QUICK SELECT
BERT HAANSTRA PROGRAM TWO
Dutch documentary master Bert Haanstra celebrates The Netherland’s social tradition and landscapes. Mirror Of Holland (1950, 12 mins) dreamily evokes the native landscape entirely through the shifting reflection of its waterways; whilst The Human Dutch (1963, 90 mins) was Haanstra’s comic, uniquely observed and Dutch box office hit search for the life and soul of his nation. Presented in association with The Embassy of the Netherlands, and The Art Gallery of New South Wales. (Both films unclassified 15+)
WALKOVER
Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 1965, 77 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Skolimowski’s Andrzej Leszczyc is now 30, failed at most things, and an itinerant tent boxer confronting defeat, the point of it all, and what will probably be his final fight. Re-inventing his autobiographical character and advancing the possibilities of the ‘time capsule’ drama explored in Identification Marks…, the director/star made the whole film in less than 30 shots, many of them of himself speaking directly to (or in Raging Bull-style brutal combat with) the camera. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa.
MARK T LEMON: MAKING SPACE MOVIES
Assoc. Professor at Texas A&M University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Dr. Mark T Lemon worked with NASA to place cameras on the Phoenix Mars Lander, making him maybe the first filmmaker on Mars (that we know of). Dr. Lemon will talk to about the technicalities of filming on another planet, and share some of his home movies - some with budgets a few billion dollars higher than yours and mine. Presented in association with Scinema 09 and with support of Australian Government's National Science Week grants program. ENTRY FREE.
FUGITIVE PIECES
Dir: Jeremy Podeswa, Canada, 2008, 104 mins, 35mm (MA15+)
A child refugee from wartime Poland must come to grips with the unknown fate of his original family and as a grown man reconcile this with his love for the second family who adopted him. Acclaimed TV drama director Jeremy Podeswa (Dexter, Six Feet Under) adapts Anne Michael's much-loved novel.
All tickets only $5 per person!
PAPER SOLDIER
(Bumazhnyy Soldat) Dir: Aleksei German Jr., Russia, 2008, 120 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
In 1961 the water-logged steppes of Kazakhstan (long a dumping ground for the Soviet Union’s dirty secrets) became a slapdash nerve-centre for the USSR’s space program. Genius engineers prepare the rockets, whilst the dashing medico Pokrovsky prepares the cosmonaut’s bodies and minds, suppressing his own nightmares of impending tragedy – and also of his murdered parents, victims of Stalinism. The visually stunning Venice prize-winner (from the son of one of Soviet cinema’s modern masters) brings the fatalism of Chekhov to a profound meditation on the Soviet Union’s lost ambitions and ideals. In association with Scinema 09.
JACK AND JILL: A POSTSCRIPT and BONJOUR BALWYN
Short features from Melbourne’s pioneering Carlton filmmaking movement. Jack and Jill: a Postscript (1970, 67 mins) was ad wunderkind Phillip Adams and pioneering film educator Brian Robinson’s virtually home-made suburban nursery rhyme, updating The Sentimental Bloke to the south/north of the Yarra social divide of the Melbourne suburbs. Bonjour Balwyn (1971, 59 mins) was Nigel Buesst’s satire on the pretensions of Carlton’s chatting classes, with John Duigan (future director of The Year My Voice Broke) as the preening and sponging editor of an Oz-style radical magazine. (Both films unclassified 18+).
BERT HAANSTRA PROGRAM THREE
Haanstra explores the ancient and modern of Dutch society: The Muider Group (1949, 12 mins) and Dutch Medieval Sculpture (1951, 12 mins) are ghostly and occasionally surreal evocations of the Dutch Renaissance. Panta Rhei (1952, 10 mins) is his Cannes-winning vision of water and light. Finally, his stunning coloured and edited celebration of the traditions of the Zuiderzee, And There Was No More Sea (1955, 24 mins) – and of the concrete and steel that took its place, Delta Phase One (1962, 20 mins). Presented in association with The Embassy of the Netherlands, and The Art Gallery of New South Wales. (All films unclassified 15+)
GLORIFYING THE AMERICAN GIRL
Dir: John W. Harkrider, Millard Webb, USA, 1929, 87 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
This sumptuous first-generation Hollywood Backstage musical confection is predictably plot-lite: girl gets discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld, is corrupted by stardom, learns from her mistakes and gets to have it all. Yet it remains a fascinating record of impresario Ziegfeld’s Broadway super-revues, gilded by two-colour Technicolor and skimpy pre-Production Code costumes. The celebrity walk-ons are also a major sugar-hit, including Johnny Weissmuller, Irving Berlin, and New York’s Jazz Age mayor ‘Beau James’ Walker. Courtesy of UCLA Film and TV Archive. Presented with the support of the Embassy of the United States.
BARRIER
(Bariera) Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 1966, 83 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Skolimoski rebirths his Andrzej Leszczyc as every-Polish-man, in a film often compared to 1960s Art cinema’s other filmic symbolic dreams, like Fellini’s 8 ½, Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad or Arthur Penn’s Mickey One. Now a nameless medical student, and stripped of back-story and psychological realism, he sends his new man out into the dislocation and revolt-by-style world of the ‘60s, in symbolic pursuit of business opportunities and idealised womanhood. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa.
SUMMER HOURS
(L'heure d'été) Dir: Olivier Assayas, France, 2009, 99 mins, 35mm, (M)
Three grown-up children of a French art lover (including Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche) meet to try to decide what to do with her treasures now that she has died. “Maybe this beautiful film will be too slight for many, but it’s certainly one of the better French films of the last year.” – David Stratton, At the Movies
HANDS UP!
(Rece do góry) Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 1967-85, 77 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Suppressed by the Polish government before its initial release, this has become Skolimowski’s most personal and cryptic film. Repeatedly re-editing and adding to the original, highly anti-Stalinist film shot in 1967 (which was loosely a reunion of the now middle-aged medical students first seen in Barrier), the director reformatted the film through the early 1980s as part Film Essay, part time-travel sci-fi and part Diary Film shot as he took on acting roles in other director’s films. Courtesy of Filmoteka Narodowa.
TWO THOUSAND WEEKS
Dir. Tim Burstall, Aust., 1971, 89 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Tim Burstall’s first feature was one of the most anticipated Australian releases of the late 1960s. Styled as a breakthrough in Australian art cinema, it’s critical and box office failure led to Burstall altering course and the very different Alvin Purple. Two Thousand Weeks is of its era, with talk of sexual freedom and the choice for Australians of staying or leaving. Yet a handsome black and white visual style, the performances of Jeanie Drynan and Mark ‘Taggart’ McManus and its then-rare depiction of an Australian intellgencia are ripe for reconsideration.
APPLAUSE
Dir: Rouben Mamoulian, USA, 1929, 80 mins, 35mm, (PG)
The first feature from one of the great masters of American cinema (then straight from staging Porgy and Bess) offers a standard plotline, as Broadway has-been Helen Morgan falls out – and is reunited – with her convent educated daughter. But plot’s not significant here. Applause was a break-through for the early Hollywood sound feature. Mamoulian’s sweeping camera movements, and his new ‘grammar’ of dialogue and effects, got sound filmmaking out of its rut, giving it legs and style. Courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive. With the support of The Embassy of the United States.
TONY MANERO
Dir: Pablo Larrain, Chile, 2008, 98 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
As Gerenal Pinochet’s grip over Chile tightens in the late 1970s, aging petty thug Raul has The Fever and the best white suit in Santiago. He thinks he’s in with a good chance of winning a TV game show prize for the best John Travolta look-alike. In fact he is Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero. And no one is going to argue. Paolo Larrain’s film made most Top-10 lists of 2008, for its raw allegory of how the aspirations of Allende’s revolution were disenfranchised and turned over to mindless TV, boozing and violence. Canberra Premiere.
GANDHI’S CHILDREN
Dir: David MacDougall, Aust, 2009, 185 mins, video (18+)
The new film by internationally renowned, Canberra-based doco maker David MacDougall is the outcome of many months spent with the boys of the Prayas Children's Home in New Delhi. Prayas cares for the forgotten ones of Delhi: destitute boys fleeing domestic violence, the streets or semi-slavery in sweat shops. The daily order is regimented and emotionally unsympathetic, but MacDougall builds an emotionally and visually powerful understanding of its necessity, in a manner every bit as powerful, but far less ‘pat’ than Slumdog Millionaire. Presented in association with The ANU Research School of Humanities and Ronin Films.
