QUICK SELECT
GOODBYE PARADISE
Dir: Carl Schultz, Aust., 1982, 119 mins, 35mm, (M)
The most inventive of Australian cinema's 1980s cycle of neo-Noirs, with Ray Barrett doing a career-best performance as a sacked Queensland police commissioner turned shambling Gold Coast PI. As Barrett's Stacy tries to stay sober enough to make sense of dodgy off-shore oil deals and a White Shoe Brigade-led military coup, director Carl Schultz revels in the Bob Ellis and Denny Lawrence script, with its cascade of Raymond Chandler-like banter and Bjelke-Petersen-era in-jokes. From the NFSA Deluxe/Atlab Project, courtesy Jane Scott and Screen NSW.
RED-HEADED WOMAN
Dir: Jack Conway, USA, 1932, 79 mins, 16mm, (PG)
Jean Harlow's career-defining role pushed all the moralists' and box office buttons in early 1932. With a script by Gentlemen Prefer Blondes writer Anita Loos (as Harlow clues us in, in its opening lines), the film follows Harlow's Lil as she progresses up through society, via a series of sugar daddies, besotted young gentlemen and even chauffeurs. Red-Headed Woman refused to follow the convention of the fallen woman movies of the era, finding Lil's progress pretty much a laugh and leaving its protagonist unpunished all the way to the top. From the collection of the NFSA.
WITHNAIL AND I
Dir: Bruce Robinson, UK, 1987, 103 mins, 35mm, (M)
In the last days of 1969 two 'resting' actors decide to leave behind the squalor and boredom of their 'matter-infested' Camden flat for an idyllic weekend in the English countryside. But a squalid cottage, eccentric uncle, no food, and constant rain bring a hunger for a past they only just realize is over. Director Bruce Robinson's hilarious and poignant semi-autobiographical film is an oftquoted look at the 'end of an era', and will always be one of Richard E Grant's most memorable roles.
CAMINO
Dir: Javier Fesser, Spain, 2008, 143 mins, 35mm, (M)
Camino is an eleven-year old dealing with two of life's greatest challenges: falling in love and dying. Deeply involved with the religious society Opus Dei, her family manage their grief by retreating into religious fervour; but Camino keeps her own faith with the sort of dreamy inner life only cinema can best describe. Like The Sea Inside “...few films manage to balance Hollywood sentiment and European irony as successfully” (Screen International). Camino triumphed at the Spanish Academy Awards in 2009, winning all major categories.
MAD DOG MORGAN
Dir: Philippe Mora, Aust., 1976, 104 mins, 35mm, (M)
In Gold Rush-era Australia, Daniel Morgan (Dennis Hopper) arrives from Ireland to make his fortune. Instead of gold, he finds desperation, bank robbery and prison. His fervour for revenge transforms him into infamous bushranger “Mad Dog” Morgan. Hopper brings “…an intensity that most actors would have found impossible to create…” to director Philippe Mora's film. Shot on historic Mad Dog sites in the Riverina and northern Victoria, the film also stars a parade of Australian legends like John Hargreaves, Jack Thompson and David Gulpilil. From the Deluxe/Atlab Project. Philippe Mora will introduce the screening.
THE FOX AND THE CHILD
(Le renard et l'enfant) Dir: Luc Jacquet, France, 2008, 92 mins, 35mm, (G)
The new film from The March of the Penguins director Luc Jacquet, hovers in a magical twilit place between wildlife documentary and children's tale. It's a story of a mutual fascination shared between a winsome, glowing red-haired French schoolgirl and an enigmatic red-pelted fox, told with an exquisitely beautiful naturalism and with an astonishing control over the presence of child and animal. Narrated by Kate Winslet. All tickets $5.
MALCOLM
Dir: Nadia Tass, Aust., 1986, 85 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Tram-fixated Malcolm (Colin Friels), ex-con Frank (John Hargreaves), and his nothing-but-spunk girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies) become the most effective bank robbing gang since The Kellys, in the most loved film of 1980s Australian cinema. A newly restored print from the NFSA's Deluxe/Atlab Project.
MONEY MOVERS
Dir: Bruce Beresford, Aust., 1979, 92 mins, 35mm, (R)
Bruce Beresford and a crew of great Australian male acting talent (Bryan Brown, Alan Cassell, Ed Devereaux, Terence Donovan, plus 'Bud' Tingwell playing nasty and in a personal favourite role) take on real-life security company boss Devon Minchin's brutal novel, based on a notorious spate of early 1970s armoured-car robberies. With its Howard Hawks-like, bootsand- all tough, masculine ensemble, Money Movers stands off-side to Beresford's other late '70s costume dramas, pathfinding a style and an amoral tone for Two Hands and other great Australian capper flicks of more recent times. From the NFSA's Kodak/Atlab Collection.
SUSAN LENNOX: HER FALL AND RISE
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard, USA, 1931, 65 mins, 16mm, (unclassified 15+)
Country orphan Greta Garbo escapes a brutal upbringing and a forced marriage for travelling engineer Clark Gable. When business commitments force Gable back to the big city, Garbo flees an attempted rape by her fiancé, falling in with a travelling band of circus freaks and carnival workers. Now the circus manager’s mistress, Gable scorns her. But Garbo is determined to have him back by any means possible. Forgotten today, Susan Lennox was one of Garbo’s most successful talkie-era vehicles (leaving little room even for the flare of then new-comer Gable), with director Robert Z. Leonard and cinematographer William H. Daniels shaping a vigorously expressionist social fable out of David Graham Phillips then popular and notoriously racy gothic novel. (Due to poor print quality, this film replaces the previously advertised feature Ann Vickers).
MALCOLM
Dir: Nadia Tass, Aust., 1986, 85 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Tram-fixated Malcolm (Colin Friels), ex-con Frank (John Hargreaves), and his nothing-but-spunk girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies) become the most effective bank robbing gang since The Kellys, in the most loved film of 1980s Australian cinema. A newly restored print from the NFSA's Deluxe/Kodak Project.
THE GIRL FRIEND EXPERIENCE
Dir: Steven Soderbergh, USA, 2009, 77 mins, 35mm, (M)
Steven Soderbergh's energetic production schedule continues to spin-off films at all sorts of levels, from the big budget Oceans franchise, through Art House movies like The Informant!, to personal low-budget projects with an eccentricity reminiscent of Sex Lies and Videotape. The Girlfriend Experience is very much in the latter category: five non-consecutive days in late 2008, leading up to the election of President Obama and in the life of a high-priced, high-concept Manhattan call girl (real-life porn star Sasha Grey). Canberra Premiere.
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
Dir: Monte Hellman, USA, 1971, 102 mins, 16mm, (M)
'You can never go fast enough…' The Driver (James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) will tell you as they drive their '55 Chevy though Kansas. But to get to where? Their rival, GTO (Warren Oates), has forgotten why he is racing. And The Girl (Laurie Bird) doesn't even care which car she is in. Too strange even for New Hollywood, Monte Hellman's post-Beat, postmodern, eternally-returning trip down the Yellow Brick Road was a commercial disaster in the late 1960s, but is now acclaimed as maybe '…the purest American road movie ever.' - Richard Linklater.
GRENDEL, GRENDEL, GRENDEL
Dir: Alex Stitt, Aust., 1980, 88 mins, digital, (G)
Life Be In It creator Alex Stitt's adaptation of John Gardner's twisted take on the Beowulf story (told from the one-eyed point of view of a mother's love) was only the second animated feature made in Australia. Arguably it was also the first to represent a distinctive, non-Disney-influenced local visual style and voice. Done with wit and a palette of delightfully wobbly 2D forms and colours, it's got a familiarly Australian vaudevillian sense of musical comedy and pathos, with voices in large part by Peter Ustinov and Keith Michell (with a little help from Phillip Adams). Plus selected short animations by Alex Stitt. From the collection of the NFSA. All tickets $5.
MALCOLM
Dir: Nadia Tass, Aust., 1986, 85 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Tram-fixated Malcolm (Colin Friels), ex-con Frank (John Hargreaves), and his nothing-but-spunk girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies) become the most effective bank-robbing gang since The Kellys, in the most loved film of 1980s Australian cinema. A newly restored print from the NFSA's Deluxe/Atlab Project.
THE PUBLIC ENEMY
Dir: William A Wellman, USA, 1931, 83 mins, 35mm, (PG)
From the defining Warners Pre-Code director and star, William Wellman and James Cagney, the most in-your face of the early '30s gangster cycle (and maybe most iconic, for the grapefruit that James Cagney gets in-the-face of sassy gang moll Mae Clarke). Wellman's reading of gangster Tom Powers' rise is socio-economic and determinist. Stripped of the psycho-analytic and Freudian colouring of Scarface or Little Caesar, Cagney's Powers is all untrammelled thug: bad news in any era, but channelled upwards on his career path by the logic of the Depression.
