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 VISIONS OF LIGHT: THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
(new 35mm print)
Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels USA/Japan, 1992; 92m
Todd McCarthy, Arnold Glassman and Stuart Samuels's graceful tribute to
the unsung heroes of moviemaking, the cinematographers.
Many of the
greats are included here, all represented by gorgeous clips from their
work: Conrad Hall, John Bailey, Haskell Wexler, Vittorio Storaro, Vilmos
Zsigmond, Gordon Willis, Michael Ballhaus, James Wong Howe, Sven Nykvist
and Nestor Almendros, among many, many others. It's informative, but
it's also a lot of fun.
Fri Aug 2: 4 & 9
TIN DRUM /
DIE BLECHTROMMEL
Volker Schlöndorff, West Germany, 1979; 142m
This adaptation of Günter Grass's novel tells the story of Oskar
Matzerath, a most unusual boy of pre-WWII Germany who at a very early
age takes fierce note of the unpleasantness and hypocrisy of the adult
world. To protest all of that, he throws himself down the cellar steps
and stops growing - just like that. Oskar is played by David Bennent, a
terrifying-looking little man with eyes that seem centuries older than
the rest of him. He's never anywhere without a tin drum he bangs
incessantly on, and his stunted growth gives him the ability to shatter
glass with a keening shriek. TIN DRUM is bleakly funny at times, as
Oskar refuses to grow up and take part in the imperfect adult world. He
tries to shock the world out of its inhumanity and animosity. The young
Bennent gives an extraordinary performance, creating a character that is
haunting and frightening but simultaneously sympathetic and intriguing.
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff (The Legend of Rita), the film won an
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the Palme d 'Or at Cannes in
1979.
Fri Aug 2: 6
Sat Aug 3: 1
BRIGHTNESS /
YEELEN
(new 35mm print)
Souleymane Cissé, Burkina Faso, 1987; 102m
Souleymane Cissé's YEELEN evokes the ancient Bambara culture of Mali
(formerly French Sudan) well before its 16th-century invasion by
Morocco. In this luminous, beautifully photographed film that is equal
parts creation, myths and Oedipal reality, a young man arrives at the
crossroads between childhood and adulthood. As he begins to fathom the
mysteries of nature - or komo, science of the gods - his father cruelly
prevents the son from deciphering the elements of the Bambara sacred
rites. After his mother rescues and sends him away on a heroic journey,
the boy masters the tribe's initiation rites and ascends the Bambara
throne, and wields the sceptrelike Kore to confront his father. A local
drama with universal themes, YEELEN is no mere coming-of-age story, but
an anatomy of social responsibility.
Sat Aug 3: 4 & 8:30
HIMALAYA
Eric Valli, France/Nepal, 2000; 104m
Filmed over seven months in the forbidding Dolpo region of Nepal,
HIMALAYA tells the story of a generational struggle for the leadership
of a tiny mountain village between its proud old chief and a headstrong
young caravanner. The balance of power shifts uneasily as they make
their annual salt trek across the Himalayas. A visually striking and
spiritually captivating portrait of life in one of the world's most
extraordinary places, HIMALAYA is both intense drama and a gorgeous
tapestry of the fast disappearing traditions of Tibetan life.
Sat Aug 3: 6:15
Sun Aug 4: 8:45
DERSU UZALA
(new 35mm print)
Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1975; 137m
Magnificently shot in 70mm with six-track stereophonic sound,
DERSU UZALA is epic in form yet intimate in scope. Set in the forests of
Eastern Siberia at the turn of the century, it is a portrait of the
friendship that grows between an aging hunter and a Russian surveyor. A
romantic hymn to nature and the human spirit, it boasts a memorable
performance by Maxim Munzuk as the wise and wizened old man of the
Taiga.
Sun Aug 4:
1 & 7
TIME REGAINED /
LE TEMPS RETROUVÉ
Raul Ruiz, France, 1999; 158m
Marcel Proust's epic masterwork Remembrance of Things Past comes to
shimmering life in this great, ingenious adaptation of its final volume
by Raul Ruiz. Working with screenwriter Gilles Taurand (Thieves), Ruiz
fashions the narrative action as a series of corridors leading to the
images, themes and stories that have coursed through all the novels. A
meditation on the distance between immediate physical sensation and the
process of memory, the film reflects this very Proustian theme with its
evocations of the snapshots of Lartigue and early films of Méliès, among
its lode of cultural and historical references. Aided by a splendid cast
featuring Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Emmanuelle Beart and
Vincent Perez, TIME REGAINED powerfully captures the end of one era as
another strains to be born.
Sun Aug 4: 3:45
THE CRY /
IL GRIDO
Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1957; 115m
Steve Cochran plays a skilled hand in a sugar refinery who is completely
bereft of any sense of purpose or capacity for emotional connection when
the woman he loves suddenly abandons him and their daughter. The
uprooted man and his little girl embark on an aimless odyssey in search
of love. By this wintry film's end, Antonioni has subtly linked the fall
of his Everyman with the demise of a whole proletarian way of life, as
plans for an American airbase threaten to level the sustaining refinery.
Mon Aug 5: 4 & 9
THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA /
NARAYAMA BUSHIKO
Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1982; 130m
Imamura's unflinchingly earthy masterpiece was named Best Film at the
1983 Cannes Film Festival. Late in the last century, members of another
of Imamura's primitive communities practice ritual sex, premature burial
for thievery, and the abandonment of the elderly on a mountaintop. The
brutal story of a man forced by custom to carry his aged mother up the
mountain unreels as fierce poetry, celebrating humanity's bedrock will
to survive.
Mon Aug 5: 6:30;
Wed Aug 7: 4
A YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN /
ROK SPOKOJNEGO SLONCA
Krzysztof Zanussi, Sweden, 1984; 107m
A YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN is perhaps Krzysztof Zanussi's most emotional
film. Set in 1946, it concerns an American ex-P.O.W. who falls in love
with a Polish woman (Zanussi's favorite actress, the sublime Maja
Komorowaska), and the difficulties and bureaucracy on both sides of the
Iron Curtain. A hauntingly beautiful love story in which the
protagonists don't speak a common language (the film is both in English
and Polish) but communicate through gestures, facial expressions and laughter.
Tue Aug 6: 4
Thurs Aug 8: 6:45
WEDDING IN GALILEE
Michel Khleifi, Belgium/Galilee, 1987; 113m
From one of the most volatile areas comes a well-told tale, tense,
complex and controlled, about a Palestinian village under Israeli curfew
and a Mukhtar, or headman, who wants his son's wedding celebrated
traditionally - into the long night. Not everyone agrees the Mukhtar
should ask the Israelis for anything, and so begins this constantly
surprising, and at times almost mythic, first theatrical feature by
Khleifi, who was born and raised in Nazareth. Shot on location, and
photographed by Walther van den Enden in the dazzling light and wondrous
landscapes of the Galilee, WEDDING IN GALILEE is supported by a large
and excellent cast comprising a few professionals and many local people
playing Palestinians and Israelis with vigor, intensity and humanity.
Thurs Aug 8: 4:30 & 9
THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL /
DIE MACHT DER BILDER: LENI RIEFENSTAHL
Ray Müller, Germany, 1993; 180m
While it is accepted that Riefenstahl sold her soul to the devil and her
talent to Hitler, we've only had evidence of Triumph of the Will and
Olympiad to go on, along with her curious African picture books. In this
stunning, exhaustive documentary, Müller grills the 99-year-old
Überfräulein on her politics and gets denials and contradictions that
form a disturbing counterpoint to the film's extraordinary revelations.
This was a dancer who scaled wintry mountains barefoot in Alpine
melodrama, this was Dietrich's rival at UFA. This is the woman who
taught Hitler how to present himself, who gave the Reich its titanic
look. A treasure of technical information, the film shows the frightful
consequences of aesthetic obsession without consequence.
Fri Aug 9: 4
THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL
Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, 1990; 70m
A poker-faced black comedy about a young woman's exploitation and
revenge, pared to 70 minutes of perfection by the Finnish director. With
searing economy, he lays bare the deadened existence of his wallflower
heroine, who finds a temporary escape from her tedious job and her
loutish parents in the arms of an affluent but dubious Prince Charming.
The mortified heroine may remind you of a Bresson martyr, but when she's
dumped by her man, she's anything but passive in her revenge. Kaurismäki
mixes deadpan wit with depth charges of feeling.
preceded by
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI /
DAS KABINETT DES DOKTOR CALIGARI
(new 35mm print)
Robert Wiene, Germany, 1919; 57m
Live Piano Accompaniment by Donald Sosin
The streets and buildings warp and tilt like broken toys, the jagged
light and shadows are mostly painted in place, and the demented geometry
of the town's rooftops would teach you the art of the nightmare if you
were incapable of having your own. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was, is,
and will remain one of the strangest films ever made: A traveling
mountebank named Caligari sends sonambulist Cesare out to do evil
deeds…or perhaps Caligari is just the kindly keeper of an insane asylum.
A landmark of cinema, now restored to its full unnerving splendor.
Fri Aug 9: 7:30
M /
M - EINE STADT SUCHT EINEN MÖRDER
Fritz Lang, Germany, 1931; 105m
Fritz Lang's first talkie, about a child murderer being tracked through
Berlin by both the police and the criminal population (he's bad for
business), is obviously a renowned classic. It's also a film with a
surpassingly brilliant use of sound very early in the game: the
soundtrack for M often works contrapunctually with the image, sometimes
as a bridge between scenes, and is a key factor in the film's portrait
of the city as gridlike, paranoid nightmare. This is the long version of
Lang's masterpiece, with its devastating final image of the bereaved
mothers of the dead children.
Sat Aug 10: 1
Sun Aug 11: 4
8 / 1/2 /
OTTO E MEZZO
Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963; 135m
Having supplied La Dolce vita with a spiritual and (a)moral center,
Mastroianni consolidated his indispensability to Fellini by playing the
maestro's alter ego: a film director who, with a string of critical
successes behind him, a wife, mistress, and host of other women who
adore him, and a crew ready to start filming, has not a clue what to do
for his next movie. The possibility of being found shallow has never
seemed more beguiling. A moment for the ages: Guido (MM) spotting his
estranged wife (Anouk Aimée) window-shopping in the streets of a strange
city, as "Blue Moon" plays on a car radio.
Sat Aug 10: 3:30
Sun Aug 11: 1
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KADOSH
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL /
THE BICYCLE THIEF / 
THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE / 
DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST / 
THE BLUE KITE
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST 
CAPITAINE CONAN
THE BLUE ANGEL /