GOING DOWN

Dir: Haydn Keenan, Aust., 1983, 90 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (M)

Haydn Keenan’s feisty film takes a look at the demi-monde of early 80s inner-suburban Sydney and a slice of its lifestyle of drug-taking, partying and loosely shared relationships and households. Going Down continues to build a cult reputation as one of the great achievements of Australian independent ‘Poor’ cinema making. The fly-by-night but ensemble cast includes Tracy Mann, Esben Storm, Ian Gilmour and cameos from Sydney acting icons like Richard Moir, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Steve J. Spears.

LACOMBE, LUCIEN

Dir: Louis Malle, France, 1974, 137 mins, 35mm, col., Fr. with Eng. subtitles (M)

Louis Malle's carefully detached study of how one French farmer's son casually switches sides from Resistance to the Vichy during the Occupation. Resonant with the same themes as Bertolucci's The Conformist, this was amongst the first French films to examine the thorny ambiguities of collaboration. Pierre Blaise's Lucien comes to epitomise the banalities of history, but also 'the banal' French provincial petit bourgeois mindset, and how both fed much greater evil. Presented with the support of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture.

AGE OF CONSENT

Dir: Michael Powell, Aust., 1969, 98 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (M)

The follow up to They're a Weird Mob and second of two feature films made in Australia by acclaimed British director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes), Age of Consent is based on the 1935 semi-autobiographical novel by Norman Lindsay. James Mason plays successful Australian artist Bradley Morahan, fleeing the bustle of New York's art scene for the pristine isolation of an island off the Great Barrier Reef. There he meets Cora (played by then 19 year-old Helen Mirren), a feral-raw (and often naked) beauty who becomes the artist's muse, and he the object of her rough affections. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, composer Peter Sculthorpe will introduce a newly restored print of Age of Consent. Supervised by Powell's widow, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, the restoration reinstates Sculthorpe's original score which was jettisoned for the film's US release in 1970. Presented in association with the Canberra International Music Festival.

A STAR IS BORN

Dir: George Cukor, USA, 1954, 154 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (G)

Cukor’s Techicolor-saturated, quasi-musical remake of the 1937 Hollywood insider melodrama has a world-weary undercurrent, using its musical numbers in a way we might now associate with Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s poignancy is also magnified because we know the real career trajectories of its leads; as wading star Norman Maine, James Mason was in truth the young rising talent, whilst supposed ingénue Judy Garland was close to career burn-out. This cut is the 1983 restoration, reconstructing 30 minutes removed after the film’s premiere through surviving production stills.

THE VOSS JOURNEY

A dozen cultural institutions collaborate in an unprecedented celebration of the fictional journeys of Nobel-prize-winning novelist Patrick White's Voss and his historical counterpart, explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. Alongside seminars, guests and performances of music inspired by both Leichhardt and White's work, The Voss Journey focuses on the two most famous dramatic interpretations of White's work: the failed attempts to realise Voss as a film, and its acclaimed operatic adaptation by composer Richard Meale and librettist David Malouf. Presented in association with the Canberra International Music Festival, the ABC, ANU, NLA, NPG, AIATSIS, The Canberra Symphony Orchestra and Manning Clark House.

Events and screenings in Arc Cinema include:

Thu 14 May, 7.30pm: OVERLORD Dir: Stuart Cooper, UK, 1975, 83 mins, 35mm, b&w (PG)

Sat 16 May, 2pm: FROM NOVEL TO SCREEN: THE MOVIE THAT WAS NEVER MADE

Sat 16 May 4.30pm: THE NIGHT, THE PROWLER Dir: Jim Sharman, Aust., 1978, 90 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (M)

Sat 16 May 7.30pm: PROVIDENCE Dir: Alain Resnais, France/Switzerland, 1977, 110 mins, 35mm, col. Eng. (M)

Sun 17 May, 2.00pm: VOSS: AN OPERA IN TWO ACTS Dir: Jim Sharman, Aust, 1986-7, 125 mins, video, col., (M)

For more information please go to the Voss website or see the Voss program in Arc

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE

L' Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Dir: Luis Bunuel, France, 1972, 102 mins, 35mm, col., Spanish/French with Eng. subtitles (PG)

A small circle of polite society – the Sénéchals, the Thévenots, Florence, the Ambassador and the Bishop – meet at a dinner party. But pleasantries over good wines, gourmet meats and chic décor turn into insult, warfare and hints of cannibalism. It’s initially clothed in the guise of drawing room farce, or even one those 1960s lifestyle films about marital experimentation with self-discovery and boundaries. But Buñuel and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière are of course having none of that. Taking up from where Exterminating Angel left off at the beginning of the 60s, the characters (including Fernando Rey Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier and Delphine Seyrig) are carved up and revealed as tough and unappetising samples of their class. Presented with the support of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture.

L'AGE D'OR & SIMON OF THE DESERT

Both films 35mm, b&w, Eng. subtitles, (PG)

From either end of his long career, two classic featurettes that are amongst Luis Buñuel's most acclaimed films: L’Âge D'or (The Golden Age, 1930, 60 mins) was the final of his collaborations with Salvador Dali and maybe the core film of André Breton’s surrealist movement, with a loose plot about a pair of lovers trying to consummate their passions. But that's merely a distraction from its endless irrationally arranged motifs and sequences. Simon of the Desert (Simón del Desierto, Mexico, 1965, 42 mins) is a comedy of contrasts between the high idealism of the pole-sitting mystic (based on the fourth-Century Syrian mystic Simeon the Stylite) and the low moral inhibition that passes at his feet. The Devil's also on the prowl — in the comely shape of Silvia Pinal breaking out the arch-surrealist pranks familiar from later and earlier Buñuelian cinema.

THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH

Die Stille vor Bach Dir: Pere Portebella, Spain, 2007, 102 mins, 35mm, col., Spanish with Eng. subtitles (unclassified 18+)

Spanish filmmaker and politician Pere Portabella worked with Buñuel in the early ‘60s and was a pioneer of modern, post-Franco Spanish cinema. But he is also a trans-European filmmaker in the tradition of Straub, Bergman and Powell: directors whose fine cinema is imbued with, and made in respect to, the spirit of European music’s classical tradition. From the opening moment when Bach becomes the three-dimensional soul in the machine of a player (and dancing!) piano, his new feature film explores the maestro’s music as an energetic modern force rather than mere legacy. Weaving multiple observations and surprising subplots (a gruff truckie who smuggles rare musical instruments; two ambitious symphonic musicians whose relation is souring on their divergent interpretation of the maestro’s legacy; a retelling of composer Mendelssohn’s famous rediscovery of a lost Bach score wrapped in butcher's paper) Portebello explores the economy, culture, politics, as well as the spirit of Bach. Plus Acció Santos (1970, 12 mins) Portebella’s and pianist Carles Santos’ transcription of the sound and silence of Chopin’s Preludes. Canberra Premiere.

NAZARIN

Dir: Luis Buñuel, Mexico, 1958, 94 mins, 35mm, b&w., Spanish with Eng. Subtitles. (unclassified 18+)

Father Nazario practises his own brand of liberation theology in a familiar Buñuelian milieu of beggars and prostitutes, venal insight and stupidity. He cheerfully turns the other check and gives away what little he accumulates. This intransigent idealism runs him foul of church and state, forcing him onto the road with his own Martha and Mary — a melancholic ingénue and the bawdy ex-prostitute who got him into trouble in the first place. But his attempts to live the life of Jesus increasingly magnify contradictions of social justice, moral values, and even the point of life over death. Buñuel's second Cannes winner of the 1950s is a cunning theological treatise that contradicted everyone: Buñuel's anti-clerical allies in Surrealism and the left; the Roman Catholic Church, which acclaimed the film; even the Spanish government, fooled into thinking he was close to a reconciliation with Francoism. Only Nazario makes sense — as a fool and one of the director's most admirable characters.

ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR

La Ilusión Viaja en Tranvía, Dir: Luis Buñuel, Mexico 1953, 82 mins, 16mm, b&w, Spanish with Eng. subtitles (unclassified 18+)

In this quite quixotic allegory from Buñuel's productive but underappreciated work making Mexico studio genre films, two drunken tram workers steal their battered tram and then find that attempts to return to their car are the biggest hangover of all. Here, more than anywhere, the richest pleasures of Buñuel's Mexican cinema can be felt. There is no sentiment about the often 'revolting' qualities of its peasant and working class characters. But there is picaresque delight in their earthy capacity to collectively 'find' the surrealist in the quotidian — most richly when the tram becomes a banquet of offal and a carnival of slaughterhouse labourers. This is perhaps Buñuel's humblest story, sharing with his slightly earlier Mexican Bus Ride (1951) a delight in the widescreen view of Mexican society. And you can't help having the suspicion that the paper-mâché Genesis tableau that Buñuel presents early in the film is the most essential representation of the director's cosmology. Plus Land without Bread (Las Hurdes, 1933, 30 mins), Buñuel’s unique, hyper-real social documentary about the almost pre-historic living conditions endured by the peasants of Northern Spain. Print courtesy Filmoteca de la UNAM.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL

Dir: Luis Buñuel, Mexico, 1962, 93 mins,35mm, b&w, Spanish with Eng. subtitles (M)

The guests at an elite Mexico City dinner party are inexplicably trapped at their dinning table. Abandoned by their waiters, then by the outside world and slowly by their wits, they survive on food scraps, a flock of passing sheep and even a roaming wild bear. But it's not long before social niceties and dinner jackets give way to mob rule. Winner of the FIPRESCI award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, Buñuel's last Mexican-produced feature was a half-way house between his Mexican studio films of the 1950s and his art house hits of the late 60s. It gets in even harder on social satire of his earlier commercial features - but also sets us up for the brilliant adventures in narrative logic to come.

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS

Dir: Louis Malle, France, 1987, 104 mins, 35mm, col., Fr. with Eng. subtitles (PG)

The Holocaust and its collaborators are explored through the destinies of two French school boys – one Catholic, the other Jewish – caught up in its terrible machinery. A late-career return to the themes of war guilt and memory, this was a deeply felt project, written from an incident in Malle’s own child-hood. Youth’s fresh vision, and its innocent detachment from history, are used to devastating effect, with stunning performances by Gaspard Manesse & Raphael Fejtö. Presented with the support of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture.

VIRIDIANA

Dir: Luis Buñuel, Mexico/Spain, 1961, 35mm, 90 mins, b&w, Spanish with Eng. subtitles (M)

The young novice Viridiana, on the verge of taking her vows, is invited to visit a distant, elderly uncle, Don Jaime. The Don makes certain ‘demands’ on her. But how far should kindness, faith and good works extend? Viridiana is a sort of closeted, virginal version of Buñuel’s early Nazario; idealistic, naive, her uncompromising faith sometimes doing more damage than the devil could ever do. Working with many of the cast who would become closely identified with his work in the 1960s and 70s (Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, Silvia Pinal) Buñuel’s rise to international cinema stardom came with his belated first Spanish feature film and first European production in over three decades of filmmaking.