may four experiments six moral tales

Transcription

maY
June
nfsa.gov.au
2011
SAT 14 MAY 4.30PM
AMERICAN MOVIE TREASURES:
SCREWBALL CLASSICS
tHe aWFul trutH
Dir: Leo McCarey, USA, 1937, 97 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 15+)
cinemacalendar
“Marriage is a wonderful thing …” With their
divorce about to become final, Jerry (Cary Grant)
and Lucy (Irene Dunne) do their best to thwart
each other’s attempts to find new love and move
on. Always versatile Leo McCarey (Duck Soup, An
Affair to Remember) took home the Best Director
Oscar for this self-assured yet deliciously ridiculous
romantic comedy of errors that is positively
suffused with irony. Cary Grant is at his most
charmingly self-effacing, and Irene Dunne’s sharp
comedic timing served to make the film a highlight
of ‘30s screwball comedies. Print courtesy of
UCLA Film Archive. Presented with the support
of the Embassy of the United States.
FOur
eXPerimentS
BY alain reSnaiS
SiX mOral
taleS
BY eric rOHmer
My Night with Maud
SAT 14 MAY 7PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
murundaK – SOnGS OF
FreedOm
Dir: Rhys Graham / Natasha Gadd, Aust., 2011,
82 mins, digital, (M)
Arc at the NFSA
National Film
and Sound Archive,
McCoy Circuit, Acton,
Canberra
Enquiries:
02 6248 2000
nfsa.gov.au
Advanced general admission ticket sales are
available from 9am Monday for the coming
week’s sessions, either at the box office or a
credit card purchase via telephone on
6248 2000.
Tickets must be collected at least 15 minutes
before the session or they may be resold.
Tickets will only be refunded up to 20 mins
after the commencement of the screening.
Pre purchased tickets cannot be replaced if
lost or stolen.
Enjoy cinema’s greatest experiences at Arc,
the state-of-the-art venue at the National Film and
Sound Archive.
TICKETS:
(except where special prices noted)
$11 / $9 concession
Max pass – 10 tickets for just $80.
Thursday Matinees – all tickets $5
Special ticket prices may apply to individual
sessions, events and seasons
Doors open for 30 mins before screening.
Admission to venue capacity only.
No admission after the session has
been running for 20 mins.
Disabled access via Liversidge Street.
maY
SUN 1 MAY 2PM
ALAIN RESNAIS
muriel…
(Muriel ou le Temps d’un retour) Dir: Alain Resnais,
France, 1963, 115 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Over 15 fragmented days in September and
October 1962, Boulogne antique dealer Hélène
(Delphine Seyrig) and her stepson Bernard (JeanBaptiste Thierrée) confront old memories and
everyday life choices: she, the reappearance of
an old lover; he, guilty memories of his recent
military service in the Algerian war. Working
from a script by Jean Cayrol, Resnais seems
superficially to be working more naturalistically
after the cinematic extremes of Last Year in
Marienbad. But Muriel…’ s splintered editing
and narrative segmented up and probed the
passing days of calendar time, with a method
in some ways more profound because it lacked
the heavy symbolic weight of Resnais’ earlier
features. Presented with the support of the
Embassy of France and the Institut Français.
SUN 1 MAY 4.30PM
tHe laSt train HOme
(归途列车/ Guitú lièche) Dir: Lixin Fan, Canada,
2009, 85 mins, digital, (M)
THU 5 MAY 2PM
tHe laSt train HOme
All tickets just $5 for Thursday matinee session.
THU 5 MAY 7PM
uncle BOOnmee WHO can
recall HiS PaSt liVeS
(Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat) Dir: Apichatpong
Weerasethakul, Thai./UK/Fr./Ger./Spain/Neth.,
2010, 114 mins, 35mm, (M)
Final screening.
SAT 7 MAY 2PM
FILMS FOR DANCE WEEK
tHe BeGinninGS OF
auStralia dance Film
Total running time 110 mins, (unclassified 18+)
We open the NFSA’s archives to reveal both some
of the earliest moving images of dance culture
in Australia, and the earliest works of ‘Dance
Film’. The selection includes key post war dance
documentaries from the Commonwealth Film
Unit like Spotlight on Australian Ballet (Dir:
‘Doc’ K Sternberg, 1948, 47 mins, 35mm) – an
astonishing document of legendary dancers,
designers and pioneering choreographers such
as Edouard Borovansky, Helene Kirsova and
Laurel Martyn – plus Corroboree (Dir: John
Martin-Jones, 1951, 10 mins, 16mm) showing
preparations for John Antill’s milestone ballet.
Also included is a sample of the pioneering films
and work of dance educator and choreographer
Margaret Barr. For full program details go to
www.nfsa.gov.au/arc. Presented in association
with Ausdance’s Dance Week program.
SAT 7 MAY 4.30PM
FILMS FOR DANCE WEEK
caPturinG tHe tranSient –
dance On Film:
Sue HealeY in
cOnVerSatiOn and
On Screen
Choreographer Sue Healey is one of the pioneers
of the experimental Dance Film in Australia. A
founding member of Melbourne’s Danceworks
company, Healey has worked in New York with
Zvi Gottheiner, studied with Trisha Brown, Dana
Reitz, and Merce Cunningham, and in Australia
has been a past Artistic Director of Vis-à-Vis
Dance, Canberra, and a Visiting Fellow at the
University of New South Wales. Sue Healey will
discuss issues of recording live dance works and
her evolution into filmmaking. Fragments of early
Vis-à-Vis Dance works will be screened along
with a selection of her recent award-winning
dance films. Presented in association with
Ausdance’s Dance Week program.
SAT 7 MAY 7PM
AMERICAN MOVIE TREASURES:
SCREWBALL CLASSICS
nOtHinG Sacred AND
eaSY liVinG
TO 11 JUN
We continue our tribute to the passing of the
French new wave cinema generation; firstly, by
completing our selection of the now 88 years old
Alain Resnais’ (1922-) most challenging but less
known experiments in narrative time and space;
then, by paying tribute to the sublime work of
the late Eric Rohmer.
His international art house hits Hiroshima Mon
Amour (1959) and Last Year in Marienbad
(1960), were inextricably linked to the French
new wave of Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut and Eric
Rohmer. Yet Alain Resnais belonged to a distinct
and self-identified ‘Left bank’ movement of
filmmakers, most distinguished by his selective
collaboration with post-modernist French
literary figures including Marguerite Duras, Alain
Robbe-Grillet and Jorge Spemrún. And as they
moved through the 1960s, Resnais’ and his
collaborators increasingly diverged from the new
wave with a series of uncompromising cinematic
experiments that seemed on the verge of leaping
from commercial art house cinema into its
structuralist experimental margins. Commercial
failure of projects such as Je t’aime, Je t’aime
led to change of direction from the mid-1970s
onwards. Yet structural and formal playfulness
remains the key to Resnais’ films, marked
especially in the last two decades by frequent
adaptations of or homage to modern English
dramatists such as Alain Ayckbourn and
Dennis Potter.
Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) was, by contrast, a core
and seminal figure in the French new wave and
consistent in his filmmaking through his career.
However, his background as moral philosopher,
as well as a film critic, ensured his films are
suffused with a curiosity about the experiences
and passions of life, as much as for cinema.
Rohmer defined most of his films as belonging
to a series of cycles that linked philosophical
themes, such as his later ‘Comedies and
Proverbs’ and ‘Four Seasons’ films. So our
tribute brings together his ‘Six Moral Tales’:
the first of these series, and the one which
brought him international acclaim; especially
in the US, where films like My Night with
Maud had a strong hold over New Hollywood
filmmakers and an influence on the beginnings
of American indie cinema. Rather than sequels
or a franchise, the Six Moral Tales are linked by
their ironic, wistful, sometimes very funny and
sometimes unexpectedly confronting reports
from the frontline of the battle of the sexes,
with a sharp eye for the ways in which men have
a knack for letting women distract men from
their romantic ideals.
As part of the Eric Rohmer tribute, we’ll also
screen what may also be fellow French new
wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s final work:
his deeply moving, yet just three minute long
tribute to Eric Rohmer.
Presented with the support of the Institut
Français and the Embassy of France, and
in collaboration with the Melbourne
Cinémathèque Inc.
Total running time 162 mins, (G)
Our Saturday night screwball double–bill is launched
by the comic force of Carole Lombard –maybe the
only power that could bring together producer David
Selznick, director William Wellman and the most hardbitten of all comedy writers, Ben Hecht for Nothing
Sacred (1938, 74 mins, 35mm). And only that quartet
could make brilliant, and rule-changing, comedy out
of the story of a cynical newspaper reporter (Fredric
March) exploiting the apparent terminal illness of a
beautiful young woman. Then we complete the Ben
Hecht tribute with the classic reworking and sexchanging of his original newspaper business satire, The
Front Page, into His Girl Friday (Dir: Howard Hawks,
USA, 1940, 92 mins, 35mm). Cary Grant and the now
‘Miss’ Hildy Johnson, Rosalind Russell, deal with comic
sexual tension, as well as deadline pressure as they do,
say and crash-tackle nearly anything to get the scoop
on a City Hall political scandal.
SUN 8 MAY 2PM
ALAIN RESNAIS
Je t’aime, Je t’aime
Dir: Alain Resnais, France, 1968, 91 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Claude Ridder’s suicidal obsessions make him the
perfect subject for an experiment in time and
space. Yet as science tries to drive Claude back
into a specific moment, one year before and one
minute long, Claude’s memory keeps trapping
him in the exquisite and tragic chaos of his
experiences, sometimes over and over. Working
from a script by cult and mystical French science
fiction writer Jacques Sternberg, Alain Resnais
drove all his previous editing and narrative
experiment to their logical extreme, with some
scenes lasting little more than one second and
some shots repeated dozens of times. Imported
35mm print.
SUN 8 MAY 4.30PM
tHe laSt train HOme
Free entry to Max Pass holders
THU 12 MAY 2PM
tHe laSt train HOme
All tickets just $5 for Thursday matinee session
THU 12 MAY 7PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
murundaK –
SOnGS OF FreedOm
The Black Arm Band is an Indigenous Australian
super group, bringing together an extraordinary
company of leading singing and performing
talents from Black Australia that has at times
included Archie Roach, Jimmy Little, Bart
Willoughby and the late Ruby Hunter. This new
documentary follows this ensemble – as well as
friends such as Shane Howard and Paul Kelly – as
they toured their award-winning performance/
theatre work in 2006. murunak gives us
access to 30 years of aboriginal history and
political activism in song – a musical tradition
in the making, with its blending of country
and western, traditional aboriginal sounds,
hard Australian pub rock and passionate social
statement. Canberra premiere.
The Last Train Home
Women without Men
tHe laSt train
HOme
WOmen
WitHOut men
TO 19 MAY
19 – 29 MAY
Every Chinese New Year, China’s cities are
plunged into chaos, as all at once, a tidal wave of
millions of migrant factory workers attempts to
return home to the rural villages and families they
left behind to seek work in the booming coastal
cities. It’s an epic spectacle that tells us much
about China, a country discarding traditional
ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global
economic dominance. Chinese-Canadian director
Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home draws us into the
fractured lives of a single migrant family caught
up in this desperate annual migration. Sixteen
years ago, the Zhangs abandoned their young
children to find work in the city, consoled by the
hope that their wages would lift their children
into a better life. Now the Zhangs are travelling
home to confront the reality of their long
absence, as Qin, the child they left behind, has
grown into adolescence crippled by a sense of
abandonment and has dropped out of school.
Teheran in August 1953 is a city agitating with
political idealism and ferment, as the government
of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed
Mossadegh is just weeks away from being over
thrown in the Anglo/US-backed coup that will
entrench the Shah as dictator – and set in train
events still jolting the Middle-east to this day.
This moment in history intersects with the lives
of four Iranian women, of very different classes
and attitudes, but all somehow prisoners of their
society. Prostitute Zarin is fleeing a brothel. Munis
is a virtual prisoner of her fundamentalist brother.
Munis’ friend Faezeh is imprisoned by her devout
faith from caring for Munis, or expressing her own
passion for Munis’ brother. Wealthy Fakhri flees
her privileged life as a general’s wife to create
a sanctuary – and an afterlife, of sorts – for the
other women, and for a Persian cultural tradition
soon to be lost forever.
Lixin Fan’s achievement in winning some of
the major prizes in international documentary
making (including Best Feature doc at
Amsterdam’s IDFA and Best doc at the AsiaPacific Screen Awards) is extraordinary for a first
feature. It’s also leading western audiences into
the rich achievements of Chinese independent
documentary, to be featured later in 2011 at Arc
cinema.
Dir: Lixin Fan, Canada/USA, 2009, 85 mins,
digital (M). A Gil Scrine/ Antidote Films
release.
Exclusive Canberra season, four sessions only:
SUN 1 MAy 4.30PM
THU 5 MAy 2PM
A Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film
Festival, Shirin Neshat’s work is one of the
most successful and acclaimed of a new wave
of feature films being directed by video artists
transitioning into cinematic features. It’s made
with a visual artist’s eye for image and allegory,
reflecting its origins as a video installation. Yet
Neshat also shows a natural feature filmmaking
instinct for bringing together talent including a
powerful source novel by Shahrnush Parsipur,
the work of cinematographer Martin Gschlacht
(Lourdes, Revanche) and a dazzling Persian fusion
score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
“…the film surpasses even Michael Haneke’s
White Ribbon in the fierce beauty and precision
of its cinematography” (Steven Holden, New
York Times)
Dir: Shirin Neshat, Iran 2010, 99 mins,
35mm, (M). A Transmission Films release.
SUN 8 MAy 4.30PM
Exclusive Canberra season, five sessions only:
THU 12 MAy 2PM
THU 19 MAy 7PM
SAT 21 MAy 7PM
SUN 22 MAy 4.30PM
THU 26 MAy 2PM
SUN 29 MAy 4.30PM
SAT 14 MAY 2PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA ANITPODEAN CINEMA
tWO lOSt WOrldS
(On connaît la chanson) Dir: Alain Resnais, France,
1997, 120 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Resnais combined his late-career interests in
modern English drama and in popular musicals
in this tribute to dramatist Dennis Potter’s
signature style of ironic lip-sync pop musical. The
director’s conceit is the most flippant and gently
ironic of his career, with its real estate market
obsessed Parisians breaking out into melodies
from pop French chanson hits (as often ballads
expressing the joys of skyscrapers, elevators,
kitchen appliances as of love) at the drop of a
hat or an old lover. The script is from the acting/
screenwriting pair of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre
Bacri, who also star along with Pierre Arditi and
Jane Birkin.
tSui HarK
2 – 19 JUNE
Those who discovered the work of Tsui Hark’s
(1950-) through our season of the return-toform Detective Dee… will be keen to check
out some of his original 1990s classics. Those
who remember Tsui’s original genre-redefining
plots, editing, camera placement and sense of
fun from many hours in Australia’s Chinatown
cinemas will be excited to see the films again
as they should be. Tsui and wife/co-producer
Nansun Shis’ Film Workshop was central to the
worldwide influence of the modern Hong Kong
cinema in the 1980s and ‘90s. This came not
just from his own films, or in giving a start to the
work of directors such as Ringo Lam, John Woo
and Wong Kai Wei. It was also Film Workshop’s
ability to restlessly try anything to get Hong Kong
audiences back in the cinema, by looking both
westward (to Hollywood filmmaking skills and
genres) and equally homeward, to a reinvention
of traditional classic literature, or pop Chinese
cinema genres.
Ironically, Tsui’s importance is marked by how
unacknowledged and universal his influence
is. The program offers a rare chance to see
Tsui’s still notorious and visceral first feature,
Dangerous Encounters – First Kind, as well
as a selection of some of hits and glories of
the 1980s and ‘90s, including the first of the
wonderful headlong meeting of Jet Li with
modern Chinese history in the Once Upon a
Time in China series.
Presented in collaboration with The
Melbourne Cinémathèque Inc.
claSSic
ScreWBall
TO 14 MAY
We complete our look at the cracking pace,
velocity and Hay’s Office-outsmarting wit of
Hollywood screwball comedy of the 1930s and
‘40s, with films by Leo McCarey and William
Wellman, plus we continue with the surprise
classic ‘screwball’ Hollywood cartoon with each
screening.
Selected titles of American Movie Treasures
are presented with the support of the
Embassy of the United States. Classic
Screwball is presented in collaboration with
the Melbourne Cinémathèque Inc.
Enemies of the People
Dir: Beck Cole, Aust., 2011, 91 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Karen (Shai Pittman) emerges from prison on
parole and into a halfway house that at first
seems like just another institution. Yet the
troubled but lively mob of young black women
who share the place become a family of sorts,
giving Karen time to heal wounds and re-connect
– even to her daughter and resentful mother
(played by Marcia Langton). Australia’s touring
film festival of new indigenous filmmaking
returns to Arc cinema for 2011, with a preview
screening of director Beck Cole’s first feature.
Evocatively photographed by Warwick Thornton,
Here I Am is a revealing, patient and often very
funny look at Black Australia women trying to
make ‘the system’ work, just for once, for them.
Beck Cole will introduce the screening.
Presented by Blackfella Films, with the
support of Screen Australia. FREE screening,
bookings preferred.
MON 16 MAY 10AM
MESSAGE STICKS 2011
FilmS BY BecK cOle
Total running time approx. 90 mins, (General
Admission)
Here I Am director Beck Cole introduces and
discusses a selection of her short films, including
Plains Empty (2004, 26 mins), Flat (2002,
20 mins) and The Lore of Love (2005, 26 mins).
Presented by Blackfella Films, with the
support of Screen Australia. FREE session
for schools, open to the general public.
Bookings essential.
THU 19 MAY 2PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
murundaK – SOnGS OF
FreedOm
All tickets $5
THU 19 MAY 7PM
WOmen WitHOut men
Dir: Shirin Neshat, Iran 2010, 99 mins, 35mm, (M)
SAT 21 MAY 2PM
MESSAGE STICKS 2011
PrOGram tWO:
neW SHOrt FilmS
Australia’s touring film festival of new indigenous
filmmaking continues with a selection of recent
short and documentary films. The program includes
Two Worlds (Dir: Lorraine Copping,
6 mins); Tales from the Daly: Nauiya Nambiya
(Dir: Steve McGregor, 20 mins), a recreation of
the traditional stories of the Wet season from the
Daly River country; Crookhat and the Kulunada
(Dir: David Tranter, 23 mins) which joins three
aboriginal elders as they travel by four-wheel drive
to a fertile waterhole that forms the centre of their
lives and their stories; and Shifting Shelter 4 (Dir:
Ivan Seen, 52 mins): the latest in Beneath Clouds
director Ivan Sen’s on-going series, following the
lives of four aboriginal teens – now adults in their
mid-30s – in rural northwest NSW. Presented by
Blackfella Films, with the support of Screen
Australia. FREE screening, bookings preferred.
SAT 21 MAY 4.30PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA ANTIPODEAN CINEMA
tHe man FrOm dOWn under
Dir: Robert Z Leonard, USA, 1943, 103 mins, 16mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Charles Laughton stars as humble Aussie Great War
digger ‘Jocko’ Wilson, unwillingly guardian of a pair
of orphaned Belgium children who he brings home
to grow up amongst the rough and tumble of an
outback pub. One of a number of films produced
by Hollywood during WW2 as a “hands across the
Pacific” gesture to its Australian allies, it follows
the pattern of many of these films in envisaging
Australia as a country of gruff Celtic blarney and
sentiment, but also a nation of warriors game
for a fight when either the Hun or Jap threaten.
Courtesy George Eastman House.
Once A Upon A Time In China
american
mOVie
treaSureS
SUN 15 MAY 4.30PM
MESSAGES STICKS 2011
Here i am
SAT 21 MAY 7PM
WOmen WitHOut men
Dir: Norman Dawn, USA, 1952, 61 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 15+)
Hollywood silent film era special effects pioneer
and occasional Australian silent and early
sound-era filmmaker Norman Dawn returned
to Australia – after a very odd fashion –for
one of his last Hollywood films. A Lost Worldstyle adventure yarn set on a volcanic island
off the coast of Queensland, its energetically
sub-Edgar Rice Burroughs / Jules Verne yarn
is complete with shipwrecked Americans (led
by Gunsmoke TV star James Arness), tropical
pirates, rampaging mega fauna, SFX and its own
little in jokes about Australia as the end of the
world. Preceded by French director Marguerite
Duras’ haunting short film, Aurélia Steiner
(1979, 16mm, 10 mins): a fictionised diary of a
young girl “… who lives on the River Yarra in
Melbourne, Australia”.
SUN 15 MAY 2PM
ALAIN RESNAIS
Same Old SOnG
The Awful Truth
SUN 22 MAY 2PM
ERIC ROHMER’S SIX MORAL TALES
tHe BaKerY Girl OF mOnceau
AND SuZanne’S career
Rohmer’s first Moral Tales were a pair of short
films, shot in 1963. Long supressed by the director
as juvenile works, their re-discovery in the 1990s
revealed Rohmer trademarking his acclaimed
subjective style, ironic themes and lightness of
touch. (La boulangère de Monceau) The Bakery
Girl of Monceau (France 1963, 23 mins, 35mm)
features Rohmer’s long-time collaborator (and
future director) Barbet Schroeder, as a law student
who has difficulty separating his taste for a pretty
brunette shop girl from his weakness for the
sweet pastries she sells. (La carrière de Suzanne)
Suzanne’s Career (1963, 55 mins, 35mm) looks at
the mixed motives and loyalties between two rivals
for the affections of a vivacious Parisian student.
Plus Jean-Luc Godard’s Tribute to Eric Rohmer
(Fr., 2010, 3 mins, digital) Presented with the
support of the Embassy of France and the
Institut Français.
tHe 2011
Human
riGHtS artS
and Film
FeStiVal
26 – 29 MAY
The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival
(HRAFF) is Australia’s premier cultural event
devoted exclusively to the exploration of
human rights issues through art and film. A
vibrant and multifaceted array of film, art,
music, performances, speakers and community
initiatives, its patrons include the Hon. Michael
Kirby AC CMG, Margaret Operand, Warwick
Thornton and Isabel Lucas.
HRAFF’s touring film festival program returns
to the Arc cinema, with more award-winning
documentaries set to challenge, stir and inspire;
including Heidi Ewing and Rachel Gradys’
devastating look at both sides of the street in the
US abortion debate, 12th and Delaware, plus the
Sundance Film Festival-prize-winning Enemies of
the People.
Special ticket prices apply to HRAFF
screening sessions.
SUN 22 MAY 4.30PM
WOmen WitHOut men
WED 25 MAY 7PM
len lYe: maVericK
mOderniSt
Total running time 120 mins (classification tba)
New Zealand-born Len Lye (1901–1980) was one
of the most colourful and influential modernist
artists of his time - not just in cinema, but in the
visual arts generally. Committed to creating art
through composing movement, Lye’s work still
has an appealing freshness, with an internationally
renowned for his experimental film legacy, as
well as a growing interest in his kinetic sculpture
work. A self-styled maverick, Lye pioneered the
art of direct film-making – stencilling, painting and
inscribing images directly onto film stock, instead
of using a camera – and produced a remarkable
range of short films, each exploring new cinematic
techniques. The New Zealand Film Archive’s Sarah
Davy presents a survey programme of Lye’s 50
year career, from the organic Tusalava (UK, 1929,
9 mins, 35mm) with live piano accompaniment
through to his 1979 masterpiece Free Radicals
(UK/USA, 5 mins, 35mm). Presented by the
New Zealand Film Archive / Nga Kaitiaki O
NgsTaonga Whitiahua, with acknowledgment
to the Len Lye Foundation.
THU 26 MAY 2PM
WOmen WitHOut men
THU 26 MAY 7PM
2011 HUMAN RIGHT ARTS
AND FILM FESTIVAL
HandS uP
(Les mains en l’air) Dir: Romain Goupil, France,
2010, 90 mins, digital, (unclassified 18+)
Sometime in the future, aging Milana (French,
but the daughter of illegal Chechen immigrant
parents) recalls her school years in 2007 Paris,
and especially how childhood friends Blaise,
Alice, Claudio, Ali and Youssef – like her,
also the children of illegal immigrants – were
deported, one by one. Actor and occasional
director Romain Gospel’s timely film was made
as the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy
began its popularist crackdown on French
illegal immigrants. For all the seriousness of its
issues, it’s a film with a light touch and one that
celebrates the optimism of childhood. Presented
by Plan International Australia. Special
ticket prices apply to all HRAFF sessions.
FRI 27 MAY 7PM
HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS
AND FILM FESTIVAL
12tH and delaWare
Dirs: Rachel Grady / Heidi Ewing, USA, 2009,
80 mins, digital, (unclassified 18+)
12th and Delaware, Fort Pierce, Florida, is the
address of both a typical American abortion
clinic and, right across the road, one of the many,
clinic-like “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that US
anti-abortion groups have set-up to persuade
pregnant women to stay on their side of the
street. Made in the wake of the chilling series
of assaults and murders of US abortion clinic
doctors, directors Grady and Ewing (Jesus Camp)
find out what women confront when they walk
through both sets of doors: what they are told,
the options they are given, and the climate of
fear enveloping women’s personal choices.
Special ticket prices apply to all HRAFF
sessions.
SAT 28 MAY 2PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA ANITPODEAN CINEMA
TO A DISTANT SHORE
(Zu Neuen Ufern) Dir: Detlef Sierck (Douglas Sirk),
Germany, 1937, 105 mins, 16mm, (unclassified 18+)
Before his 1937 escape to the USA (with his Jewish
wife), director Douglas Sirk was one of the Nazi’s
state film studio’s leading film directors. Closely
associated with UFA glamour-queen Zarah Leander,
their most unlikely project was this Australian-set
convict melodrama, with Leander as a scandalous
London music hall star who is transported to
colonial New South Wales, after taking the rap for
her thoroughly no-good, con artist lover. UFA’s
vision of colonial ‘Parramatta’ is more like colonial
German Africa, complete with very African looking
aborigines; but the film’s critique of British class
is both typical of a then common genre of NaziGerman cinema – and also atypical for its proto‘Sirkian’ touches of class analysis. From the NFSA
collection.
SAT 28 MAY 4.30PM
MY NIGHT WITH MAUD
(Ma nuit chez Maud) Dir: Eric Rohmer, France,
111 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
The film that established Rohmer’s international
reputation stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as an uptight
mechanical engineer living by his Catholic faith and
the certainties of mathematics and Pascal. A chaste
co-religionist Françoise seems to fit his belief system
best; but fate determines that he must first spend
a night defending himself in the boudoir of the
caustic, flirtatious, sensual and nearly naked divorcee
Maud. My Night with Maud’s mix of sex and
philosophical chat seemed to define the 1960s ideal
of the “arthouse hit” (its influence on Woody Allen
is manifest) and, oddly, also redefined male sexuality
in the movies forever afterwards. Presented with
the support of the Embassy of France and the
Institut Français.
SAT 28 MAY 7PM
2011 HUMAN RIGHTS ART
AND FILM FESTIVAL
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE
Dir: Rob Lemkin / Thet Sambath, UK/Cambodia,
2009, 93 mins, digital, (unclassified 18+)
Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath has spent
more than a decade and most of his spare time,
energy and money gaining the trust of the surviving
members of the Khmer Rouge. Working with UK
documentary filmmaker Rob Lemkin, Sambath
revisits and re-interviews who sowed the Killing
Fields, from the then mostly teenage cadres who
did the killing, all the way up to Pol Pot’s Brother
Number Two, the notorious and brilliantly defensive
Nuon Chea. One of the most talked about films at
the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and winner of its
Special Jury Prize for documentary, Enemies of the
People is a fresh look at the mindset of genocide
and a tribute to the dogged power of old-fashioned
investigative journalism. Special ticket prices apply
to all HRAFF sessions.
SUN 29 MAY 2PM
2011 HUMAN RIGHTS ART
AND FILM FESTIVAL
WAR DON DON
Dir: Rebecca Richman Cohen, USA, 2010, 83min,
digital, (unclassified 18+)
In the heart of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone,
Issa Sesay awaits his trial for war crimes. Prosecutors
say Sesay is guilty of heinous crimes against
humanity. His defenders say he is a reluctant fighter
who protected civilians and played a crucial role in
bringing peace to Sierra Leone. With unprecedented
access to prosecutors, defence attorneys, victims
and Sesay himself, War Don Don puts international
justice on trial for the world to see. “One of the
most viscerally compelling documentaries of the
year, it will leave you haunted.” (Mary Anderson
Casavant, Filmmaker Magazine). Presented by
Oxfam Australia. Special ticket prices apply to
all HRAFF sessions.
SUN 29 MAY 4.30PM
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN
JUNE
THU 2 JUN 2PM
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN
All tickets $5
THU 2 JUN 7PM
TSUI HARK
DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS FIRST KIND
(Di yi lei xing wei xia / a.k.a. Don’t Play with Fire)
Dir: Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, 1980, 95 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
A joy-riding gang of students accidentally kill a
pedestrian. Terrified, thrilled, the incident triggers an
escalation of their risk-taking and sadistic thrill seeking.
Hark’s third film was the first to bring critical attention
and also controversy; attracting local censorship
(unusually for Hong Kong cinema in that era) for its
graphic violence. A lot is borrowed from Wes Craven
and George Romero, early horror movies franchises
like Nightmare on Elm Street, and 1950s Hollywood
juvenile delinquent films. But with wild mood changes
between exploitation movie, cynical social satire and
kinetic action movie, there’s also a taste of Hark’s
filmmaking to come in the 1990s. Courtesy of
Mr. Thomas Fung, Fairchild Films International
Ltd. and The Hong Kong Film Archive.
SAT 4 JUN 2PM
THE GIRL IN
THE YELLOW PYJAMAS
(La ragazza dal pigiama giallo) Dir: Flavio
Mogherini, Italy, 1977, 98 mins, digital, (M)
Italian genre cinema journeyman Mogherini
stumbled on one of the oddest cases in the annals
of Australian crime – the late 1930s Pyjama Girl
mystery – to bolt together one of the oddest of
entries in the 1970s giallo cycle of Italian horror
movies. With interiors shot at Rome’s Cinecitta, but
exteriors around suburban Sydney, the cast mixes
superannuated Hollywood leads Mel Ferrer and
Ray Millard (plus Millard overcoated body double),
Italian character actors like Michele Placido and Rod
Mullinar providing Australian colour. Still, the illogical
shifts in geography and accent shouldn’t obscure the
genuinely smart twists in Mogherini’s plotting of the
victim’s death and the investigation that follows.
SAT 4 JUN 4.30PM
ERIC ROHMER’S SIX MORAL TALES:
THE COLLECTOR
(La collectionneuse) Dir : Eric Rohmer, France, 1967,
87 min, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Art dealer Adrien and his painter crony Daniel take
an exquisité Riviera villa for a summer of art gossip,
drinking and picking up women. But in a classic
Rohmerian twist well-laid holiday plans and ideals go
astray when their neighbour Haydée comes calling
– a ‘liberated’ woman every bit as opinionated and
as sexually aggressive as they are. Is she a free spirit
or just their uncomfortable mirror image? Rohmer’s
early sketch for the philosophical tropes of My Night
with Maud (and his first of many collaborations
with DoP Néstor Almendros) is perhaps the clearest
outline of the clash of the sexes scheme behind all
the Moral Tales. Presented with the support of
the Embassy of France and the Institut Français.
SAT 4 JUN 7PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
WHO IS HARRY NILSSON
(AND WHY IS EVERYBODY
TALKIN’ ABOUT HIM?)
SAT 11 JUN 7PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
EGG
(Yumurta) Dir: Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey / Greece,
Dir: John Scheinfeld, USA, 2010, 116 mins, digital,
(unclassified 18+)
Bursting onto the 1960s pop scene from seemingly
out of nowhere, Harry Nilsson’s diverse song
writing career made him difficult to define.
From odd ditties for television superstars The
Monkees, to the now legendary and perfect
soundtrack numbers Coconut, One, and his
cover of Everybody’s Talkin’ for the film Midnight
Cowboy, Nilsson’s work penetrated popular culture
even beyond his death in 1994. Scheinfeld’s
comprehensive documentary includes interviews
with Jimmy Webb, Robin Williams, Yoko Ono,
Randy Newman and Jon Voight (among a plethora
of others), plus incredible archival footage connect
to show how Nilsson’s life was an almost atypical
example of 60’s and 70’s pop culture’s rise and fall.
But don’t feel bad for Harry, he had a ball…
SUN 5 JUN 2PM
CLAIRE’S KNEE
SUN 12 JUN 2PM
TSUI HARK
BLADE
(刀/ Dao) Dir: Tsui Hark, HK, 1995, 101 mins,
35mm, (MA15+)
The Marriage of Maria Braun
FASSBINDER’S
WOMEN
THE MUSES OF NEW GERMAN
CINEMA’S MOST INCENDEScenT
FILMMAKER
(Le genou de Claire) Dir: Eric Rohmer, France, 1970,
105 mins, 35mm, (PG)
FROM 18 JUNE
Jérôme is a middle-aging, womenising academic
holidaying on Lake Annecy. He develops a
friendship with opinionated teenage neighbour
Laura. But then there’s her sister Claire, and a very
particular part of her anatomy Jérôme can’t forget...
Are these crazy, dangerous attractions a fetish? A
mid-life crisis? Or an intellectual meeting of razorsharp minds across generations? Claire’s Knee
extends the Moral Tales’ gender civil wars into
an intergenerational philosophical battle of wits.
Presented with the support of the Embassy of
France and the Institut Français.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was post-war German
cinema’s most meteoric filmmaking force, with
American critic Vincent Canby able to write in
1979 that “… each Fassbinder film is another
explosion in what appears to be a single,
continuing eruption of talent that shows no
signs of subsiding”. By 1980 and the age of
just 37, Fassbinder was dead. Yet he had still
managed to direct nearly 30 films in 13 years, as
well as countless plays. All of the New German
Cinema generation of the 1960s and ‘70s (Wim
Wenders, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge)
were responding to the American military –
and cultural –occupation of their post-war
SUN 5 JUN 4.30PM
TSUI HARK
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA
childhood growing up in West Germany. But
Fassbinder flirted with rather than brooded on
this influence, channelling it into films that made
the marginal and personal of West German life
into the political. His strongest influence were
the films of late 1940s and ‘50s Hollywood
auteurs like Nicholas Ray and – especially – the
Nazi refugee Douglas Sirk. Like Ray and Sirk,
he exploited the conventions of commercial
cinema melodrama to essay the plight of men
and women estranged and imprisoned in a
society that saw itself as successful, prosperous,
politically and morally ‘free’. Fassbinder’s men
(sometimes played by the director himself) were
brooding, bitter, sexual opportunists. But this
season concentrates on the dominant characters
in Fassbinder’s films: the women who most
seemed to embody the director’s theatre of
social estrangement and who, toughened by
fate, control the ways and means of power in
the private and sexual sphere.
Presented with the assistance of The
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and
with the collaboration of The Melbourne
Cinémathèque Inc.
Tsui Hark gave Jet Li one of his international
breakout roles as they joined to reinvent modern
Chinese history’s folk hero, Wong Fei-Hung. As Li’s
Wong outwitting Triad gangs, English colonisers
and Chinese merchant lackeys with dazzling moves
and Hark’s lightening fast editing, the genre-redefining influence of Sergio Leone is manifest
not just in the film’s English title, but also in its
co-option of Leone’s love of the legendary, the
mythic and the baroque of history. The film’s brand
of historic revisionism and its pop comedy of the
colonialized turning the table on the European
colonisers was to do much to inspire the late 1990s
and early 21st century cycle of epic Chinese/HK
co-productions. Free entry to Max Pass holders.
Total running time 150 mins, (PG)
To mark our season of Antipodean Cinema
filmmaking oddities, the editors of a new
“Australian International Cinema” issue of the
journal Studies in Australasian Cinema, RMIT’s
Dr. Adrian Danks and Monash University’s Con
Verevis, join the ANU’s Dr. Catherine Summerhayes
for a gaze through both ends of the lens through
which world cinema has seen Australia. The panel
session will be preceded by one of the seminal
titles in Australian cinema’s history and dialogue
between us and the rest: English director Michael
Powell’s adaptation of John O’Grady’s They’re
a Weird Mob (1966, 112 mins, 35mm), with
import Italian star Walter Chiari. Presented FREE
in association with The Australian Institute
of International Affairs, Forum on Public
and Citizens Diplomacy. Bookings essential.
They’re a Weird Mob is part of the NFSA’s
Kodak/Atlab Collection.
THU 9 JUN 2PM
TSUI HARK
ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA
(黃飛鴻/Huáng Feihóng) Dir: Tsui Hark, Hong Kong,
1991, 134 mins, 35mm (M)
All tickets $5
THU 9 JUN 7PM
TSUI HARK
ZU - WARRIORS FROM THE
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
(新蜀山劍俠/ Xin shu shan jian ke) Dir: Tsui Hark,
HK, 1983, 95 mins, 35mm, (MA15+)
HK action superstars Biao Yuen, Brigitte Lin and
Sammo Hung star in the most successful of Tsui
Hark’s wuxia martial-arts fantasy epics. The tale
of a humble soldier becoming the lynchpin in a
cosmic struggle between two priests is cited as the
precursor for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
its successors. But Hark was more looking back to
the glories of Shaw Brothers martial arts cinema
and forward to a ramping up of the scale of Hong
Kong cinema production values. This is filmmaking
with the energy, scale and obvious ambition of
making a Hong Kong Star Wars, complete with the
importation of Hollywood special effects tools and
experts from George Lucas’s ILM.
SAT 11 JUN 2PM
STINGAREE
Dir: William Wellman, USA, 1934, 77 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Hollywood hardboiled action director William
Wellman (Wings, The Public Enemy) briefly found
himself making an Australian bushranger romance
at RKO in the mid-1930s, based on a popular novel
by Raffles author E W Horning. The plot is more
delightful fluff than rugged adventure. Stingaree
(played by early sound-era heartthrob Richard
Dix) is a gentleman of the road, in love with the
charms and singing voice of the humble servant girl
Hilda, and determined to turn the tables on all of
Melbourne to win her the right to perform at the
best opera houses of Europe. Lost for many years
after the breakup of RKO studios, the film was
recently restored by Turner Classic Movies. From
the collection of the NFSA.
SAT 11 JUN 4.30PM
LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
Dir: Eric Rohmer, France, 1972, 93 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Happily married and waiting for the birth of his
second child, business executive Frédéric still can’t
escape his inexhaustible sex fantasies. Especially
with the erotic alternatives offered, in abundance,
every day that he travels to work through the
crowded Paris streets (often in-jokingly portrayed
by some of the female leads from earlier Moral
Tales episodes). Then a more than idyll threat to
Frédéric’s marriage arrives with the reappearance
of old flame Chloe. Less known, but often a
critic’s favourite amongst the Moral Tales and the
director’s films generally, Rohmer concluded the
series in a way that suggested a dimension of real
tragedy to men’s compulsions to philandering.
Presented with the support of the Embassy of
France and the Institut Français.
SUN 12 JUN 4.30PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
EGG
THU 16 JUN 2PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
EGG
All tickets $5
THU 16 JUN 7PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
MILK
(Süt) Dir: Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey / Greece, 2008,
SAT 18 JUN 2PM
DRIFTING AVENGER
(黃飛鴻/Huáng Feihóng) Dir: Tsui Hark, Hong Kong,
1991, 134 mins, 35mm, (M)
MON 6 JUNE 6.15PM
ANTIPODEAN AND
AUSTRALIAN
INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
Unlike some of his more playful historical epics,
Tsui Hark’s reworking of Shaw Brothers’ classic
Wang-Yu starring The One-Armed Swordsman
series hits the genre head-on, with tough, brutal
and desperate fight action as its hero fights for
the modest goal of protecting a village swordmaking foundry and the family who own it. Called
“… an exhilarating disorientation of our sense of
Wuxi cinema.” by Hong Kong film critic Stephen
Teo, The Blade is one of the key mid-1990s films
(alongside Woo’s The Killers and Ringo Lam’s City
on Fire) to channel the anxieties of pre-handover
HK into its popular cinema.
(荒野の渡世人/Koya no toseinin) Dir: Sato Jun’ya,
Japan, 1968, 107 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Plains Empty
Honey
THE YUSEF
TRIOLOGY:
MILK, EGG AND
HONEY
FROM 13 JUNE
Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu’s Yusef
Trilogy has brought the greatest international
acclaim to Turkish cinema since Ceylan’s Distant.
Influenced by the transcendental cinema of
Bresson, Tarkovski and Satyajit Ray, it exploits
the “history of a soul” via reverse chronology,
beginning with poet Yusef’s mature creative life,
ending in the childhood that made the man.
Kaplanoglu’s works in a style he calls “spiritual
realism”; carefully and consciously designing his
films not as works of costume nostalgia, but as
though all the memories are vivid experiences
alive and in the present tense.
In Yumurta/Egg (2007) successful poet Yusuf
returns to his childhood hometown on his
mother Zahra’s death; to discover an unknown,
distant relative Ayla has been living with his
mother in the crumbling family house and to
journey with Ayla to a nearby religious shrine to
fulfil Zahra’s dying wish.
In Süt/Milk (2008) high school graduate Yusuf is
just starting to find his voice as a published poet,
whilst working in his widowed mother Zahra
village milk business. But Yusuf’s confidence
begins to sway as he discovers Zehra is having an
affair with the local stationmaster and the army
rejects him as unfit for military service.
Bal/Honey (2010) enters into Yusef’s childhood
as a six year old, on the day his father Yakup
departs on one of his regular expeditions to
gather wild Caucasian black hive honey. Shy and
stricken by speech and reading difficulties, Yusef
retreats into silence in the days that follow and as
the family begins to fear for Yakup’s safety.
“For me, film-making is an entirely metaphysical
and philosophical endeavour… What I’m looking
at here is a longish cinematographic flashback…
I hope in this way to narrate the burden and
pain of passing time so that I may be able to
invite everyone to remember and think about his
own time. We all have mothers and it is highly
possible that much is hidden in the time we
spent with our mothers, and the time we are
no longer able to spend with them. I am of the
view that time is the raw material of cinema….”
(Semih Kaplanoglu)
Egg and Milk screen courtesy Memento
Film Distribution. Honey is a Madman
Entertainment release.
Australian
CINEMA
MESSAGE
STICKS 2011
15 – 21 MAY
Australia’s festival of new Indigenous filmmaking
returns for 2011, with a special opportunity to
preview one of the most awaited new Australian
features of the year: Beck Cole’s Here I Am.
Message Sticks 2011 also features the latest
documentary from Iven Sen, plus special schools
screenings. For further details of the program
please see our website www.nfsa.gov.au/arc.
Presented in association with Blackfella
Films and Screen Australia.
Two Lost Worlds
(In einem jahr mit 13 monden) Dir: Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, Germany 1978, 124 mins, 35mm,
(MA15+)
Frankfurt orphan Erwin Weishaupt was raised
by nuns, becomes a butcher, marries, fathers a
daughter and then falls impulsively in love with
his straight business partner, Anton. When Anton
casually suggests he might be interested if Erwin
was a girl, Erwin’s next impulse is to fly Casablanca
for a sex change. Rejected by the disgusted Anton,
Erwin becomes a cliché of hysterical feminine desire
as he learns new ways in which society can reject
him all over again. Made soon after the suicide
of Fassbinder’s own transsexual lover, the film
is a devastating exercise in role reversal and the
reassigning of gender roles in cinematic drama.
“… grotesque, arbitrary… cold as ice, its only
redeeming feature is genius…” (Vincent Canby).
Courtesy the R W Fassbinder Foundation.
SAT 18 JUN 7PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
MILK
(Süt) Dir: Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey /Greece, 2008,
TO 18 JUNE
(上海之夜/Shang Hai zhi yen) Dir: Tsui Hark,
Hong Kong, 1984, 103 mins, 35mm, (M)
AUSTRALIAN MADE IN THE
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE
Continuing from April, we look at the Australia
that was imagined on the studio backlots
of Hollywood and Europe; the ‘Antipodean’
cinema that took the strange and familiar parts
of European and American culture and spliced
them into the Australian legend. It’s a fascinating
visual record of the imaginative colonisation of
Australian culture and, in a way, of Australia as
an imagined colony. It’s also an Australia seen
through a glass, darkly; ‘about’ what others
thought of us, and what Australian history,
national character and values represented to
them when interpreting their own national
discourse. Ironically it’s also a cycle of films
produced when there was little local Australiann
feature filmmaking – something which makes
its images of 20th century Australia all the more
jarring, frustrating and uncanny.
Some of the interest also comes from watching
Australia becoming a place beyond some famous
filmmaker’s comfort zones. It’s also uncanny to
watch master Hollywood directors like William
Wellman or Douglas Sirk telling stories of class,
convicts and run rebellions in colonial Sydney. Yet
the genre throws up even greater oddities than
that, such as Hollywood-based, but frequent
Australian visitor Norman Dawn (For the Term
of his Natural Life) finding Queensland to be the
perfect place to set a special effects monster
movie. Or Japanese film studios finding Australia
itself to be a good place to tell stories of the
American west.
SUN 19 JUN 2PM
TSUI HARK
SHANGHAI BLUES
On the promise of a brief encounter during
a Japanese bombing raid in the late 1930s,
poor Shanghai jazz violinist and vaudevillian
Do-Re-Me (Kenny Bee) pursues showgirl Sylvia
Chang through the obstacles of gangsters,
the Japanese, bad timing, crossed wires and
distractions of cute neighbour Sally Yeh – all the
way to the arrival of the Communists in 1949.
Oh, yes: it was so dark under that bridge, that
the two fated lovers haven’t actually ever seen
each other’s faces… Tsui’s gaudy and giddy
romantic comedy brought 1930’s Hollywood
screwball comedy to Shanghai’s art deco and
jazz age Bund district.
NOW OPEN
TEATRO FELLINI
The NFSA’s new café provides a delicious
range of light meals and snacks, hot
and cold beverages. Teatro Fellini is also
open before all Arc cinema screenings, so
why not treat yourself to a Reel Deal to
complete your visit to the National Film
and Sound Archive.
Open weekdays 9am to 5pm.
Weekends, public holidays
10am to 5pm.
Also open before Arc Cinema
screenings.
Dir: Richard Wherrett, Aust., 1995, 92 mins,
35mm, (PG)
Acclaimed Sydney theatre director Richard
Wherrett’s only foray into feature filmmaking
was sly musical comedy about a boozed and
small-time jazz trumpeter who wakes up one
morning with a gift from a goddess: the voice of
jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday. A showcase for (who
else?) Max Cullen – and based on his own knack
for mimicking Holiday’s voice – Billy’s Holiday
is an eccentric and under-appreciated reminder
of Richard Wherrett’s directing charm and flair.
Preceded by Wherrett’s short film adaptation of
Frank Moorhouse’s The Girl Who Met Simone
de Beauvoir in Paris (1980, 16mm, 24 mins).
Presented in collaboration with the National
Portrait Gallery, Between Light and Shadow:
Portraits by Stuart Campbell. For more
details see nfsa.gov.au/arc
SAT 25 JUN 4.30PM
ANTARCTIC SOUNDS
SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC
Dir: Charles Freud, UK, 1948, 111 mins, 35mm, (G)
Ealing studio’s colour retelling of Captain
Scott’s tragic “dash to the Pole” emerged in a
post-World War Two Britain taking stock of its
pre-World War One ideals and national status.
Lovingly respectful of the Edwardian detail, décor
and beliefs of its characters, John Mills’ Scott is a
surprisingly complex characterization of a decent
man overwhelmed by trying to do the right thing
by too many people. What stuns us most of all
now is Geoffrey Unsworth and Jack Cardiff’s
Technicolour images and Ralph Vaughan Williams’
equally ethereal score, later to form the basis of
the composer’s Seventh Symphony. Courtesy the
BFI. Presented as part of the ANU School of
Music Antarctica Music Festival. Special ticket
prices apply to this session.
SAT 25 JUN 7PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
HONEY
(Bal) Dir: Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey / 2009,
102 mins, 35mm, (G)
SUN 26 JUNE 1PM
ANTARCTIC SOUNDS
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF
THE WORLD: DOUGLAS QUIN
IN CONVERSATION
Total running time 150 mins, (G)
Sound designer, naturalist, theorist and composer
Dr. Douglas Quin introduces a screening of
director Werner Herzog’s award-winning
documentary about life and the survival of life
in Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the
World (2007, USA/Germany, 99 mins, digital)
and talks about his work on the sound design of
the film – and the soundscape of the continent.
Presented as part of the ANU School of
Music Antarctica Music Festival. Special
ticket prices apply to this session.
SUN 26 JUN 5PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
HONEY
102 mins, 35mm, (G)
THU 30 JUN 2PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
HONEY
102 mins, 35mm, (G)
All tickets $5
THU 30 JUN 7PM
RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA
BRAUN
(Die Ehe der Maria Braun) Dir: Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, Germany 1978, 120 mins, 35mm, (M)
As American bombs and the delusions of Nazism
crash around them, typically naïve young German
couple Hermann (Klaus Löwitsch) and Maria
(Hanna Schygulla) marry on the night before
Hermann returns to the front. He quickly vanishes
in the chaos of the war’s last days and in the
dangerous and starving first year of peace Maria
takes up with an American G.I – the first of her
many patrons. But when Hermann returns home
and a messy confrontation leads to the GI’s death
and Hermann going to jail, it launches Maria on
a trajectory of influence, power and eventually
tragedy in post-war West Germany. Courtesy
the R W Fassbinder Foundation.
cinemacalendar
SUN 19 JUN 4.30PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
MILK
MON 20 JUN 1PM
NINGLA A-NA
(Dir: Alessandro Cavadini, Aust., 1972, 75 mins,
16mm, (unclassified 15+)
Alessandro Cavadini’s film is a historic record
of the events surrounding the establishment of
the Aboriginal tent embassy on the lawns on
Parliament House. Documenting the struggles of
the Aboriginal people for justice in their own land,
it includes affecting footage of the demonstrations
at the Embassy, plus interviews with key identities
involved in driving the founding of the Embassy.
From the NFSA Collecton. Presented in
association with the Symposium on the
Aboriginal Embassy, hosted by the Australian
Centre for Indigenous History, Australian
National University. Free event, bookings
recommended.
THU 23 JUN 2PM
THE YUSEF TRILOGY
MILK
Who is Harry Nilsson
Our monthly series of new music films and
documentaries features Canberra premieres of
the new Australian documentary murunak –
Songs of Freedom – celebrating the songs and
talents of contemporary indigenous Australian
music – plus John Seinfeld’s new film on the
seminal and sometimes elusive influence of
singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson: Who Is Harry
Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’
About Him?)
SAT 18 JUN 4.30PM
RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER
IN A YEAR WITH 13 MOONS
ANTIPODEAN
cinema
For more details see www.nfsa.gov.au.
Antipodean Cinema marks the launch of
a special issue, “Australian International
Cinema” (edited by Adrian Danks and Con
Verevis) of the Journal of Australasian
Cinema (Intellect Books, Bristol, publishers).
SOUNDS
ON SIGHT
Violence follows a former samurai fleeing the chaos
of 19th century civil war Japan for a new life in
California. Seeking his revenge, he lays down his
sword and learns the way of the six-shooter. One of
a number of Japanese studio films shot in Australia
in the mid 1960s, Drifting Avenger reverses
the usual m.o. of Antipodean cinema by using
Australia, for once, as a geographic substitute for
the wild west. The film’s pedigree is fascinating in
retrospect: director Sato was and still is a respected
action movie craftsman, whilst Takakura Ken was a
veteran of Toei yakuza thrillers and a regular guest
star when Hollywood came to Tokyo in movies
like The Yakuza and Black Rain. From the NFSA
collection.
SAT 25 JUN 2PM
AUSTRALIAN CINEMA –
PORTRAITS
BILLY’S HOLIDAY
THU 23 JUN 7PM
SOUNDS ON SIGHT
WHO IS HARRY NILSSON
(AND WHY IS EVERYBODY
TALKIN’ ABOUT HIM?)
Dir: John Scheinfeld, USA, 2010, 116 mins, digital,
(unclassified 18+)
The National Film and
Sound Archive is a member
of the International
Federation of Film Archives
The Arc cinema program is curated by NFSA Cinema
Programming (Quentin Turnour, Cynthia Piromalli). NFSA Chief
Projectionist: Reece Black
Message Sticks 2011 program curated by Rachel Perkins and
Darren Dale for Blackfella Films. 2011 Human Rights Arts and
Film Festival program selected by the HRAFF programming
committee.
While every effort is made to provide accurate information, the
NFSA reserves the right to alter, without notice, advertised Arc
screening programs or starting times.
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