2014 Schedule
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Opening Night: Wednesday 5 March, 7.30pm
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AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
Vincente Minnelli │ USA │ 1951 │ HD │ 113 mins │ G
Winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Cinematography and Best Score, Minnelli's enduring musical classic stars Gene Kelly as the eponymous Yank, a former G.I. trying to make a living as a painter. With a rich score of classic numbers by George and Ira Gershwin, this lavish romp through the City of Light culminates in one of the most famous dance numbers in all cinema: a groundbreaking, sixteen-minute-long ballet, mounted at the then astronomical cost of half a million dollars. - Toronto International Film Festival
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| Wednesday 12 March at 7:30 pm
TOMBOY
Céline Sciamma │ France │ 2011 │ Digital │ 82 mins │ M
When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, the young girl must make a new set of friends. With her short hair and boyish looks, Laure decides to pose as a boy…But as school approaches, and her friendship with Lisa turns into a budding romance, Laure/Mikael is going to have to reveal herself, no matter the consequences. Brilliantly capturing the thrill and anxiety of coming of age, Tomboy is a tender exploration of gender, friendship and identity wonderfully acted by its young cast. - Toronto International Film Festival |
| Wednesday 19 March at 7:30 pm
LOU REED'S BERLIN
Julian Schnabel │ USA │ 2007 │ HD │ 85 mins │ PG
Lou Reed recorded his ambitious, mesmerizing, and mournful concept album Berlin [in 1973]. Harsh reviews prevented him from performing the album live; three decades later, the critical assessment had turned, and the album was considered one of Reed’s best. With painter/filmmaker Julian Schnabel directing, Berlin was performed over five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn [in 2006]…The film Lou Reed’s Berlin is a wonderful chronicle of an unforgettable event. - NY Museum of the Moving Image |
| Wednesday 26 March at 7:30 pm
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
Bir zamanlar anadolu´da
Nuri Bilge Ceylan │Turkey│2011│150 mins│HD│M
A police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor, and two murder suspects venture into the Anatolian countryside in search of a dead body whose burial location has been forgotten by the confessed killer. The search proves difficult in the dark landscape of the steppes, while the men discover secrets and hypocrisies about the murder and themselves. This philosophically resonant work from Turkey's leading director won the 2011 Grand Jury prize at Cannes. 'A masterpiece… (Globe and Mail)' - Cornell Cinema |
| Wednesday 2 April at 7:30 pm *
ESTERHAZY
Izabela Plucinska│Germany/Poland│2009│25 mins│Digital
In this delightful animated short film, a gentle bunny called Esterhazy is sent to Berlin to find a larger wife in order to save the family line. There he finds a rabbits' Paradise, where hundreds of rabbits lived in the area protected by the Berlin Wall.
Followed by:
RABBIT A LA BERLIN
Królik po berlinsku
Bartek Konopka & Piotr Roslowski│Germany/Poland│2009│50 mins│Digital
The cold war has been examined from many perspectives, but only now are we getting the rabbit's point of view on the division of Europe in the postwar years. The Oscar-nominated documentary Rabbit à la Berlin tells the story of the thousands of wild rabbits who once thrived in the strip of no man's land on the eastern side of the Berlin wall…When it came down, they were expelled from Eden. - The Guardian
* Casual admission will be possible, in exchange for a small donation. | 
| Wednesday 9 April at 7:30 pm
TEN CANOES
Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr│Australia│2006│90 mins│HD│M
When they were making The Tracker, Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil suggested to de Heer that he make a film 'with my people on my land.' A few years later, the director found himself in Gulpilil's hometown of Ramingining in the Northern territory. The result was Ten Canoes, a wise, wry fable set before the arrival of Europeans, in which a group of men tell a cautionary tale on a ritual goose-egg hunting expedition. Drawing on photographs taken in the 1930s, it is a uniquely beautiful and narratively innovative film. - Time Out |
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Wednesday 16 April at 7:30 pm
ZAZIE DANS LE METRO
Louis Malle│France│1960│89 mins│Digital│PG
A brash and precocious ten-year-old comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle; he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this anarchic comedy from Louis Malle, which rides roughshod over the City of Light. Based on a popular novel by Raymond Queneau, Malle’s audacious Zazie dans le métro, made with flair on the cusp of the French New Wave, is a bit of stream-of-consciousness slapstick, wall-to-wall with visual gags, editing tricks, and effects. - Criterion |
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Wednesday 23 April at 7:30 pm
VANYA ON 42ND STREET
Louis Malle│USA│1994│119 mins│Digital│G
In the early '90s, theater director André Gregory mounted a series of private performances of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a Manhattan playhouse. This experiment in pure theater—featuring a remarkable cast of actors, including Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, and George Gaynes—would have been lost had it not been captured on film, with subtle cinematic brilliance, by Louis Malle. Malle's film, which turned out to be his last, is a tribute to the playwright’s devastating work as well as to the creative process itself. -Criterion |
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Wednesday 30 April at 7:30 pm
TOOMELAH
Ivan Sen│Australia│2011│106 mins│HD│R16
Located on the border between Queensland and NSW, Toomelah is an Aboriginal community where 10-year-old Daniel is growing up the hard way. He lives with his mother and grandmother, while his father, an ex-boxer and meth addict, seems to have no roof over his head at all. Filmed on location using a cast of mainly non-professional actors,Toomelah is a powerful and disturbing view of Aboriginal outback life, a place where there seems to be no employment, no future and very little in the way of love. - ABC |
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Wednesday 7 May at 7:30 pm
THE CONNECTION
Shirley Clarke│USA│1962│110 mins│HD│Tbc
Premiering at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, Shirley Clarke's feature debut was an adaptation of Jack Gelber's off-Broadway play about a documentary crew who film a group of junkies waiting to score in a downtown loft. With Clarke's earlier associations with the cinéma vérité movement, plus the film's aesthetic qualities - hand-held camera, fast black-and-white stock - The Connection...self-reflexively portrays and betrays cinéma vérité. Furthermore, by framing the action through a fictional white male film director, the distinct gender and race politics at play in Clarke's adaptation cannot be ignored. - ACMI |
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Wednesday 14 May at 7:30 pm
PORTRAIT OF JASON
Shirley Clarke│USA│1967│105 mins│HD│Tbc
Shirley Clarke's portrait of 'Jason', a gay, black, self-described hustler, is widely considered her masterpiece. A unique documentary hybrid, the film was shot in one continuous 12-hour sitting in Clarke's apartment at the Chelsea Hotel. As Clarke and her partner stayed off-camera prompting and, at times, wilfully goading Jason, he tells tales, impersonates, breaks down and gets back up again. His monologue is hilarious, poignant and full of contradictions. It captures 'a single character knowingly doing an emotional striptease for public consumption', that 'addresses questions of power and resistance in relation to both sexual and social identities.' - ACMI |
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Wenesday 21 May at 7:30 pm
SAMSON AND DELILAH
Warwick Thornton│Australia│2009│101 mins│HD│R16
Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton's debut feature, is a near silent, sun-bleached love story that plays out delicately between two teens living in a rundown community in the Australian desert. At first, it’s Samson who does all the chasing, but when Delilah’s grandma dies and the community blames her, she seeks companionship with Samson. Thornton is brilliant at capturing the isolation that marks these kids’ lives and inviting us into their bubble, a place where we see tenderness behind rough exteriors and understand the prejudices they face. - Time Out |
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Wednesday 28 May at 7:30 pm
LUMUMBA
Raoul Peck│France/Belgium/Germany/Haiti│2000│115 mins│Digital│M
Lumumba is potent stuff. Complex, powerful, intensely dramatic, its compelling depiction of an African political tragedy echoes Woodrow Wilson's [assessment of] Birth of a Nation: 'It is like writing history with lightning.' The tragedy is not only that of Patrice Lumumba, a man whose career had the trajectory of a skyrocket. He was not yet 35 when he became the first prime minister of the newly independent Congo in 1960, one of the continent's most promising leaders. Two months later he was out of power; six months after that, he was dead. It was a calamity for his country and for Africa's place in the world. - LA Times |
University of Otago Inter-Semester Break
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Wednesday 9 July at 7:30
PRIVILEGE
Peter Watkins│UK│1967│103 mins│HD│ PG
After directing several extraordinary documentaries for the BBC, including the award-winning Culloden, Peter Watkins made his first dramatic feature with this flawed but striking film about Steven Shorter, a pop singer in a future society whose music and image are used to channel the impulses of rebellious youth in a society where entertainment is controlled by a totalitarian government…When Shorter's handlers decide to revamp his image into that of an obedient, religious boy, he rebels, to his peril…Privilege later became something of a cult film; one of the film's admirers was rock poet Patti Smith, who recorded one of 'Steven Shorter''s songs, 'Set Me Free,' on her 1978 album Easter. -Mark Deming, Rovi |
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Wednesday 16 July at 7:30 pm
IF...
Lindsay Anderson│UK│1968│111 mins│Digital
Lindsay Anderson's If…is a daringly anarchic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England. Before Kubrick made his mischief iconic in A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell made a hell of an impression as the insouciant Mick Travis, who, along with his school chums, trumps authority at every turn, finally emerging as a violent savior in the vicious games of one-upmanship played by both students and masters. Mixing color and black and white as audaciously as it mixes fantasy and reality,If…remains one of cinema’s most unforgettable rebel yells. - Criterion |
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Wednesday 23 July at 7:30 pm *
NOTES FOR A COASTLINE
Zoe Roland│NZ│2004│26 mins│Digital
Notes for a Coastline is an essayist documentary about cultural memory with regard to place; in this instance, Gore Bay, a beach settlement in the South Island of New Zealand.
Followed by:
MARTI: THE PASSIONATE EYE
Shirley Horrocks│NZ│2004│73 mins│Digital
Marti: the passionate eye traces the dramatic history of Marti Friedlander, one of New Zealand’s leading photographers, alongside the major social changes she recorded. She has photographed New Zealand’s best-known artists, collaborated with Michael King on a famous series of Maori portraits, and documented many protest activities including the Springbok Tour and the Women’s Movement. Marti talks frankly about the art of photography, her life, and the fascinating people and events she has portrayed.
* Casual admission will be possible, in exchange for a small donation. |
New Zealand International Film Festival, Dunedin, 31 July - 17 August 2014
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Wednesday 20 August at 7:30 pm
5 BROKEN CAMERAS
E. Burnat & G. Davidi│Palestine/Israel/France/Netherlands│2011│94mins│Digital│M
An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of village turmoil. - Kino Lorber |
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Wednesday 27 August at 7:30 pm
O’HORTEN
Bent Hamer│Norway/Germany/France/Denmark│2007│90 mins│Digital│M
Scrupulously observed and crisply shot, this entrancing, eccentric comedy paints a wistful picture of Odd Horten (Baard Owe), a routine-bound train engineer whose retirement after 40 years sends him a little off track. After a farewell party where his colleagues give him the railroad salute (they stand and imitate the sound of a locomotive) and play Norwegian train trivia, his life turns surreal. He meets a child who mimics the sound of a train on the drums, goes to a restaurant where the cook is arrested, and befriends a cheery inventor genius who drives his car around town by memory with his eyes closed. -NOW |
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Wednesday 3 September at 7:30 pm *
COLOUR OF THE OCEAN
Die Farbe des Ozeans
Maggie Peren│Germany/Spain│2011│95 mins│Digital
A small boat washes ashore on an island off the coast of Spain. The African refugees aboard are dehydrated and close to death, including a man desperately seeking a better life for his son. A vacationing German woman provides the little water that she has and rushes off to get more. While she’s gone, the authorities arrive, including a young officer with a troubled personal life. These three characters and their intertwined stories make up Maggie Peren’s The Colour of the Ocean, a hard-hitting drama that uses this structure to explore the inherent virtues and dangers of compassion. - Toronto International Film Festival
* Casual admission will be possible, in exchange for a small donation. |  |
Wednesday 10 September at 7:30 pm
BAMAKO
Abderrahmane Sissako│Mali/USA/France│2006│115 mins│Digital│PG
Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako’s seething, complicated and disarmingly beautiful investigation of Africa’s social, economic and human crises, is a work of cool intelligence and profound anger, a long, dense, argument that is also a haunting visual poem…His central conceit is at once simple and daring…In a courtyard in a poor section of Bamako, Mali’s capital, magistrates in robes sit at a table, taking notes and shuffling through files as they listen to testimony from witnesses and advocates. On trial is not a person but the World Bank — which is to say, global capitalism — itself. - New York Times |
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Wednesday 17 September at 7:30 pm *
BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A METROPOLIS
Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt
Walter Ruttmann│Germany│1927│65 mins│Digital
The great ‘city symphonies’ of the silent era celebrated the pulsating life of the streets.Berlin was the joint effort of Carl Mayer, the expressionist scenarist; Karl Freund, the great cameraman; and Walther Ruttmann, at the time an abstract filmmaker. For all its basis in reality - capturing a late spring day in the German capital, from dawn to midnight - it was conceived as an abstract artwork, rigorously organized according to musical principles. The filmmakers wandered the city for over a year, filming from high buildings, in tunnels and sewers. They popularized the Russian Dziga Vertov’s kino-eye technique in a film that was shown around the world and still stands as a great achievement of urban cinematic art. - Pacific Film Archive
Please note that there will be a brief intermission between films.
Followed by:
MELODY OF THE WORLD
Melodie der Welt
Walter Ruttmann│Germany│1929│49 mins│Digital
This 'documentary' about the ocean liner Resolute’s around-the-world cruise may very well be Germany’s first sound film. Although he was not on the voyage himself, Ruttmann “organized” the visuals shot by his cameraman, adding ambient sounds and music to create a compelling visual and aural tour of the globe. - MOMA
* Casual admission will be possible, in exchange for a small donation. |  |
Wednesday 24 September at 7:00 pm
GRIN WITHOUT A CAT
Le fond de l'air est rouge
Chris Marker│France│1977/1993│177 mins│Digital│G
Chris Marker's remarkable documentary about the rise and fall of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s was originally released in 1977, but was reworked in 1993 in the wake of the Cold War's end and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Grin Without a Cat is divided into two parts. The first part, called "Fragile Hands,' focuses on the emergence of leftist movements circa 1967, the Vietnam War serving as the lightning rod for radicals of all stripes to come together to agitate for their utopian dreams. The second part, entitled 'Severed Hands,' details the slow demise of the invigorated left, from forces within (the discord between different factions) and without (the role of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in keeping the countries in their backyards in line). - Elbert Ventura, Rovi
Please note the earlier starting time. |  |
Wednesday 1 October at 7:30 pm
THE CRUCIFIED LOVERS
Chikamatsu manogatari
Mizoguchi Kenji│Japan│1954│102 mins│HD│PG
Set in feudal Japan, ‘Chikamatsu Monogatari’ is an adaptation of a famous kabuki play by the sixteenth-century master Chikamatsu Monzaemon, about a merchant's wife and an employee of her husband's who become compromised by circumstances and are forced to flee after being accused of adultery. Only then do they become lovers. Their illicit passion not only questions the rigid hierarchic codes that govern the society through which they move, but sweeps aside the relevance of that hierarchy. It's a film marked by breathtaking refinement on every level, with tantalising echoes of ‘Empire of the Senses’. - Time Out |
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Wednesday 8 October at 7:30 pm
CHINESE TAKEAWAY
Un cuento chino
S. Borensztein│Argentina│2011│93 mins│Digital│M
Roberto, the misanthropic owner of a hardware store, spends his time counting screws to make sure the supplier hasn’t shortchanged him, and clipping stories of weird deaths out of the newspaper. Eventually he encounters Jun, a Chinese man who speaks no Spanish and has been dumped by a taxi on the streets of Buenos Aires in search of an uncle who has left no forwarding address…Though Roberto tries to fob Jun off, no one, from the police to the Chinese consulate, will accept responsibility. And so Roberto’s hidden humanity is revealed as he grudgingly opens his home to Jun and builds a tentative friendship. - Time Out |
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Wednesday 15 October at 7:30 pm
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Nicolas Roeg│UK│1976│139 mins│HD│ R18
'Thomas Newton' falls like an apple to earth. His diaphanous being has taken the form of David Bowie, androgynous earthling of the orange hair, pale skin, sad eyes. With a business partner, the alien establishes World Enterprises, an empire of images, in order to finance his journey home. The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote of the re-release, 'Time has done nothing to reduce its cool, confounding strangeness. Here is a sci-fi movie dedicated to the notion that no planet, anywhere else in the galaxy, would look half as freakish as our own would to the inquiring visitor.' - Brooklyn Art Museum |
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