The Cinematheque NOV+DEC 2015 by The Cinematheque

y NOVEMBER + DECEMBER 2015

18th Annual

European Union F i l m Fe s t i v a l Europe without the Jetlag!

BABY(A)LONE

NOV+ DEC 2015 1131 Howe Street | Vancouver | theCinematheque.ca

TRACES THAT RESEMBLE US EUFF 2015 THROUGH INDIAN EYES: NATIVE AMERICAN CINEMA WIM WENDERS CONTINUED... 1131 Howe Street | Vancouver | theCinematheque.ca

STRAIGHT TIME

EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA

T R A C E T H A T R RA EC SE ESM U H LA ET E S E AMCB E AU TS E A C SE ESM LA ET US SE M B E S

ART Nov. 21 – Jan. 30 Reception Nov. 21

T T R L

kky Alexander oy Arden obert Arndt arin Bubaš ana Claxton tan Douglas reg Girard odney Graham wen Kydd yfanwy MacLeod n Wallace eff Wall

L U

F I L MA R T Nov.Nov. 12, 21 19,–26 Jan. 30 Dec. 3, 10, 17Nov. 21 Reception

Vikky Alexander Roy Arden Robert Arndt Karin Bubaš Dana Claxton F I LM Stan Nov. Douglas 12, 19, 26 Greg Girard Dec. 3, 10, 17 Rodney Graham Owen Kydd Myfanwy MacLeod Ian Wallace Jeff Wall

B S S B

Film Screenings

Art Exhibition

November 12, 19, 26 December 3, 10, 17

November 21 – January 30 Opening Reception November 21

1131 Howe Street, Vancouver theCinematheque.ca

105 – 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver monteclarkgallery.com

The Cinematheque, in collaboration with Monte Clark Gallery, presents Traces That Resemble Us, a screening series and art exhibition that explores the intersections between visual art in Vancouver and cinema. Motivated by Jeff Wall’s history as a former film programmer at The Cinematheque, Traces That Resemble Us invites twelve prominent Vancouver-based artists to each program a film that has been influential to his or her practice, and to exhibit artwork for a corresponding group exhibition at Monte Clark Gallery. Participating artists include Vikky Alexander, Roy Arden, Robert Arndt, Karin Bubaš, Dana Claxton, Art Exhibition Film Screenings Stan Douglas, Greg Girard, Rodney Graham, Owen Kydd, Myfanwy MacLeod, Ian Wallace, and Jeff Wall. November 12, 19, 26 December 3, 10, 17

November 21 – January 30 Opening Reception November 21

1131 Howe Street, Vancouver 105 – 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver Screenings will occur on Thursday evenings from November 12 to December 17 at theCinematheque.ca monteclarkgallery.com The Cinematheque, with each film preceded by a special introduction.

The art exhibition will run from November 21 to January 30 at Monte Clark Gallery, with an Opening Reception on November 21 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm. Monte Clark Gallery is located at 105 – 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver. www.monteclarkgallery.com “Traces That Resemble Us takes its title from a phrase of Jean-Luc Godard. In one of a series of lectures given at Concordia University in 1978, the auteur claimed that, in cinema, the traces of former images are found in each that follow it. Every image is a history of all other cinematic images. He holds that we — its viewers and makers — are also traces in those images, as our human history is also threaded into that most significant cultural and social phenomenon of the last century: cinema. And the artists in Traces, with their selected films and artworks, evince how these practices also are projected onto it.” – Aaron Peck, excerpted from his essay “Traces That Resemble Us” (2015), available to read in full in the exhibition booklet

OPENING RECEPTION

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 - 2:00PM-4:00PM

Monte Clark Gallery * Free admission

Program notes by participating artists.

Acknowledgements: The Cinematheque is grateful to Monte Clark, Lindsay Inouye, and Matt McGale from Monte Clark Gallery; Derek Barnett and Vicky Lum from Information Office; Aaron Peck; and all participating artists and guest speakers for making this project possible.

IAN WALLACE

Contempt (Le Mépris)

France/Italy 1963. Dir: Jean-Luc Godard. 103 min. DCP

Since 1996, I have been making a series of works, titled Masculin/Féminin, that comment on the tragic divisions that exists in male/female relationships. These works are compositions of painting and photography that use citations of still photographic images from specific films from the 1960s, including Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris of 1963, which I consider to be one of the great films of the recent past. In this film, Godard’s first major production shot in colour and Panavision, he has created a montage of scenes that brilliantly reveal his ironic humour and philosophical insights into the conflicts between male and female through a deep meditation on the art of cinema. In the citation of Le Mépris in my own work, I pay homage to a major work of modern art by one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema. (IW) INTRODUCED BY IAN WALLACE Ian Wallace lives and works in Vancouver and has been exhibiting internationally since the 1970s. His work was integral in the establishment of what is now referred to as the Vancouver school of photoconceptualism. His prestigious exhibition career includes Canadian group and solo exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and international group and solo exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. He continues to be an influential artist, teacher, and writer. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 6:30 PM

DANA CLAXTON

Dog Day Afternoon USA 1975. Dir: Sidney Lumet. 125 min. DCP

The independent production value and 1970s Kodak texture of Lumet’s classic speak to a current feature film I am working on: a real life coming-of-age story set in Vancouver in 1973 about aboriginal youth, Indian drag princesses, Andy Warhol, and union politics. Everything I love – Indians, art, politics, and sexuality! When “Attica! Attica!” is shouted out to the hoards of people gathered in support of Sonny, this indicated a political consciousness of the times. They were collectively articulating their disapproval of state violence. My photo work Love Liberation Front considers the same time frame and places the indigenous female body in defiance of authority and exploitation. The declaration “make love not war” becomes relational to Redbone’s 1970s hit, “Come and Get Your Love,” visible on the protester’s sign. Love Liberation Front creates a complex negotiation of reading the desirability of the indigenous female body within colonial and now lateral violence. (DC) INTRODUCED BY DANA CLAXTON Dana Claxton works in film, video, photography, and performance art. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the body, the socio-political, and the spiritual. Her work has been shown internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center, and appears in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She currently teaches in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, at the University of British Columbia. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 8:30 PM

ROY ARDEN

Speedy

USA 1928. Dir: Ted Wilde. With: Harold Lloyd. 85 min. 35mm

Speedy was made towards the end of the silent film era. Its lack of dialogue serves its true subject: the traumatic experience of modernity. A hokey plot about a young man trying to save his future father-in-law’s horse-powered streetcar business sets in motion a dizzying tour of Manhattan and Coney Island. Watching early silent films and animation, I noticed that many of them centre on aspects of modern technology, especially new conveyances like cars, trains, streetcars, motorized ships, and airplanes. In Speedy, the rides at Coney Island use modern mechanics to simulate real world conveyances. It got me thinking about the jalopy as a comical critique of the automobile. It didn’t take people long to see that as amazing as the automobile was, it was ultimately a pile of nuts and bolts, destined for ruin – as ignoble as a horse is noble. This led to my work Jalopy, which features a wind-up tin toy car going through its gimmicky paces. For the first two minutes, the video feels comical. The second two minutes is simply the first part repeated in reverse, but now it feels decidedly demonic. (RA) Preceded by Roy Arden Jalopy, 2011 2 min. endless loop. Video for projection with stereo sound Courtesy of the artist, Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, and Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles

INTRODUCED BY AARON PECK Roy Arden has been active as an internationally exhibiting artist since the late 1970s. Regularly seen in significant local, national, and international exhibitions, Arden’s work appears in important museum collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. He has taught photography and art theory in Canada and abroad, curated exhibitions of Canadian and international art, and written critical essays for exhibition catalogues and art journals. Aaron Peck is a novelist, art writer, and lecturer at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 6:30 PM

VIKKY ALEXANDER

Playtime

France 1967. Dir: Jacques Tati. 124 min. 35mm

My interest in Playtime comes from its satirical perspective on architecture. I like to think that it is a film about architecture’s “revenge.” In the first part, the uniformity and perceived inhumanity of International Style architecture is identified in the complete confusion it causes for the protagonist, who cannot find or connect with the bureaucrat he is looking for because of the building’s unkind intervention. At an International Trade Fair, a group of American tourists are only allowed to peep at the historic city of Paris through reflections in portions of glass-curtain walls, which the monuments seem to literally slip off. When Hulot goes to meet a friend for an evening, he is confounded by the entrance to the apartment. He can see his friend and family from the street through the floor-to-ceiling window, but cannot figure out how to access them, and when he leaves, he cannot exit the main door. Finally, on the opening night of a chic restaurant, the room, furniture, food, and costumes literally self-destruct in front of us. The more ruinous the interior, the more fun for all. (VA) INTRODUCED BY VIKKY ALEXANDER Vikky Alexander is one of Vancouver’s most acclaimed artists. Her work has been recognized in Canada and internationally in New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Europe, and the United States. She is a leading practitioner in the field of photoconceptualism, but has also exhibited works of sculpture, collage, video, and installation. In her art, Alexander likes to situate the viewer within idealized spaces that reflect our aspirations and utopian desires. She lives in Vancouver and has been a professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Victoria since 1992. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19 – 8:30 PM

KARIN BUBAŠ

The Night of the Hunter USA 1955. Dir: Charles Laughton. 92 min. DCP

The Night of the Hunter has some of the most haunting, chilling, and beautifully poetic scenes I’ve seen depicted in cinema. Set during the Depression in Ohio, the black and white film is like a child’s nightmare come to life, with the surrealistic sets and expressionistic style adding to the horrific storyline. The heart of the story is one of predator and prey – children John and Pearl attempt to escape their murderous preacher stepfather. The river scene is one of the most affecting; the entire sequence perfectly captures the sorts of nightmares where you are trying to run but can’t quite move. The young children rush through the woods at night, managing to evade their stalker in a small boat that takes them down river. These two babes have seen more and experienced more than any child should, and their weary bodies collapse into the comfort of the little boat taking them to momentary safety. Animals of the night watch over them from the side of the river, Mother Nature keeping them safe from the madman, as young Pearl launches into haunting song. (KB) INTRODUCED BY MONTE CLARK Karin Bubaš lives and works in Vancouver. Since graduating from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, her works have been exhibited at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Presentation House Gallery, the Charles H. Scott Gallery, as well as in numerous site-specific projects across Canada. Her art is collected by institutions including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Royal Bank of Canada, and TD Bank. Monte Clark is the owner and Director of Monte Clark Gallery, established in Vancouver in 1992. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 6:30 PM

STAN DOUGLAS

Film by Samuel Beckett USA 1965. Dir: Alan Schneider. 22 min. DCP

Vidéo is an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s 1965 Film by way of Orson Welles’s The Trial (1962), which itself was based on Franz Kafka’s 1925 novel. Beckett’s protagonist, O, spends the bulk of Film avoiding the gaze of others and especially that of the camera, which stands in for self-perception. Conversely, Kafka’s hero, K, desperately seeks to find out why the eye of the law is upon him and the nature of the crime of which he has been accused. Neither succeeds. Welles shot the bulk of his film in Paris in studios and in the then-abandoned Gare d’Orsay. Vidéo was also shot in Paris and in its troubled Northern suburbs. K in this version is a black woman who lives in La Courneuve – epicenter of the 2005 riots — in the same public housing complex where Jean-Luc Godard shot 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle in 1967. Vidéo borrows two basic conceits from Film: (1) it is silent except for a single sonic event, and (2) the protagonist’s face is withheld from view. O’s face is revealed in Film’s denouement; however, in Vidéo, K’s face remains unseen. (SD) Followed by Stan Douglas Vidéo, 2007 18:14 min. DCP Courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner New York/London, and Victoria Miro, London

INTRODUCED BY STAN DOUGLAS Stan Douglas is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver and Los Angeles. His films, videos, and photographs have been seen in exhibitions internationally including Documentas IX, X, and XI (1992, 1997, 2002) and three Venice Biennales (1990, 2001, 2005). A survey of his recent work, Stan Douglas: Mise en scène, will travel Europe until the end of 2015. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a professor at Universität der Künste Berlin and since 2009 has been a member of the core faculty in the Grad Art Department of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 8:30 PM

JEFF WALL

Straight Time

USA 1978. Dir: Ulu Grosbard. 114 min. 35mm

Straight Time, photographed by Owen Roizman, is an outstanding example of the new colour cinematography that seemed to emerge from everywhere in the later 1960s. The film is an interesting, though conventional, version of the romance of criminality, laced with sour emotional realism, that has been a staple of the movies since the early days. It was adapted from a novel called No Beast So Fierce, by Edward Bunker, quite notable and notorious in his own right as delinquent, criminal, author, and actor, who also wrote the screenplay for another of my favourite films, Runaway Train, in the mid-1980s. In that film, Jon Voight, playing a criminal very much like Dustin Hoffman’s in Straight Time, quotes this line from Shakespeare’s Richard III: “No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.” Straight Time is directed by Israel (Ulu) Grosbard, Hoffman’s close friend and mentor, a distinguished director better known for his work in the theatre. (JW) INTRODUCED BY JEFF WALL (TBC) Jeff Wall is an artist working in photography. He has exhibited his pictures internationally for the past 35 years. His pictures, in both black and white and colour, are usually large in scale and done in collaboration with performers. He calls them “cinematography.” He is considered to be one of the artists who has led the way in emphasizing the affinities between photography, painting, and cinema. His work is included in many major public and private collections. He was born in Vancouver, and lives and works there. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 6:30 PM

GREG GIRARD

The Yakuza

USA/Japan 1974. Dir: Sydney Pollack. 112 min. 35mm

There is an early scene in The Yakuza in which Robert Mitchum’s character, Kilmer, and his young sidekick, Dusty, ride into town from the airport. It’s Tokyo, 1974. Kilmer, stationed in Japan after the war, looks out at the modern cityscape and says, “I hardly recognize the place.” Dusty, unimpressed, replies, “Looks like just another big city.” (You won’t see this scene. I’m remembering it from my first viewing in Tokyo in 1976, and it appears to have been cut from all subsequent versions of the film). Dusty’s throwaway comment was, for me, a kind of landmark moment: the first acknowledgment of Tokyo as a modern city in a Hollywood film, a refreshing corrective to outdated readings of the time. It also demonstrates that particularly American indifference to “the foreign,” a hallmark of post-war American hubris and entitlement. Later, Kilmer’s old army buddy tells them: “It’s still there. Farmers in the countryside may watch TV from their tatami mats and you can’t see Fuji through the smog, but don’t let it fool you. It’s still Japan and the Japanese are still Japanese.” A good enough introduction to modernity in Japan. And a good enough departure point for exploring the forms it would take in the years ahead. (GG) INTRODUCED BY GREG GIRARD Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer who has spent much of his career in Asia. His work has examined the social and physical transformations in Asia, especially in its largest cities, for more than three decades. He is the author of several photographic books including City of Darkness Revisited, a revival and update of the influential book with co-author Ian Lambot, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City (Watermark, 1993). His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3 – 8:30 PM

MYFANWY MACLEOD

Star 80

USA 1983. Dir: Bob Fosse. 103 min. 35mm

I have vivid memories from when Star 80 was made, particularly the media controversy surrounding the actress cast to play Stratten, Mariel Hemingway, when it was revealed she had breast implants in order to portray her character. I was, and have been, a fan of Hemingway’s since her film debut at the age of 14 in Lamont Johnson’s Lipstick, and then three years later, when she played Woody Allen’s underage girlfriend in Manhattan. Star 80 was released three years after Stratten’s murder in 1980. The movie was shot in Vancouver and, in ways still oddly unique, the city plays itself. Though Stratten was the impetus for a major work of mine, I will join some of the audience in viewing Star 80 for the first time. I’m fascinated by her story – how the movie appears to weave subject and location together. In many ways, Star 80 is not just a representation of the life and death of Dorothy Stratten — one of the city’s great tragic victims — but also a portrait of the context that informed the photographic practices that emerged in the city at that time. (MM) INTRODUCED BY DR. AOIFE MAC NAMARA Myfanwy MacLeod is an artist based in Vancouver. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the VIVA Award from the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation (1999), the Canada Council for the Arts Artist-in-Residence program, La Cité des Arts, Paris (1999-2000), the City of Vancouver Artist Studio Residency (2002-2005), and the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Award for Visual Arts (2013). An internationally exhibiting artist, her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Dr. Aoife Mac Namara is the Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology at Simon Fraser University. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 6:30 PM

OWEN KYDD

Gummo

USA 1997. Dir: Harmony Korine. 89 min. 35mm

Unequal parts document, narrative, and micro-cinema, Gummo essentially functions as a self-portrait of Harmony Korine’s youth in Nashville, Tennessee. Although fictionally set in a tornado-ravaged Ohio town, Korine casts his misbehaving friends beside actors in a succession of anarchic scenes that are at times both horrifying and beautiful, forging his singular style of polyphonic realism. Mistakenly criticized as white trash nihilism, Gummo instead carried the torch of structuralist cinema into the late 1990s, while also producing a complex portrait of a generation of Midwest kids that still had the ability get lost and weird, whether they wanted to or not. Filmed by French cinematographer JeanYves Escoffier, Gummo adeptly filters the tones of American pop through a Dogme-adjacent genre portrait of suburban anomie. (OK) INTRODUCED BY NIGEL PRINCE Owen Kydd studied at Simon Fraser University and UCLA and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has recently exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and the International Center of Photography, New York. Kydd’s works are housed in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the Hammer Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Albright-Knox Museum, and numerous others. Nigel Prince is the Executive Director of Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG). THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10 – 8:30 PM

ROBERT ARNDT

Pickpocket

France 1959. Dir: Robert Bresson. 75 min. 35mm

Robert Bresson’s Dostoevskian Pickpocket is a film that resists conventional filmic language. The editing, cinematography, use of non-actors and their expressionless/non-acting performances, duplications, choreography of shot sequences, music – in a way, it is Bresson who is pulling a sleight of hand on the audience and the medium of film. Through his provocation, he offers an uncomfortable close-up of the exchanges of capitalism and transcendence. There is much discussed about Pickpocket and what has become known as the Bressonian form or technique. His approach enabled filmmakers to reconsider the way narrative is conceived and conveyed. His influence can be identified in films such as Taxi Driver, American Gigoloi, and Eastern European new wave cinemas. (RA) Preceded by Robert Arndt Pursuit, Plunder & Fleece, 2011-15 12:30 min. Single channel video projection Courtesy of the artist and Macaulay & Co. Fine Art, Vancouver

INTRODUCED BY ROBERT ARNDT Robert Arndt currently lives and works in Vancouver. His work has most recently been seen at Macaulay & Co. Fine Art, the Jewish Museum, New York, the Vancouver Art Gallery, INOVA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Artspeak, and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17 – 6:30 PM

RODNEY GRAHAM

Dillinger Is Dead (Dillinger è morto)

Italy 1969. Dir: Marco Ferreri. 90 min. 35mm

Songs featured in Dillinger Is Dead: “Cielo rosso” by Jimmy Fontana “Qui e là” by Patty Pravo “Travelin’ Man” by The Four Kents “The Moving Finger Writes” by The Four Kents “Searchin’ For My Baby” by The Four Kents “Hold My Hand” by The Rokes “Ripe Apples” by The Rokes (RG) Preceded by Rodney Graham I’m Running Away to Join Cirque du Soleil Music video for the song of the same name from the Rodney Graham Band’s album Good Hand Bad Hand, 2015 Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York

INTRODUCED BY HELGA PAKASAAR Rodney Graham was born in Vancouver, where he continues to live and work. He is a prolific creator and has exhibited a wide range of art forms including video, photography, music, sculpture, drawing, and installation. His work can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands. He is the recipient of the 2004 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, the 2006 Kurt Schwitters Prize, and the 2011 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts. Helga Pakasaar is Curator at Presentation House Gallery. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17 – 8:30 PM

Karin Bubaš Artist Edition A new photograph inspired by The Night of the Hunter Limited edition of 25 $200 (unframed) All proceeds benefit The Cinematheque Karin Bubaš Little Lad, 2015 Archival pigment print 10x24 inches (image size) 13x27 inches (paper size) The Cinematheque Artist Edition of 25 Courtesy of the artist and Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver

Framed prints can be viewed at The Cinematheque and Monte Clark Gallery To purchase, call 604.688.8202 or email info@theCinematheque.ca

“A singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it.” – Rolling Stone The Chan Centre Connects Series and The Cinematheque present

Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love USA 2008. Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. 102 min. DVD

An audience sensation at film festivals worldwide, I Bring What I Love takes you behind the scenes and into the world of Africa’s most famous musician: Youssou N’Dour. This neverbefore-told story follows N’Dour at a turning point in his life and career, as he releases his most personal and controversial album, Egypt. The singer’s hope for promoting a more tolerant face of Islam erupts in scandal and outrage in his native Senegal, which rejects the album and denounces it as blasphemous. Part explosive documentary, part stirring drama, I Bring What I Love is an unforgettable musical journey with an artist whose courage and conviction shook the music industry and ultimately awakened the world . . . From generations of griots [traditional West African storytellers/singers], comes a messenger for our time, Youssou N’Dour” (official synopsis). With Peter Gabriel, Moustapha Mbaye, Kabou Guèye, and Fathi Salama. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5 – 7:00 PM

This screening is presented in conjunction with the Chan Centre’s presentation of Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour on Tuesday, November 10 at 8:00 pm at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC.

The Chan Centre Connects Series presents outreach activities related to visiting artists performing in the annual concert series at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC. For more information on these events, please visit chancentre.com/connects www.chancentre.com

ATANARJUAT, THE FAST RUNNER

ative Americans first appeared on film in 1895 at the dawn of the medium but were totally excluded from any meaningful role in the production of their own cinematic images for virtually the entire century to follow. They continue to be marginalized in the entertainment industry today. Over the last 25 years, however, a renaissance in independent First Nations filmmaking has occurred. This phenomenon is, however, not sui generis. Indeed, since the 1970s, First Nations communities, after centuries-old legacies of genocide, displacement, forced assimilation, poverty, alcoholism, and demeaning media images, have worked incrementally to take command of their destinies and their representation. First Nations filmmakers have undertaken dramas, crime films, comedies, shorts, documentaries, and animation, reaching mainstream audiences and Native communities while working to recuperate tribal languages, spirituality, and community. What we are in fact witnessing is a “national” cinema in formation. Financed variously by tribal communities and non-Native sources, these films have been guided by Indian eyes, i.e. directed by First Nations filmmakers. We also see the beginning development of a First Nations film aesthetic: different ways of perceiving space and time, stories that are circular rather than linear, landscapes which are both real and allegorical. This program presents works produced in Canada and the United States, representing a cross-section of tribal communities. – UCLA Film & Television Archive

Presented in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Series curators: Jan-Christopher Horak, Dawn Jackson (Saginaw Chippewa), Shannon Kelley, Paul Malcolm, and Valerie Red-Horse Mohl (Cherokee). Associate curator: Nina Rao.

Program notes credited to UCLA are adapted from the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Through Indian Eyes: Native American Cinema catalogue. The Cinematheque acknowledges that Vancouver is located on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples, including the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

THROUGH INDIAN EYES: NATIVE AMERICAN CINEMA

CURATED BY THE UCLA FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE

Smoke Signals

USA/Canada 1998. Dir: Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho). 89 min. 35mm

“Director Chris Eyre’s monumental first feature – the first commercially-released American feature written, directed, and coproduced by Native Americans – presents two young Native men, stoic Victor (Adam Beach) and nerdy Thomas (Evan Adams), who journey from their Coeur-d’Alene, Idaho, reservation to Arizona to retrieve the ashes of Victor’s long-lost father. The road trip deepens the pair’s tenuous friendship, as they explore their Native identity and confront past traumas with courage and humour. Nimbly shifting between deeply emotional passages and sunny comedy, Eyre’s sure-handed storytelling offers an extraordinary catharsis” (UCLA). The screenplay is by novelist Sherman Alexie. Notable Canadians in the cast include, along with Beach and Adams, Gary Farmer and Tantoo Cardinal. “Original, audacious, entertaining, and an all-round impressive debut” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out).

preceded by

Carrying Fire

Canada 2009. Dir: Marie Burke (Cree/Dene). 4 min. DCP

The fire of spiritual wellness and self-knowledge is powerfully shared among individuals and generations in this striking short film. (UCLA) FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 6:30 PM

Naturally Native

USA 1998. Dirs: Valerie Red-Horse (Cherokee), Jennifer Wynne Farmer. 107 min. 35mm

“Three American Indian sisters, raised separately in foster homes after the death of their alcoholic mother, seek a shared destiny as entrepreneurs of a line of organic cosmetics in this disarming drama, a moving tale of self-betterment and triumph. Sisters Tanya, Karen, and Vickie realize that their family legacy of herbal remedies might provide a way for them to heal, bond, and prosper – if they can develop a marketable product line. The way to success, however, is strewn with practical, cultural, and personal obstacles. Itself a noteworthy achievement by Native American women, the film, starring Irene Bedard, Kimberly Guerrero, and triple-threat Valerie RedHorse (who wrote the screenplay and co-directed) presents a drama rich with emotion and from a perspective heretofore rarely treated on screen” (UCLA).

preceded by

Cow Tipping: The Militant Indian Waiter USA 1991. Dir: Randy Redroad (Cherokee). 17 min. DVD

Randy Redroad’s hilarious short illustrates the confrontation of cultural insensitivity and cultural oversensitivity, leading to a seemingly endless cycle of the same old, same old. (UCLA) FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 – 8:30 PM

Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner Canada 2001. Dir: Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit). 170 min. Blu-ray Disc

Zacharias Kunuk’s spellbinding epic, the first-ever feature in the Inuktitut language, was voted one of Canada’s All-Time Top Ten films in 2004 and 2015 polls conducted by the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it ranked first – “likely the first time that a film by an indigenous filmmaker has topped a poll of national cinema” (Steve Gravestock, TIFF). Based on a centuries-old Inuit legend, Atanarjuat transports us to an utterly convincing, meticulously recreated pre-Colombian Inuit world, and enthrals us with a mythic, magical tale of love, jealousy, family rivalry, and revenge. The film’s many laurels include the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes – the first (and, to date, only) Canadian film to be so honoured – and the Genie Award for best picture. A memorable and timeless milestone. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – 7:00 PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 7:00 PM

Rhymes For Young Ghouls

Canada 2013. Dir: Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gmaq). 88 min. Blu-ray Disc

Quebec Mi’gmaq Jeff Barnaby’s stylish, head-spinning drama shared Best Canadian First Feature honours at VIFF and was selected for Canada’s Top Ten 2013. A fictional Mi’gmaq reserve in 1976 is the setting, and the real-life tragedy of Canada’s residential school system is the backdrop, for Barnaby’s potent, propulsive, genrebending tale of 15-year-old drug-dealing queen Aila (Devery Jacobs), who decides to take on the sadistic Indian agent who torments her community. “Barnaby’s much-anticipated debut feature resembles an S.E. Hinton novel re-imagined as a surreal, righteously furious thriller” (Steve Gravestock, TIFF). “A ferocious and wildly entertaining feature debut . . . steeped in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere of dread and instability . . . Barnaby fuels a full-throttle action revenge fantasy with no time for quaint notions of feel-good empowerment” (UCLA). This screening made possible with the support of Movie Central. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 6:30 PM

Kissed By Lightning

Canada 2009. Dir: Shelley Niro (Mohawk). 89 min. HDCAM

“Mavis Dogblood (Kateri Walker) is a Mohawk painter from Canada haunted by the tragic death of her husband, who was hit by lightning. She paints the stories he used to tell her, but she can’t come to grips with her loss. It is only after she drives to New York City for an art opening, travelling across what were her ancestors’ tribal lands (and the U.S.-Canadian border that artificially divides them), that Mavis reconciles herself to her new life. Beautifully photographed, with haunting images and sounds, writer-director Shelly Niro’s feminist film meditates on loss of identity, First Nations traditions, and the role of Native American women in keeping families and traditions alive” (UCLA). Niro is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario.

preceded by

?E?anx: The Cave

Canada 2009. Dir: Helen Haig-Brown (Tsilhqot’in). 11 min. DigiBeta

Helen Haig-Brown’s sci-fi fantasy, based on a traditional Tsilhqot’in tale, is set in 1961 in B.C.’s Chilcotin, where a hunter discovers a secret portal. Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2009. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 8:20 PM

SHIMASANI

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance Canada 1993. Dir: Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki). 119 min. DCP

This landmark film by one of Canada’s most respected documentarians offers a powerful, passionate, behind-the-barricades look at Canada’s Oka crisis of 1990, in which Quebec Mohawks faced provincial police and the Canadian military in an armed stand-off lasting 78 nerve-wracking days and nights. The conflict was triggered by the planned expansion of a golfcourse development onto traditional Mohawk lands. The film won the prizes for Best Canadian Feature at TIFF and Best Documentary at VIFF. “The astounding incidents, captured by Obomsawin during the 78-day ordeal, form a double portrait: of an indifferent government, and a people prepared to maintain their dignity at any cost . . . Her measured and beguiling narration constructs both history and anecdote with the patience and momentum of a master storyteller” (UCLA).

preceded by

Lye

USA 2005. Dir: Dax Thomas (Laguna/Acoma). 5 min. Beta SP

Dax Thomas’s impressionistic short, appropriating existing footage, deconstructs the inexorable of images of empire and its violent expansion. (UCLA) MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 6:30 PM

Trudell

USA 2005. Dir: Heather Rae (Cherokee). 80 min. DigiBeta

“Freely experimenting with documentary form, Heather Rae’s film about American Indian activist and poet John Trudell, a Santee Sioux from Nebraska, meets its multifaceted subject with a complexity worthy of the man. Recounting Trudell’s rise from poverty to leadership in the American Indian Movement, then through personal tragedies to newfound status as a poet and recording artist, Rae combines multiple sources to construct the film as a poem in itself, powerfully evoking the moral and visionary force of a leader who continues to instil the American scene with a sterling note of conscience. Trudell’s collaborations with numerous artists have brought him an expanded audience, and praise from the likes of Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson, and Robert Redford, who are all interviewed here, among others” (UCLA).

preceded by

Nikamowin (Song)

Canada 2007. Dir: Kevin Lee Burton (Swampy Cree). 11 min. Betacam

A thrilling and complex deconstruction of the sounds and rhythms of Native language. (UCLA) MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 8:50 PM

The Honour of All (Part I)

Drunktown’s Finest

This deeply-moving docu-drama chronicles how the Alkali Lake Indian Band, a Shuswap people in B.C.’s Cariboo region, overcame a terrible legacy of alcoholism. When Chief Andy Chelsea and wife Phyllis realize that their own drinking threatens to destroy their family, it begins a difficult, decades-long journey to sobriety for a community that suffered under an alcoholism rate of 100%. Directed by pioneering Native American filmmaker Phil Lucas, an Arizona-born Choctaw, and funded by the Canadian government, the film uses the members of the band to re-enact the remarkable true story of their recovery.

“In her impressive first feature, writer-director Sydney Freeland unfurls a suite of stories about contemporary life among Navajo youth. The film follows three residents of the small, reservation-adjacent town of Dry Lake. Nizhoni, a college-bound woman raised by a white family, longs to connect with her birth parents. Sickboy plans to join the military but struggles to disengage from pervasive bad influences. Felixia, a transgender woman living with her traditional grandparents, dreams of being a model. All three walk a fine line between cultural inheritance and destiny. Freeland brings a firsthand authority to bear from her own reservation upbringing. Her astute drama, premiered at Sundance in 2014, cuts every which way through received stereotypes of Native life” (UCLA).

Canada/USA 1986. Dir: Phil Lucas (Choctaw). 57 min. BetaSP

followed by

Tikinagan

Canada 1991. Dir: Gil Cardinal (Métis). 59 min. BetaSP

“In Northwestern Ontario, Tikinagan Child Services works to support First Nations children and overcome the legacy of mistrust caused by the provincial child-welfare system. Taking its name from the Cree word for the cradleboard traditionally used to swaddle and carry babies, Tikinagan is a revolutionary program: a Native-run agency that seeks to keep Native children in their own communities. This candid, clear-eyed documentary observes the efforts of Tikinagan workers to rebuild relationships, alleviate past wrongs, and to ensure safe, supportive homes for children in communities beset with heart-rending challenges” (UCLA). Alberta-born director Gil Cardinal was himself raised in a foster home. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 6:30 PM

This May Be the Last Time USA 2014. Dir: Sterlin Harjo (Creek/Seminole). 90 min. DCP

“Who knew that the Muscogee Creek and Seminole nations developed their own traditional hymns akin to Negro spirituals? In the 1830s, the Creeks and Seminoles were forcibly relocated by the U.S. government from their ancestral homes in the American southeast to Oklahoma. Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s first-person documentary, which world-premiered at Sundance in 2014, weaves together the surprising and tragic history of their devotional songs with the mysterious disappearance of his own grandfather in 1962. As Harjo notes of these hymns, ‘They are intrinsic to our culture. In times of tragedy and hardship, we often turn to hymns as a way of seeking emotional and spiritual support’” (UCLA).

preceded by

A Bentwood Box

USA 1985. Dir: Sandy Osawa (Makah), Yasu Osawa. 5 min. DVCAM

This enthralling short illustrates the creation of a carved wooden box, using perfect modulations of duration and focal distance to inscribe both the act of creation, and the film’s act of observation, as reverential. (UCLA)

USA 2014. Dir: Sydney Freeland (Navajo). 89 min. Blu-ray Disc

preceded by

Shimasani

USA 2009. Dir: Blackhorse Lowe (Navajo). 15 min. Blu-ray Disc

This elegiac period piece set in 1934 captures a moment of decision for two restless Navajo sisters living with their grandmother on the reservation. (UCLA) WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 6:30 PM

Navajo Talking Picture USA 1985. Dir: Arlene Bowman (Diné). 40 min. DVD

“While a film student at UCLA, Arlene Bowman set out to document her grandmother’s life on the Navajo reservation. When grandmother stops cooperating, Bowman is drawn more deeply than she expected into an encounter with her personal history, her Navajo heritage, and her motives as a filmmaker. As she struggles to complete the project, the film grows ever more fascinating. Is Bowman a naïve, would-be ethnographer stumbling through the pitfalls of representation? Or is she dismantling from within the whole ethnographic project and the presumptions of outsiders who, for centuries, have assumed the right to ‘preserve’ Native cultures? Navajo Talking Picture speaks to the complexities and pitfalls of representation no matter who’s behind the camera” (UCLA).

followed by

Itam Hakim, Hopiit

USA 1984. Dir: Victor Masayesva Jr. (Hopi). 85 min. BetaSP

“Made during the tricentennial of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, an uprising of Hopi and Pueblo peoples against the Spanish, Victor Masayesva Jr.’s film makes few concessions for non-Hopi audiences in its evocation of Hopi mythology and its upending of traditional documentary form. Over a kaleidoscopic montage of reservation life, historical photographs, and re-enactments, Ross Macaya, a Hopi elder, shares stories of his boyhood and the origins of the Hopi people. Past and future collapse into a layered present as Masayesva works to construct a visual language to document and express Hopi experience. For Masayesva, who has gained international recognition for his films and photography, Itam Hakim, Hopiit stands as an act of visual sovereignty” (UCLA). WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 8:30 PM

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 8:45 PM

ESSENTIAL CINEMA ESSENTIAL BIG SCREEN HAPPY HOLIDAYS The Cinematheque wishes you the best of the season with a special selection of splendid film classics – all cinema essentials, all must-sees on the big screen. John Ford’s The Searchers, cinema’s greatest and most glorious Western. North by Northwest, Hitchcock’s largest and most lavish thriller. Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, one of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever made. Tokyo Story, the sublime family drama that is Ozu’s supreme masterpiece. And Barry Lyndon, Kubrick’s most painterly and sumptuous achievement. Happy holidays and happy viewing! And thank you for your patronage and support in 2015!

Tokyo Story

(Tokyo monogatari)

Japan 1953. Dir: Yasujiro Ozu. 135 min. DCP

“One of the manifest miracles of the cinema” (Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker), Tokyo Story is usually cited as Ozu’s supreme masterpiece, and is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. (In the 2012 edition of Sight and Sound’s oncea-decade poll of international critics, it ranked third, behind only Vertigo and Citizen Kane!) A sad, simple, economical tale of generational conflict, told in the consummate Ozu style, the film concerns an aging couple who journey to Tokyo to visit their married son and daughter, only to find that their presence seems to be an imposition on their rather insensitive, apparently too-busy offspring. Tokyo Story offers a perfect example of the quality of mono no aware — a sad but serene resignation to life as it is — that informs Ozu’s sublime work. Program Note: Wim Wenders’s Ozu documentary Tokyo-Ga will screen on the same evening as Tokyo Story on December 22 & 23. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23 – 8:20 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26 – 4:00 PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 27 – 6:30 PM

The Searchers USA 1956. Dir: John Ford. 119 min. DCP

The cinema’s greatest Western is also one of its greatest, most enduring masterpieces. Filmed amidst the glorious vistas of Utah’s Monument Valley, John Ford’s magnificent film is a landmark of the “adult” or “psychological” Western, and features what may be John Wayne’s finest performance. The Searchers follows the epic odyssey of Ethan Edwards (Wayne) an embittered, almost pathological outsider in search of the Comanche Indians who kidnapped his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) and massacred the rest of his brother’s family. Joining him on the obsessive quest is Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), part Cherokee himself. The film’s conflicted politics are part of its many fascinations. Wayne’s catchphrase here, “That’ll be the day,” inspired Buddy Holly’s classic song. Ford’s classic film has exerted a powerful influence on many leading filmmakers; Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Wenders’s Paris, Texas, and Lucas’s Star Wars saga are among the movies in its debt. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 28 – 4:00 PM WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30 – 9:00 PM

ESSENTIAL CINEMA

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

North by Northwest USA 1959. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. 136 min. DCP

Is there a more entertaining and richly satisfying Hitchcock film than North by Northwest? From the spiffy Saul Bass title sequence to the cliff-hanger climax on Mount Rushmore, with a zillion breathless, bizarre, and Freudian twists and turns in between, this quintessential suspense thriller is the largest and most lavish of the director’s works. The impeccable Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a New York City ad executive who, in a classic case of Hitchcockian mistaken identity, finds himself taken for a spy and forced on a dangerous cross-country adventure – including, of course, one heart-stopping encounter with a crop duster in an Indiana cornfield! Ernest Lehman wrote the wild and witty double-chase script; the stunning images, in VistaVision and Technicolor, are by Robert Burks, and have to be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26 – 8:45 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 28 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30 – 4:00 PM

The Red Shoes

Great Britain 1948. Dirs: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. 133 min. DCP

“One of the most beloved films of all time” (Ian Christie), Powell and Pressburger’s ravishing, rapturous The Red Shoes, shot in dazzling Technicolor by Jack Cardiff, is also one of the most beautiful. Moira Shearer, in a remarkable debut, is Victoria Page, an up-and-coming dancer newly taken on by a successful ballet company. Anton Walbrook is Lermontov, the company’s manipulative, demanding impresario (modelled on Serge Diaghilev), whose ruthless your-art-is-your-life approach to dance imperils Victoria’s physical and emotional health. Marius Goring is Julian, the young composer with whom Victoria falls in love. The Red Shoes is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of the same name. The film’s much-celebrated centrepiece, a stunning 14-minute ballet sequence directly based on the Andersen tale, is one of the great glories of cinema. The film won 1948 Oscars for its art direction and score.

Barry Lyndon

Great Britain 1975. Dir: Stanley Kubrick. 187 min. DCP

Stanley Kubrick’s lavish adaptation of Thackeray’s picaresque novel was once dismissed by Pauline Kael and others as a “coffee-table movie,” but has since made its long, slow, inexorable climb to masterpiece status – and to recognition as one of Kubrick’s greatest achievements. Ryan O’Neal is the eponymous Barry Lyndon, an 18th-century Irish rogue and social climber in relentless, unscrupulous pursuit of wealth and status. Kubrick’s bold, painterly film was a massively expensive undertaking: painstakingly researched to ensure historical accuracy, sumptuously costumed, and filmed on location in Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany, it took some 300 days to shoot, and made pioneering use of an ultra-sensitive, NASA-developed lens in order to film sequences lit only by candlelight. Its celebrated, climatic duel scene reportedly took 42 days to edit. Barry Lyndon won Oscars for its cinematography, art direction, costumes, and musical score. Kubrick’s follow-up was The Shining. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2 – 7:00 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 3 – 7:00 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 4 – 7:00 PM

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 27 – 4:00 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 28 – 9:00 PM WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30 – 6:30 PM

SUN

1 TICKETS

MON

Wim Wenders

The Left-Handed Woman – 6:30 pm

HOW TO BUY TICKETS Day–of tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening. Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca ($1 service charge applies). Events, times, and prices are subject to change without notice.

The Cinematheque is recognized as an exempt non–profit film society under the B.C. Motion Picture Act, and as such is able to screen films that have not been reviewed by the B.C. Film Classification Office. Under the act, all persons attending cinematheque screenings must be members of the Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique Society and be 18 years of age or older, unless otherwise indicated.

Through Indian Eyes

Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner – 7:00 pm

Wim Wenders: Short Films – 6:30 pm

Atanarjuat, The Fast

The State of Things – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders: Short Films – 8:45 pm

NOVEMBER Through Indian Eyes

Wim Wenders

FRI

Chan Centre Connects

Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love – 7:00 pm

SAT

Through Indian Eyes

Smoke Signals + Carrying

Wim Wenders

The State of

Fire – 6:30 pm

Things – 6:30 pm

Naturally Native + Cow

The Left-Handed

Tipping: The Militant

Woman – 8:45 pm

Indian Waiter – 8:30 pm

DIM Cinema

Stella Polare - 7:30 pm

Runner – 7:00 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Ian Wallace: Contempt – 6:30 pm

Through Indian Eyes

Rhymes For Young

Wim Wenders

The Salt of the

Dana Claxton: Dog Day

Ghouls – 6:30 pm

Earth – 6:30 pm

Afternoon – 8:30 pm

Kissed By Lightning +

Wings of Desire – 8:40 pm

GUEST

Cinema Sunday

Planet of the Apes – 1:00 pm

Through Indian Eyes

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Deprogrammed – 7:30 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Roy Arden: Speedy +

Wim Wenders

Resistance + Lye – 6:30 pm

Jalopy – 6:30 pm

The Salt of the

Trudell + Nikamowin

Vikky Alexander:

Earth – 5:00 pm

(Song) – 8:50 pm

Playtime – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Kings of the Road – 7:00 pm

Kings of the

DIM Cinema

Almanac (Circa 1970) - 7:30 pm

Road – 3:30 pm

Traces That Resemble Us

Opening Reception at Monte Clark

TRACES THAT RESEMBLE US 2–6

The Honour of All (Part I)

Through Indian Eyes

Drunktown’s Finest +

Traces That Resemble Us

Karin Bubaš: The Night of

EUFF 2015

Baby(a)lone – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Banana – 4:30 pm

Shimasani – 6:30 pm

the Hunter – 6:30 pm

The Keeper of Lost

Liza, the Fox-Fairy – 6:30 pm

Kings of the

This May Be the Last Time +

Navajo Talking Picture +

Stan Douglas: Film by Samuel

Causes – 8:30 pm

Admiral – 8:30 pm

Road – 7:00 pm

A Bentwood Box – 8:45 pm

Itam Hakim, Hopiit – 8:30 pm

Beckett + Vidéo – 8:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Head Full of Honey – 4:00 pm

Cats Don’t Have Vertigo – 6:30 pm

Hostage – 6:30 pm

Fever – 8:50 pm

EUFF 2015

To See the Sea – 4:00 pm

Little England – 6:00 pm

EUFF 2015

Love Building – 6:30 pm

The Sinking Of Sozopol – 8:15 pm

EUFF 2015

Ismael – 6:30 pm Cowboys – 8:45 pm

EUFF 2015

Noble – 6:30 pm

Muse of Fire – 8:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Gods – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

The Fencer – 6:30 pm Committed – 8:20 pm

How Saul and Paul Robbed

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Jeff Wall: Straight Time – 6:30 pm Greg Girard: The Yakuza – 8:30 pm

DECEMBER

The Tree – 8:30 pm

CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS 7

Through Indian Eyes

GUEST

+ Tikinagan – 6:30 pm

Simshar – 8:30 pm

Kings of the

Gallery - 2:00 pm

Wim Wenders

Road – 7:00 pm

Wings of Desire – 7:00 pm

$3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

IN THIS ISSUE

THURS

?E?anx: The Cave – 8:20 pm

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

theCinematheque.ca

Wim Wenders

WED

The Left-Handed Woman – 8:30 pm

The State of Things – 8:45 pm

TUES

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Myfanwy MacLeod:

Star 80 – 6:30 pm

Them All – 8:45 pm

EUFF 2015

The Grump – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Alias Loner – 4:30 pm

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch

Wild Life – 6:30 pm

Reflecting on Existence – 8:30 pm

All Cats Are Grey – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Until the End of the

World – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Until the End of the World – 12:00 noon

Owen Kydd: Gummo – 8:30 pm

Until the End of the World – 6:30 pm

THROUGH INDIAN EYES 8–11 EUFF 2015 16–21 WIM WENDERS 22–23 SHORTEST DAY 24

GUEST

Cinema Sunday

The Gold Rush – 1:00 pm

FRAMES OF MIND 26

Until the End of the

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Eva Nová – 7:30 pm

World – 6:30 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Robert Arndt: Pickpocket +

Wim Wenders

Buena Vista Social

Pursuit, Plunder & Fleece – 6:30 pm

Club – 6:30 pm

Until the End of the

Rodney Graham: Dillinger Is

Notebook on Cities and

World – 6:30 pm

Dead + I’m Running Away to

Clothes – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

CINEMA SUNDAY 25

Wim Wenders

The Shortest Day 2015

Kids’ Program - 1:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Tokyo-Ga – 6:30 pm

Essential Cinema

Tokyo Story – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Tokyo-Ga – 6:30 pm

Rated G

Family Program - 3:00 pm

Notebook on Cities and

Wim Wenders

Essential Cinema

Musical Program - 4:30 pm

Clothes – 8:20 pm

Tokyo-Ga – 9:00 pm

Tokyo Story – 8:20 pm

Rated PG

Adult Program - 6:00 pm

Buena Vista Social Club – 4:30 pm Notebook on Cities and Clothes – 6:30 pm Buena Vista Social

Join Cirque du Soleil – 8:30 pm

DIM CINEMA 27

Wim Wenders

Club – 8:10 pm

Essential Cinema

Tokyo Story – 4:00 pm The Searchers – 6:30 pm

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

North by Northwest – 8:45 pm

Rated 14A Rated 18A

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

ATANARJUAT, THE FAST RUNNER

Essential Cinema

The Red Shoes – 4:00 pm

The Searchers – 4:00 pm

North by Northwest – 4:00 pm

Tokyo Story – 6:30 pm

North by Northwest – 6:30 pm

The Red Shoes – 6:30 pm

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The Red Shoes – 9:00 pm

The Searchers – 9:00 pm

JANUARY

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

Perfect Holiday Gifts for Film Lovers 10 Double-Bill Film Pass $108 2016 Annual Film Pass $320 Gift Certificates $10 Notebooks $8 Purchase at the Box Office on screening nights or by phone at 604.688.8202 during business hours

SUN

1 TICKETS

MON

Wim Wenders

The Left-Handed Woman – 6:30 pm

Through Indian Eyes

Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner – 7:00 pm

Wim Wenders: Short Films – 6:30 pm

Atanarjuat, The Fast

The State of Things – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders: Short Films – 8:45 pm

NOVEMBER Through Indian Eyes

Wim Wenders

FRI

Chan Centre Connects

Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love – 7:00 pm

SAT

Through Indian Eyes

Smoke Signals + Carrying

Wim Wenders

The State of

Fire – 6:30 pm

Things – 6:30 pm

Naturally Native + Cow

The Left-Handed

Tipping: The Militant

Woman – 8:45 pm

Indian Waiter – 8:30 pm

DIM Cinema

Stella Polare - 7:30 pm

Runner – 7:00 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Ian Wallace: Contempt – 6:30 pm

Through Indian Eyes

Rhymes For Young

Wim Wenders

The Salt of the

Dana Claxton: Dog Day

Ghouls – 6:30 pm

Earth – 6:30 pm

Afternoon – 8:30 pm

Kissed By Lightning +

Wings of Desire – 8:40 pm

GUEST

Cinema Sunday

Planet of the Apes – 1:00 pm

Through Indian Eyes

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Deprogrammed – 7:30 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Roy Arden: Speedy +

Wim Wenders

Resistance + Lye – 6:30 pm

Jalopy – 6:30 pm

The Salt of the

Trudell + Nikamowin

Vikky Alexander:

Earth – 5:00 pm

(Song) – 8:50 pm

Playtime – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Kings of the Road – 7:00 pm

Kings of the

DIM Cinema

Almanac (Circa 1970) - 7:30 pm

Road – 3:30 pm

Traces That Resemble Us

Opening Reception at Monte Clark

TRACES THAT RESEMBLE US 2–6

The Honour of All (Part I)

Through Indian Eyes

Drunktown’s Finest +

Traces That Resemble Us

Karin Bubaš: The Night of

EUFF 2015

Baby(a)lone – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Banana – 4:30 pm

Shimasani – 6:30 pm

the Hunter – 6:30 pm

The Keeper of Lost

Liza, the Fox-Fairy – 6:30 pm

Kings of the

This May Be the Last Time +

Navajo Talking Picture +

Stan Douglas: Film by Samuel

Causes – 8:30 pm

Admiral – 8:30 pm

Road – 7:00 pm

A Bentwood Box – 8:45 pm

Itam Hakim, Hopiit – 8:30 pm

Beckett + Vidéo – 8:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Head Full of Honey – 4:00 pm

Cats Don’t Have Vertigo – 6:30 pm

Hostage – 6:30 pm

Fever – 8:50 pm

EUFF 2015

To See the Sea – 4:00 pm

Little England – 6:00 pm

EUFF 2015

Love Building – 6:30 pm

The Sinking Of Sozopol – 8:15 pm

EUFF 2015

Ismael – 6:30 pm Cowboys – 8:45 pm

EUFF 2015

Noble – 6:30 pm

Muse of Fire – 8:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Gods – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

The Fencer – 6:30 pm Committed – 8:20 pm

How Saul and Paul Robbed

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Jeff Wall: Straight Time – 6:30 pm Greg Girard: The Yakuza – 8:30 pm

DECEMBER

The Tree – 8:30 pm

CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS 7

Through Indian Eyes

GUEST

+ Tikinagan – 6:30 pm

Simshar – 8:30 pm

Kings of the

Gallery - 2:00 pm

Wim Wenders

Road – 7:00 pm

Wings of Desire – 7:00 pm

$3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

IN THIS ISSUE

THURS

?E?anx: The Cave – 8:20 pm

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

theCinematheque.ca

Wim Wenders

WED

The Left-Handed Woman – 8:30 pm

The State of Things – 8:45 pm

TUES

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Myfanwy MacLeod:

Star 80 – 6:30 pm

Them All – 8:45 pm

EUFF 2015

The Grump – 6:30 pm

EUFF 2015

Alias Loner – 4:30 pm

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch

Wild Life – 6:30 pm

Reflecting on Existence – 8:30 pm

All Cats Are Grey – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Until the End of the

World – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Until the End of the World – 12:00 noon

Owen Kydd: Gummo – 8:30 pm

Until the End of the World – 6:30 pm

THROUGH INDIAN EYES 8–11 EUFF 2015 16–21 WIM WENDERS 22–23 SHORTEST DAY 24

GUEST

Cinema Sunday

The Gold Rush – 1:00 pm

FRAMES OF MIND 26

Until the End of the

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Eva Nová – 7:30 pm

World – 6:30 pm

GUEST

Traces That Resemble Us

Robert Arndt: Pickpocket +

Wim Wenders

Buena Vista Social

Pursuit, Plunder & Fleece – 6:30 pm

Club – 6:30 pm

Until the End of the

Rodney Graham: Dillinger Is

Notebook on Cities and

World – 6:30 pm

Dead + I’m Running Away to

Clothes – 8:30 pm

Wim Wenders

CINEMA SUNDAY 25

Wim Wenders

The Shortest Day 2015

Kids’ Program - 1:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Tokyo-Ga – 6:30 pm

Essential Cinema

Tokyo Story – 6:30 pm

Wim Wenders

Tokyo-Ga – 6:30 pm

Rated G

Family Program - 3:00 pm

Notebook on Cities and

Wim Wenders

Essential Cinema

Musical Program - 4:30 pm

Clothes – 8:20 pm

Tokyo-Ga – 9:00 pm

Tokyo Story – 8:20 pm

Rated PG

Adult Program - 6:00 pm

Buena Vista Social Club – 4:30 pm Notebook on Cities and Clothes – 6:30 pm Buena Vista Social

Join Cirque du Soleil – 8:30 pm

DIM CINEMA 27

Wim Wenders

Club – 8:10 pm

Essential Cinema

Tokyo Story – 4:00 pm The Searchers – 6:30 pm

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

North by Northwest – 8:45 pm

Rated 14A Rated 18A

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

ATANARJUAT, THE FAST RUNNER

Essential Cinema

The Red Shoes – 4:00 pm

The Searchers – 4:00 pm

North by Northwest – 4:00 pm

Tokyo Story – 6:30 pm

North by Northwest – 6:30 pm

The Red Shoes – 6:30 pm

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The Red Shoes – 9:00 pm

The Searchers – 9:00 pm

JANUARY

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

18th Annual

European Union F i l m Fe s t i v a l Europe without the Jetlag!

November 27 - December 9 elcome to The Cinematheque’s 18th European Union Film Festival! Our annual showcase of acclaimed new films from across greater Europe is proudly presented in partnership with the Vancouver consulates and Ottawa embassies of the member states of the European Union and the Delegation of the European Union to Canada. This year’s event is our largest yet, with entries from all 28 of the EU member states. Participating in the festival for the very first time is Malta, an EU member since 2004, but largely without an active domestic film industry. (Malta is represented by Simshar, a drama heralded as the country’s first bona-fide feature film.) Each EU country has carte blanche to choose the film that will represent them. Together, their selections make for a lively, provocative, stimulating, and entertaining state-of-the-Union celebration of the diversity, dynamism, and accomplishment of contemporary European filmmaking.

LUXEMBOURG

ITALY

Vancouver Premiere!

Luxembourg/Belgium 2015. Dir: Donato Rotunno. 98 min. DCP

Italy 2015. Dir: Andrea Jublin. 90 min. DCP

Baby(a)lone

Director Donato Rotunno’s second feature is Luxembourg’s official submission to the upcoming 88th Academy Awards. Baby(a)lone is an intense coming-of-age drama set in an affluent modern Europe supposedly committed to the well-being of its children, but where the young, exposed to violence, drugs, and pornography even at school, can grow up too fast. The protagonists are Shirley (Charlotte Elsen) and X (Joshua Defays), two 13-year-olds who become a couple in a dangerous headlong rush to find the love missing in their lives. The film is adapted from Luxembourgian writer Tullio Forgiarini’s novel Amok, winner of a European Union Prize for Literature in 2013.

Banana

Andrea Jublin, director of the Oscar-nominated 2007 short The Substitute, makes the jump to features with Banana, a coming-of-age charmer about a young misfit undeterred by his lack of proficiency at school, sports, or most everything. “Banana (Marco Todisco), so nicknamed because of his fruitshaped foot, believes that getting the girl of his dreams will make him happy. He also bases his whole philosophy on Brazilian soccer, and sees himself as a bold offensive player in the game of life, while his classmates see him as a weird and awkward child who messes up every chance he has to score, on and off the field. This doesn’t stop Banana from trying . . . A delightful Italian comedy” (Seattle I.F.F.)

OPENING NIGHT SPONSORED BY:

All Ages Screening - Rating TBA FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 4:30 PM

DENMARK

Updates, trailers, and advance tickets

Vancouver Premiere!

The Keeper of Lost Causes (Kvinden i buret)

Denmark/Sweden/Germany 2013. Dir: Mikkel Nørgaard. 97 min. Blu-ray Disc

eufilmfestival.com Program subject to change

This slick, suspenseful dose of Nordic Noir adapts a bestselling novel by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, and features a screenplay by Nikolaj Arcel, who penned the original film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (Arcel also wrote and directed the 2012 Danish hit A Royal Affair.) After a police raid goes badly awry, high-strung detective Carl Mørck is assigned to desk duty in the newly-created Department Q, devoted to quickly closing cold cases. He and his new assistant Assad are under strict orders: theirs is a paperpushing job only. But stubborn Mørck can’t stop himself from delving deeper into the case of a well-known female politician who disappeared mysteriously five years before. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 – 8:30 PM

Acknowledgements: For assistance in making this Vancouver presentation possible, The Cinematheque thanks Diodora Bucur, Press Officer, Delegation of the European Union to Canada (Ottawa); Tom McSorley, Executive Director, and Jerrett Zaroski, Programmer, Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa); and the Embassies and Consulates of all EU member states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom. For its kind support in organizing

this year’s festival celebration during the current Luxembourg presidency of the European Union, we are grateful to the Consulate of Luxembourg in Vancouver.

HUNGARY

SLOVAKIA

Vancouver Premiere!

Hungary 2015. Dir: Károly Ujj Mészáros. 98 min. Blu-ray Disc

(Rukojemník)

Liza, the Fox-Fairy

A lonely-hearts Budapest nurse who loves all things Japanese begins to worry that she might be a fox-fairy, a soul-sucking Japanese demon, in Károly Ujj Mészáros’s sumptuous, inventive fantasy, winner of the Best New Director prize at this year’s Seattle festival. The film is set in a fictionalized 1970s Hungary, where Liza (Mónika Balsai) cares for the wife of the Japanese ambassador. Her only friend is Tomy Tani, the ghost of a dead Japanese pop singer. Liza’s bad luck with men takes a deadly turn when all her suitors start dying in freak accidents! “Blending Japanese folklore with Amélie-inspired artistic direction, this dark fairytale delivers touches of whimsy and a large helping of Hungarian intensity and humour” (Seattle I.F.F.). SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 6:30 PM

Hostage

Slovakia/Czech Republic 2014. Dir: Juraj Nvota. 102 min. DCP

A young boy enjoys the adventures of childhood while contending with the realities of politics and the absurdities of adults in Slovak director Juraj Nvota’s Amarcord-like comedydrama, set in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. (Two previous Nvota films, Cruel Joys and Music, have screened in past EUFFs.) Little Peter is being raised by this grandparents. His parents have emigrated to Vienna, and the political situation has made it difficult to join them; Peter is a virtual hostage of the regime. While he dreams up ways of crossing the border, he is also preoccupied by the stuff of growing up: school, bullies, hijinx, first love. Nvota’s crowd-pleasing film features a terrific cast of well-known Slovak and Czech actors. All Ages Screening - Rating TBA

THE NETHERLANDS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 6:30 PM

MALTA

Vancouver Premiere!

Admiral

(Michiel de Ruyter)

Netherlands 2015. Dir: Roel Reiné. 151 min. Blu-ray Disc

The second-most expensive Dutch film ever (after Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book) is a large-scale historical epic set in the mid-17th century, during the Dutch Golden Age. The Netherlands was then one of the world’s richest countries and great maritime powers. This drama of political intrigue, conspiracies, and spectacular naval battles stars Frank Lammers as the legendary admiral and national hero Michiel de Ruyter, who assumes command of the Dutch fleet with the country at war with England and also on the brink of civil war, as Republicans and Orangists vie for supremacy. Verhoeven regular and Blade Runner replicant Rutger Hauer co-stars. The film marked director Roel Reiné’s return home after several action films in Hollywood. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 8:30 PM

GERMANY

Vancouver Premiere!

Simshar

Malta 2014. Dir: Rebecca Cremona. 101 min. Blu-ray Disc

We’ve never before had an entry from Malta in our Vancouver EUFF! Rebecca Cremona’s Simshar has been heralded as Malta’s first bona-fide feature. It is also timely: an intense drama set against the illegal migrant crisis convulsing southern Europe. The film follows parallel storylines. In one, a young boy from a traditional fishing village makes his first trip on the family fishing boat, only to be caught up in a disaster at sea. In the second, a Maltese doctor boards a Turkish merchant ship that has rescued a group of Africans, then finds himself stranded on the vessel as Malta and Italy wrangle over who is responsible for the migrants. Simshar became Malta’s first-ever official Oscar entry when it was submitted to this year’s 87th Academy Awards. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 8:30 PM

PORTUGAL

Vancouver Premiere!

Head Full of Honey (Honig im Kopf)

Germany 2014. Dir: Til Schweiger. 139 min. Blu-ray Disc

Popular German writer-director-actor Til Schweiger’s crowdpleasing family dramedy has been a major box-office hit at home and in other German-speaking regions of Europe. The title’s “head full of honey” belongs to elderly Amandus (beloved German comedian Dieter Hallervorden), suffering from Alzheimer’s and in rapid decline. His desperate family, including son Niko (Schweiger), is no longer able to cope and has decided to have him committed. More sympathetic to the old man’s now-childlike ways is 10-year-old granddaughter Tilda (Emma Schweiger, the director’s daughter). She decides to take her granddad on one last big adventure – a road trip to Venice. All Ages Screening - Rating TBA SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 4:00 PM

Vancouver Premiere!

Cats Don’t Have Vertigo (Os Gatos não Têm Vertigens)

Portugal 2014. Dir: António-Pedro Vasconcelos. 124 min. Blu-ray Disc

Veteran director António-Pedro Vasconcelos’s serio-comic tale of the unlikely bond between a lonely widow and a complicated youth with literary ambitions has been likened to a Portuguese Harold and Maude. Job (newcomer João Jesus) is a disenchanted 18-year-old from a dysfunctional family. Rosa (the celebrated Portuguese actress Maria do Céu Guerra) is an elderly woman haunted – quite literally – by the recent death of her beloved husband. When Job is kicked out of his home after a violent argument with his father, he takes refuge in Rose’s terrace – and a highly unusual relationship begins to develop. The film won nine Sophia Awards (Portugal’s national film awards) this year, including best film, director, actor, actress, screenplay, and music. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 6:30 PM

AUSTRIA

SPAIN

Vancouver Premiere!

(Fieber)

Spain 2013. Dir: Marcelo Piñeyro. 111 min. DCP

Fever

Austria/Luxembourg 2014. Dir: Elfi Mikesch. 80 min. DCP

Fassbinder and Herzog actress Eva Mattes plays a photographer confronting her troubled past in AustroGerman filmmaker Elfi Mikesch’s fever-dream drama. Franzi grew up in a small Austrian town in the 1950s in an unhappy home dominated by her unstable father, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion. Her father’s photos of his service in North Africa had both beguiled and disturbed her, intermingling with her own childhood world of fairytales and fantasy. Now, years later, on an important journey to Serbia, nightmarish images of the past begin intruding on Franzi’s present. Fever premiered at Berlin in 2014, where Mikesch, also a pioneering female cinematographer, was given a special Teddy Award for her life’s work. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30 – 8:50 PM

Ismael

A star-studded Spanish cast headlines director Marcelo Piñeyro’s tender family drama, the tale of a runaway boy seeking his biological father. Ten-year-old Ismael (newcomer Larsson do Amaral) hops a train from Madrid to Barcelona in search of Félix (Mario Casas), the father he’s never met. He lands on the doorstep of chic restaurateur Nora (The Sea Inside’s Belén Rueda), Félix’s mother. She had no inkling of Ismael’s existence, and no longer has much contact with Félix. After alerting Alika (Ella Kweku), Ismael’s worried mother, of his whereabouts, Nora takes the boy to the city of Girona to introduce him to his father – an encounter that will open many old wounds. Sergi López (Pan’s Labyrinth) co-stars. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 6:30 PM

CROATIA

ROMANIA

Vancouver Premiere! Vancouver Premiere!

Love Building

Romania 2013. Dir: Iulia Rugina. 85 min. DCP

Cowboys (Kauboji)

Croatia 2013. Dir: Tomislav Mršić. 108 min. Blu-ray Disc

“In this charming low-budget independent comedy that has ‘American remake’ written all over it, 14 couples enroll in a camp designed to mend broken relationships, but things get quickly out of hand. One of the reasons is that the seven-day program is run by three young men who have emotional problems of their own, so they may not be the right trainers after all. It is noteworthy that this light and entertaining debut is actually the result of an acting workshop. Except for the leading trio (played by the only well-known actors in Love Building, who also run a private acting school in real life), everybody else in the cast is a student” (Film Society of Lincoln Center).

“A theatre director struggles to turn deadbeats into actors in Cowboys, a lower-key Full Monty-style outing set in small-town Croatia. That nation picked Tomislav Mršić’s feature debut as its contender for this year’s foreign-language Oscar . . . Helping adapt his own play for the screen, Saša Anočić plays Saša, a director returning from the city to his hometown after some unspecified setbacks and a bout with cancer. He’s been offered a chance to mount a small play, mainly to give townsfolk something to see in their underused civic hall, but the pickings are slim: five nobodies show up for auditions . . . Cowboys is a perfectly audience-friendly comedy with a refreshing unwillingness to oversentimentalize” (John Defore, Hollywood Reporter).

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 6:30 PM

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 – 8:45 PM

BULGARIA

FINLAND

Vancouver Premiere!

(Potavaneto na Sozopol)

(Mielensäpahoittaja)

The Sinking Of Sozopol Bulgaria 2014. Dir: Kostadin Bonev. 100 min. DCP

A troubled man arrives in the Black Sea town of Sozopol with ten bottles of vodka in veteran Bulgarian director Kostadin Bonev’s thoughtful, moody drama. Chavo (Deyan Donkov), an architect weighted with guilt and painful memories, takes up residence in an old family home. As he drowns his sorrows, and as rain drenches the historic town, he becomes convinced – or desperately hopes – that when he finishes the booze, something in his life will change forever. Adapted by Bonev and Ina Vultchanova from the latter’s novel, the film won Golden Roses in Bulgaria for best screenplay and best actress (Snezhina Petrova). TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1 – 8:15 PM

The Grump

Finland 2014. Dir: Dome Karukoski. 104 min. Blu-ray Disc

A cantankerous elderly farmer with outrageously old-fashioned ideas wreaks havoc in the Helsinki household of his mildmannered son and high-achieving, increasingly exasperated daughter-in-law in this satirical comedy from on-the-rise Finnish director Dome Karukoski. Prominent Finnish actor Antti Litja won the 2015 Best Actor Jussi (Finland’s Oscar) for his finely-pitched performance in the lead. (Litja was also awarded a Jussi for lifetime achievement.) The film is based on a popular series of books and radio plays by Tuomas Kyrö. The Finnish title translates as “The Man Who Gets Upset About Things.” “Alternately hilarious and heartfelt . . . Karukoski has further established himself as one of today’s most versatile and inventive filmmakers” (Steve Gravestock, Toronto I.F.F.) FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 6:30 PM

SWEDEN

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)

Sweden/Norway/France/Germany 2014. Dir: Roy Andersson. 101 min. DCP

The latest jaw-dropping wonder from singular Swede Roy Andersson won the Golden Lion at Venice last year and is Sweden’s submission to next year’s Oscars. Composed of 37 comic vignettes, the film follows sad-sack salesmen Sam and Jonathan, door-to-door peddlers of cheap novelty items. Setpieces include an anachronistic appearance by Charles XII, Sweden’s early-18th-century ruler, and the most astonishing representation of Western colonialism, imperialism, and racism you’ll ever encounter in the cinema. Pigeon forms a triptych of sorts – “a trilogy on being a human being” –with Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, Andersson’s previous two features, and serves up the same marvellous, visionary, Monty-Python-meets-Ingmar-Bergman mix of absurdist humour, apocalyptic angst, and exquisitely-composed visual tableaux.

BELGIUM

Vancouver Premiere!

All Cats Are Grey

(Tous les chats sont gris)

Belgium 2014. Dir: Savina Dellicour. 90 min. Blu-ray Disc

Paul, a 43-year-old amateur detective fond of quoting Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy, a rebellious 16-year-old girl from an affluent family, share an unexpected connection in Belgian writer-director Savina Dellicour’s moving debut feature. Paul knows that he is Dorothy’s biological father. Over the years, he has spied on her from afar. Dorothy, learning that he is fond of sleuthing, one day knocks on Paul’s door – and asks him for help in finding her birth father! Veteran Belgian actor Bouli Lanners and newcomer Manon Capelle, both impressive, play the principals. Belgian critics have been full of praise for Dellicour’s well-judged film, one likening it to a mix of The Virgin Suicides, Woody Allen comedy, and suspense drama. In French. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 8:30 PM

CZECH REPUBLIC

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4 – 8:30 PM

LATVIA

Vancouver Premiere!

To See the Sea (Pojedeme k moři) Vancouver Premiere!

Alias Loner

(Segvārds Vientulis)

Latvia 2014. Dir: Normunds Pucis. 90 min. DCP

“First-time director Normunds Pucis effectively sets up the conflict between heroism and self-preservation in the face of an all-seeing invader in this black-and-white docudrama set in Latvia in 1945. In the wake of the second Soviet occupation, rural Catholic priest Antons Juhņevičs helps local men escape forced conscription in the oppressor’s army by hiding them on the church grounds. The danger and the tension build to a showdown in the snowy woods, as the ruse is prolonged with fateful consequences” (Siskel Film Center, Chicago). The film is based on actual events that took place in the vicinity of Līvāni. The score is by Rihards Dubra, an internationally-acclaimed Latvian composer of sacred music. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 4:30 PM

Czech Republic 2014. Dir: Jirí Mádl. 90 min. DCP

“Lively and puckish, this first feature by popular star-turneddirector Jirí Mádl unreels a story seen entirely through the brand-new home-video camera of its main character, 11-yearold Tomas. While adults go about their business, Tomas and his best friend Haris fashion themselves as spies, stalkers, and clandestine filmmakers, beginning with catching Tomas’s dad in suspicious jaunts away from home. Mádl, who got his start as a teen heartthrob, brings acute sensitivity the comedy, pain, and poignancy of innocence on the cusp of adolescence” (Siskel Film Center, Chicago). “Surprises on many levels . . . To See the Sea puts Mádl on the fast track for a promising filmmaking career” (Martin Kudlac, TwitchFilm). All Ages Screening - Rating TBA SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 4:00 PM

GREECE

FRANCE

Vancouver Premiere! Vancouver Premiere!

Wild Life

(Vie sauvage)

France/Belgium 2014. Dir: Cédric Kahn. 102 min. DCP

Director Cédric Kahn’s compelling drama, based on a well-known child-abduction case in France, features superb performances from leads Céline Sallette and Mathieu Kassovitz. “Nora and Paco, tired of propriety and consumerism, opt to renounce civilization and live off the land. They lead a nomadic life in their caravan, gradually adding children to the mix. But when Nora tires of their itinerant lifestyle and gains custody of their sons, Paco refuses to allow his progeny to be raised according to the societal codes he abhors. What follows is the riveting true story (based on the case of Xavier Fortin) of a father’s reckless but all-consuming love” (Film Society of Lincoln Center). Belgian auteurs Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne co-produced.

Little England (Mikra Anglia)

Greece 2013. Dir: Pantelis Voulgaris. 132 min. DCP

Greek auteur Pantelis Voulgaris (Brides) adapts wife Ioanna Karystiani’s best-selling novel in this epic romance/period drama, a major commercial and critical hit at home. The film is set in the 1930s and 40s on the island of Andros, a seafaring society whose men who are away much of the time. Orsa and Moscha are sisters who fall for the same dashing sailor. Meanwhile, their domineering mother, Mina, attempts to marry them off to wealthy men. Winner of six Greek Oscars (including best film) and Greece’s submission to this year’s 87th Academy Awards, Little England is “handsomely mounted and impeccably acted . . . A woman’s picture in the most positive sense of the word” (Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter). SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 6:00 PM

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5 – 6:30 PM

SLOVENIA

UNITED KINGDOM

Vancouver Premiere!

(Drevo)

United Kingdom 2013. Dirs: Dan Poole, Giles Terera. 83 min. DCP

The Tree

Slovenia 2014. Dir: Sonja Prosenc. 90 min. DCP

The bold first feature of writer-director Sonja Prosenc is Slovenia’s official submission to the upcoming Academy Awards. A chamber piece told in three chapters and unfolding in slowburning, non-linear fashion, The Tree concerns a widowed mother and her two young sons who, for reasons initially left unexplained, have confined themselves behind the walls of their house. “Prosenc tells a stark, elemental story in startlingly unconventional fashion . . . The tale has an almost Biblical quality . . . The filmmaker expertly creates an atmosphere of dread, using visual elements and Janez Dovc’s ominous musical score to disturbing effect . . . The Tree is an intriguing effort that marks an auspicious feature debut” (Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter).

Muse of Fire

Are you afraid of William Shakespeare? Two young British actors who loathed Shakespeare in school, then fell in love with Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo + Juliet, set out to discover who adores, who despises, and who is mystified by the Bard in this good-natured, globe-trotting buddy movie/documentary. Along the way are illuminating visits with some of our era’s leading Shakespearean actors, including Judi Dench, Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Alan Rickman, and James Earl Jones. “Muse of Fire is a smart, subversive, idiosyncratic road movie in search of the enduring power of one of the greatest playwrights of all time . . . It will change the way you feel about Shakespeare forever” (BBC). MONDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 8:30 PM

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 – 8:30 PM

IRELAND

Vancouver Premiere!

Noble

Ireland/Vietnam/United Kingdom 2014. Dir: Stephen Bradley. 100 min. DCP

A fearless Irishwoman follows her motto “a little insane goes a long way” and accomplishes great things in director Stephen Bradley’s stirring, crowd-pleasing biopic, dramatizing the true story of Christina Noble. She overcame nightmarish adversity in her own life – a Dickensian childhood, sexual assault, an abusive marriage – to found an important international children’s charity. In the 1970s, Noble was haunted by recurring visions of children victimized by the Vietnam War. With little more than gumption and a desire to do good, she took herself to Ho Chi Minh City. Deirdre O’Kane gives a fine, forceful performance as the adult Noble in this intelligent, moving film. “Inspired . . . A joyful and rousing affirmation of the human spirit” (Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter). MONDAY, DECEMBER 7 – 6:30 PM

HEAD FULL OF HONEY

POLAND

Gods

(Bogowie)

Poland 2014. Dir: Lukasz Palkowski. 120 min.

“You wouldn’t think a film about cardiology in Poland would be such a kick, but Gods is a fast-paced, soapy pleasure, sort of like ER or Grey’s Anatomy, but with the 1980s setting adding a judicious dollop of iron-curtain period kitsch. Tomasz Kot plays Zbigniew Religa, the doctor who performed the first successful heart transplant in Poland after battling opposition from colleagues and struggling to set up his own clinic . . . A brightly limned roster of supporting characters, from tough-cookie nurses to patrician superiors, orbit about him, snapping out great chunks of medical dialogue. Gods tells a fascinating story well and ably captures a specific time and place in medical history” (Leslie Felperin, The Guardian). TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 6:30 PM

LITHUANIA

Vancouver Premiere!

How Saul and Paul Robbed Them All

(Traukinio apiplėšimas, kurį įvykdė Saulius ir Paulius) Lithuania 2015. Dirs: Simonas Askelavicius, Ricardas Marcinkus. 100 min. DCP

Two yokels attempt to rob a wedding train in this Lithuanian box-office hit, described as “an adventure comedy with elements of Westerns and Georgian spice.” Saul (Giedrius Savickas) and Paul (Marius Repšys) are pals in a boring small town. Saul’s bummed out: the woman he adores is about to marry a wealthy Georgian. Lifting his spirits is an unexpected proposal from a local businessman, who promises to give Saul and Paul a totally awesome gift: a beautiful, vintage American muscle car. There will, of course, be complications . . . Savickas and another principal member of the cast, Ramūnas Cicėnas, appeared in How to Steal a Wife, last year’s Lithuanian EUFF entry.

CYPRUS

Vancouver Premiere!

Committed

Cyprus 2014. Dir: Stelana Kliris. 90 min. DCP

“Doing for Cyprus what Scorsese did for New York, this part-crowdfunded debut feature from Stelana Kliris is an unconventional and moving – but ultimately light-hearted – romantic comedy about modern-day relationships. A chance meeting between George (Orestes Sophocleous) – a handsome 30-something under pressure to propose to his girlfriend – and the devastatingly beautiful ‘Bride’ (Melia Kreiling of Guardians of the Galaxy fame) – who has bailed on her groom-to-be on their wedding day – forces two strangers to confront their hang-ups about love, marriage, insecurity, and commitment. They set off on an unforgettable road trip across Cyprus and embark on an odyssey into self-discovery in the process” (Melbourne Greek Film Festival). In English. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 8:20 PM

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8 – 8:45 PM

ESTONIA

Vancouver Premiere!

The Fencer (Miekkailija)

Estonia/Finland/Germany 2015. Dir: Klaus Härö. 93 min. DCP

A finely-crafted, well-acted suspense drama set against the backdrop of Soviet-era fear and paranoia, this international co-production represents Estonia in our EUFF but is also Finland’s official submission to the upcoming 88th Academy Awards. In Soviet-occupied Estonia, a young fencer, on the run from Stalin’s secret police, seeks refuge in a remote town, where he quietly starts a new life as a gym teacher at the local school. When he decides to start a fencing club for the kids, it brings him into conflict with the school’s stern, suspicious principal. The film fictionalizes the story of Estonian fencing master Endel Nelis. Three of director Klaus Härö’s four previous features were also selected to represent Finland at the Oscars! WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9 – 6:30 PM

CONTINUED FROM OCTOBER

WIM WENDERS A RETROSPECTIVE

ecipient of an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (b. Düsseldorf, 1945) has had a long and distinguished career spanning the five decades from his earliest 16mm experimental shorts of the late 1960s to his recent award-winning arts documentaries such as Pina (2011) and The Salt of the Earth (2014). Wenders first came to wide attention in the 1970s as the director of a series of existential road movies exploring modern-day alienation, spiritual confusion, loneliness and dislocation, the Americanization of Europe, the expressive possibilities of landscape, the glories of pop and rock music, and the primacy of the cinema. Including The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971), Alice in the Cities (1974), and Kings of the Road (1976), these haunting, highly-assured films – along with The American Friend (1977), a brilliant adaptation of Patricia Highsmith – established Wenders as a filmmaker of international prominence. Wenders’s work, in turn, helped establish das neue Kino, the New German Cinema – that brave new wave of Wenders, Fassbinder, Herzog, Kluge, Schlöndorff, von Trotta, et al. – as arguably the most significant national cinema of the 1970s. With the

New Restoration!

The Left-Handed Woman (Die linkshändige Frau)

West Germany 1978. Dir: Peter Handke. 119 min. DCP

The directorial debut of writer Peter Handke, an important Wim Wenders collaborator, was produced by Wenders and shot by Robbie Müller. “An exquisite – and little-seen – film of the 1970s. A married woman living in the suburbs of Paris separates from her husband and begins adjusting to a life alone. She translates Flaubert, putters around the kitchen, picks up her father from the train station, and hikes with her son. As the banal particulars of her daily routine proceed in a rigorously poetic fashion, every spoken word and gesture feels deliberate and momentous. With its austere compositions, minimal camera movement, and delicately restrained performances by Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz, The Left-Handed Woman is a powerful meditation on autonomy, self-preservation, and liberation. Handke cited Chantal Akerman as a key influence when the film premiered at Cannes” (Museum of Modern Art, New York). SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 8:45 PM

New Restoration!

The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge)

West Germany/Portugal/USA 1982. Dir: Wim Wenders. 121 min. DCP

A European auteur finds himself at odds with Hollywood sensibilities in Wenders’s sardonic, self-referential The State of Things, winner of the 1982 Golden Lion at Venice. In Portugal, a prominent German director is shooting his first American movie, a low-budget, post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic, when the production runs out of film stock and money. After days of idleness, the desperate director sets out for Hollywood in search of the film’s missing producer. The State of Things was made during a break in the shooting of Hammett, Wenders’s U.S. debut, and is considered a film à clef account of Wenders’s troubles with Francis Ford Coppola and Hollywood during that fraught production. Samuel Fuller, Roger Corman, and Warhol superstar Viva have prominent supporting roles. French master Henri Alekan (Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Wenders’s Wings of Desire) was lead cinematographer of this beautiful black-and-white work.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 8:45 PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 6:30 PM

1980s art-house hits Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987), Wenders’s international popularity reached a zenith. Running from October through December, this major retrospective of Wenders’s cinema (the first presented in Vancouver in more than two decades) includes new digital restorations of many of his key fiction and nonfiction films; rare screenings of his early experimental short works, and of The Left-Handed Woman (1978), produced by Wenders and directed by his frequent collaborator Peter Handke; and the Vancouver premiere of the fulllength, five-hour Director’s Cut of Wenders’s monumental science-fiction feature Until the End of the World (1991). Acknowledgments: Janus Films (New York); Brian Belovarac, Janus Films Program Note: Wrong Move (1975), previously announced as part of our Wim Wenders retrospective, will not be available for our Vancouver presentation. A restoration is pending. Screened in October: The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971) ● Alice in the Cities (1974) ● The American Friend (1977) ● Paris, Texas (1984)

The Salt of the Earth

France/Brazil/Italy 2014. Dirs: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. 110 min. DCP

“In addition to masterful fiction films, the tireless and evercurious Wim Wenders has created wondrous documentaries (Tokyo-Ga, Buena Vista Social Club, Pina). This deeply emotional portrait of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed with Salgado’s son Juliano, is his finest nonfiction work yet. Salgado left a comfortable middle-class career as an economist to become a restless globetrotting artist. Each series of Salgado’s photos – documenting marginalized folk artists, manual labourers working nightmarish jobs, and survivors of genocide – combines acute moral and social commitment with visionary intensity and beauty. In Salt, Salgado, advancing in years, and Juliano set out to document the Earth’s last untouched communities. The deep respect and affection Wenders and Juliano feel for this great artist radiate from every frame” (Larry Gross, Telluride F.F.). Special Jury Prize, Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2014. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 5:00 PM

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin)

West Germany/France 1987. Dir: Wim Wenders. 128 min. DCP

Angels perched atop the buildings of Berlin listen in on the innermost thoughts of mere mortals in Wim Wenders’s lovely, lyrical Wings of Desire, a soaring high-point of the director’s cinema and a moving, melancholic elegy to a Berlin still divided. Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are brooding, compassionate angels who eavesdrop on the secret pains and fears of ordinary people. When Damiel falls for a beautiful trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), he renounces his immortality to return to earth as a human, hoping for a love that transcends life in the heavens. The stunning cinematography — crisp black-and-white, lurid Technicolor — is by French great Henri Alekan, whose many credits include Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Wenders won Best Director honours at Cannes. “Few films are so rich, so intriguing, or so ambitious” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 8:40 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 7:00 PM

WIM WENDERS: SHORT FILMS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 8:45 PM

Total running time: approx. 99 min. Format: DCP

3 American LPs (1969) ● Wenders calls his first film with writer Peter Handke “a film about American music . . . about how American rock music was about emotion and images instead of sounds.” 12 min. Alabama (2000 Light Years) (1969) ● Wenders’s first film shot on 35mm, and first with cinematographer Robbie Müller, is a road movie set to John Coltrane, The Rolling Stones, and the competing Dylan/Hendrix versions of “All Along the Watchtower.” 21 min. Polizeifilm (1968) ● The Munich police and their psychological tactics during the 1968 student riots make for “a very funny film . . . a sort of slapstick film” (Wenders). 12 min.

New Restoration!

Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit)

West Germany 1976. Dir: Wim Wenders. 175 min. DCP

Many consider this meditative, mesmerizingly beautiful road movie to be Wim Wenders’s supreme achievement! Unanimous winner of the International Critics Prize at Cannes in 1976, it’s also a virtual compendium of the themes and motifs that characterize the director’s distinctive cinema. A despondent man (Hanns Zischler) and an itinerant movie-projector repairman (Rüdiger Vogler) journey through the backwaters of West Germany’s border with the East, servicing various run-down movie theatres. The film’s German title translates literally as “In the Course of Time.” The stunning black-and-white ’Scope cinematography, by Robbie Müller, was inspired by the Depression-era photographs of Walker Evans. “King of the Road Movies . . . One of the great films about men, about travelling, about cinema and the effect of America in ‘colonising’ the European subconscious” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). “If Wenders never made another movie, Kings of the Road would stake his claim as a great director” (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20 – 7:00 PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 – 7:00 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 3:30 PM & 7:00 PM

Vancouver Premiere!

Until the End of the World

NEW RESTORATION

5 HOUR DIRECTOR’S CUT!

(Bis ans Ende der Welt)

Germany/France/Australia/USA 1991. Dir: Wim Wenders. 295 min. DCP

An event! We’re gonna peregrinate like it’s 1999 with Wim Wenders’s sprawling, wildly-ambitious science-fiction epic, billed as “the ultimate road movie.” The film satisfied no one in the shortened (158-minute) original edit – the “Reader’s Digest version” – Wenders was contractually obliged to release in 1991. This rarely-seen five-hour Director’s Cut, regarded by Wenders as definitive, was the standing-O hit of the Museum of Modern Art’s Wenders retrospective in New York earlier this year! In a futuristic 1999, as global panic spreads over the imminent, apocalyptic crash of a nuclear satellite, heedless French hedonist Claire (Solveig Dommartin) meets a mysterious traveller (William Hurt) who is being pursued by bounty hunters and government agents as he travels the world on a secret mission to advance a radical technological breakthrough. Wenders’s globetrotting opus, described as “cyberpunk noir,” explores in prescient fashion our increasing reliance on technology and our dangerous addiction to images. It was shot, by Robbie Müller, across four different continents, with an international cast that includes Sam Neill, Max von Sydow, Jeanne Moreau, and Wenders regular Rüdiger Vogler. The script was co-written by two-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey. The outstanding modern-rock score (the soundtrack album was a hit, even if the movie was not) features tracks by the era’s major artists, all of whom were asked to contribute the kind of music they thought they’d be making in 1999! There will be a 10 minute intermission during the screening. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 – 12:00 NOON & 6:30 PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 14 – 6:30 PM

Silver City Revisited (1968) ● “I was very impressed by the views from the different apartments in which I lived as a student in Munich . . . And in the attic of the film school I found a collection of old 78 shellac records” (Wenders). 25 min. Same Player Shoots Again (1967) ● A short black-andwhite sequence of a man running with a gun is repeated five times, with five different colour treatments, “like the five balls in a pinball machine” (Wenders). 12 min. Reverse Angle: NYC March ’82 (1982) ● This introspective diary film finds Wenders on the road in New York, plagued by the dislocation that haunts his feature work, and embroiled in creative differences with Francis Ford Coppola over Hammett. 17 mins.

Buena Vista Social Club Germany/USA 1999. Dir: Wim Wenders. 105 min. DCP

Wim Wenders had his biggest hit in years – and his first-ever Academy Award nomination - with this 1999 documentary about traditionalist Cuban music, inspired by the million-selling 1997 album produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder. The phenomenal popularity of Buena Vista Social Club, record and film, made international stars of the aging, all-but-forgotten likes of Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, and Orlando ‘Cachaito’ López. Two subsequent Wenders projects, Pina and The Salt of the Earth, have also been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. “An ebullient documentary . . . The music pulsates, and the pictures of Havana compare the city’s grand but faded architecture with the musicians’ weather-beaten faces” (Stephen Holden, New York Times). “A film of ineffable sweetness and glorious music . . . An achievement of both music scholarship and passionate humanity” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 4:30 PM & 8:10 PM

New Restoration!

Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten)

West Germany/France 1989. Dir: Wim Wenders. 81 min. DCP

The titular cities are Paris and Tokyo and the clothes are by Japanese fashion guru Yohji Yamamoto in Wim Wenders’s impressionistic, self-reflective documentary, the German director’s follow-up to Wings of Desire. Commissioned by Paris’s Pompidou Centre to make a film on fashion, Wenders expanded an exploration of Yamamoto and his visionary work into a multi-layered, multi-media meditation on, among other things, the creative process, cultural dislocation, urban life, cinema in the digital age, and the languages of, and parallels between, filmmaking and fashion design. Notebooks, loosely constructed and amiably kaleidoscopic, is nobody’s idea of haute-couture Wenders, but it does offer an intimate and intriguing look at the meeting of two fascinating minds and the intersection of two creative spheres. “Not Paris, Texas but Paris, Tokyo . . . As usual, Wenders has an unerring eye for the real points of cultural interaction” (Jill Forbes, Sight and Sound). FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18 – 8:30 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 8:20 PM

New Restoration!

Tokyo-Ga

West Germany/USA 1985. Dir: Wim Wenders. 92 min. DCP

Inspired by the cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders travelled to Tokyo in 1983 to find out if, two decades after the Japanese master’s death, traces still remained of the world so richly rendered in sublime films such as Late Spring and Tokyo Story. Wenders’s eye for striking and unusual images finds ample material in the pachinko parlours, golf stadiums, rockabilly teenagers, and plastic sushi models of contemporary Tokyo. Fellow filmmakers Werner Herzog and Chris Marker make brief appearances, but highlighting things are visits with Chishū Ryū, Ozu’s favourite leading man, and Yūharu Atsuta, Ozu’s longtime cinematographer, both of whom offer poignant and revealing accounts of Ozu’s methods. Wenders’s own cinematographer for this eloquent, enjoyable essay film/travelogue was the talented American Ed Lachman, recently a Todd Haynes mainstay. “For many, this is Wenders’s most underrated film” (Harvard Film Archive). Program Note: Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story will screen on the same evening as Tokyo-Ga on December 22 & 23. MONDAY, DECEMBER 21 – 6:30 PM TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22 – 9:00 PM WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23 – 6:30 PM

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 A DAY OF FREE SCREENINGS! ALL AGES WELCOME!

The Shortest Day, an annual celebration of the short film, returns for a third year! This free event, featuring four outstanding programs of new, classic, and award-winning shorts by some of Canada’s most talented filmmakers, is a fun way for families and film-lovers to celebrate the lead-up to this year’s winter solstice on December 22 – the shortest day of the year – and usher in the holiday season.

FREE ADMISSION!

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Cinematheque membership is not required for this event.

The National Film Board of Canada, Telefilm Canada, and Quebec’s Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) are partners in presenting this event across Canada. The Cinematheque is pleased to join with them again this year in hosting this special day of free screenings in Vancouver. The Shortest Day was started in France in 2011 and has now spread to more than 50 countries. Join us on December 20 to discover and celebrate great films and outstanding filmmakers! More details on The Shortest Day screenings and films, including film synopses, can be found at www.theshortestday.ca

, Kids PROGRAM (under 8 years old) - 61 min.

Ludovic – The Snow Gift ● Noël Noël ● Private Eyes ● Stormy Night SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 1:30 PM

Fa m i ly P ro g r a m (7 years old +) - 52 min.

A Tax on Bunny Rabbits ● All the Rage ● Be the Snow ● Homerun ● If I Was God Kindergarten, Da Bin Ich Wieder ● Me and my Moulton ● The Big Swing ● The Child that Hammered Nails SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 3:00 PM

MUSICAL PROGRAM (17 years old +) - 73 min.

A New Year ● Blue Thunder ● Home Cooked Music ● Mobilize ● nevermind. ● One Last Ride ● Song for Cuba SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 4:30 PM

ADULT PROGRAM (17 years old +) – 94 min.

Bacon & God’s Wrath ● Bus Story ● Call It Blue ● No Fish Where to Go ● Overpass The Little Deputy ● The Pepperette ● The Wolf Who Came to Dinner SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 – 6:00 PM

PLANET OF THE APES

The Cinematheque’s Education Department presents

An Afternoon Film Program for Children and Their Families $6 Children & Youths (under 18) $9 Adults (Cinematheque membership not required)

If there’s one thing the movies do best, it’s whisking audiences away on incredible journeys and fantastic voyages. Travel with us to points unknown in our 2015 Cinema Sunday series, “The Spirit of Adventure.” Teeter on the edge of your seat over the perilous pursuit of ancient artifacts, expeditions of eternal enlightenment, quests to quench fortune and glory, and missions to vanquish the vile villain. We are thrilled to present amazing adventures of the ages… for all ages! Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher, critic, and dashing man of adventure Michael van ben Bos. In-theatre giveaways courtesy of Cinema Sunday community sponsors Videomatica Sales and Golden Age Collectables.

Planet of the Apes USA 1968. Dir: Franklin J. Schaffner. 112 min. DCP

Before the brow-furrowing Tim Burton remake, before the CG-savvy reboot, before the ’70s sequels and CBS show, there was just Planet of the Apes (1968), a deliriously fun, high-concept “what if” classic that featured one of the most grandscale twist endings in cinema history. Charlton Heston plays American astronaut George Taylor, survivor of a crash landing on an unknown planet some 2,000 years after his departure from Earth. Delivering on its title, the film’s legendary locale is populated by our primate cousins – but in an Outer Limits-esque inverse, the apes are the oppressors, humans the oppressed. A watermark for social commentary in the veil of sci-fi campery, it’s “no less of a mind-altering beast than Kubrick’s similarly simian-featuring 2001” (Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York). SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 1:00 PM

After the film, stick around for an eye-popping presentation by Joel Echallier, Owner and Designer of SFX Studio. Discover the latest tricks and technology used by an award-winning, full-service makeup, prosthetics, and animatronics effects company whose film credits include Blade 3, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, and Tron Legacy. www.sfxstudio.com

The Gold Rush

USA 1925. Dir: Charlie Chaplin. 88 min. 35mm

We bid farewell to our year of spirited adventures with a closing film fit for the cinema pantheon. Chaplin called The Gold Rush “the picture I want to be remembered by.” It is perhaps his most celebrated silent masterpiece – a veritable hit parade of vintage Chaplin moments. In it, he’s the lovable Tramp, trekking to the Klondike of 1898 in search of fortune, only to wind up snowbound in a comically unbalanced cabin, fending off attacks by bears and ferocious fellow prospectors, and – in one of the cinema’s most famed sequences – staving off starvation by eating his own shoe! We agree with critic James Agee: “Anyone who saw Chaplin eating a boiled shoe like brook trout has seen perfection.” The Gold Rush screens here in its 2012 restoration with orchestral score. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13 – 1:00 PM

After the screening, The Cinematheque’s Education Department, with the support of Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society, will lead an all-ages 16mm editing activity. Learn more about Cineworks at www.cineworks.ca

THE GOLD RUSH

Eva Nová

A Monthly Mental Health Film Series Presented by The Cinematheque and the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry

he Cinematheque is pleased to join with the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting “Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings, accompanied by presentations and audience discussions, are held on the third Wednesday of each month.

Series directed by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Programmed by Caroline Coutts, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.

Vancouver Premiere!

Deprogrammed Canada 2015. Dir: Mia Donovan. 90 min. DCP

In the 1970s, the youthful search for meaning could often land you in a cult. As membership in the Moonies, the Children of God, the Christ Family, the Love Family, the Hare Krishnas, and others increased, so too did panic amongst middle-class parents, reaching a fever pitch with the 1978 Jonestown massacre. Into this maelstrom stepped deprogramming expert Ted “Black Lightning” Patrick, “a 10th-grade drop-out with a PhD in common sense.” Patrick’s “reverse brainwashing” methods were unorthodox, if not plainly criminal, involving as they did kidnapping, forced confinement, repetitive interrogations, and sleep deprivation. Mia Donovan (Inside Lara Roxx) raises questions of the rights of the individual and free will in this fascinating documentary, which features interviews with the now 84-year-old (and unrepentant) Patrick, never-before-seen archival footage of deprogramming sessions, and current interviews with former cult members, some grateful for Patrick’s interventions, some not. Post-screening discussion with Dale Beyerstein, the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Langara College. Dale has also taught philosophy at Malaspina College, Douglas College, Kwantlen College, and UBC. He is a founding member of the B.C. Skeptics, and a director-at-large of the organization. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM

Vancouver Premiere!

Eva Nová

Slovakia 2015. Dir: Marko Škop. 106 min. Blu-ray Disc

Writer-director Marko Škop’s intimate psychological drama won a prestigious International Critics Prize at TIFF this year. Its impact is due largely to an absolutely stellar performance from Emília Vášáryová, the “First Lady of Slovak Film and Theatre,’ familiar to Vancouver audiences for her roles in Czech director Jan Hřebejk’s Cosy Dens and Up and Down. Vášáryová plays the titular Eva, a discredited, once-famous actress well into her 60s, recently released from her third stint in rehab for alcoholism, and desperate to make amends with the now-adult son she abandoned in infancy to the care of her sister. Travelling to the country village where her son, his family, and her sister live in the crumbling family home, Eva is promptly shown the door and instructed never to return. What follows is a sometimes harrowing, ultimately hopeful portrait of a woman determined to do anything to be given a second chance. Post-screening discussion with Dr. Rene Weideman, a registered psychologist in private practice with a focus on psychotherapy. Previously, he was Coordinator of the Outpatient Psychiatry Program at Vancouver General Hospital and then Director of the Clinical Psychology Centre at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Weideman is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UBC. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16 – 7:30 PM

AAEON

Moving-image art in dialogue with cinema Programmed by Michèle Smith, co-editor of the art journal Drawing Room Confessions.

www.dimcinema.ca

Stella Polare

Great Britain 2006. Dirs: Anthea Kennedy, Ian Wiblin. 76 min. BetaSP

“This port city, it’s much like any port city: it’s everywhere and nowhere.” For this Remembrance Day screening, DIM Cinema presents Stella Polare, an immersive essay film on the nature of war, terror, and resistance; memory, loss and forgetting. The soft voice of an anonymous narrator addresses the audience in the second person, situating us behind the camera as an unseen flâneur casting a stranger’s gaze across an unnamed European city. We encounter some of the town’s inhabitants as they stroll along the jetty in the fading evening light, peer into shop windows in half-deserted streets, and drift through the interiors of 19th-century apartments and museums, following the “dusted faded traces of a glorious imperial past.” From these images and from fragments of sounds and voices, a forensic but speculative narrative develops around “past histories, events, and incidents that bleed into the present” (Andy Birtwhistle, Vertigo Magazine). Anthea Kennedy, a British filmmaker, and Ian Wiblin, a British filmmaker and photographer, have been making films together since 2000. Their work takes the form of experimental documentary or essay films, focusing on place, history, and memory. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM

Almanac (Circa 1970) In 1970, the Stills Division of the National Film Board of Canada commissioned a series of photographic booklets by West Coast artists that were later compiled into an anthology. The B.C. Almanac(h) C-B artists conceived the book as an exhibition, and designed the accompanying exhibition as a 3-D version of the book’s production. To bring to light this forgotten event in the history of West Coast media art, Presentation House Gallery has reprinted the anthology and remounted the exhibition, along with works from the period by artists featured in the book. Tonight’s program celebrates the collage and deconstruction aesthetic of the B.C. Almanac. Not all the films were made in the year the book was published, but all are representative of the vibrant multidisciplinary art scene of the West Coast as it embraced the expressive potential of newly accessible camera technologies. Cosmic Ray | Bruce Conner/USA 1961. 5 min. 16mm Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper | David Rimmer/Canada 1970. 9 min. 16mm 7362 | Pat O’Neill/USA 1967. 10 min. 16mm Aaeon | Al Razutis/Canada 1970. 24 min. 16mm Runs Good | Pat O’Neill/USA 1970. 15 min. 16mm Crossroads | Bruce Conner/USA 1976. 37 min. 35mm Total running time: approx. 99 minutes Organized in partnership with Presentation House Gallery and its exhibition B.C. Almanac(h) C-B, on display September 30 – November 29, 2015. presentationhousegallery.org MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – 7:30 PM

STELLA POLARE

MARIA EICHHORN

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE 200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 Phone: 604.688.8202 Fax: 604.688.8204 Email: info@theCinematheque.ca Web: theCinematheque.ca STAFF Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Kate Ladyshewsky Operations & Marketing: Shaun Inouye Education Manager: Liz Schulze Education Coordinator: Hayley Gauvin Venue Operations Manager: Linton Murphy Assistant Theatre Managers: Gabi Dao, Jessica Johnson, Aryo Khakpour, Justin Mah Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Tim Fernandes, Ron Lacheur, Cassidy Penner, Helen Reed, Ryan Ermacora BOARD OF DIRECTORS President: Jim Bindon Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Secretary: Lynda Jane Treasurer: Elizabeth Collyer Members: David Legault, Moshe Mastai, Wynford Owen, Eric Wyness

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VOLUNTEERS

THE CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM GUIDE

Theatre Volunteers: Simon Armstrong, Sarah Bakke, Mark Beley, Taylor Bishop, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nadia Chiu, Andrew Clark, Rob Danielson, Steve Devereux, Bill Dovhey, Olivia Fauland, Moana Fertig, Kevin Frew, Lesli Froeschner, Andrew Gable, Shokei Green, Paul Griffiths, Joe Haigh, Savannah Kemp, Tash King, Michael Kling, Viktor Koren, Ray Lai, Christina Larabie, Sharon Lee, Britt MacDuff, Abbey Markowitz, Liam McClure, Dawn McCormick, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Adrian Nickpour, Chahram Riazi, Will Ross, RJ Rudd, Hisayo Saito, Sweta Shrestha, Paige Smith, Gordon Tanner, Stephen Tweedale

Program Notes: Jim Sinclair, additional program notes by Shaun Inouye Advertising: Shaun Inouye Proofreading: Kate Ladyshewsky Design: Marc Junker

Distribution: Hazel Ackner, Horacio Bach, Michael Demers, Gail Franko, Jeff Halladay, Alan Kollins, Martin Lohmann, Lynn Martin, Matthew Shields, Lora Tanaka, Vanessa Turner, Justina Vanovcan, Harry Wong Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips Education: Ryan Calderon, Michael van den Bos, Abby Wiseman And a special thanks to all our spares!

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Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 10–15,000. Printed by Van Press Printers. ADVERTISING To advertise in this Program Guide or in our theatre before screenings, please email advertising@theCinematheque.ca or call 604.688.8202. SUPPORT The Cinematheque is a charitable not-forprofit 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 $50 or more. To make a donation or for more information, please call our administration office at 604.688.8202. The Cinematheque gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies:

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