FALL 2005

INTERNATIONAL CINEMA SERIES

Wednesdays, 6:30pm, Crabbe Library 108

 

All screenings are free and will be followed by discussion in the Library Café.

Click titles for links to reviews, interviews, and other related material.

For further links concerning international cinema, click here.

 

 

Contacts: Rob Sica, Sarah Tsiang, Neil Wright and The Office of International Education

 

 

Visit our friends at The Bluegrass Film Society

 

August 31

BLOODY SUNDAY  (Ireland/UK, 2002, 107 min.)

On Sunday January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland, British paratroopers killed thirteen unarmed men and boys and wounded fourteen others after a disturbance in the wake of a civil rights march.  Paul Greengrass’ award-winning documentary-style film is a recreation of the events of that fateful day known as “Bloody Sunday.”

September 7

MY LEFT FOOT  (Ireland/UK, 1989, 103 min.)

An inspiring adaptation of the autobiography of Christy Brown, an Irishman born with cerebral palsy who, despite being limited to the use of his left foot, eventually became an internationally-acclaimed writer, poet, and painter.  

September 14

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC  (France, 1928, 82 min.)

Carl Dreyer’s austere, intense, and transcendental rendering of the original record of the trial and execution of Joan of Arc not only remains one of the most admired movies ever made, but also features one of the most revered performances ever recorded on film. 

September 21

THE NASTY GIRL  (Germany, 1990, 93 min.)

A schoolgirl researching the wartime past of her small Bavarian hometown encounters increasingly hostile resistance as she gradually uncovers the truth in this stylistically jolting black comedy based on the true story of Anna Rosmus.

 

September 22, 7:30pm, Student Services Building Auditorium

Chautauqua Lecture Series

Anna Rosmus: “Seeking Equilibrium with Open Eyes: Unveiling Passau’s Denial”

 

September 28

BY CHANCE BALTHAZAR  (France, 1966, 95 min.)

In his most personal film, master film-maker Robert Bresson crafted a complex and allegorically suggestive portrait of the human condition through an elliptical and densely sensual chronicle of a donkey’s life under various owners.  “Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished,” famously claimed Jean-Luc Godard, “because this film is really the world in an hour and a half.”

October 5

THE SEVENTH SEAL  (Sweden, 1957, 96 min.)

In renowned Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s visually stunning religious allegory, a disillusioned medieval knight returns from the Crusades to his plague-ridden homeland and challenges Death to a game of chess.

October 18–6pm

FULL METAL JACKET  (UK/USA, 1987, 116 min.)

Stanley Kubrick's masterly and gripping portrait of American soldiers in training and in combat during the Vietnam Conflict will be followed by a discussion led by history professor Bob Topmiller.

October 19

SURE FIRE  (USA, 1990, 86 min.)

The entrepreneurial zealotry of a crafty small-town real-estate investor leads to tragedy of classic proportion in this searing critique of American mythology shot on location in the “Mormon Dixie” region of central Utah by fiercely independent and resourceful American film-maker Jon Jost. 

October 26

PRIEST  (UK, 1994, 105 min.)

Antonia Bird’s controversial seriocomic portrait of the Catholic Church concerns a young and earnest priest who arrives in Liverpool only to find himself increasingly conflicted by his sexual identity, a wary congregation, an unchaste and unabashedly liberal fellow priest, and a harrowing ethical challenge to his confessional vow of secrecy.

October 27

The Holy Girl  (Argentia, 2004, 106 min.)

October 29

THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS  (Italy, 1950, 75 min.)

Praised by Francois Truffaut as “the most beautiful film in the world,” director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini used naturalistic locations and non-professional actors to portray, through a series of vignettes, the life and spirit of St. Francis of Assisi during the beginnings of the Franciscan Order.

November 2

THE TASTE OF CHERRY  (Iran, 1997, 98 min.)

In this meditative exploration of life and death by Iran’s most internationally-acclaimed film-maker, a middle-aged man roams the outskirts of Tehran in his Range Rover and encounters people of various occupations and ethnicities in his quest for someone who will breach Islamic Law by helping him commit suicide.

November 9

THE BOOK OF LIFE  (USA, 1998, 63 min.)

In this adventurously stylized digital-video comedy by independent film-maker Hal Hartley, it is December 31, 1999 in New York City where Jesus Christ, Satan, and Christ’s assistant Magdelina (played by P.J. Harvey) debate and struggle over the Seven Seals, Armageddon and the meaning of life.  Featuring music by P.J. Harvey and Yo La Tango.

November 16

JAPÓN  (Mexico, 2002, 126 min.)

Abandoning a career in international law for film-making, 31 year-old Carlos Reygadas made his directorial debut with this boldly mysterious and visually ravishing existential exploration in which a brooding middle-aged painter who leaves the city for a village in a remote valley gradually recovers his will to live through the saintly beneficence of an elderly Indian woman.

November 21 – Monday, 6pm

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL  (UK, 1974, 93 min.)

This British cult classic parody of the Legend of King Arthur and the pursuit of the Holy Grail will be followed by discussion led by History Department professors David Sefton and Jennifer Spock.

November 30

THE LIZARD  (Iran, 2004, 115 min.)

This satiric film about an escaped convict who, while posing as a mullah, finds himself offering subversively humanist spiritual guidance to his congregation enjoyed huge success in Iranian theaters before being banned by censors in May of 2004.

December 7

WHY HAS BODHI-DHARMA LEFT FOR THE EAST?  (South Korea, 1989, 135 min.)

Several years were spent composing the captivating images of simple monastic life in the lush mountains of South Korea that pervade this unhurried observation of an aging master who guides the spiritual development of the young monk and orphan boy he will leave behind.  The title refers to a Zen koan.

December 14

THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN  (France, 1928, 28 min.)

Adapted from a script by iconoclastic drama theorist Antonin Artaud, this controversial landmark surrealist film is directed by Germaine Dulac – the first feminist film-maker and a seminal figure of 1920s French Avant-Garde cinema.

SIMON OF THE DESERT  (Spain/Mexico, 1965, 43 min.) 

Surrealist and satirist Luis Bunuel based the last of his twenty films made in Mexico upon the legendary fifth-century Syrian Saint Simon Stylites, revered for having spent the last thirty-six years of his life in devotion to God atop a pillar in the desert.