotion that had little place in traditional Indian literature and drama.
This exhibition of thirteen legendary Kapoor films, many of them in newly struck 35mm prints, celebrates one of the most ravishing and influential periods of world cinema and the extraordinary talents of an artist known in India as The Great Showman. Acknowledgments: “Raj Kapoor and The Golden Age of Indian Cinema” was curated by Noah Cowan, Artistic Director, TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto) and was organized by TIFF, IIFA (International Indian Film Academy), and RK Films with the support of the Government of Ontario. Series introduction and program notes adapted from descriptions written by Noah Cowan for TIFF. -----------------------------------------------
ALL AGES WELCOME! ANNUAL $3 MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENT IN EFFECT FOR THOSE 18+ Applicable B.C. film classification (rating) for each film is provided with film descriptions and/or will available on our website.
All films in Hindi with English subtitles.
MEDIA SPONSORS
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JAGTE RAHO - STAY AWAKE (aka Ek Din Ratre) India 1956. Directors: Sombhu Mitra, Amit Maitra Cast: Raj Kapoor, Motilal, Pradeep Kumar, Sumitra Devi, Smriti Biswas, Nargis
BARSAAT - MONSOON
India 1949. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Prem Nath, K.N. Singh, Cuckoo, Nimmi
NEW 35mm PRINT
The moody, music-filled romance Barsaat was Raj Kapoor’s first megahit and first film with composers ShankarJaikishan, the hit-writing duo who would hereafter score Kapoor’s films. Barsaat shuttles between the stories of romantic idealist Pran (Kapoor) and his more carnally-driven best friend Gopal (Prem Nath), who both meet and romance the daughters of innkeepers. Gopal loves and leaves Neela (future star Nimmi, in her debut), vowing to return when the monsoon comes, while Pran woos Reshma (Nargis, Kapoor’s main leading lady) with music until her father ends it, claiming all city boys are degenerates. In an attempt to see Pran once more, Reshma falls into a river and is presumed dead... Much complication, happiness, and tragedy follow until the film’s unsettling end. Set in part against the gorgeous landscapes of Kashmir, Barsaat is beautifully shot, its blackand-white images constantly moving into deep focus and silhouette and elevating the star-crossed lovers to objects of veneration. The film also introduced the whisper to Indian commercial cinema, a type of intimacy and emotional dimensionality unknown on screen at the time. “The specially charged Kapoor-Nargis love duets were often singled out as exemplifying the acme of the Indian cinema’s romances” (Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema). B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 171 mins. FRIDAY, MARCH 9 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 10 – 6:30 PM
VIOLENCE
A Chaplinesque tramp gets more than he bargained for when he wanders into a luxury apartment building looking for a glass of water in Jagte Raho, an ironic, socially-conscious comedy-drama that exposes the behind-closed-doors perversions of Calcutta’s upper-middle class. The thirsty vagabond, played by Raj Kapoor, witnesses a veritable carnival of evildoing as he moves from flat to flat; he is ultimately forced to wear a barrel, Hollywood hobo-style, to evade the police. The film was directed (or co-directed with Kapoor, as many insist) by Sombhu Mitra and Amit Maitra, two key progressive figures in the Calcutta theatre scene. Its storytelling rhythms — a statelier pace, an emphasis on close-ups, a more “natural” soundtrack, and an emulation of literary models in terms of its structure and narration — bear a distinct similarity to the Bengali art film tradition familiar to Western viewers from the films of Satyajit Ray. This may help explain Jagte Raho’s success in the West; when it won the main prize at Karlovy Vary in 1957, it became the first Indian film to take the top award at a competition festival. “Kapoor’s character is cut from Chaplin’s cloth ... The result is one of Kapoor’s most diverting films” (Geoff Brown). B&W, DigiBeta video, in Hindi with English subtitles. 136 mins. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14 – 7:00 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:00 PM
VIOLENCE
“Kapoor’s singular and gargantuan talent subsumes a variety of influences and affinities — Chaplin, Frank Capra, Orson Welles — with even a touch of Russ Meyer apparent in the later work.” ELLIOTT STEIN, RAJ KAPOOR: THE SHOWMAN AUTEUR OF INDIAN CINEMA
AAG - FIRE
India 1948. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Prem Nath, Kamini Kaushal, Nigar Sultana
NEW 35mm PRINT
Raj Kapoor’s first film as director and star, the brooding, noir-ish Aag is an ideal entrance point for audiences unfamiliar with Hindi cinema: it often feels like a 1930s Hollywood melodrama with an expressionistic twist, and it has a complex flashback structure influenced (Kapoor acknowledged) by Citizen Kane. It was also Kapoor’s first film with actress Nargis; the two would become one of Bollywood’s most popular onscreen couples. Kapoor stars as Kewal, a theatre producer obsessed with the twinned ideas of ideal beauty and self-sacrifice. He meets and falls in love with women named Nimmi at three different phases of his life. In each instance, she is taken away from him, destroying his dream of sharing the stage with her for the rest of their lives. Introducing two key themes for his future work — the love triangle, and Kapoor’s casting of himself as a theatrical performer — Aag also represents Kapoor’s earliest experiments with heavily symbolic shots, in this case evoking the manifold meanings around fire — including the fires of Partition. “I’ll never forget Aag because it was the story of youth consumed by the desire for a brighter and more intense life” (Kapoor). B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 138 mins. SATURDAY, MARCH 10 – 3:00 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 11 – 6:30 PM
AWAARA - THE VAGABOND India 1951. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Prithviraj Kapoor, Leela Chitnis, K.N. Singh
One of the most famous and successful Indian films ever made, Raj Kapoor’s Awaara, a marvellous mix of romanticism, social comment, music, dance, and fantasy, was a global sensation, becoming a major hit (along with its title song) in the Soviet Union, Middle East, Africa, and Asia (even Chairman Mao was said to be a fan). It also marked the first appearance of Kapoor’s iconic tramp persona. Collaborating for the first time with star writer K.A. Abbas, Kapoor concocted a modern-day version of the tale of Rama’s banishment of Sita. A draconian judge (Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj’s father) rejects his wife after she is kidnapped and, he believes, impregnated by a criminal. Protesting her innocence, she raises her son Raju (Raj Kapoor) in poverty; deprivation later leads Raju to join the same criminal’s gang. But when Raju is reunited with childhood sweetheart Rita (Nargis), now a ward of the judge, he tries to extricate himself from the vicious circle of poverty and violence. Awaara’s marvellous, extended dream sequence—with Kapoor and Nargis successively cast in different guises, some mythological, some modern, continually seeking each other’s embrace but torn apart by the forces of society—revolutionized Hindi cinema, and introduced the idea of externalizing characters’ inner conflicts though song-and-dance numbers. B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 193 mins.
VIOLENCE
There will be a 15-minute intermission approximately 90 minutes into the film. FRIDAY, MARCH 16 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 17 – 6:30 PM
VIOLENCE
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SANGAM
India 1964. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Vyjayanthimala, Rajendra Kumar, Lalita Pawar, Achala Sachdev
Breaking box-office records wherever it played (including multi-year runs in both Israel and Egypt), Sangam, Raj Kapoor’s first colour film, is pure spectacle: a whirlwind tour through suburban mansions, European vacations, scotch-sipping parties, and a furious love triangle that rips upper-crust society to shreds. Sunder (Kapoor), an unmoneyed, self-involved party boy, is convinced that he will perish without the love of Gopal (Nargis), his companion since childhood. When he seeks to prove himself as an air force pilot and is presumed dead, Gopal and Sunder’s best friend Radha (Vyjayanthimala) fall in love, setting up a tragic dance of death when the erstwhile hero returns. Hiding his class anxiety and aspirations behind a mask of narcissistic hedonism, Kapoor’s Sunder is a fascinating character: an unlikeable, obnoxious figure (not unlike the roles made famous by contemporary Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan) who seems totally oblivious to the amorous anxiety of his companions, especially the hangdog devotion of his best friend. The clues to his real self, of course, come through the film’s multitude of songs, which reveal an enormous sensitivity and poetry—as well as conflicted feelings about marriage and even the matrimonial bed! Colour, DigiBeta video, in Hindi with English subtitles. 170 mins. SATURDAY, MARCH 17 – 3:00 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 18 – 6:30 PM
RATING TBA
BOOT POLISH
India 1954. Director: Prakash Arora Cast: Baby Naaz, Rattan Kumar, David, Chand Burke, Veera, Raj Kapoor
Although his protégé Prakash Arora received credit for this tear-jerking realist drama about an orphaned brother and sister, most sources insist Raj Kapoor directed much of it himself — and it clearly bears his stamp. Often compared to Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine — and with interesting parallels to Slumdog Millionaire, which takes place on the same mean streets — Boot Polish concerns young siblings Bhola (Rattan Kumar) and Belu (Baby Naaz), who are forced by their horrid aunt to beg on the streets. A kindly smuggler (David) and a young shoeshine boy encourage them to join the boot-polish trade, but the coming of the monsoons tears the two siblings apart. Boot Polish is writer K.A. Abbas’s most explicit articulation of the beliefs underlying Nehru’s campaign for social reforms, especially the contention that the poor must be helped to find work in order to further their self-respect. “One of the great tear-jerkers ... Kapoor squeezes every drop out of every scene — and then a few more for good measure ... The monsoon song performed in jail by David with his fellow prisoners is a highlight — another is a rousing production number with a chorus line of slum kids – ‘A New Dawn Will Come’” (Elliott Stein). B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 149 mins. SATURDAY, MARCH 24 – 3:00 PM
KAL AAJ AUR KAL - YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW India 1971. Director: Randhir Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Prithviraj Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Babita Kapoor, Roopesh Kumar
Three generations of Indian cinema’s legendary Kapoor clan take to the screen in this tale of generational conflict set in Bombay. Raj Kapoor plays lonely, wealthy widower Ram, pining for the comforts of kin. Ram’s father (Prithviraj Kapoor) lives in the old village; Ram’s son (Randhir Kapoor, who also directs), resides abroad. After Ram brings them all under his roof to live together as a family, it isn’t long before older and younger generations are locking horns. When the elderly patriarch attempts to marry his grandson off to a friend’s granddaughter, the young man, who has his own ideas about love and marriage, storms off with his girlfriend. Forlorn Ram, meanwhile, takes to drink and debauchery, and soon finds himself entangled in his own nasty scandal, forcing the family to reunite to help him out of his troubles. The fun here is watching three terrific actors riff off one another — one senses that whatever script existed at the beginning of the shoot was quickly tossed out the window. The film also marked the last official collaboration between the Kapoors and the music team of Shankar-Jaikishan; the songs, including several hits, are delightful, ingeniously creative confections. Colour, DigiBeta video, in Hindi with English subtitles. 152 mins. THURSDAY, MARCH 22 – 6:30 PM
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VIOLENCE
“The popularity of Kapoor’s work derives from a paradoxical achievement: he intensified in his films both the lavishness and the social consciousness of the Hindi cinema ... Kapoor’s films articulate at some level the longings of an entire people.” SATTI KHANNA, FILMREFERENCE.COM
SATYAM SHIVAM SUNDARAM - LOVE SUBLIME /LOVE, TRUTH AND BEAUTY
RATING TBA
India 1978. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Zeenat Aman, Shashi Kapoor, Kanhaiyalal, A.K. Hangal, David, Leela Chitnis
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SHREE 420
India 1955. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Nadira, Nemo, Lalita Pawar
Shree 420 is perhaps Raj Kapoor’s most famous incarnation of his tramp persona. The title refers to the Indian penal code statute for fraud; Kapoor plays country bumpkin Raju, who arrives in the big city to make his fortune and soon find his way into the criminal underworld. Raju woos honest schoolteacher Vidya (Nargis) while secretly dipping into a life of gambling, petty fraud, and more dangerous crime. Growing disgusted with his boasting and love of money, she rejects him. As Raju finally rouses the poor into action against the rich parasites who prey off them, he reveals to Vidya that “he wears the mask of an entertainer to conceal his nerve endings, his pain, and disappointments.” The post-Partition changes to the major Indian cities loom large over the film’s tragicomic situations, with the teeming Bombay streets a vivid backdrop for the film’s legendary musical numbers — including the best-known Kapoor-Nargis duet and, most famously, the fabulously titled “Mera Joota Hai Japani” (“My Shoes are Japanese”), which became a worldwide hit (including a year at the top of the charts in Fiji). B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 169 mins. FRIDAY, MARCH 23 – 6:30 PM
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VIOLENCE
There is nothing quite like Satyam Shivam Sundaram: it’s a meditation on love and beauty, a raunchy, Russ Meyeresque T&A melodrama, an exposé of the dangers of rural electrification — and a throwback psychedelic musical. It may also be Raj Kapoor’s most controversial film. A city engineer (Shashi Kapoor), sent to a small village to run a hydroelectric dam, falls for temple girl Roopa (Zeenat Aman), whose beauty is marred by a horrible scar she keeps hidden from him. He discovers her disfigurement on their wedding night and goes mad, insisting she is an impostor — leading Roopa to undertake a strange masquerade to win him back. Shot by Kapoor regular Radhu Karmakar, the film looks ravishing, with mesmerizingly outlandish song-and-dance sequences that evoke Vincente Minnelli’s most lavish and dreamlike Hollywood musicals. Some viewed the film as sexploitation, objecting to the constant near-nakedness of female star Aman, to which Kapoor retorted, “That a country which produces 700 million kids should object to a piece of beauty! As if children are born on trees. They are made in beds!” “Although it was made for Indian audiences, I have never met an Indian who will admit to liking it and I have never met anyone from the West who didn’t like it” (Elliott Stein). Colour, DigiBeta video in Hindi with English subtitles. 172 mins. SATURDAY, MARCH 24 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, MARCH 25 – 3:00 PM
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MERA NAAM JOKER - MY NAME IS JOKER India 1970. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Raj Kapoor, Manoj Kumar, Rishi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Dara Singh
JIS DESH MEN GANGA BEHTI HAI - WHERE THE GANGES FLOWS India 1960. Director: Radhu Karmakar Cast: Raj Kapoor, Padmini, Pran, Tiwari, Nayampalli
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A contentious entry in the Raj Kapoor canon, this 1960 film — nominally directed by Radhu Karmakar, Kapoor’s cinematographer-in-residence — marked Kapoor’s final direct incarnation of his tramp character and the first time he was not paired with romantic co-star Nargis. Raju—portrayed here by Kapoor as at best a naïve innocent and at worst a total simpleton—is a pilgrim to the Ganges River lured away from his religious observances by a tomboyish (yet scantily clad) female bandit. Ardently pursuing her, he bumbles into an outlaw encampment, where he attempts to convert the brigands into latter-day Robin Hoods. Kapoor’s performance is a constant question mark: is he indeed a fool or is it a put-on, an act to win the lady through charm? While expressed in borderline simplistic terms, Raju’s homilies reflect Gandhi’s teachings on bringing non-violent change to the countryside; the film’s story was apparently based on an apocryphal secular pilgrimage by an acolyte of Nehru’s. In any event, the film is hilarious, and it is Kapoor’s cleverest use of (often charmingly raunchy) double entendres. B&W, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 167 mins. SUNDAY, MARCH 25 – 6:30 PM
VIOLENCE
Raj Kapoor’s lavish, legendary film maudit (or “accursed film”), clocking in at almost four hours, was condemned as an exercise in self-pity throughout the Indian film world. Both a colossal failure and a colossal extravaganza, its reputation has been gradually revived by Western critics, who saw in it echoes of Chaplin (particularly Limelight) and Fellini and proclaimed it a self-reflexive masterwork. Kapoor here completely undermines the tramp persona he had so carefully evolved over two decades, removing from it all traces of heroism and social justice: this tramp is a saccharine, mopey, loveobsessed clown whose one goal in life is to follow in his father’s footsteps as a trapeze artist so he can “make Jesus laugh.” Joker mirrors the three-story, three-ages structure of Kapoor’s first film Aag, tracing the clown’s three pathetically failed relationships: with his high school teacher, a beautiful Soviet circus performer, and a cross-dressing girl who dumps him when she becomes a movie star. As a sign of love he sends each a sad clown doll and, later in life, gathers them all together at a circus performance for the send-off monologue that begins and ends the film. A compulsively watchable, astonishing train wreck of a film. Colour and B&W, 35mm, in English, Hindi, and Russian with English subtitles. 224 mins. There will be a 15-minute intermission approximately two hours into the film. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 31 – 2:00 PM
RATING TBA
“Kapoor looms large over the Indian film landscape... In a mostly formulaic and conservative industry, he made inventive, personal films that were entertaining and accessible but also something more ... They resonated in — and maybe even helped to define — a newly independent India busy inventing itself.” RACHEL SALTZ, NEW YORK TIMES
RAM TERI GANGA MAILI - GOD, YOUR RIVER IS TAINTED
India 1985. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Rajiv Kapoor, Mandakini, Divya Rana, Saeed Jaffrey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Raj Kapoor’s final and most financially successful film returns to the crusading social-message dramas of his early years, vividly depicting the corruption and mendacity at the heart of Indian society and utilizing the Ganges itself as a guiding metaphor for the country’s decline. Narendra (Rajiv Kapoor, Raj’s son), a young man fed up with the bloviating and corrupt politicians in his hometown of Calcutta, flees to the source of all purity — the headwaters of the great Ganges. Falling in love with a local girl not coincidentally named Ganga (Mandakini), he marries her (after a fashion) and then leaves again for the city, promising to return for her. Family troubles delay him, and he is unaware that a child is born from their union. Following the path of her fluvial namesake, Ganga travels to Calcutta to find her husband, a journey that becomes a Dante-esque descent into human degradation. The plot reworks the Shakuntala story from the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic. Kapoor’s renowned tendency to push the limits of government censorship — especially in depicting the female form — is on ample display. The film’s union of matters spiritual and environmental was at the time a major theme of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Colour, DigiBeta video, in Hindi with English subtitles. 166 mins. MONDAY, MARCH 26 – 6:30 PM
RATING TBA
BOBBY
India 1973. Director: Raj Kapoor Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia, Pran, Prem Nath, Sonia Sahni
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Great fun! Raj Kapoor bounced back from the commercial and critical disaster of Mera Naam Joker with this charming pop paean to youth, starring his son Rishi. Bobby became an enormous hit amongst young urban audiences and exhibited a devil-may-care innocence that was a relief after the heavier socialmessage films that preceded it. Raj (Rishi), teenage son of a wealthy family, falls in love with their former maid’s granddaughter Bobby (played, in her first screen role, by future Bollywood icon Dimple Kapadia — cast, apparently, because of her resemblance to frequent Kapoor romantic co-star Nargis). When his parents try and arrange a marriage for him with a brain-damaged heiress, Raj and Bobby run away, pursued by a horde of bounty-hunting bandits. What makes Bobby so enjoyable, other than the zany sets, outrageous clothes, and delightfully corny physical comedy, is the music: Kapoor sought to marry traditional musical forms with Western music, and so an Ashkenazi wedding waltz is followed by a qawwali (a Sufi-inspired devotional song), a Goan folk song, and the naughty, rock ‘n’ roll-flavoured “Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein” (“You and Me, Shut Up In A Room”). Colour, 35mm, in Hindi with English subtitles. 168 mins. SATURDAY, MARCH 31 – 6:30 PM
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Robert
Bresson The French director Robert Bresson (1901-1999), one of film’s most important and influential artists, was master of a spare, rigorous, intensely metaphysical cinema that explored, with rare poetry and purity, the human struggle for grace and redemption.
Bresson made but 13 features in a film career spanning five decades; that body of work is one of the most extraordinary and uncompromising in the history of cinema. Bresson’s singular style — a stripped down, affectless aesthetic that miraculously turns austerity and asceticism into amplitude and manages to approach the immanent, express the ineffable — has been famously described, by Paul Schrader, as transcendental. Drama in a Bresson film is internal, spiritual; it derives not from plot, character, or psychology but emanates from an intense materialism that transforms objects and gestures into manifestations of the transcendent and renders, in ways both painterly and profound, the mysterious interior battles we wage with freedom, sin, salvation, and truth. One of the defining (and most controversial) characteristics of Bresson’s style is his use of actors — or, as he preferred to call them, “models.” Bresson, after his first two features, eschewed the use of professional actors; he didn’t want performers performing, actors emoting. Instead, his “models” were just another element, another object, to be manipulated in the service of his minimalist, rigorously controlled aesthetic, his aim to remove everything extraneous and leave only what is essential. “One does not create by adding,” Bresson said, “but by taking away.”
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“Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.” JEAN-LUC GODARD
It is the paradox, and the great art, of Bresson’s cinema that this intense minimalism, this intense materialism, this almost fanatical focus on gesture and objects and physical details, becomes the stuff of a profoundly metaphysical experience; an expression of the deep yearning for redemption and transcendence; a heightened, hyper-real cinema of great beauty and elegance, of rare emotional and spiritual power. It is also, as James Quandt, the curator of this touring retrospective, argues, a cinema that demands to be seen on the big screen: “No director’s work more demands it because of the physiological effects of his sound and image editing, the sheer physical authority of his meticulously constructed worlds ... Encountering Bresson on the big screen for the first time can induce a kind of vertigo, as eyes and ears dulled to inattention by conventional cinema are suddenly forced to new or heightened awareness, an effect that registers somewhere between bracing and life changing.”
“Arguably the most original and brilliant body of work over a long career from a film director in the history of cinema.” ALAN PAVELIN, SENSES OF CINEMA
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne)
France 1945. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Maria Casarès, Paul Bernard, Elina Labourdette, Lucienne Bogaërt, Jean Marchat
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Les Anges du Péché (Angels of Sin)
France 1943. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Renée Faure, Jany Holt, Sylvie, Mila Parléy, Marie-Hélène Dasté
“One of the most astonishing film debuts ever” (David Thompson, Time Out), Bresson’s first feature is (like Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, its follow-up) more elegant and stylized than the sparer masterworks to come, but nonetheless boldly announces the central Bressonian themes: isolation, suffering, martyrdom, and the struggle for redemption and grace. It’s also one of the great “nun” movies. A feisty, pampered young woman (Renée Faure) joins a Dominican convent dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminal women and devotes herself — far too single-mindedly, in the eyes of her superiors — to “saving” a bitter, hostile young convict (Jany Holt). Les Anges du Péché was written with playwright Jean Giraudoux and shot in gorgeous monochrome by Philippe Agostini (who also filmed Dames). Alain Resnais called it “a filmgoer’s dream come true”; Roland Barthes was also a great admirer. “Films have been made before about religious orders, but never one of such spiritual intensity and rigour... For once a director is really concerned with religion, and has succeeded in giving it dramatic life — even for non-believers” (Richard Roud). “Rarely have the seemingly opposite worlds of the spiritual and the erotic received such sublime, ennobling treatment” (Thompson). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 8 – 8:15 PM
SUPPORTED BY
Acknowledgments: This touring retrospective has been organized by the TIFF Cinematheque, Toronto. We are grateful to James Quandt, Senior Programmer, TIFF Cinematheque, for his dedication to this project. Thank you also to the Institut Français; Mylène Bresson, Paris; Delphine Selles Alvarez, French Cultural Services, New York; Brian Belovarac and Sarah Finklea, Janus Films; Eric Di Bernardo, Rialto Pictures; Jake Perlin, The Film Desk; Paramount Pictures; La Cinémathèque française, Paris; Pierre Lhomme, Paris. For assistance and support in the presentation of this retrospective in Vancouver, Pacific Cinémathèque is very grateful to the Consulate General of France in Vancouver.
Bresson’s second feature is “a landmark in cinema history ... Its influence on subsequent French cinema is far from exhausted” (David Thomson). Made in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, who wrote the dialogue, and deriving much of its dramatic tension from the counterpoint between Cocteau’s dense, ornate words and Bresson’s natural austerity, Les dames du Bois de Boulogne features the great actress Maria Casarès (Cocteau’s Princess of Death in Orphée) in her first starring role. She gives a piercing performance as a jilted woman who takes revenge on her ex-lover by luring him into a marriage with a prostitute. The story is freely adapted from an episode in Diderot’s 18th-century classic Jacques le fataliste, and given a lush, contemporary, Cocteau-like setting, filled with flowers, furs, jewels, and shiny automobiles. Antonioni, among others, cited the film as a major influence. Although he received stellar performances here, Bresson would never again work with professional actors; acting, he believed, was bastard art that hindered his search for truth. “A masterpiece. It remains the greatest achievement of its decade in France” (P. Adams Sitney). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 90 mins. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4 – 8:20 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 8 – 6:30 PM
Pickpocket France 1959. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Martin Lassalle, Pierre Leymarie, Jean Pélégri, Marika Green, Kassagi
In a body of work full of major achievements, Pickpocket definitely ranks as a chef d’oeuvre: Bresson authority Richard Roud cites it as Bresson’s masterpiece, Cahiers du cinéma voted it the greatest French film of the postwar era, and it was an important influence on Paul Schrader’s script for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Loosely inspired by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, this most contemporary of Bresson films (it was shot on the streets of Paris at the same time Godard was making Breathless) concerns a compulsive young man (Martin Lassalle) who, having rejected God and convinced himself of his moral superiority to others, takes up the life of a thief — until the love of a young woman offers him the hope of redemption. Bresson’s precise depictions of the mechanics of pickpocketing (“ballets of thievery,” said Jean Cocteau) have a real erotic and spiritual charge. Typical of the director’s work, the film eschews the conventional psychology that would “explain” its protagonist’s actions. “A film of dazzling originality ... If you deny this film, it is cinema itself as an autonomous art that you call into question” (Louis Malle). “Timeless, achieving a state of spiritual grace rarely seen, or even contemplated, in the secular medium of cinema (A.O. Scott, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 75 mins. THURSDAY, APRIL 5 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 6 – 4:30 PM & 8:20 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 7 – 6:30 PM
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NEW 35mm PRINT!
Le Diable Probablement (The Devil Probably)
France 1977. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Antoine Monnier, Tina Irissari, Henri de Maublanc, Laetitia Carcano, Nicholas Deguy
Bresson’s penultimate film was his most controversial: Le Diable Probablement was prohibited in France to viewers under 18, on the grounds it might incite suicide, and ignited a jury revolt at the Berlin Film Festival, where German director R.W. Fassbinder and British critic Derek Malcolm went public with their anger that it had not won top prize (it won a Special Jury Prize instead). A work of bleak but stirring beauty, the film traces the last six months in the life of a suicidal Parisian youth who, horrified by a world of spiritual and physical pollution, rejects the conventional solutions (politics, religion, psychoanalysis) offered by society. “My sickness,” he says, “is that I see clearly.” “From the faces of his young protagonists and images of Paris, particularly the Seine at night, Bresson builds up an image of a world without grace but still imbued with mystery and the power to enthral” (Roy Armes). “Bresson’s best film since Pickpocket ... Even though Bresson has painted a dark picture of wasted youth and beauty, one comes out of the film with a sense of exaltation. When a civilization can produce a work of art as perfectly achieved as this, it is hard to believe that there is no hope for it” (Richard Roud). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. New 35mm print courtesy The Film Desk and Olive Films. THURSDAY, APRIL 5 – 8:00 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 6 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 7 – 8:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 9 – 4:30 PM
Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d’Arc)
France 1962. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Florence Carrez (Florence Delay), Jean-Claude Fourneau, Marc Jacquier, Roger Honorat, Jean Gillibert
Bresson’s startling, searing take on one of cinema’s most filmed stories is based — like Dreyer’s 1929 silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc — on the actual transcripts of Joan’s trial, here distilled into the very essence of the spare Bressonian aesthetic, and focusing with unsettling power on Joan’s physical humiliation. (British critic Gilbert Adair has described the film as “Bresson’s essay in sadomasochistic voyeurism.”) Trial of Joan of Arc won a Jury Special Prize at Cannes in 1962 (shared with Antonioni’s L’Eclisse), and was much admired by the filmmakers of the French New Wave, and by Tarkovsky, who cited it as a formative influence. “Perhaps the ultimate expression of Bresson’s unique cinematic voice... In the austere documenting of Joan’s imprisonment and trial, physical objects — chains, stones, wall, windows — become metaphors for her spiritual isolation and sounds — the scratching of a pen during her hearing — contribute to the minimalist musicality of the experience” (James Monaco). “The most underrated of the director’s 13 features” (Melissa Anderson, Village Voice). “For the first time in film history, one feels that Joan was really burnt” (Richard Roud). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 65 mins. SUNDAY, APRIL 8 – 5:00 PM MONDAY, APRIL 9 – 6:30 PM
“Some of the most gorgeous, most profound, most moving, most heartbreaking works of cinematic genius ever committed to celluloid.” CHARLES H. MEYER, CINESPECT
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L’Argent France 1983. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Christian Patey, Sylvie van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Caroline Lang, Vincent Risterucci
The awe-inspiring farewell film from one of cinema’s most rigorous masters shared the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1983 with Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, and was selected by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest films of the 1980s. Freely adapted from a short story by Tolstoy, L’Argent charts the circulation of a counterfeit bank note, and the contagion of evil it spreads, as it passes from hand to hand. When an innocent man unwittingly uses it to pay for a meal, he falls into a disastrous downward spiral that leads ultimately to murder. As in all Bresson’s major works, the true drama here is internal, spiritual; it derives not from plot or character but emanates from an intense materialism which transforms objects and gestures into manifestations of the transcendent. L’Argent is one of Bresson’s best and most beautiful works. “As a summa and final testament, L’Argent is magisterial. It makes most other films look puny and inconsequential by comparison” (James Quandt). “At nearly 80, Bresson’s power to renew our faith in cinema is as firm as one could wish for” (Chris Peachmont, Time Out). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 84 mins. FRIDAY, APRIL 13 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 14 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 15 – 4:30 PM & 8:15 PM
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Une Femme Douce (A Gentle Creature)
France 1969. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Dominique Sanda, Guy Frangin, Jeanne Lobre, Claude Ollier, Jacques Kébadian
Based on a story by Dostoevsky (Bresson’s next film, Four Nights of a Dreamer, would also be a Dostoevsky adaptation), Une Femme Douce was Bresson’s first film in colour, and marked the stand-out screen debut of model Dominique Sanda, a Bresson non-pro who went on to have a major career in European cinema (including leading roles in Bertolucci’s The Conformist and 1900). A troubling, told-in-flashback tale of the failure of love and the walls that separate us, the film concerns a materialistic Parisian pawnbroker struggling to understand why his free-spirited young wife — the “gentle creature” of the title, played by Sanda — committed suicide for no apparent reason (suicide becomes an increasingly prevalent theme in Bresson’s later work). Bresson’s use of colour is characteristically expert — “a masterful composition almost entirely in tones of blue and green” (Richard Roud). This haunting, poetic, and mysterious work is often cited as the director’s most sensual and secular film. “Colour in no way lessened his ability to create a totally personal vision... The progress of the couple’s relationship is beautifully captured without recourse to psychological ‘explanations’” (Roy Armes). “Une Femme Douce belongs among the greater Bresson films” (Roger Greenspun, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 87 mins. FRIDAY, APRIL 13 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 15 – 6:30 PM
“Bresson’s films are among the most seductive in the history of cinema. From Diary of a Country Priest to L’Argent, no image is inconsequential, no sound incidental, no cut invisible.” TONY PIPOLO, ARTFORUM
ONE SCREENING ONLY!
Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake)
France 1974. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Luc Simon, Laura Duke Condominas, Humbert Balsan, Vladimir Antolek-Oresek, Patrick Bernard
Long a pet Bresson project (he had been trying for two decades to bring it to the screen), Lancelot du Lac presents a masterful, magnificent, anti-heroic portrait of Camelot and the Age of Chivalry in decline. In Bresson’s stark, startling vision, the heroes of Arthurian legend must face the failure of their impossible quest for the Holy Grail, while Lancelot and Guinevere prove unable to conquer human weakness with the power of love. These dispirited Knights of the Round Table clank nosily about in clumsy armour, reduced to infighting and petty jealousies, reenacting rituals now debased to mere bloodletting and crude violence. “This is the Arthurian legend stripped bare, spotlighting the characters’ cruelty, pride, and the aching need for human affection ... It’s stunningly beautiful, mesmerising, exhausting, uplifting, amazing — all the things you could possible expect from a masterpiece” (Geoff Brown, Time Out). “A uniquely original and hypnotic study of the loss of spirituality, caught in distinctive images that are at once stark and sensuous, with arrestingly realistic sounds to accompany them” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). “A masterpiece on every level ... There have never been so many arresting images in a Bresson film” (Richard Roud). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 85 mins.
Au Hasard Balthazar
France 1966. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge, Philippe Asselin, Nathalie Joyaut, Walter Green
Described by Godard as “absolutely magnificent... one of the most significant events of the cinema,” and by Michael Haneke as “the most precious of all cinematic jewels,” this remarkable Christian parable is one of Bresson’s most deeply affecting, lyrical, and accessible works. Its saintly central figure is ... a donkey! Poor, suffering Balthazar, passed from owner to owner throughout an often brutal life, bears witness to (and is victim of) the full range of human failings, cruelties, and vices — but also love. In a parallel and intersecting tale, young farm girl Marie (Anne Wiazemsky, Godard’s future star and wife, in her debut) is seduced by the leader of a motorcycle gang. “No film I have ever seen has come so close to convulsing my entire being ... It stands by itself as one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realized emotional experience” (Andrew Sarris). “Heart-breaking ... The supreme masterpiece by one of the greatest of filmmakers” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). “In their account of suffering and of human reaction to it, Balthazar and Mouchette appear now as Bresson’s greatest works” (David Thomson). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 95 mins. THURSDAY, APRIL 19 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 22 – 6:30 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 14 – 6:30 PM
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Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d’un curé de campagne)
France 1950. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Claude Laydu, Jean Riveyre, Nicole Ladmiral, Marie-Monique Arkell, André Guibert
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A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s’est échappé)
France 1956. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Roland Monod, Maurice Beerblock, Jacques Ertaud
The masterly A Man Escaped is cited by many as Bresson’s pinnacle achievement; it was hailed by Truffaut at the time of its release as “the most important French film of the past ten years.” Based on the experiences of French resistance fighter André Devigny, and set to Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, the film recounts, in Bresson’s spare, precise, rigorous, intensely metaphysical style, a condemned man’s singleminded efforts to escape a Nazi prison cell in Lyon just hours before his scheduled execution. Rohmer called the intent focus on the materials of the hero’s efforts — string, a safety pin, a spoon — “the miracle of objects.” The film, said Martin Scorsese, “functions like a delicate and perfectly calibrated hand-made machine.” Bresson, who’d been a POW himself, won Best Director honours at Cannes in 1957. His anti-psychological suspense movie transports us into the realm of the transcendental, and is “the kind of film which inspires awe, even in an atheist” (Nigel Floyd, Time Out). “The best of all prison escape movies ... It reconstructs the very notion of freedom through offscreen sounds and defines salvation in terms of painstakingly patient and meticulous effort” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). “A marvellous movie ... almost mystic” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 102 mins.
Perhaps the quintessential Bresson film, and one of the essential works of world cinema, Diary of a Country Priest is the work which established the aesthetic austerity and metaphysical intensity of the director’s celebrated style. Based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, and featuring a cast of non-professionals (henceforth a Bresson hallmark), the film charts the odyssey of a young parish priest, self-doubting and dying of cancer, whose attempts to minister to the spiritual needs of his flock are met with utter indifference. Critics were awestruck by Bresson’s brilliance at filming the apparently unfilmable, at finding a cinematic language for the life of the spirit, for the story of a man’s interior development; some cited the work as a stunning return to expressive pictorial values not seen since silent cinema. Diary of a Country Priest truly bespeaks and epitomizes a cinema of grace. “A film of great purity and, at the end, a Bach-like intensity... One of the few modern works in any art form that helps one understand the religious life” (Pauline Kael). “Bresson’s best film... Every shot is as true as a handful of earth” (François Truffaut). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 115 mins. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 26 – 8:10 PM
“Bresson’s films are an argument not just for the cinema, but also for life itself.” NICK PINKERTON, VILLAGE VOICE
THURSDAY, APRIL 19 – 8:20 PM FRIDAY, APRIL 20 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 21 – 8:20 PM SUNDAY, APRIL 22 – 8:20 PM MONDAY, APRIL 23 – 6:30 PM
Mouchette
NEW 35mm PRINT!
France 1967. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Marie Cardinal, Paul Hébert, Jean Vimenet
Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d’un rêveur)
France 1971. Director: Robert Bresson Cast: Isabelle Weingarten, Guillaume des Forêts, Maurice Monnoyer, Lidia Biondi, Patrick Jouanné
“Certainly the rarest of Bresson’s films — see it now or never — Four Nights of a Dreamer has a dreamy beauty unparalleled in the rest of his work. A luminous transposition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights (earlier filmed by Luchino Visconti) to the contemporary Latin Quarter of Paris, Four Nights of a Dreamer is a nocturne of hypnotic beauty — the sequence of the bateaux mouches on the Seine is justly famous — and unsettling power. A reclusive young painter, obsessed with the ideals of medieval courtship, saves a woman from suicide, sustains her hope in a series of night-time rendezvous, then watches as she returns to the man who spurned her” (James Quandt, TIFF Cinematheque). “A movie about the condition of being in love ... It is shockingly beautiful, and I can think of nothing in recent films so ravishing as Bresson’s strange romantic vision of the city, the river, the softly lighted tourist boats in the night ... It may well be his loveliest film” (Roger Greenspun, New York Times). “Pulsing with electric mystery ... An essential film” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 87 mins. FRIDAY, APRIL 20 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, APRIL 21 – 6:30 PM
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A work of extraordinary purity and grace, the almost unbearably moving Mouchette was Bresson’s second adaptation of a Georges Bernanos novel (Diary of a Country Priest was the first), and stands as something of a companion piece to Au Hasard Balthazar in its sobering but ultimately transcendent account of earthly suffering. The film chronicles the final 24 hours in the life of 14-year-old Mouchette (Nadine Nortier), a lonely, loveless, and mistreated peasant girl living in Provence with her alcoholic father and dying mother. Bresson charts poor Mouchette’s torments with a relentlessness that some have found oppressive and almost sadistic; others have praised this intense film as one of cinema’s most serious, unsentimental treatments of innocence and childhood. The soundtrack makes sublime use of Monteverdi’s Magnificat; the tourde-force denouement is “among the most distilled and moving events in cinema... It is from this period [of Balthazar and Mouchette] that it becomes possible to see an Eastern, mystical calm in Bresson’s work” (David Thomson). “Magnificent and deeply rewarding ... Cinema at its most sublime ... Bresson conducts you to the heart of life’s paradox” (Wally Hammond, Time Out). “Oh, Mouchette. I loved it, I loved it!” (Ingmar Bergman). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 80 mins. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 – 8:40 PM THURSDAY, APRIL 26 – 6:30 PM
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