2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

(2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle) Dir: Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1968, 100 mins, 35mm, col., French with Eng. subtitles (M)

Godard tells us a few things about the women of Paris and the consumer society of 1960s France, in his take on the Belle de Jour theme of housewives with day jobs in casual prostitution. There are the usual cinematic, literary, and political Godardian-isms, the usual situationalist wit and rapid-fire commentary. But there is also the elegiac lyricism of works like Contempt; no one else could conjure galaxies from the froth of espresso coffee. Imported print.

MARLENE

Dir: Maximilian Schell, West Germany, 1984, 93 mins, 35mm, col./b&w, German with Eng. subtitles (G)

Although Dietrich refused to be filmed (“…I’ve been photographed to death…”), fellow German actor Maximilian Schell talked the then 83 year-old diva into a marathon audio interview. Quickly he found his subject over ‘being’ Marlene Dietrich. Instead, the two segued into a testy, but revealing dialogue about celebrity, exile and being German in the 20th century, recreated by Schell in a set based on recollections of Dietrich’s shuttered Paris apartment. Supported by the Goethe Institut. Celebrating Shooting Stars, VIVID National Photography Festival.

IF...

Dir: Lindsay Anderson, UK, 1968, 110 mins, 35mm, col./b&w, Eng. (M)

What Rebel Without a Cause was to America in the 50s, If… was to the UK in 1968: a standard-bearer for angry young masculinity and a vehicle for a new charismatic star (Malcolm McDowell). The setting is a surreal refraction of one of Great Britain’s venerable institutions: the hallowed halls and dorms of its Public schools. And as in all of Anderson’s films (This Sporting Life, O Lucky Man!) its hierarchical bullying and systematic rottenness are metaphors for Britain’s crumbling social order. Courtesy of the BFI.

WITCHFINDER GENERAL

Dir: Michael Reeves, UK, 1968, 86 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (R)

As a vicious Puritan inquisitor at large in 1640s Civil War England, Vincent Price fully uses his menace, rather than his camp, in Michael Reeves’ legendary shocker. Made when the director was only 24 (the final film of a tragically short career), Reeves led British horror cinema out of the misty settings of Hammer horror movies, and into the brutally specific context of English history. Witchfinder General sparked outrage as an early ‘cinema nasty’. But it also marked a final renaissance for British studio filmmaking. Courtesy of the BFI.

NO WORRIES

Dir: David Elfick, Australia, 1993, 92 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (G)

Taken away from the sunlight and close-knit values of bush Australia, schoolgirl Matilda does it tough as drought and the banks force Mum and Dad off the family farm. David Elfick’s marvellously modest Australian family movie has emerged in recent years as a national classic. David Holman’s script is endearing for its big heart and timely, popular telling of the hardship and rites-of-passage demanded by Australia’s rural crisis. New print from the NFSA’s Atlab/Kodak Project.

GLASS: A PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IN TWELVE PARTS

Dir: Scott Hicks, Aust/USA, 2007, 115 mins, digital, col., Eng. (unclassified 15+)

Australian director Scott Hicks (Shine) returns to his documentary filmmaking roots to make this portrait of friend and esteemed composer Philip Glass. Documenting his 70th birthday and an eventful year that includes a new opera and his Eighth Symphony, Glass looks back on his controversies, his relationship with Buddhism and a career trajectory from driving taxis to the cover of Time. Interviewed are friends and collaborators like Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Woody Allen, Robert Wilson, Errol Morris and Martin Scorsese. Canberra Premiere.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

Dir: John M. Stahl, USA, 1945, 110 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (PG)

Ellen Berent is the Daddy’s Girl of an establishment family. But when Daddy dies, her Electra complex goes wild, destroying anything between her and a new father figure Richard (Cornel Wilde). The masterpiece of usually sentimental ‘woman’s picture’ expert John M. Stahl (Imitation of Life) is an example of how studio directors, like their stars, could work ‘against type’. Its frightening melodrama of spoilt middle-class American femininity proves some of the best film noir came in saturated Technicolor. New print, courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

(El Espíritu de la colmena) Dir: Victor Erice, Spain, 1973, 97 mins, 35mm, col., Spanish with Eng. subtitles (unclassified 15+)

Director Victor Erice’s filmography contains just four features – all masterpieces – in four decades; long enough ago for The Spirit of the Beehive to have been made in the last years of Franco’s Spain. Precursor to Pan’s Labyrinth and recent Spanish cinema’s other allegories of fascism, it’s a haunting evocation of Castilian village life in the 1940s, through the psyche of its children. Into this enclosed world Erice sends a travelling cinema and its Hollywood movie characters – spectres that soon begin to haunt the children’s imagination. Imported print.

BURN!

(Queimada!) Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/France, 1969, 112 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. version (M)

Gillo Pontecorvo followed The Battle of Algiers with an historical epic of grander ambition. Marlon Brando plays an early 19th century James Bond: a British naval attaché, spy and provocateur fermenting revolt amongst Caribbean slaves. Although a foreign policy parable with clearly contemporary meaning, the film still failed at the box office. Today, however, Burn!’s renown steadily grows: for Brando’s slyest performance, for Morricone’s magisterial score and for its superiority in grasping the realpolitick of revolutionary struggle. Imported print.

FRANKENSTEIN

Dir: James Whale, USA, 1931, 71 mins, b&w, Eng. (PG)

Rather like the Doctor giving birth to his Monster, director James Whale (the subject of the film Gods and Monsters) breathed cinematic life into Mary Shelley’s gothic novel and the legacy of ghouls that have been the staple of B-movie pop culture ever since. Seen again, Frankenstein’s terse, Depressionera rawness, and its feel for human loneliness most stands out. Boris Karloff’s Monster is bewildered, misbegotten, clumsy, and harassed, with the wishful inner life of a child. Imported print.

BLUE IN BLACK AND WHITE

Approx. 90 mins

Following up her NFSA Journal article “Blue Movies in Australia: a Preliminary History”, ANU Professor Jill Julius Matthews presents material from the erotic margins of Australia’s 20th century visual heritage. Prof. Matthews’ lecture will contain rarely seen clips from the NFSA collection, including smuggled American stag and nudie movies found during the NFSA’s “The Last Film Search” film-collecting drive, and Australian-made amateur, avant garde and feature films. This lecture will contain adult content; admission only to those 18+.

PATHER PANCHALI

Dir: Satyajit Ray, India, 1955, 115 mins, 35mm, b&w, Bengali with Eng. subtitles

Satyajit Ray established his career as one of cinema’s greats with this evocation of Bengali village life and the vivid impressions of a boy growing up in a genteelly poor Brahmin family. Beginning his Apu trilogy, Pather Panchali also brought to western audiences the then-unknown tradition of Bengali-language art cinema (from a sub-continent typically linked only to Hindi and Bollywood pop movies) and the idea of ‘world cinema’ itself: the new cinema perspectives of the ex-colonial and third world. Imported 35mm print.

LOU REED'S BERLIN

Dir: Julian Schnabel, USA, 2007, 85 mins, 35mm, col., Eng. (PG)

Artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) realizes a musical theatre version of Lou Reed’s cult concept album and its despairing cycle of songs about the streets and low lives of early 1970s New York. This is a rare chance to see one of the most anticipated Lou Reed performances of recent years, as presented at its 2006 Brooklyn premiere. Emmanuelle Seigner cameos as the album’s ethereal drug-muse, Caroline. Presented as part of the Canberra International Film Festival.