Four by Asghar Farhadi - National Film and Sound Archive

Transcription

MAY/
JUNE
nfsa.gov.au
2013
SAT 11 MAY 2PM
Donald McAlpine, acs, asc
TEMPEST
Dir: Paul Mazursky, USA, 1982, 140 mins, 35mm, (M)
CINEMACALENDAR
Arc at the NFSA
National Film
and Sound Archive of
Australia,
McCoy Circuit, Acton,
Canberra
Enquiries:
02 6248 2000
nfsa.gov.au
Enjoy cinema’s greatest experiences at Arc,
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Special ticket prices may apply to individual sessions,
events and seasons. Booking fees may apply.
MAY
THU 2 MAY 2PM
Bond(s) at 50
GOLDFINGER
Dir: Guy HAMILTON, UK/USA, 1964, 110 mins,
35mm, (PG)
The third of the Bond films sees Sean Connery
trying to thwart Auric Goldfinger’s (Gert Fröbe)
plan to rob Fort Knox. It’s the first of four in the
series to be directed by Guy Hamilton. In many
ways it remains, if not the best, then the first
where all the parts of the Bond moviemaking
operation were finally running to specification.
There’s twice the budget of any of the previous
films, the gadgets (the Aston Martin first appears
here), the Bond girls (Shirley Eaton, with Honor
Blackman’s Pussy Galore as the anti-heroine),
all the irony, all the set pieces, and all the
psychopathology of the bad guys. UK reviewers
took its artistic success on its own terms, turning in
compliments like Penelope Gilliatt’s: ‘… so elegant
– so vile…’. Technicolor 35mm print, courtesy
UCLA Film and Television Archive.
SAT 4 MAY 7.30PM
Cult of Arc: Two by Astron-6
MANBORG AND
FATHER’S DAY
Total running time 170 mins, (MA15+)
Canada-based filmmaking collective Astron-6 now
do for ‘80s, straight-to-VHS genre movies what
fellow Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin has been
doing for years for silent movies: lovingly crafting
homages, ham-ups and expressions of a geeky
love for the originals. The similarity to the name
of ‘80s genre film studio Vestron says it all. In the
$1000-budget Manborg (Dir: Steven Kostanski,
Canada, 2011, 70 mins, digital) a cyborg soldier
is rebuilt from bits of Lee Majors, Dolph Lundgren
and Robocop, then let loose to fight for mankind’s
future against an invasion by Nazi vampires.
Schlock distributors Troma threw in $10k to
make Father’s Day (Dir: Astron-6, 98 mins, 2012,
digital) Aston-6’s first big budget movie. Aspiring
to the paternal influence of The Hitchhiker and
The Stepfather, its plot sends a gang of orphans
(plus one idealistic Catholic priest) out for revenge
against the cannibal, serial rapist and slasher, The
Father’s Day Killer. With thanks to Monsterfest and
Monster Pictures.
THU 2 MAY 7PM
Asghar Farhadi
NADER AND SIMIN,
A SEPARATION
(‫ نیمیس زا ردان ییادج‬/ Jodái-e Náder az
SUN 5 MAY 2PM
Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films
CLOSE-UP
(‎ ‫ کیدزن یام ن‬/ Nema-ye Nazdik) Dir: Abbas
The title only gives you some part of the emotional
complexity of Farhadi’s Best Foreign Film Oscarwinner. Teheran urban professionals Náder and
Simin are going through a messy divorce. Simin
wants to leave Iran with their daughter; Náder
wants to stay with his aging father. Then Náder
loses his temper with his father’s personal carer,
the deeply religious and anxious Razieh and the
ensuing argument ends in Razieh’s miscarriage. The
legal battle that follows between Náder, Razieh and
her hot-headed husband Hodjat, reveals even much
more about the state of Náder and Simin’s marriage
than their own divorce proceedings. For Farhadi,
this is where the real relationship breakdown is
taking place: between the worldview of the modern
Iranian middle-class, and the more conservative
values of mainstream Iran.
Hossain is a typical Iranian film nerd. One day
he falls into a conversation with the wife and
mother of a wealthy Teheran family about a
favourite director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A small
lie snowballs into the (self?)-deception that Hossain
actually is Makhmalbaf, and then a wild scheme
to fund his (Hossain’s? Makhmalbaf’s?) new
movie. Director Abbas Kiarostami read about the
case, filmed Hossain’s fraud trial and then got
all involved to recreate the whole unlikely story –
finally realising their collective fantasy to be stars
in a great Iranian movie. Close-up embodies a
fresh, new, all-assumptions-questioned approach
to cinema realism that made Iranian cinema the
discovery of late 20th century world cinema. In the
2012 Sight & Sound critics poll it was the highest
ranked work produced outside of the mainstreams
of European, Hollywood and Asian cinema.
Imported 35mm print.
Simin) Dir: Asghar FARHADI, Iran, 2011, 123 mins,
35mm, (PG)
SAT 4 MAY 1PM
spArc
THE RED BALLOON AND
THE WHITE MANE
Total running time 83 mins, digital, (G)
French director Albert Lamorisse’s timeless,
impressionistic and influential pair of children’s
short films. White Mane (Crin-blanc, France,
1953, 47 mins) tells the tale of two free and
kindred spirits who live in the marshes of France’s
Camargue region; a wild horse named Crin-blanc
and a boy named Folco. By contrast, The Red
Balloon (Le Ballon rouge, France, 1956, 35 mins)
has a sophisticated Parisian setting. Pascal is
another young boy who thinks he’s found himself
a friend. But the red balloon has other ideas. As
Pascal chases it across the city it’s clear that it’s
just as much a free spirit as the white horse.
All tickets $5. Recommended for those 5+ years.
SAT 4 MAY 3PM
MY BRILLIANT CAREER
Dir: Gillian Armstrong, Aust., 100 mins, 1979,
35mm, (G)
Sybylla is a precocious teenage with an
imagination stuck in Edwardian Australia, on a
sheep station far from London and with choices to
make between romance and the life of the mind.
Updating (but honouring) Miles Franklin’s original
novel revealed the talent of the young, up until
then short filmmaker Gillian Armstrong, of the
many other creative women involved (screenwriter
Eleanor Witcombe, producers Margaret Fink and
Jane Scott) and of two charismatic stars, Judy
Davis and Sam Neil. Don McAlpine was the
experienced and male hand in this. After working
on the often tough and blokey films of Bruce
Beresford of the late ‘70s, his lyrical, radiant yet
not too decorative touch is another revelation.
From the NFSA’s Kodak/Atlab Collection.
SAT 4 MAY 5PM
Bond(s) at 50
THE AMBUSHERS
Dir: Henry LEVIN, USA, 1967, 102 mins, 35mm, (M)
This is the third of four irreverent, ‘lounge-cinema’,
Bond knock-off adaptations of Donald Hamilton’s
spy novels, produced by Hollywood dealmaker
Irving Allen. Ratpacker star Dean Martin naturally
sucks all of the seriousness out of Hamilton’s
fictional Helm, but also honours the original
character flaws: overweight, washed up, and by
necessity out-witting rather than out fighting his
enemies. Yet the biggest joke of the series is in
hindsight: in how the tiring Bond films of the 1970s
and ‘80s seemed to be borrowing from the Helm
movies. Original 35mm Technicolor print, courtesy
UCLA Film and Television Archive.
KIAROSTAMI, Iran, 1990, 100 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
SUN 5 MAY 4.30PM
Aleksei Guerman
KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR
(Khrustalyov, mashinu!) Dir: Aleksei GUERMAN,
USSR/France, 1998, 150 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+).
Guerman’s most visually stunning, wildly
provocative work, this fever dream meditation
on the crazed final days of Stalin’s regime was a
cause célèbre of the 1998 Cannes and New York
film festivals. Based on a Joseph Brodsky story,
the film takes off from the infamous ‘Doctor’s Plot,’
in which predominately Jewish Moscow doctors
were fingered as members of a conspiracy to
assassinate Stalin. Yuri Glinshi, Red Army general
as well as famous brain surgeon, is sent to the
Gulag after an anti-Semitic purge, then freed in
a final effort to save the ‘People’s Little Father’
from his date with destiny. Guerman creates a
consistently amazing visual and aural rendition
of the charged atmosphere of those sad times, in
which no shadow is devoid of possible danger,
nor any stray remark free from potentially lethal
consequences. Imported 35mm print.
THU 9 MAY 2PM
Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films
CLOSE-UP
(‫ کیدزن یامن‬/ Nema-ye Nazdik) Dir: Abbas
KIAROSTAMI, Iran, 1990, 100 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
THU 9 MAY 7PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
(‫ یلا هرابرد‬/ Darbareye Elly) Dir: Asghar
FARHADI, Iran, 2009, 119 mins, DCP, (PG)
Three Teheran families take a getaway weekend
holiday together in an isolated villa beside the
Caspian Sea. They’re all old law school buddies;
although one, Ahmad, has largely moved on
and is only briefly visiting from his new home in
Germany. The outsider is Elly, the kindergarten
teacher of one of the couple’s children. She’s been
roped in by the group’s domineering ‘den mother’
Sepideh, largely to provide the recently divorced
Ahmad with a date. Elly is shy and conservative;
the necessary fiction that she and Ahmad are
married just adds to the tensions beginning to
re-surface between the friends. Then suddenly Elly
goes missing, leaving nothing behind apart from
questions as to why she was there in the first place.
Starting off with the (false) glow of a nostalgic
Hollywood college reunion movie, but ending in
a troubling moral fable reminiscent of Antonioni’s
L’avventura, Farhadi’s international breakthrough
film won him the Best Director’s award at Berlin
Film Festival and paved the way for his subsequent
global success with A Separation.
A Hi-Gloss Entertainment release.
Director Paul Mazursky’s tribute to two much
loved ‘Bards’ – one of English drama, the other of
American indie cinema – weaves the plot and the
island setting of Shakespeare’s late, wistful drama
into a mid-life crisis fable that might be from the films
of its star John Cassavetes (Faces, Love Streams).
Like much of the work of both these influences,
this is a film that celebrates its woman characters,
enhanced by the presence of Cassavetes’ wife
Gena Rowland, Susan Sarandon (who won best
actress at Venice Film Festival) and Molly Ringwald
in her first feature film role. It’s also Don McAlpine’s
first Hollywood feature. His spontaneous response
to the dry, brilliant light of the Greek island locations
is a reminder of all the qualities that intrigued
US filmmakers when they first started calling on
Australian cinematographers in the 1980s.
Four by
Asghar
Farhadi
MAY–JUN
Iranian cinema art has had a major place in
the international film festival scene for over a
quarter of a century, led by the breakthrough
successes of filmmakers like Dariush Mehrjui in
the 1970s, then in the ’80s of Abbas Kiarostami
and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Yet Iranian cinema
has still struggled to find western commercial
success; to get beyond narrow film festival, critical
and academic attention. It has also struggled
to break free of Iran’s internal and geo-political
polarities, post- the 1979 Islamic revolution. Films
that are box office hits at home rarely travel, even
to western film festivals. Films and filmmakers
celebrated at western film festivals are often
(with some political calculation) isolated from
mainstream Iranian audiences – or punished, as
the recent house arrest of Jafar Panahi and the
long-term exile of Makhmalbaf and others attest.
The consensus of success achieved by the films
of Asghar Farhadi (1971–) seems to break
through these partitions of reception. Western
film journalists tend to assume that acclaim
beyond Iran must equal defiance and censorship
at home. Yet Farhadi’s film festival profile and
strong art house box office capitalises on broad
successes already achieved at home, where
his films make money (in at least Teheran and
other major Iranian cities), win good reviews in
the mainstream press and multiple prizes at the
local film industry’s major awards. It’s another
reminder of hidden social and political nuances
we often miss when generalising about Iran’s
contemporary filmmaking.
A Separation has been the only one of Farhadi’s
films to be widely seen in Australia so far
(fortunately, as Australia was a source of some
of the film’s pre-production funding). So our
audiences here have some catching up to do.
Not unreasonably; Farhadi emerged quickly,
finding his local and international success with
five features made since 2003 (after training with
the Iranian Young Cinema Society, so often the
breeding ground for the Iranian new wave). The
centrepiece to our survey is a limited release of
the Berlin film festival Best Picture winner, 2009’s
About Elly – almost unseen in Australia. Plus we
will also bring to Canberra audiences two also
largely unseen earlier films, 2004’s Beautiful City
and 2006’s Fireworks Wednesday.
All three films give an indication of the consistency
of Farhadi’s interest in the double life of the
Iranian middle-classes: the private lifestyle and
worldview which is typically liberal, westernised
and internationalised, and the public position
squeezed within the confines of contemporary
Iran’s jostling locus of social, cultural, geo-political
and theocratic forces.
About Elly is a Hi-Gloss Entertainment release,
screening in a limited season:
A Separation
SAT 11 MAY 4.45PM
Bill Douglas
MY CHILDHOOD
AND MY ‘AIN FOLK
Total running time 101 mins, 16mm (orig. 35mm),
(classification tbc)
Rebelle
Rebelle
13–23 JUN
Kidnapped by a Congolese rebel militia at the
age of 12, Komona is a young pre-teen who
lost her adolescence to the horrors of war. Her
‘rite of passage’ is to be forced at gunpoint to
slaughter her own parents and to pick up an
AK-47 (her new “father and mother”); to fight
as a child soldier, suffer sexual abuse, drug
abuse and fanatical indoctrination. Yet she has
a strange state of grace, somewhere between
cynical cruelty and utter innocence. It bestows on
her a sixth sense in battle, one she thinks comes
from the ghosts of her parents. Acclaimed as a
sorcerer by the militia’s commander, Great Tiger,
she is given the battleground name of ‘War
Witch’. There are respites of tenderness in her life
and even a flirtation with an albino boy named
the Magician. But the grim cycle of killing goes
on and on, until it is second nature.
Bravely made on location in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Rebelle has become the
breakthrough feature for French-Canadian
filmmaker Kim Nguyen. An award-winner at Berlin
Film Festival, a Best Foreign-language Film Oscar
nominee and the dominant film at 2012’s Canadian
film awards, its cast (non-professionals and children
from the streets of Kinshasa) has also been a
revelation, with first-timer Rachel Mwanza winning
Best Actress at both Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals.
“The refreshing surprise is how impressively
Canadian-based writer-helmer Kim Nguyen
handles the material, displaying a maturity,
panache and emotional marksmanship… the film
continues to haunt long after the end credits roll”
(Leslie Felperin, Variety)
(aka War Witch) Dir: Kim Nguyen, Canada, 2012,
90 mins, DCP, (MA15+). A Curious Films release.
LIMITED RELEASE SEASON
THU 13 JUN 7PM
SAT 15 JUN 7.30PM
SUN 16 JUN 4.30PM
THU 20 JUN 2PM
SUN 23 JUN 2PM
THU 9 MAY 7PM
SAT 11 MAY 7PM
SUN 12 MAY 2PM
THU 16 MAY 2PM
SUN 19 MAY 4.30PM
THU 30 MAY 2PM
Scottish director Bill Douglas’s austere, hesitant
trilogy of autobiographic films has had a
profound influence on UK independent cinema.
Resisting sentiment, but embracing emotion,
his film language spoke as maybe only
documentaries had been able to previously do in
cinema. Douglas’ avoidance of overt narrative, in
favour of episodes of impressionistic experience
and imaginative impact, still influences many
short narrative filmmakers (even when they are
unaware of his work as their source). Following
our April screenings of his only other feature,
Comrades, we celebrate Douglas’ original, spare
genius. My Childhood (UK, 1972, 46 mins) brings
us the first sensations of Douglas’ ‘Jamie’, as a
boy born into the Scottish coal-mining village of
Newtongrange. My ‘Ain Folk (UK, 1973, 55 mins)
explores Jamie’s adolescence: a grim awakening
to the pre-determined realities of the world
around him. From the NFSA collection.
SAT 11 MAY 7PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
(‫یلا هرابرد‬‎ / Darbareye Elly) Dir: Asghar
Free for Max Pass Holders.
SUN 12 MAY 2PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
SUN 12 MAY 4.30PM
Bond(s) at 50
INCEPTION
Dir: Christopher NOLAN, UK/USA, 2010, 148 mins,
DCP, (M)
In a very near future ‘dream stealing’ is on the
cutting-edge of industrial espionage: the use of
ex-military interrogation technologies to steal
secrets from a sleeper’s sub-conscious – or
‘incept’ thoughts that are not their own. Crack
dream stealer Dominic Cobb is hired in a takeover battle between Japanese businessman Saito
and the dynasty of the dying Maurice Fischer;
a contract that also offers Cobb a way to find
peace after the death of his wife. We end our
Bond tribute with what Christopher Nolan has
called his “Bond movie”; especially citing the
influence of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
(and its editor John Glen’s furious, punchy cutting
in that film) on Inception ’s final ‘deep dream’
sequence. Perhaps no film – and no modern
filmmaker – better understands how the Bond
franchise is a dominant gene in the DNA of
modern action cinema.
THU 16 MAY 2PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
Don McAlpine
In the Fog
In the Fog
30 MAY – 8 JUN
Its 1942 and well behind the then sweeping
German military advance into the Soviet Union.
Although isolated partisans still hide in the region’s
dense forests, for much of the population of Soviet
Belarus, Stalinism seems to have been swept away
forever. The new Nazi order brings a time for
settling scores. Railway labourer Sushenya awaits
one reckoning, as an accidental participant in an
act of sabotage by fellow workers. Yet instead
he’s inexplicably released by his German captors,
and sent home with a handshake. He fully expects
what will happen next: in the dead of night two
partisans come to kill him as a traitor.
In the early 2000s Belarusian-Russian filmmaker
Sergi Loznitsa emerged suddenly and fully
formed as a major and risk-taking documentary
filmmaker. Films such as Blockade (2006)
challenged the historic record of the Soviet
patriotic war against Nazi Germany. Others like
Train Station (2001) or Portrait (2002) observed
a contemporary Russia that for Loznitsa seemed
to be (in his words) “… falling out of time.” All
his films seem to find a connection between the
myths and assumptions of the Soviet past and the
present day ‘condition’ of its successor republics.
Loznitsa has carried these concerns into his first
feature films, 2010’s My Joy and now this new
film, winner of the Fipresci prize at the Cannes Film
Festival and based on a story by uncompromising
Belarusian soldier/poet Vasil Bykaŭ. Although
both films have won acclaim in western Europe,
it’s probably unsurprising that both have also
been deeply controversial in Russia and Belarus.
In the Fog is an even more direct challenge to a
central myth of the Soviet past and to a staple
genre of its cinema: the film of heroic, patriotic
and total resistance to the Nazi invasion. Like the
films of Aleksei Guerman (subject of our recent
retrospective) Loznitsa instead sees war as a
vicious trap of history, and proposes that the
greatest ‘resistance’ in wartime can often be a
private refusal to succumb to its inhumanity.
“…(In the Fog) has transcendental grace to
spare… brings with it a deep evocation of wellknown Russian pics about WWII… Nevertheless,
despite its classicism, Loznitsa’s helming still feels
post-millennial in its austerity, particularly given
the total absence of music and the slow-breath
rhythms of its editing.” (Leslie Felperin, Variety)
(В тумане / V tumane) Dir: Sergi LOZNITSA,
Russia/Germany, 2012, 127 mins, (M). A Sharmill
Films release.
LIMITED RELEASE SEASON
THU 30 MAY 7PM
SAT 1 JUN 7.30PM
SUN 2 JUN 4.30PM
THU 6 JUN 2PM
SAT 8 JUN 7.30PM
Don McAlpine
acs, asc
MAY
Don McAlpine (1934– ) has become the local
elder statesman of cinematography – the cinema
craft for which Australia gets most respect and the
most awards. Now approaching 80, McAlpine
goes back far enough to have a career that predates our modern feature film industry. He even
shot one of the key films that triggered it, 1972’s
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Yet he’s still
a highly active and in-demand filmmaker, most
recently at work in the US on Gavin Hood’s big
budget sci fi thriller Ender’s Game.
To follow up our recent season of Show Me the
Magic (documentary filmmaker Cathy Henkel’s look
at his career and on-location working methods),
we’re featuring a short selection of Don McAlpine
ACS, ASC’s key work, as one of Australia’s great
feature film directors of photography. Consciously,
we’ll place his local and international work side by
side, including his first international film Tempest
(1982) but also key collaborations with Australian
directors like Baz Luhrmann and Bruce Beresford.
In late May, McAlpine will be in Canberra
as a special guest of the 2013 Australian
Cinematographer Society’s national awards. Over
the weekend of the 25–26 May he’ll be on hand
at Arc to round the season out, with two ‘carte
blanche’ sessions that he will select and introduce.
For further details, visit nfsa.gov.au/arc
THU 16 MAY 7PM
Asghar Farhadi
BEAUTIFUL CITY
(‫ ابیز رهش‬/ Shah-re ziba) Dir: Asghar
FARHADI, Iran, 2004, 101 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
Becoming an adult brings no joy to juvenile
prisoner Akbar. In detention since he impulsively
killed his girlfriend when just 16, turning 18
simply gives the state the right to execute him.
Akbar seems perhaps more accepting of his fate
than his sister Firoozeh and friend A’la, who on
the outside are desperately trying to convince
the dead girl’s father to consent to his reprieve.
As the wheels grind mysteriously within Iran’s
legal system, Farhadi’s film has unexpected
thematic priorities: less with the obvious social
injustice of Akbar’s plight, more in just how willing
apparently upstanding individual citizens are to
take responsibility for his situation – or to exploit
his peril to their own advantage.
SAT 18 MAY 2PM
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
ROMEO + JULIET
Dir: Baz LUHRMANN, Australia/USA, 1996, 120
mins, 35mm, (M)
You know the plot and all the spoilers. Baz
Luhrmann well understood their appeal of across
global pop culture. He brilliantly made us aware
of Shakespeare’s modern potency by relocating
Verona’s family rivalries to a vaguely South Florida
setting of tourist resort kitsch, MacMansions,
Miami Vice-stylings and Cuban-American factional
politics. Don McAlpine (and editor Jill Bilcock)
had mentored Luhrmann in creating the visual
style that pre-figured this in his first film, Strictly
Ballroom. Here their collaboration completes the
task, codifying the ‘playback musical’/ pop-campclassical bricolaging of Luhrmann’s ‘Red Curtain’
films (and its signature shots, like McAlpine’s crashzooms). Although shot in Mexico, it’s arguably the
only other time (apart from Mad Max) Australia’s
given world cinema a distinct genre worth ripping
off. It also introduced two of the most attractive
performers of the current American screen:
Leonardo DiCaprio (working again with Luhrmann
on The Great Gatsby) and Claire Danes.
SAT 18 MAY 4.30PM
BILL DOUGLAS
MY WAY HOME
Dir: Bill DOUGLAS, UK, 1978, 71 mins, 16mm (orig.
35mm), (classification tbc)
Father’s Day
Cult of Arc
MAY–JUN
In May, Cult of Arc introduces you to a team
of Canadian filmmakers whose films celebrate
the cool of 1980s, straight-to-video sci fi and
horror movies, with a hit double ripped from
Melbourne’s Monsterfest Film Festival. In June,
we begin a tribute to the greatest name in cult
cinema, Roger Corman – starting with two of his
greatest collaborations with actor Vincent Price
and the classic tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Bill Douglas’ alter ego, Jamie, grows out of the
confides of Scottish work class life and then,
through his national military service with the RAF,
finds his talents and the love of his life. The third
part of Douglas’ autobiographical Trilogy was
a more confident re-consideration of the themes
of the earlier My Childhood and My ‘Ain Folk,
expanding them into a first real feature (and also
a love letter to Douglas’ own life-partner, Peter
Jewell). But whereas the first two featurettes in
the series were about repression, My Way Home
was to be Douglas’ and one of British cinema’s
greatest films about personal liberation.
From the NFSA collection.
SAT 18 MAY 7.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
MERRY CHRISTMAS,
MR LAWRENCE
(戦場のメリークリスマス/ Senjō no Merī
Kurisumasu) Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, UK/Japan,
1983, 123 mins, 35mm, (M)
On the Japanese-occupied island of Ambon
there are clear lines of command and resistance
between the Anglo-Dutch prisoners of war and
their Japanese guards. Then a handsome, almost
mystically calm English officer upsets the very
tip of this order. Ōshima’s best-known feature,
made with UK producer Jeremy Thomas is also
one his most curious. Ōshima is the only director
who could have upset the normal mechanisms of
an Anglo-Hollywood POW movie, reformatting
South African writer Sir Laurens Jan van der
Post’s war memoirs into a dizzy melodrama
of unresolved sexual tension – and by casting
1980s androgynous pop gods David Bowie and
Ryuichi Sakamoto. The marriage of Japanese
and western acting styles and war movie genres
doesn’t always work (although supports Tom
Conti and ‘Beat’ Takeshi together make an oddly
tender expression of strange affections across
war’s front line). But it remains an introduction to
the confronting locus of sexual-political themes
that dominated the director’s late films.
SUN 19 MAY 2PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH
(青春残酷物語 / Seishun Zankoku Monogatari)
Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, Japan, 1960, 97 mins, 16mm
(orig. 35), (unclassified 18+)
Ōshima first major feature was also the first film
to reach the screens after Japanese establishment
studio Shochiku decide to try to cash in on the
volatile ‘youthquake’ buffeting Japanese society
at the beginning of the 1960s. Under instruction
to make French new wave-style movies, Ōshima
followed the lead of Jean-Luc Godard À bout de
souffle and went straight to the tabloid headlines:
for a story of an amoral young couple who extort
money from passing motorists – until they, too, are
shaken down by local hoodlums. Much more than
in Godard or Truffaut’s formative features (or in
Rebel Without a Cause, another influence), what
fascinated Ōshima was the political rather than the
sociological context. From the NFSA collection.
SUN 19 MAY 4.30PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
THU 23 MAY 2PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
MERRY CHRISTMAS,
MR LAWRENCE
(戦場のメリークリスマス/ Senjō no Merī
Kurisumasu) Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, UK/Japan,
1983, 123 mins, 35mm, (M)
THU 23 MAY 7PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
THE SUN’S BURIAL
(太陽の墓場/Taiyō no Hakaba) Dir: ŌSHIMA
Nagisa, Japan, 1960, 87 mins, 16mm (orig.
35mm), (unclassified 18+)
The inhabitants of a Tokyo slum are a microcosm
of Japanese society and national values. Unable
to imagine leaving, nor dreaming of any other
life, they fight for survival, material success or
the resurrection of a (mythical) past when things
were great and they were respected. Most
barely realise the obvious truth: they are all petty
criminals, beggars or swindlers who justify their
actions according to their needs. In this amoral
microcosm young prostitute Haneko and teen
gang leader Shin stand out by at least showing
some occasional humanity, or insight. The last of
Ōshima’s ‘straight’ youth movies has the elements
of a Japanese ‘bosozoku’ teen gang movie,
but charges them with the social and political
meaning of a great Russian novel – or a great
Hollywood film noir. From the NFSA collection.
SAT 25 MAY 2PM
DON McALPINE
CARTE BLANCE
Don McAlpine comes to Arc as part of A Shining
Light, the Australian Cinematographer’s Society’s
weekend of events celebrating its 42nd National
ACS Awards for Cinematography. McAlpine will
select and introduce two sessions, and bring to a
close our survey of his work.
For more information, see nfsa.gov.au/arc.
SAT 25 MAY 4.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
MERRY CHRISTMAS,
MR LAWRENCE
(戦場のメリークリスマス/ Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu)
Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, UK/Japan, 1983, 123 mins,
35mm, (M)
SAT 25 MAY 7.30PM
Asghar Farhadi
FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY
(‫ یروس هبنشراهچ‬/ Chaharshanbe Suri)
Dir: Asghar FARHADI, Iran, 2006, 102 mins, digital
(orig. 35mm), (unclassified 18+)
The English title of Farhadi’s third feature is a loose
translation of the name of the Persian New Year.
It’s a reference Iranians well understand, with
social and religious connotations of purification,
cleansing and renewal. Again, the director is
concerned with marital discord and “he said/
she said” of relationship disintegration. Rouhi is
looking for some extra cash ahead of her own
wedding, so takes a housecleaning job with a
wealthy couple in one of Teheran’s better-heeled
northern suburbs. Yet after a day spent in their
apartment, and as a bystander and shifting ally in
their simmering row over his relationship with the
divorcee next door, she begins to reconsider her
own forthcoming life as a young bride.
SUN 26 MAY 2PM
DON McALPINE
CARTE BLANCE
Don McAlpine selects and introduces the final
of two sessions screening as part of A Shining
Light, the Australian Cinematographer’s Society’s
weekend of events celebrating its 42nd National
ACS Awards for Cinematography.
For more information, see nfsa.gov.au/arc.
SUN 26 MAY 4.30PM
Asghar Farhadi
FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY
(‫ یروس هبنشراهچ‬/ Chaharshanbe Suri)
Dir: Asghar FARHADI, Iran, 2006, 102 mins, digital
THU 30 MAY 2PM
Asghar Farhadi
ABOUT ELLY
THU 30 MAY 7PM
IN THE FOG
Russia, 2012, 127 mins, DCP, (M)
JUNE
SAT 1 JUN 2PM
The SAFC at 40
DAVID WILLIAMSON’S
THE CLUB
Dir: Bruce BERESFORD, Aust., 1980, 96 mins,
35mm, (M)
Released little more than six months after
Breaker Morant, the second of Beresford’s David
Williamson adaptations was made by many of
team who made both Morant and Don’s Party.
Yet it feels less personal than both; a film already
belonging to a new era when the SAFC needed
to start pre-packaging elements for box office
success. The cast is high-concept, using the star
calibre of Jack Thompson, the new talents of a
then lanky John Howard, TV identities like Frank
Wilson and Graham Kennedy (both delivering
amongst their most affecting performances) and
a lot of 1980s AFL football colour and cameos. In
this case, it all mostly works in the material’s favour.
Or perhaps it’s because Williamson’s biting yet
slightly heart-broken play and film script were as
much about our film industry as AFL football: both
once made by heated local passions; both now
going corporate in the 1980s. With thanks to the
South Australian Film Corporation. From the NFSA’s
Kodak/Atlab Collection.
SAT 1 JUN 4.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
DEATH BY HANGING
(絞死刑/Kōshikē) Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, Japan, 1968,
118 min, 16mm (orig. 35mm), (unclassified 18+)
An unnamed Japan-Korean is to be hanged for
rape and murder. The execution is carried out
efficiently, as ordered by the Japanese penal
code. Yet absurdly, the prisoner will not die.
Confounded, officials begin to argue about what
to do and what the law requires they do. Authority
begins to disintegrate. Even in death, the prisoner
seems to be defying the rule – and the rules – of
law. The treatment of Japan’s Korean minority
was a constant theme in Ōshima’s 1960s films.
Here it seems to be serving as a metaphor for
a deeper national corruption. This is Ōshima’s
punishment without the crime: starting like a prison
documentary, traveling through stages of surreal
allegory, ending in what its director called the
‘collective illusion’ of post-war Japan.
SAT 1 JUN 7.30PM
IN THE FOG
SUN 2 JUN 2PM
Asghar Farhadi
NADER AND SIMIN,
A SEPARATION
(‫نیمیس زا ردان ییادج‬‎ / Jodái-e Náder az
Simin) Dir: Asghar FARHADI, Iran, 2011, 123 mins,
35mm, (PG)
SUN 2 JUN 4.30PM
IN THE FOG
MON 3 JUN 7PM
Human Rights Arts
and Film Festival
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN
Dir: Harry Freeland, UK, 2012, 84 mins, digital,
Albinos in Tanzania have traditionally been
perceived as almost mythical beings. To some
they are ghosts who cannot die; to others the
result of a family curse. In 2007, after a wave of
albino murders, a disturbing myth is exposed:
witch doctors are calling for albinos to be hunted.
Albino Josephat Torner sets out across the country
confronting the superstitions. Shot over six years, In the Shadow of the Sun is the story of a man who
stands up to persecution, putting his life on the line
to change the world in which he lives.
Special ticket prices apply. For more information
and for advanced bookings, see hraff.org.au.
TUE 4 JUN 7PM
Human Rights Arts
and Film Festival
MY BROTHER THE DEVIL
Dir: Sally El Hosaini, UK, 2012, 111 mins, digital,
Power, poverty and sexuality. My Brother the
Devil is a coming-of-age drama like no other.
Rashid and Mo are two Arab-British brothers
growing up in London council ﬂats with their
Egyptian parents. Rashid is already involved in
the gritty underworld of drugs and gangs, but
holds higher hopes for his younger brother Mo.
When a tragic event brings the brothers face-toface with the realities of urban violence, Rashid
attempts to get out while Mo becomes more
determined to step up and take his place. A story
about brotherhood and belonging, this is a slick
and energetic portrayal of migrant youth pushed
to the fringe. Special ticket prices apply. For more
information and for advanced bookings, see
hraff.org.au.
WED 5 JUN 7PM
Human Rights Arts
and Film Festival
ALIAS RUBY BLADE
Dir: Alex Meillier, USA/Aust., 2012, 78 mins, digital,
Intrigue, romance and revolution come together
in this action-packed documentary, chronicling
the tumultuous birth of a new nation in East
Timor. Kirsty Sword, a young Australian activist,
aspired to be a documentary filmmaker, but
instead became an underground operative for the
Timorese resistance in Jakarta – code named ‘Ruby
Blade’. Kirsty became a conduit of information
and instruction for the enigmatic leader of the
resistance, Kay Rala ‘Xanana’ Gusmão, while
he was in prison. Alias Ruby Blade captures their
incredible story from this beginning to the ultimate
triumph of freedom in East Timor, demonstrating
the astonishing power of individuals to change the
course of history. Special ticket prices apply. For
more information and for advanced bookings,
see hraff.org.au.
THU 6 JUN 2PM
IN THE FOG
THU 6 JUN 7PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
VIOLENCE AT HIGH NOON
(白昼の通り魔/ Hakuchū no Tōrima) Dir: ŌSHIMA
Nagisa, Japan, 1966, 99 mins, 16mm (orig.
35mm), (unclassified 18+)
Housemaid Shinko wakes from a bad dream – to
realise that her nightmare of vicious assault is
very real and she is one of the few survivors of
a serial killer at large. Then she pieces together
the unreality of it all – and realises the killer is
someone from her own troubled past. Ōshima
went to one of his favourite sources – the tabloids
and reports of a real life fraud/murder spree
of the late 1950s – for his most ‘noirish’ film. Its
rapid opening shots of sexual assault marked a
startling discovery of the power of montage by a
director previously known for long-takes (Violence
at High Noon has 2000 plus shots when early
Ōshima films might have a 100). Then the real
characteristics of Ōshima’s cinema emerge, the
film burning slowly and brightly as it flashes
back to the roots of a ‘criminal beast’; less born
a psychopath than made by socio-economic
opportunism. From the NFSA collection.
SAT 8 JUN 2PM
The SAFC at 40
THE SURVIVOR
SUN 16 JUN 2PM
Chris Marker
FAR FROM VIETNAM
Dir: David HEMMINGS, Aust./ UK, 1981, 99 mins,
35mm, (M)
After a horrific crash landing, airline pilot Keller
(Robert Powell) is the only one amongst 300
passengers and crew still alive. Wracked with
survivor guilt, bewildered at his loss of recall, he
becomes increasingly paranoid. Then a spiritualist
connects him to the dead passengers – and they,
too are asking for answers. In the early 1980s,
the new ‘10BA’ film finance rules sent the SAFC
in search of a deal with Australian producing
maverick Anthony I. Ginanne and UK production
financiers Hemdale. Many 10BA-era Australian
films were despised. The Survivor does better
than most, beyond just its cult repute as part of
the Ozploitation cycle. Despite messy disputes
over its co-production deal, and plotting that’s all
over the place, it’s getting critical reevaluation as
a well-crafted, supernatural special effects thriller.
SAT 8 JUN 4.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF
(新宿泥棒日記/ Shinjuku Dorobo Nikki) Dir:
ŌSHIMA Nagisa, Japan, 1969, 96 mins, 16mm
In the late 1960s, Tokyo’s Shinjuku district
was as much a scene of revolutionary student
intensity as Paris or Berkeley. Cutting between
black and white, colour and interweaving story
lines, Ōshima tried to grasp the ‘situation’ of this
political, sexual and imaginative liberation, via
multiple story strands. In one, a street theatre
collective are trying to revitalise kabuki theatre. A
second tells of the adventures of young student,
Birdy Hilltop who gets off on shoplifting literature
– the more cerebral the better – and of Birdy’s
lover Umeko, who role-plays at being a book
store assistant. Others are about the film crew
themselves, or about a for-real bookshop owner,
Mr Tanabe, trying to set Japanese teens straight
on the facts of life. From the NFSA collection.
SAT 8 JUN 7.30PM
IN THE FOG
SUN 9 JUN 2PM
Chris Marker
SUNLESS
(Sans Soleil) Dir: Chris MARKER, France, 1982,
100 min, 35mm, (M)
Marker’s ruminative, melancholy masterpiece
channels the imagination of a lonely traveling
cameraman – evoked in letters from distant Africa
and Japan – into a profound meditation on the
creative conjuring powers of memory, place and
image. Among the most brilliant examples of
the essay film, Sunless uses a lyrical, associative
structure to transform modern Japan into a vivid
metaphor for the scintillating mosaic of fact,
fiction and fantasy that defines the increasingly
mediated image world in which we live. Sunless
was the crucial bridge between Marker’s
adventurous earlier travel films and his growing
interest in video, in interactive media, and later in
on-line image making. From the NFSA collection.
(Note: with thanks to Harvard Film Archive).
SUN 9 JUN 4.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
BOY
(少年/Shōnen) Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, 97 mins,
1969, 16mm (orig. 35mm), (unclassified 18+)
The boy of the title is the main breadwinner
of an itinerant family roaming the small cities
of northern Japan. The family trade is petty
extortion, with a specialty in faking pedestrian
accidents and then demanding cash from
mortified car drivers. As the boy’s apparent
innocence and skills in artfully dodging cars
increasingly make him into the family business
profit centre, his parents become more cynical in
their exploitation, whilst the boy himself retreats
into the make-believe that he is a manga hero.
Ōshima’s shift from the agit-prop of his 1960s
films to the poignant narrative metaphors of his
1970s and ’80s features and documentaries
began here. This is still maybe his most
emotionally moving feature and (drawn from a
Japanese newspaper story) the one closest to his
(alas, little-seen) documentary filmmaking.
Ōshima Nagisa
It Always Rains On A Sunday
ˉ shima Nagisa:
O
Cruel Stories,
Sensual Realms
MAY–JUN
“I have no way to make films except by
examining the Japanese and endeavouring to
discover who they are.” (Ōshima Nagisa)
The January, 2013 death of Japanese filmmaker,
Ōshima Nagisa (1932–2013) was not unexpected.
Having suffered a series of massive strokes in the
late 1990s, he’d long ago largely abandoned
filmmaking, beyond a few personal documentaries,
one feature, and habitual Japanese TV talkshow
appearances (he was a regular on Iron Chief).
Yet coming so soon after the death of that other
iconoclast of 1960s erotic/political cinema,
Wakamatsu Koji, it seems that a great era of
Japanese cinema has passed into history.
Ōshima was the internationally best-known of
a generation that scorched their way across
postwar Japanese cinema from the late 1950s
until the ’80s. ‘Outlaw masters’ like Wakamatsu,
Suzuki Sejun, Shinoda Masahiro, Imamura
Sho
ˉ hei and Adachi Masao all began working
in the 1950 and early ’60s, at first within the
strict, hierarchical Japanese system of studios
like Shochiku and Nikkatsu. All then fought,
lost and then rebelled again the system, in the
1960 and ’70s making fast and wild films (often
released through the Art Theatre Guild distribution
collective) that were anti-establishment, narratively
unpredictable and predictably radical. Ōshima
was the best-known internationally of these
filmmakers – and within Japan maybe the most
politically and culturally visible.
Ōshima’s career trajectory reflects the tumultuous
modernization of Japan in the second half of the
20th century, especially its most acute phase in
the 1960s and ’70s – and maybe also in its post
1990s stagnation. Films like Sing a Song of Sex
and Japanese Summer: a Double Suicide (both
1967) were made in a mood to shock and in
a mode of political and sexual sensationalism
that just came right at just the right time. Ōshima
suddenly became Japan’s internationally
emblematic chic art cinema radical and formal
provocation was sometimes clearer than content
in these early- to mid-career films. Yet in at least
Violence at High Noon (1966), in Death by
Hanging (1968) and especially in Boy (1969)
and The Ceremony (1970) there was a profound
development on the genre allegories of Ōshima’s
first films. Each went to the newspaper headlines
for inspiration, using true-life lurid crimes,
scandals and cause célèbres as weapons with
which to fire his social critique. Each film seemed
to realise the filmmaking Ōshima had argued
for as far back as in a 1958 essay: one that
uses “…critical spirit and powers of expression
in a persistent struggle…against the pre-modern
elements of Japanese society”.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976) became the
most notorious of these: a graphically erotic,
but also acutely politically attenuated version
of the (for Japanese cinema) oft re-told Abe
Sada murder case of 1936. His subsequent
international films are often important, but are
sometimes also tarnished by a stateless feel in
their realisation. Even his best-known film, Merry
Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983) – although
audaciously cast and the ‘queer’ war movie the
director needed to make – is a sometimes jarring
match of themes and acting styles. Only the
greatly underrated Gohatto (1999) seems to fully
gel – his final film, only Japanese studio feature
after 1978 and only work in the classic Japanese
jidaigeki (period samurai) genre.
This is just a selection of the key films, in large
part suggesting that it’s time to review the real
achievements of his international hits of the 1960s,
’70s and ’80s. In a small part the program also
acknowledges a surprisingly large collection of
the director’s films held in the NFSA collection,
and the passion for Ōshima’s work of a number of
Australian cinephiles and distributors who helped
to build this local resource over many years.
THU 13 JUN 2PM
The SAFC at 40
DAVID WILLIAMSON’S
THE CLUB
Dir: Bruce BERESFORD, Aust., 1980, 96 mins,
35mm, (M)
From the NFSA’s Kodak/Atlab Collection. With
thanks to the South Australian Film Corporation.
THU 13 JUN 7PM
REBELLE
(aka War Witch) Dir: Kim NGUYEN, Canada, 2012,
90 mins, DCP, (MA15+)
SAT 15 JUN 2PM
The SAFC at 40
FREEDOM
Dir: Scott HICKS, Aust., 1982, 102 mins, digital, (M)
When the opportunity to steal a fast Porsche
presents itself, it’s natural that Ron’s eyes, hands
and dreams of freedom act before commonsense.
His trip has its inevitable outcome, but the
feeling of horsepower remain his first instinct. An
SAFC in-house assistant and short documentary
filmmaker through the mid- to late 1970s, future
Shine director Scott Hick’s first mainstream feature
is probably the sort of film most directors need to
get out of their system: a story of risks, the road
and the excitements of amour fou. Yet few first
films evoke so well the sadness of passing youth
as well as just a stylised sense of angst – a feeling
touched by knowing that its two leads, Jon Blake
and Jad Capelja died well before their talents
could be fully explored. With thanks to the South
Australian Film Corporation.
SAT 15 JUN 4.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
THE CEREMONY
(儀式/Gishik), Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, Japan, 1970,
123 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Ōshima’s major historical ‘epic’ begins in the
days of austerity after Japan’s defeat in 1945.
It then progresses from that ‘year zero’ of
modern Japanese history via five milestone,
ceremonial events in the life of an upper-middleclass Japanese family, ending in the glowing
years of the nation’s ‘economic miracle’ of the
early 1970s. This seemed to mark a shift to
the mainstream, away from the director’s new
wave, more didactic filmmaking of earlier in
the 1960s. But the feast days, funerals and
weddings its members celebrate are for Ōshima
not social rituals, but in truth allegories of political
discord, discourse and disenfranchisement. The
Ceremony’s social critique is no less excoriating
and radical – or perhaps even more so – for
being bound by the conventions of ‘family
melodrama’. From the NFSA collection.
SAT 15 JUN 7.30PM
REBELLE
Incident at Raven’s Gate
Total Film:
The South
Australian Film
Corporation in the
1980s and ’90S
JUN
October 2012 marked the 40th anniversary of
one the great milestones in the modern Australian
feature film industry: the establishment of the
South Australian Film Corporation, by thenPremier Don Dunstan and its founding CEO,
Gil Brealey. This was the pivotal moment of the
Australian cinema renaissance; when one state
government’s pro-active screen policy finally
pushed our cinema past earlier exploitations of
Australia as a picturesque location, or the hesitant
prods to local production of the mid- to late-1960s
and early ’70s. It was an enterprise that would
lead the Australian film industry back into regular
and sustained production, to international critical
appreciation and local audience respect.
The first part of our 40th anniversary retrospective
began in 2012 with a look at the SAFC’s classics
and milestones of the late 1970s. Part Two looks
at SAFC in the 1980s and until 1994. This was a
much less remembered and more difficult period
for the Corporation. After Breaker Morant, the
gloss began to rub off, as our cinema moved
from the halcyon days of the 1970s renaissance
into the hard realities of sustaining an industry
through the 1980s. The SAFC particularly had to
negotiate a move from films where it was almost a
film studio to ones where it was mostly a financier.
It was the new world of the ‘10BA’-era deal, as
well as that of a government agency working
in a market orientated political and cultural
environment. Some of the SFAC’s best work at this
time was for TV (like the 1987 telemovie Call Me
Mr. Brown). Of the cinema features greenlit some
even then seemed to be bad calls. Some still do.
Yet in hindsight, some are underrated; especially
a number of SAFC feature projects that focused
on the teen and youth market (1982’s Freedom,
1986’s Playing Beatie Bow, and 1990’s Struck
by Lightning). It was perhaps most important that
the SAFC was nurturing a new generation of
filmmakers. The 1980s sees the first commercial
features of a pre-Shine Scott Hicks (who worked
as an assistant on some of the key SAFC films
of the 1970s) and also of Rolf de Heer, whose
Incident at Raven’s Gate (1988) remains one of
the great Australian sci fi films.
Total Film is presented with thanks to the South
Australian Film Corporation. Selected titles are
courtesy the NFSA’s Kodak/Atlab and Deluxe/
Kodak Project collections.
Rainy Sundays,
Stormy Mondays:
British Film Noir
JUN–JUL
Generally defining where film noir starts, stops
and what it is (and perhaps more importantly
what it isn’t) is hard enough. Getting what’s film
noir in British cinema is even more elusive, at least
between 1945 and the arrival of its much better
known ‘Kitchen Sink’ realist filmmaking at the start
of the ‘60s. Especially when (as suggested by one
of the first to detect that there had been a British
film noir cycle, film historian William K Everson)
one of its most interesting characteristics was that
it’s long been assumed not to exist. Especially
when British screen culture has sometimes
enjoyed wallowing in the greatest ever put-down
of any national cinema: by Francois Truffaut, in
1962, to Alfred Hitchcock: “… Isn’t there a certain
incompatibility between the terms ‘cinema’ and
Britain… national characteristics… – the subdued
way of life, the stolid routine – that are antidramatic in a sense”?
Perhaps Truffaut’s boiling scold is a starting point –
as is a reminder that he was putting it to Hitchcock
who was both British and a ‘noir’ specialist. It’s
not that British cinema doesn’t exist. It is that it’s
grievously misunderstood; a bit like one of its
juvenile delinquent characters, by a lack of inquiry
into its sociology and lack of sympathy for its difficult
upbringing. British cinema noir is important because
it is the best place for such revisionist research to
start. At the least after 1945, film noir is the best
place to go see the smouldering social revolt
precisely against – precisely, grimly, concerned
with – exactly what Truffaut complained of the British
“subdued way of life” and its “stolid routine”.
British noir is rude and raw. As academic Robert
Murphy reminds us, British noir was borne
in “….the brutal traditions of British popular
entertainment – bear-baiting, prize-fighting, public
execution…”). There is more class, more spite
between classes, and more kitchen sinks (even
then) than in US film noir. That aforementioned
smouldering resentment sometimes turns into real
acid throwing. More razors are pushed into faces
than grapefruits. The occasional gun is a real
fear-symbol. And firing it becomes a profound
social and existential incident.
British noir is also a menace to the canon of
British cinema. The filmographies of some of
British noir’s ‘Subjects for Further Research’ (to
borrow American film critic Andrew Sarris’ turn of
phrase for underappreciated directors) suggests
so many great little films that, by comparison,
make some of UK cinema ‘masterpieces’ seem
like rubbish. Are there some terrible mistakes of
value judgement that need to be corrected? Or
has there been a real streak of self-loathing in
British cinema’s self-judgement?
Standard noir tropes don’t always make sense
in British noir (... vive la difference, Francois).
French cinema of the 1930s is a greater influence
than German Expressionism. Femme fatales are
almost irrelevant; the neurotic males can destroy
themselves without their help. Art direction
needs as much attention as cinematographer’s
chiaroscuro (Britain’s endless youth subcultures and their ‘revolt through style’ is often
elaborated here, in costume and décor). Political
telegramming is more overt than in American noir
– but implicit in style and subtext, not at the cost
of reducing noir to ‘the trimmings’. Indeed, the
fates of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth
Ellis – and others executed by miscarriages of the
20th century UK criminal justice system – gives so
much of British noir its deep tragic timbre.
What else British noir is can be the subject to your
own further research into a national cinema so
many have long loved to hate. We acknowledge
this selection’s limitations. Most are borne of an overabundance of choice. We haven’t begun to unpack
all the sub-cycles and variations. We haven’t
pursued 1930s pre-war antecedents or the post1960s neo-noir, glam-gangster films (Get Carter,
Stormy Monday, Sexy Beast). We can’t cover all the
key directors. We only name check most; sometimes
due to problems getting good prints.
You will notice one bias: towards the expat.
Australians who so often passed through
British noir. Our first internationally acclaimed
cinematography, Robert Krasner. Or John
McCallum and Googie Withers, honoured
here with a new print of their most famous
collaboration with director Robert Hamer, on It
Always Rains on a Sunday. Or others who, like
Withers – or like actor Michael Craig – became
Australian by adoption and played their part in
our film production revival.
Presented in collaboration with the Sydney
International Film Festival. With special thanks to
BFI Distribution and the BFI National Archive.
Cats Vanish,
Grins Linger:
Chris Marker
JUN–JUL
During December 2012’s visiting Visible Evidence
international documentary conference we began
to pay tribute to Chris Marker, aka Christian
François Bouche-Villeneuve (1921-2012). Described
by fellow French filmmaker Alain Resnais as “…the
prototype of the twenty-first-century man”, Marker
was one of the most game-changing of all modern
documentary filmmakers. He is maybe even more
so now, in a 21st century age of YouTube and nocost digital filmmaking that his radically influential
approach so clearly foresaw.
As we promised, last December’s short, selective
conference program was just a foretaste for a more
substantial look at Marker’s work – and also his
influence on others. As well as revisiting some of
the early short films briefly seen last December, we
look at Marker’s crucial, longer film projects – often
made in unusual and selfless collaboration with his
peers. Each has become a by-word in innovation
in documentary style, especially in defining the
experimental documentary form with which
Marker is most often associated: the ‘essay’ film.
In July, we will also move onto a selection of films
where Marker’s influence is most obvious. Some
are documentary classics of the 1960s to ‘80s
where his influence is manifest (and occasionally
the result of his collaboration and assistance in
the film’s production). Others will be part of a new
edition of our occasional Docs with Style season –
which this year will showcase (often via Canberra
premieres) recent films that indicate that Marker’s
filmmaking radicalism is still an enduring force.
NOW OPEN
TEATRO FELLINI
The NFSA’s café provides a delicious range
of light meals and snacks and hot and cold
beverages. Teatro Fellini is also open before
all Arc cinema screenings, so why not treat
yourself and complete your visit to the
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia..
OPENING HOURS
Mon−Wed 9am – 5pm, Thur 9am − 7pm
Fri 9am − 5pm, Sat 11.30am − 7.30pm*,
Sun 10am − 4.30 pm
Also open before Arc Cinema screenings.
*Please note: no main meals after 6.30pm
(Loin du Vietnam) Dirs: Jean-Luc GODARD/ Alain
RESNAIS/ Claude LELOUCH/ William KLEIN/ Joris
IVENS/ Agnes VARDA/ Chris MARKER, France, 1967,
115 mins, 16mm (orig. 35mm), (unclassified 18+)
In 1967 Marker’s SLON filmmaking collective
asked four French filmmakers, one Dutch
documentary veteran and an American artist
living in Paris to respond to the then seemingly
everlasting war in Vietnam. Some reactions are
‘straight’ works of agitprop (Marker channeling
Castro on Vietnam). Some complex meditations on
the difficulty of making cinema in the face of war
(Godard) or its contradictions (Varda on pro-war
African-Americans). Some are about helplessness
(Resnais in an aside to his then in-production
feature Je t’aime, je t’aime). Or hope (Klein’s deeply
emotional interview with the wife of Quaker antiwar martyr Norman Morrison). Always, there is
a sense of dialogue and debate. Unlike the many
other ‘portmanteau’ films of the 1960s, Marker
careful edits each sequence, so as to cloak its
‘auteur’-ship. Episodes flow seamlessly together
– or are sometimes tersely crosscut to contradict
what’s come before. From the NFSA collection.
SUN 16 JUN 4.30PM
REBELLE
Free for Max Pass Holders.
THU 20 JUN 2PM
REBELLE
THU 20 JUN 7PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
MAX, MON AMOUR
Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, France, 1986, 92 mins,
35mm, (M)
The wife of an English diplomat in Paris is
charming, supportive and knows all of the right
things to say when at her husband’s side. Then
she loses her will to an intense erotic obsession,
one she flaunts in front of husband and society.
Within the elite circles of Paris even this might not
normally be out of bounds – except her lover is a
chimpanzee. All of Ōshima’s later, internationally
funded films used sexual taboo as a metaphor for
rebellion against rigid social hierarchies. However
his last international work (before his almost careerending illness of the 1990s) took the opportunity
to partner with Luis Bunuel’s late, great production
and screenwriting collaborators, Serge Silberman
and Jean-Claude Carrière – as well as endlessly
versatile actress Charlotte Rampling – to find an
even more transgressive object of desire. Courtesy
L’Institut Français and the Embassy of France.
SAT 22 JUN 1PM
spArc
PLAYING BEATIE BOW
Dir: Donald Crombie, Aust., 1986, 93 mins, 35mm, (PG)
Abigail (Imogen Annesley) is a young teen in
modern Sydney who can bring people from the
past and also travel there herself. She finds her
counterpart in her Victorian-era forebear Beatie,
and their extra-sensory link draws Abigail back
to Beatie’s childhood in the 1870s. Playing Beatie
Bow has a wistful, gentle sense of the fleeting
hopes of its intended audience, mostly fans of
Ruth Park’s source novel. In what was otherwise a
period of backlash against costume drama, director
Donald Crombie does more than just make period
nostalgia. Much as in his earlier film Caddie, he
richly evokes the forgotten stories and social history
of young Australian women. Also screening as part
of our SAFC at 40 series. From the NFSA collection.
Recommended for those 10+ years.
SAT 22 JUN 3PM
The SAFC at 40
INCIDENT AT RAVEN’S GATE
Dir: Rolf DE HEER, Aust., 1989, 94 mins, 35mm, (M)
Raven’s Gate is an experimental farm in the
South Australian outback, the passion project of
an idealistic agricultural scientist. Nothing there
surely warrants the attention it gets from all sorts
of unlikely interests: the scientist’s shady brother
Eddie (Steven Vidler), the police special branch’s
‘man in black’ (Terry Camilleri) and eventually
shadowy aliens from another planet. Those who
only know Rolf de Heer’s work via Ten Canoes
and The Tracker might be surprised at one of the
best amongst his early, often ‘cinema fantastique’
genre-driven films. But there is much that will
also seem familiar. As always in his films, de
Heer plays with eccentric characterisation, stock
dramatic ‘types’ that suddenly aren’t doing as
you expect and a deadpan humour – which here
often plays satirically with imagery familiar from
outback gothic films like Wake in Fright.
From the NFSA collection. With thanks to the
South Australian Film Corporation.
SAT 22 JUN 5PM
British Noir
IT ALWAYS RAINS ON A
SUNDAY
Dir: Robert Hamer, UK, 1947, 91 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
It’s a dreary early Sunday morning in London’s
Bethnal Green, early in 1947. Before her husband
and stepdaughters are awake, unhappily married
housewife Rose finds her old wartime lover Tommy
on her doorstep – on the run from goal. She hides
him in the old air raid shelter and gets on with
the chores. For the rest of that Sunday he’ll be an
alluring reminder of the thrills of Rose’s past life. This
is the masterpiece of the troubled career of director
Robert Hamer, its description by one critic as the
“definitive British Film Noir…” absolutely exact in that
it is the perfect fusion of noir thriller plot line with a
gray milieu of UK post-war disillusionment. It’s also
the great double role for two of Hamer’s regular
acting collaborators – Australian John McCallum
and Australian-by adoption Googie Withers – in
perhaps their best work in UK studio cinema.
New print. Courtesy the British Film Institute.
SAT 22 JUN 7.30PM
Cult of Arc:
Poe, Corman and Price
THE MASQUE OF THE RED
DEATH AND THE TOMB OF
LIGEIA
Total running time 170 mins approx, 35mm.
Just two of the seven collaborations between
producer/director Roger Corman, the overripe
persona of star Vincent Price and the gothic
stories of Edgar Allan Poe, screening in imported
35mm prints. Shot by Nicolas Roeg, The Masque
of the Red Death (Dir: Roger Corman, UK/ USA,
1964, 89 mins, (M)) stars Price in Poe’s story of
nobles trying to cheat their own fate. Its feudal,
atmospheric use of medieval allegory has been
compared (not without justification) to Bergman’s
The Seventh Seal. Also shot on location in the UK,
The Tomb of Ligeria (Dir: Roger Corman, USA/ UK,
1964, 81 mins, (PG)) features Price as a man so
terrified of the spirit of his first wife that he is unable
to love his second bride. Elizabeth Shepherd plays
both wives, whilst the script is an early work from
master screenwriter Robert Towne.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
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.
Theatre Manager: Trevor Anderson.
Projectionists: Greg Rooke, John Taylor.
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.
To sign up for the NFSA’s email news or receive a copy of the
calendar in the post, email [email protected]
SUN 23 JUN 2PM
REBELLE
SUN 23 JUN 4.30PM
British Noir
THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE
(aka I Became A Criminal) Dir: (Alberto)
CAVALCANTI, UK, 1947, 96 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
‘Narcy’ Narcissus is “…cheap, rotten, after-thewar trash.” So he needs brains, social skills and
respectability as his black market operation grows.
Bored Battle of Britain hero Clem (Trevor Howard)
at first does nicely; he needs the money to keep his
vain girlfriend Ellen. Yet getting out of this game
proves much harder than bailing out of a Spitfire.
Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti had an eclectic
but fascinating career in UK cinema, making
everything from experimental documentaries and
Dickens’ adaptations to horror. Least expected
would be this entry in the ‘spiv’ sub-cycle of
late 1940s British noir. New print. Plus Margate
summer holidays are celebrated in Sunday By The
Sea (Dir: Anthony Simmons, UK, 1953, 9 mins,
35mm) and then the passing of London’s trams in
The Elephant Will Never Forget (Dir: John Krish,
UK, 1953, 10 mins, 35mm). Courtesy the British
Film Institute and the Film Foundation.
THU 27 JUN 2PM
British Noir
IT ALWAYS RAINS ON A
SUNDAY
Dir: Robert HAMER, UK, 1947, 91 mins, 35mm,
(unclassified 18+)
THU 27 JUN 7PM
Chris Marker
GRIN WITHOUT A CAT
(Le fond de l’air est rouge) Dir: Chris MARKER,
France 1977-93, digital (orig. 16/35mm, color, 180
min, (unclassified 18+)
Grin without a Cat was a post-cold war Englishlanguage re-edit and re-think of an originally four
hour long film essay Marker released in the late
1970s. Cut from newsreels, propaganda films,
footage shot by friends as well as by Marker
himself, it sets itself an extraordinary brief: to
construct a polyphonic, immersive, critical, almost
mournful history of the new left’s rise in the 1960s –
and its hubris in the ’70s. Courtesy L’institut Français
and the Embassy of France in Australia. (Note: with
thanks to Harvard Film Archive).
SAT 29 JUN 2PM
The SAFC at 40
SEBASTIAN AND THE SPARROW
Dir: Scott HICKS, Aust., 1989, 88 min, 35mm, (PG)
Sebastian is an Adelaide Ferris Bueller; middleclass, a natural leader and the son of ‘cool’
liberal parents. Sparrow is a lean and nervy
street kid. They meet at a video-game arcade.
Smart and tough in their own way – and
also secretly wishing they had what the other
had – they become mates. Alongside Donald
Crombie’s Playing Beatie Bow, Scott Hicks’
third pre-Shine feature is another of the SAFC’s
modest but underrated ‘young adult’ movies of
the 1980s. Only a few if any Australian films
got this close to matching the pop energy of
Hollywood teen movies (or had this good a
local sound track to match). From the NFSA
collection. With thanks to the South Australian
Film Corporation.
SAT 29 JUN 4.30PM
British Noir
ODD MAN OUT
Dir: Carol REED, UK, 1947, 116 mins, 35mm, (PG)
In the dark hours after a violent Belfast robbery
attempt goes wrong, IRA gunman McQueen
(James Mason) tests the loyalty of friends, the
kindness of strangers and his wounded belief in
the Irish Republican cause. This was Carol Reed’s
first collaboration with the Australian-raised
cinematographer Robert Krasker, with whom he
would later make The Third Man. Yet as Odd Man
Out charts McQueen’s crossing of paths with the
fears, desires and shabby morals of its gallery of
supporting characters, it’s more Old Testament than
in the manner of The Third Man’s fairy tale, the
lesson richly illustrated by Krasker’s expressionist
camerawork. Courtesy the British Film Institute.
SAT 29 JUN 7.30PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES
(愛のコリーダ/ Ai no Ai no Korīda / L’Empire des
sens) Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, Japan/France, 1976,
106 mins, 35mm, (R)
Post-war Japanese filmmakers have repeatedly
filmed the true and very scandalous story of the
1936 murder of a middle-class businessman
by his mistress, Abe Sada. No version is betterknown – or more accentuates the politically over
the romantic – then Ōshima’s telling, in the film
that confirmed both his international acclaim and
made his reputation as cinema provocateur. As
Abe uses her sexual talents and jealous will the
analogy is clear: between erotic distraction and
Japan’s collective (and just as masochistic) national
submission to militarism in the 1930s.
SUN 30 JUN 2PM
ˉ shima Nagisa
O
MAX, MON AMOUR
Dir: ŌSHIMA Nagisa, France, 1986, 92 mins,
35mm, (M)
SUN 30 JUN 4.30PM
Chris Marker
LE JOLI MAI
Dirs: Chris MARKER/ Pierre L’HOMME, France, 1963,
121 mins, 16mm (orig. 35mm), (unclassified 18+)
Chris Marker began the 1960s in a groundbreaking use of the then-very new generation
of 16mm sync-sound cine-cameras. Le Joli mai
explores how Paris was responding to the war
nearest to home – the Algerian conflict then
winding down into stalemate. Rather than
ask Parisians to comment on that war – with
predictably partisan responses – Marker and
photo-journalist Pierre L’homme put a much more
meaningful question: are you happy? In letting
the average Frenchman talk about themselves
and their own feel-good factors, they manifest
the real state of mind of a nation coming to grips
with the end of its colonial power. Screening is
the Marker-approved, two hour English-language
version of the film, with English narration by
Simone Signoret (whose husband Yves Montand
had voiced the original French cut).
CINEMACALENDAR
nfsa.gov.au

Four by Asghar Farhadi - National Film and Sound Archive

Transcription

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