FALL 2004 INTERNATIONAL CINEMA SERIES
General Information
Time: All
screenings begin at 6:30pm
Location: Crabbe Library, Room
108 (except for “The Dreamlife of Angels” and
“Young Adam” in 128)
Contact: Rob Sica
All screenings are free and will be followed by discussion
in the Library Café.
Click titles for links to reviews, interviews, and related material.
Click here for
further links about international films.
01
September
JUDY BERLIN Eric
Mendelsohn, 2003, USA, 97 min., not rated
Best Director—Sundance Film Festival
A strangely protracted solar eclipse stimulates
residents of Babylon, Long Island to profound reconsideration of their lives in
this poetic and evocative rendering of American suburbia.
08
September
DOG DAYS Ulrich Seidl, 2001, Austria, 121 min., rated R
Grand Jury Prize—Venice Film Festival
Winner of the International Critics’ Prize at the
Bratislava Film Festival “for the pityless and ferocious
but also colorful portraying of a group of people in the lower Austrian middle
class, trapped in their loneliness, small time dreams and ambitions." In order to intensify the performances of its
mostly amateur actors, this film was shot in Viennese suburbs during three
summers in temperatures above 98.6°F.
15
September
THE CIRCLE Jafar Panahi, 2000, Iran, 91 min., not rated
Golden Lion—Venice Film Festival
Winner of the International Critics’ Prize
at the Venice Film Festival “for its imaginative blending of content and form,
to deal with the situation of women in any patriarchal society.” This
absorbing portrait of women in modern Tehran living under social and political
repression was banned by Iranian authorities until earning international
acclaim.
22
September
THE
DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS Erick Zonca, 1998,
France, 113 min., rated R
European Discovery of the Year & Best Actress—European Film
Awards
Winner of the International Critics’ Prize at the
Vienna Film Festival “for the authentic and realistic way in which Zonca depicts the doubts of the young generation on their
quest for their own formula of happiness, and for the outstanding performances
of the two leading actresses.” This
subtly-crafted film closely observes the strained bonds of friendship between
two young working-class women in Northern France.
29
September
SHOW ME LOVE Lukas Moodysson, 1998,
Sweden, 89 min., not rated
Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actress & Best
Screenplay—Swedish Film Institute
This coming-of-age comedy portrays with uncommon
candor the conflicts faced by two high-school girls in a small Swedish town
when an unlikely amorous relationship develops between them.
Live @ Your
Library: A Celebration of Japanese Culture
13 October TAMPOPO Juzo Itami, 1986, Japan, 114 min., not rated
18 October SONATINE Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, 1993, Japan, 93 min.,
rated R
20 October ONIBABA Kaneto Shindo, 1964, Japan, 103 min., not rated
27
October
TIME OUT Laurent
Cantet, 2001,
France, 128 min., rated PG-13
Best Actor & Best Director—National Society of Film Critics
Winner of the International Critics’ Prize
at the Vienna Film Festival “for a powerful, visually impressive portrayal of existential anguish
and alienation in a corporate society governed by competition, status and
success.” This is a
finely-tuned character-study about a married man who pretends to his family and
friends to have a fictitious job after having been fired from his real one, as
well as an acutely observed dramatization of the overwhelming effort required to maintain the deception.
03 November
HAPPY TOGETHER Wong
Kar-Wai, 1997, Hong Kong, 105 min., not rated
Best Director—Cannes Film Festival
This technically innovative and visually dynamic
study of loneliness and unrequited love concentrates upon a young gay couple
whose troubled relationship is severely aggravated when they relocate from Hong
Kong to Buenos Aires.
10
November
YOUNG ADAM David
Mackenzie, 2003, UK, 98 min., rated R
British Newcomer of the Year—London Critics Circle Film Awards
Characterized by its director as “an amoral moral
tale,” this atmospheric, noir-ish and introspective
thriller concerning a death and a love triangle is based on a novel by Scottish
beat writer Alexander Trocchi and set in the 1950s on
a barge traveling between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
17 November
SPRING, SUMMER, FALL,
WINTER …AND SPRING Kim Ki-Duk, 2003, South Korea, 102 min., rated R
Don Quixote Award, Youth Jury Award, & Netpac Award—Locarno Film
Festival
Set on a temple floating in a lake enclosed by forested mountains in
contemporary South Korea, this Buddhism-inspired story about cyclical renewal
is organized in five parts according to the film’s title and concerns an
elderly monk and his protégé.
01 December
WHAT
TIME IS IT THERE? Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001,
Taiwan, 116 min., not rated
Grand Prix, Best Director
& Best Supporting Actress—Asia-Pacific Film Festival
This arrestingly serene meditation on solitude,
loss and the passage of time concerns a young man who sells wristwatches on the
sidewalks of Taipei, his recently widowed mother, and a young woman who buys
the watch from his wrist before her flight to Paris.
08
December
THE OUTSKIRTS Pyotr Lutsik, 1998, Russia, 95 min., not rated
Don Quixote Award—Berlin Film Festival
Winner of the International Critics’ Prize at the
Chicago Film Festival “for its ironic recycling of classic Soviet cinema in
addressing a modern crisis,” this dryly satiric film follows a vengeful trio of
peasants from the Urals as they cross the country and scale the social
hierarchy in search of the officials responsible for selling their collective
farm to oil oligarchs.
15
December Mini-Double-Feature
LA
JETEE Chris Marker, 1963, France, 28 min., not rated
Prix Jean Vigo
Composed
almost entirely of still shots, this seminal experimental short-film transcends
its status as one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made by dwelling
with haunting intensity upon the interaction of desire, memory, and fate.
NIGHT
AND FOG Alain Resnais, 1955,
France, 31 min., not rated
Prix Jean Vigo
Set on
the desolate grounds of Auschwitz a decade after the liberation of the Nazi
concentration camps, this contemplative documentary is a cautiously poetic
exploration of memory, human evil and the limits of artistic
representation.