QUICK SELECT
COUNTDOWN
Dir: Robert Altman, USA, 1968, 101 mins, 35mm, (G)
Then TV director Robert Altman’s first theatrical feature was meant to be a studio ‘quickie’ that celebrated America’s Space-age ‘right stuff’. Instead Altman’s ‘What if…’ scenario is almost like a Combat movie: a nerve-wracking study of the psychological stakes involved in the space race. It’s dominated by the performances from the then oft-paired acting duo of Robert Duvall and James Caan, as astronauts fatigued, fatalistic but clear on their duty and destiny – as much to their ‘espirt de corps’ as to their country. Courtesy of the UCLA Film and TV Archive and presented with the support of the Embassy of the United States. In association with Scinema 09.
CHET BAKER: LET’S GET LOST
Dir: Bruce Weber, USA, 1988, 120 mins, 35mm, (M)
Photographer and documentary filmmaker Bruce Weber’s grey and silver toned film begins with the broken, junk-damaged man that jazz trumpet virtuoso Chet Baker had become when Weber first met him in the late 1980s, then traces him back to the handsome lean beatnik star of the late 50s, at play with the likes of Charlie Parker and Gerry Mulligan. Let’s Get Lost pioneered the modern musical bio-documentary, but still stays unique for its poetic expression of how some modern cultural icons struggle with the ghosts of their celebrity past.
THE PUMPKIN EATER
Dir: Jack Clayton, UK, 1964, 118 mins, 35mm, (M)
From novelist, screenwriter, film critic Penelope Mortimer’s part-autobiographical novel, Anne Bancroft stars as a woman with too much passion, too many children and a vital, but at times self-destructive instinct that the next love must be better. Almost overcoming the star casting (with James Mason as an ambiguous confidant and Peter Finch as husband number three) Pinter and director Clayton (The Innocents) made a work of British psychological realism, as good or better than similar but better regarded French films of this period by Truffaut or Louis Malle.
BLACK RIVER
(Kuroi kawa) Dir: Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1957, 114 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Whilst a young couple fall to the temptations offered by a local Yakuza enforcer, their whole community falls under the spell of the Yankee dollars and pop culture on offer around a nearby US air force base. The early masterpiece from the director of Kwaidan looks at the social corruption that existed in the shadow of post-War US military occupation. “… (M)oral without being moralistic… the villain is not America for having camps but the Japanese social system which permitted lawless behaviour.” - Donald Richie. Courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
WALTZ WITH BASHIR
(Vals im Bashir) Dir: Ari Forman, Israel, 2008, 35mm (MA)
Director Ari Forman interviews and probes the memories of Israeli soldiers who fought in, but never quite understood their nation’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Regarded as the triumph at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s certainly the major work of a new wave of animated documentary.
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PALE FLOWER
(Kawaita Hana) Dir: Masahiro Shinoda, Japan, 1963, 96 mins, 16mm, (unclassified 18+)
A veteran gangster emerges from three hard years in prison. The old scene seems feudalistic, inflexible and even boring, and he is attracted to an amoral and very different young society woman with an addiction to gambling, high-risk living and thrill killing. A gritty, neon-lit portrait of Tokyo street life at the beginning of the ‘Economic Miracle’ period. Shinoda’s film brought together the traditions of the Yakuza genre with the moral and stylistic freedoms of the Japan’s cinema New Wave. From the collection of the NFSA.
THREE TO GO
Dirs: Peter Weir, Brian Hannant, Oliver Howes, Aust. 1971, 89 mins, (18+)
In the late 1960s, the Commonwealth Film Unit gave three young documentary-making talents the chance to tell a feature-length anthology of stories about young Australians in social flux. Peter Weir’s Michael (featuring then Weir regular Grahame Bond) has the most flourish, imagining May 1968-style student revolution on Sydney’s streets. More naturalistic and maybe more effective are Harrants’s Judy, about country town girl leaving home for the big smoke and Howes’ Toula: a sweet tale following the double life of the teenage daughter of Greek migrants.
THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM
Dir: Michael Anderson, UK/USA, 1966, 99 mins, 35mm, (PG)
George Segal is a Cold War-era spy unexpectedly seconded to investigate a West Berlin neo-Nazi organisation, staffed by a creepy gang of Euro-criminals (including George Sanders, Max von Sydow and Australian Robert Helpmann). Despite the shadow of the Cold War and the then new Berlin Wall, Germany’s old ghosts, histories and intrigues drag him inward and downwards. Pinter found the terrain of Len Deighton and Le Carre as a very suitable mechanism to explore his own regular themes of personal betrayal, but also some of his uneasy survivor’s guilt as an English Jew.
EXPRESSO BONGO
Dir: Val Guest, UK, 1959, 111 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 15+)
Agent Johnny Jackson cruises the joints of London’s Soho, always talking, always on the lookout for new talent. Bert Rudge may not be smart, but rebranded as Bongo Herbert, he’s the new cat Johnny’s looking for. Wolf Mankowicz’s droll hit West End musical satire was rebuilt as a vehicle for new superstar Cliff Richards. But the show’s stolen by the hustle of Laurence Harvey as Johnny, the sexy bustle of Sylvia Syms as his smarter-than-she-looks girlfriend and director Val Guest’s comic sketches of subterranean, late 1950s London.
BERT HAANSTRA PROGRAM ONE
Essentially Dutch, Bert Haanstra is at the same time one of the great universal artists of any nation’s shared history and humble living experiences. A first selection of his key post-war documentaries (a rare chance to see them in 35mm) includes the Oscar-winning, mind- and glass-blowing Glass (1958, 11 mins) and his charming Battle of the brass Bands comedy, Fanfare (1958, 90 mins). Presented in association with the Embassy of the Netherlands, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. (All films 15+)
IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE
(Rysopis) Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski, 1964, 76 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
University student Andrzej Leszczyc has run out of excuses to avoid the draft. In the hours ahead of his departure for basic training he contemplates life, failed emotional entanglements and the ennui of Poland under the Soviet order. Skolimowski also starred in his own first feature, the first of a Truffaut-like series that embodied an at-odds and cynical 1960s Polish generation: hypersensitive to its long national tragedy - but also secretly longing to embrace modern Europe. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa.
MAN ON WIRE
Dir: James Marsh, USA/UK, 94 mins, video (PG)
Called “…the best heist movie of recent cinema”, James Marsh Oscar®-winning doco. talks to charismatic wire walker Philippe Petit about the day he took a stroll between the twin towers of the New York’s World Trade Center.
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BATTLES WITHOUT HONOUR AND HUMANITY
(Jingi Naki Tatakai) Dir: Kinji Fukasaku, Japan, 1973, 97 mins, 35mm, (18+)
This is the Japanese The Godfather, the masterpiece from the veteran director of over 60 features who only came to notice in the west with his late 1990s cult Battle Royale. A raw history of the emergence of modern Yakuza in post-War Japan, Battles Without Honour and Humanity has moments of spellbinding bullet ballet, but also creates an unglamorous, neo-real context for organised crime in poverty, humiliation and greed. “Fukasaku’s crime films were… ideal vehicles… to vent his anger and frustration about the hypocrisy of post-war Japan.” – Tom Mes, Midnight Eye. Courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
A CITY’S CHILD
Dir. Brian Kavanagh, 80 mins, 1972, 35mm (unclassified 18+)
Spinster Monica Maughan’s real life is disappointing, lonely (apart from her doll collection) and dominated by a bullying invalid mother. But when mother succumbs to acute rage and cat allergy, the daughter’s new passionate inner life is awoken, along with the attentions of a dark and handsome mystery man. An early AFI Award-winner, Brian Kavanagh’s surprising little film could be taken from the writing of Patrick White or Elizabeth Jolley, pioneering what’s now called the Suburban Surreal strain in modern Australian cinema.
UNIVERSE and THE CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS
Science-fact and lunar B-fantasy from the beginning of the 1960s, exploring the angst and romance of space conquest. Roman Kroitor and Colin Low’s majestic space documentary Universe (Canada, 1960, 30 mins, 35mm) was acknowledged by Kubrick as an inspiration for the visual style of 2001: A Space Odyessy. Phil (Robot Monster) Tucker’s The Cape Canaveral Monsters (USA, 1960, 65 mins, 16mm) has potato-like aliens stitching human body parts together to stalk the U.S. space program, with only a couple of Young Scientists in Love to stop them. (Both films PG)
KANTATA TAKWA and SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE MEKONG
New rock-docs on Southeast Asian pop cultures. Restored after years of police suppression, Kantata Takwa (Dirs: Gotot Prakosa, Eros Djarot, Indonesia, 1992-2008, 70 mins, video) features Indonesian superstars, poet W.S. Rendra and singer Iwan Fals in the rock concert that signalled the outburst of student protest against the Suharto regime. John Pirozzi’s Sleepwalking Through the Mekong (USA, 2007, 67 mins, video) follows Los Angeles band Dengue Fever and singer Chhom Nimol as they bring their sound – 1960s psychedelic Cambodian pop music – back home to 21st Century Phnom Penh. (Both films unclassified 18+)
