QUICK SELECT
BIG SHOTS, SMALL PACKAGES FOUR
2007-09, video, 55 mins (*unclassified 15+. Under Australian law; those under 15 must be accompanied by a parent, teacher or guardian)
Movies for really small kids, 2 to 5 year-olds. TICKETS $5
Full film listing for Big Shots, Small Packages 4
BIG SHOTS, SMALL PACKAGES FIVE
2007-09, video, 55 mins (*unclassified 15+. Under Australian law; those under 15 must be accompanied by a parent, teacher or guardian)
Movies for little kids, 3 to 7 year-olds. TICKETS $5
Full film listing for Big Shots, Small Packages 5
VIOLENT COP
(Sono otoko, kyôbô ni tsuki) Dir: Takeshi Kitano, Japan, 1989, 103 mins, (MA15+)
The directing career debut of the then cult Japanese TV comedian and occasional Japanese cinema ''heavy'' 'Beat' Takeshi astonished international Film Festival audiences for its unexpected mood and poetics. As the film’s anti-hero, Kitano’s Detective Azuma can easily be shoe-horned into the Dirty Harry stereotype. But as a director, Kitano’s interests are very different. Much like Kurosawa’s early Samurai epics he achieves an overall sublime melancholy by keeping the brutality to a few startling, kinetic moments. Courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
BASTARDY
Dir: Amiel Courtin-Wilson, 2008, 84 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)
Aboriginal elder, actor and cat burglar, junkie and gay, Jack Charles is a man of irrepressible contradictions. Over six years, Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s documentary followed Jack as he traversed jail and the criminal underworld to support a raging heroin habit - all the while performing with some of Australia’s most renowned stage and screen directors. Jack Charles is winner of the 2009 Tudawali Award for Contribution to Indigenous Media, and Bastardy is about a man who is both a national treasure and a self proclaimed urban fringe dweller. Canberra Premiere.
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN
Dir: Karel Reisz, UK, 1981, 124 mins, 35 mm, (M)
Pinter solved the ‘unfilmiblity’ of John Fowles’ complex, revisionist, and self-reflexive ‘Victorian’ novel by providing its cinematic analogue: a complex reflection on the processes of film adaptation. In an example of early 1980s dream casting, Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play both Fowles’ class-defying lovers and also a Pinteresque pair of actors, starring in the movie of the novel and deep into a conflicted on-set affair. With the current trend for romance-saturated Jane Austin adaptations, Pinter’s text and subtexts seem even more of a revelation.
PETE SEEGER – LIVE IN AUSTRALIA
Aust, 1963, 102 mins, video (G)
We celebrate folk music legend Pete Seeger’s 90th year with a new discovery from the archives of the ABC: complete footage of Seeger’s legendary 1963 Australian concert tour. The performance is astonishingly bare: a guitar, the famous five-string banjo and the plaintive voice. But its impact on the revival of folk music in Australia is still with us. Introduced by folk music historian Warren Fahey and veteran musician David Lumsden. Presented in association with Acorn Media and ABC-TV.
BIG SHOTS, SMALL PACKAGES SIX
2007-09, video, 55 mins (*unclassified 15+. Under Australian law; those under 15 must be accompanied by a parent, teacher or guardian)
Shorts for kids 5 to 12 year-olds. ALL TICKETS $5
Full film listing for Big Shots, Small Packages 6
HIP HIP OLE – FILMS FROM LATIN AMERICA
2007-09, video, 55 mins (*unclassified 15+. Under Australian law; those under 15 must be accompanied by a parent, teacher or guardian)
Movies from across the Pacific for 8 year-olds and up (Most Spanish with basic English subtitles). ALL TICKETS $5.
Full film listing for Hip Hip Ole: Films from Latin America
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA
Dir: José Luis Guerín, Fr/Spain, 2007, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
On a warm summer’s day in the French city of Strasberg, a backpacker sits in an outdoor café, sketching the pretty girls. One seems familiar – or maybe he just wishes it was so – and he follows her through the streetscape of the ancient city, hoping for some kind of connection. Guerín is a renowned Spanish film theorist and critic. But it is the instinctive sensuality of its simple boy-chases-girl story that had critic J. Hoberman proclaiming it as “…pure cinema and pure pleasure.”
I, THE EXECUTIONER
(Minagoroshi no reika) Dir: Tai Kato, Japan, 1968, 90 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
A rare chance to see the sex, revenge, and Kabuki-soaked work of the Yakuza genre master director Tai Kato, described by Paul Schrader as like "… the very best of Sergio Leone.” Kato was famous for gender-inverting plots. So it’s no surprise that this legendary exploitation movie overturns the norms of the Revenge melodrama sub-genre, by having for its protagonist a young male teen gang member - and the target of his retribution five women who sexually abuse a mentally disturbed friend. Courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
THE DISH
Dir: Rob Sitch, Aust., 2000, 100 mins, 35mm, (M)
The Working Dog team's follow-up to The Castle celebrated Australia’s modest contribution to the first landing on the Moon. It’s an affectionate yarn of how Big American science collaborated with Australian common sense (and an ordinary country town) to capture Neil Armstrong’s first great step for Mankind. Staff from the CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Facilities section join us to talk about the science behind the story, and also to introduce Parkes Receiving (Aust. 1969, 22 mins): the original film on Australia’s NASA collaboration. In association with Scinema 09.
THE LAST TYCOON
Dir: Elia Kazan, USA, 1975, 123 mins, 35mm, (M)
Written as a comeback project for On the Waterfront’s director Elia Kazan and producer Sam Spiegel, Pinter’s attempt to shape F. Scott Fitzgerald’s hauntingly unfinished final work (novelising the life of tyro film producer Irving Thalberg) probably represents noble defeat for the art of screen adaptation. However, the casting is magnificent. Robert DeNiro is the Thalberg-like Monroe Stahr, studio-era veterans Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, and Ray Milland caricature their one-time employers, and there’s a table tennis match between DeNiro and Jack Nicholson – their only screen time together.
STYLE WARS
Dir: Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, USA, 1984, 70 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)
Originally commissioned as a news report for PBS television, Style Wars now stands as the essential record of New York’s Hip Hop subculture at its early 1980s peak. It captures the look and feel of the city’s subway system when it was the graffiti writers’ playground, battleground, artistic canvas and social platform. And it captures their soundtrack: the MCs, DJs, the street corner breakdance crews, and seminal NY acts such as The Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Trouble Funk, Rammelzee & K-Rob and Dion. Screens courtesy Public Arts Films Inc.
JEANNIE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
Dir: Chantal Akerman, Belgium, 1975, 201 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
The routine day of a Belgium housewife (Delphine Seyrig) begins with the morning chores and ends in doting on her spoilt only son. But she also works part time, so daily the doorbell rings, and there are business obligations. Then one day the potatoes overcook and this order begins to unravel… A new print and rare Australian screening (the first for Canberra!) of Chantal Akerman’s legendary, mock-epic study of a work-from-home prostitute and the inner rage of a whole generation of women. New print.
2009 ST KILDA FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM ONE
Aust., 2008-09, 100 mins, video, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
26 years old and still going strong, the 2009 edition of Australia’s showcase for new local short filmmaking comes to Arc Cinema for the first time. As well as a selection of the best of the festival’s ‘Australia’s Top 100 Short Films’ competition, there will also be winners from the SoundKILDA Music Video Competition - Australia’s only dedicated competition for music videos. Paul Harris, film critic and St Kilda Film Festival’s Artistic Director, will be in conversation about the state of Australian short filmmaking, with screenings from 7pm. Presented in association with the City of Port Phillip.
