ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP! Ezra Alexandra Stuff and Dough

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CALENDAR PROGRAMMED BY
KAREN COOPER AND MIKE MAGGIORE
F E B R U A R Y 1 3
2 W E E K S
–
2 6
Ezra
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY NEWTON I. ADUAKA
FRANCE / NIGERIA / AUSTRIA 2006 110 MINS.
IN ENGLISH CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL
WOMAN ON THE BEACH
J A N U A R Y 9 –
2 W E E K S
2 2
Woman on the Beach
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY HONG SANG-SOO
SOUTH KOREA 2006 127 MINUTES
IN KOREAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES NEW YORKER FILMS
“HONG SANG-SOO BELONGS TO A FAST-GROWING
CATEGORY OF INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKERS: MASTERS
AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR POWERS who remain almost
entirely unknown in the United States… Mr. Hong, a
wry, unsparing anatomist of the romantic discontent
of South Korean twenty- and thirty-somethings (with
special emphasis on the failings of South Korean
men), has made his most coherent and emotionally
accessible film yet. On the surface the story of a
short, not-too-happy love affair, filmed in a clear,
unassuming style, it turns out on closer examination
to be full of subtle narrative symmetries and visual
patterns. It’s a wicked comedy of manners…”
— A.O. Scott, The New York Times
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
OF CHILDREN ARE KIDNAPPED BY MARAUDING ARMIES
AND TRANSFORMED INTO CHILD-SOLDIERS who help
escalate the chaos and madness that has engulfed
much of the African continent. Many were already
orphaned by years of civil war; they find a new kind
of family in the brutal ragtag military that captures
them body and soul. Ismael Beah’s A Long Way
Gone is a best-selling memoir of his experiences as
a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and now EZRA by
Nigerian filmmaker Newton Aduaka becomes the
first dramatic feature to do justice to this
frightening phenomenon. Ezra’s story is told in a
series of flashbacks: Brainwashed by the military,
he’s given powerful amphetamine shots that keep
him awake for days, destroy his conscience and
wipe out any memory of the bloody events in which
he participates. In 2007, EZRA won the top prize at
FESPACO, Africa’s leading film festival.
1, 3:15, 5:35, 7:45, 10
1:15, 3:45, 6:45, 9:15
ALEXANDRA
M A R C H
2
2 6 – A P R I L
W E E K S
8
Alexandra
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY ALEXANDER SOKUROV
RUSSIA 2007 92 MINS
IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES CINEMA GUILD
THE GREAT ALEXANDER SOKUROV (RUSSIAN ARK,
MOTHER AND SON) has made a powerful anti-war film in
which not a shot is fired. Russian opera legend Galina
Vishnevskaya stars as an elderly woman visiting her
grandson, an officer stationed among the bored,
weary troops at a desolate military outpost. More
myth than contemporar y politics — the movie
juxtaposes her womanly warmth with the hard steel of
their weaponry; the value she places on their lives,
with the pessimism of their mind set; her memories of
family life and hopes for their future with the cynicism
inherent in their mission. “A life of struggle and dignity
emanates from ever y pore. Sure, she’s Mother
Russia, but she’s every mother viewing the wasted
lives of young men and wondering why. Hers is no
operatic performance, à la Maria Callas: this is the
soul of Eleonora Duse.” — Jay Weissberg, Variety
1:15, 3:15, 6, 8, 10
EZRA
FEBRUARY 27 – MARCH 11
2 W E E K S
Chop Shop
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY RAMIN BAHRANI
USA 2007 85 MINS. KOCH LORBER FILMS
DOC
J A N U A R Y 2 3
1 W E E K
–
2 9
Doc
DIRECTED BY IMMY HUMES
USA 2007 98 MINS.
HAROLD L. HUMES (AKA DOC HUMES) WAS BRILLIANT
AND PRECOCIOUS (HE WENT TO MIT AT 16), A LITERARY
PHENOMENON (the author of two acclaimed novels, The
Underground City, Men Die, who never wrote again),
who was instrumental in founding The Paris Review.
He was also a deeply paranoid, peripatetic “talking
machine” (so dubbed by George Plimpton), who
charmed, confounded and infuriated his distinguished
friends and far-flung family. Plimpton, Norman Mailer,
Paul Auster, Peter Matthiessen, William Styron and
Timothy Leary recall an extraordinary man, a Zelig-like
figure who led a protest in Washington Square Park
(“300 Beatniks Riot in Village” — NY Daily Mirror),
championed the use of medical marijuana, and
managed Mailer’s 1961 run for mayor of New York.
His daughter Immy Humes, in Doc’s own words, “puts
a frame around the wreckage” in her affectionate, yet
profoundly disquieting portrait.
STALAGS
“AN INDEPENDENT FILM THAT IS MIRACULOUS… an
American film with the raw power of CITY OF GOD or
PIXOTE, a film that does something unexpected, and
inspired, and brave.” — Roger Ebert. Ramin Bahrani,
after his auspicious debut (MAN PUSH CART), sets
his story of a 12-year-old Latino boy and his older
sister in the no-man’s-land that is Willet’s Point,
Queens, a 20-block stretch of junkyards and chop
shops (where stolen cars are dismantled for parts),
overshadowed by Shea Stadium’s giant billboard:
“Make Dreams Happen.” Perhaps it is because
Bahrani and co-author Bahareh Azimi are both of
Iranian descent that they are able to conjure up an
outsider’s reality with such palpable compassion and
realism. Without a smidgeon of sentimentality, CHOP
SHOP suggests that for many New York City is closer
to a third world country than the glittering jewel in the
crown of a land of infinite opportunity.
1, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8, 10
1:15, 3:15, 6, 8, 10
CHOP SHOP
A P R I L 9 – 2 2
2 W E E K S
Stalags
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY ARI LIBSKER
PRODUCED BY BARAK HEYMANN
ISRAEL 2007 63 MINS. IN HEBREW WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Two Women and a Man
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY ROEE ROSEN
ISRAEL 2005 16 MINS. IN HEBREW WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
“IT WAS ONE OF ISRAEL’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS. In the
early 1960s, as Israelis were being exposed for the first
time to the shocking testimonies of Holocaust survivors
at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a series of pornographic
pocket books called Stalags, based on Nazi themes,
became best sellers throughout the land... The books
told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots
being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted
with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the
male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing
their tormentors… The Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew
concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging
in the public eye.” — Isabel Kershner, The New York
Times (Sept. 6, 07). Ari Libsker, a grandson of Holocaust
survivors, explores this phenomenon and considers how
fantasy may seep into public consciousness and
become indiscernible from the historical record.
Complementing STALAGS is a movie by Israeli artist
Roee Rosen who plays games with gender identity,
history and the pornographic imagination.
1:15, 3, 4:45. 6:30, 8:15, 10
M A R C H 1 2 –
2 W E E K S
2 5
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE JOAN S. CONSTANTINER
FUND FOR JEWISH AND HOLOCAUST FILM
Blind Mountain
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY LI YANG
GERMANY / HONG KONG / CHINA 2007 97 MINS
IN MANDARIN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES KINO INTERNATIONAL
THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH
JANUARY 30 – FEBRUARY 12
2 W E E K S
The Silence
Before Bach
DIRECTED BY PERE PORTABELLA
SPAIN 2007 102 MINS
IN SPANISH, CATALAN AND GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
PERE PORTABELLA, THE LEGENDARY SPANISH
SURREALIST and 78-year-old enfant terrible, was
honored with a retrospective last fall at the
Museum of Modern Art. His newest and arguably
greatest film, THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH, “brings
Bach’s music to life with a mysterious, magnificent
blend of drama, documentary, and quasi-surrealist
whimsy. Beginning with a scene of a player piano
rattling off the Goldberg Variations while rolling
through a bright, bare loft, Portabella tickles the
senses with a series of skits… From puckish
humor and borderline kitsch, a great and serious
notion emer ges: the constr uction of modern
Europe on the basis of classical music.” – Richard
Brody, The New Yorker
1, 3:15, 5:40, 7:50, 10
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MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN CHINA: an attractive, urbane
young woman travels to a remote village in
mountainous Shaanxi province for a job she has been
promised. Instead she is kidnapped, drugged, and sold
into marriage. Huang Lu gives a stirring performance
as the unwitting bride whose increasingly desperate
and ingenious attempts to escape pit her against a
corrupt community and its government enablers.
Controversial Chinese filmmaker Li Yang (who exposed
criminal scams in the Chinese mining industry in BLIND
SHAFT) was inspired by the horrific reality of human
trafficking for this riveting thriller. Real-life kidnapped
brides appear in several roles. “Yang demonstrates
once again that he is a master of cinematic tension.”
— Lee Marshall, Screen International
STUFF AND DOUGH
A P R I L
2
2 3 – M A Y
W E E K S
6
Stuff and Dough
WRITTEN, PRODUCED & DIRECTED BY CRISTI PUIU
ROMANIA 2001 91 MINS.
IN ROMANIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES MITROPOULOS FILMS
THE ROMANIAN NEW WAVE CONTINUES with the release
of STUFF AND DOUGH, the debut feature by Cristi
Puiu, critically acclaimed director of THE DEATH OF
MR. LAZARESCU. Combing genres (the road movie,
the buddy movie, the slacker story), he takes us in a
rattle-trap van with a naïve young man, his pal and the
pal’s girlfriend, en route to Bucharest to deliver a
mysterious parcel for a local gangster. Their
conversation and the action veers from the mundane
and the idiotic to the sinister and the bizarre. Puiu’s
sense of humor is never far from the surface, but
neither is his notion that Romania is a land of serious
contradictions, corruption, foolishness and brutality.
1:30, 3:30, 6, 8, 10
BLIND MOUNTAIN
1, 3:15, 5:40, 7:50, 10
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