Dunedin Film Society to screen Sonja Maria Kröner’s THE GARDEN

[Dunedin Film Society]

DUNEDIN FILM SOCIETY

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Sonja Maria Kröner’s

THE GARDEN  /

(Sommerhäuser)

(Germany, 2017, 97 mins, M Nudity)

Wednesday, 21st October, 7:30 pm, University of Otago Red Lecture Theatre**

Our screening of The Garden is presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut. Casual admission will be possible in exchange for a small donation.

In Kröner’s debut feature, family dynamics disintegrate at an extended family gathering during a languid 1976 summer.

      

ABOUT THE FILM

“Suffused with sun-dappled bodies and the hubbub of summer activity, the debut feature by German writer-director Sonja Maria Kröner is an enchanting slow burn. Unfolding in 1970s Bavarian cottage country, The Garden tells the story of an extended family of adults and children gathering to commemorate a deceased matriarch and to laze away their holidays. Though brimming with incident, this is above all a masterfully rendered mood piece about time and family, innocence and hazard... Somewhere in the vicinity a child murderer is on the loose, yet this terrible threat never quite eclipses other concerns, including long-brewing resentments, new-found childhood rivalries, absent fathers and unexpected flirtations. The Garden is unassuming and utterly transporting. You can feel its warmth – and its creeping sense of impending change” (Kerri Craddock, Toronto International Film Festival).

View the Trailer of The Garden

FURTHER REVIEWS

"For much of The Garden, Kröner’s approach is exemplified by the game its children play. As the adults tend to more serious matters in this shared family compound, the youngsters compete to see who can capture the most wasps, often trapping them and making them squirm. Or, perhaps it’s two youngsters picnicking under a table that provide a more apt description. Taking to the ground to pretend they’re dogs while their elders talk above, the girls get a unique, secret view of the seemingly ordinary goings-on around them…"

Read the review

“Though men are present, this is very much a film about how women try to hold families together, even if they, too, tend to fight and bicker amongst themselves. “It’s a stupid job and stupid jobs are for men,” Eva explains when her daughter complains that her older brother gets to help grandpa with taking down a wasp nest. It’s one of these seemingly throwaway lines that suggests something about changing gender dynamics in the 1970s.”

Read the review

”The past is indeed a foreign country, which means it’s often filmed as such, with an eye for the exotic otherness that makes it an alien realm. But Sonja Kröner’s quietly assured, gently tragedy-tinged debut stands apart by rejecting that anachronistic approach and instead delivering a portrait of a bourgeois German family’s 1970s summer that feels deliciously and authentically present-tense."

Read the review

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ABOUT THE DUNEDIN FILM SOCIETY

ADMISSION

Free to members.  (The 6 remaining screenings for 2020 are also free.)

TO JOIN

Simply arrive ten minutes before the screening begins with payment (cash or cheque only please) and fill in a membership form. Subscriptions are as follows:

• Half-year waged membership: $35

• Half-year student/unwaged membership: $30

• Half-year junior membership (for senior secondary school students with ID only, 

subject to censorship restrictions): $15 

• Three-movie passes (may be shared by up to three people until all three 

admissions are used up): $25

To join between screenings:

Memberships and three-movie passes can be purchased from the reception desk at the OUSA office on the main campus of the University of Otago (located near the intersection of Cumberland and Albany Streets).  Payment by cash or cheque only. 

EXTRA DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE

Waged and student/unwaged members will receive discounts off the regular ticket price of all 2D screenings at the Rialto cinemas (Monday to Friday).

Please see our website for further details

We follow the New Zealand Government’s Covid-19 Alert Level 1 guidelines: 

- continue to keep a safe distance from people you don’t know

- continue good habits with face coverings

- continue contact tracing and hand-sanitiser

- keep up good hand washing practices, and cough or sneeze into your elbow

- please stay home if you are feeling unwell 

**The Red Lecture Theatre is located near the side entrance of the Scott Building, 260 Great King Street, across the road from the emergency entrance of the Dunedin Public Hospital and not far from the intersection with Hanover Street.

WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK!

...on this screening, or any other Dunedin Film Society showing, on dunedinfi...@gmail.com. 

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