SPRING 2005
INTERNATIONAL CINEMA SERIES
All screenings are free and will be
followed by discussion in the Library Café.
Click titles for links to reviews,
interviews, and related material.
For further links about international
films, click here.
Contacts: Rob Sica,
Neil Wright, and Office of International Education
(622-1478)
ARS
CINEMA—Wednesdays, 6:30pm, Crabbe Library 108
12 January
GOOD
WORK Claire Denis, 1999, France, 90 min., not rated
Best Cinematography—National Society of Film Critics, USA
Set on a
contemporary French Foreign Legion outpost of Djibouti in East Africa, this
poetic and elliptical adaptation of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd
explores with sensuous intensity the complex antagonism between a new recruit
and an envious officer.
19 January
DOLLS Takeshi Kitano, 2002, Japan, 113 min., not rated
Golden Award—Damascus Film Festival
From one of
Japan’s most highly-acclaimed film-makers, an operatic and visually ravishing
trio of interwoven contemporary stories about love and mortality adapted from
17th century Bunraku puppetry.
26 January
OLDBOY Park Chan wook, 2004, South Korea, 118 min., not rated
Directed by a
leader of the recent flowering of South Korean cinema and winner of the
prestigious Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, this spirited
and highly stylized amalgamation of Kafka, Sophocles, and Quentin Tarantino
concerns a man seeking vengeance upon those who mysteriously held him in
captivity for 15 years.
THE
DISTAFF—Thursdays, 6:30pm, Crabbe Library 108
10 February
WHAT
ALICE FOUND A. Dean Bell, 2003, USA, 96
min., rated R
Special Jury Prize for Emotional Truth—Sundance Film
Festival
While en
route to Florida after having run away from her New Hampshire home, a desperate
and naive 18 year-old girl finds herself absorbed in unforeseen moral
complexities after accepting help at a rest stop from an older couple traveling
the interstate in their RV.
17 February
TEN Abbas Kiarostami, 2002, Iran, 92 min., not rated
In Competition—Cannes Film Festival
Iran’s most
revered film-maker depicts the lives of contemporary Iranian women through the
prism of ten conversations in a car traveling amid modern Tehran. In order to foster “the disappearance of
direction,” Kiarostami confined himself to the use of
two digital video cameras fixed to the vehicle’s dashboard.
24 February
ROSETTA Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999, Belgium, 95 min., rated R
Golden Palm, Best Actress, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury:
Special Mention—Cannes Film Festival
A young
woman in an economically-depressed industrial city struggles for dignity
through employment in this fiercely realistic film which stimulated a reform of
Belgian youth labor law known as the “Rosetta Plan.”
3 March
THE
PIANO TEACHER Michael Haneke,
2001, Austria, 130 min., not rated
Grand Prize of the Jury, Best Actress, Best Actor—Cannes
Film Festival
A sternly reserved piano instructor at a prestigious Viennese
conservatory becomes involved in a harrowing relationship with a brash young
student in this acute and demanding adaptation of the most popular novel by
last year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Elfriede
Jelinek.
BLACK AND WHITE—Wednesdays, 6:30pm, Crabbe Library
108
16 March
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966, Algeria/Italy, 123 min.,
not rated
Golden Lion, International Federation of Film Critics
Award—Venice Film Festival
In August
2003, the U.S. Defense Department held a Pentagon screening of this classic
political film about the Algerian struggle for independence from France. Find out why.
23 March
RASHOMON
Akira Kurosawa, 1951,
Japan, 83 min., not rated
Golden Lion, Italian Film Critics Award—Venice Film Festival
30 March
ALEXANDER
NEVSKY Sergei Eisenstein, 1938, USSR, 107 min., not rated
INFERNO—Thursdays,
6:30pm, Crabbe Library 108
14 April
BLIND
SHAFT Li Yang, 2003, Hong Kong/China, 92 min., not
rated
Silver Bear—Berlin Film Festival
In this astringent
tale of personal moral decline and regeneration within an environment of
political and economic corruption, two miners carry out a deadly
compensation-claim scheme in China’s notoriously dangerous mining industry.
21 April
IN
THIS WORLD Michael Winterbottom,
2002, UK, 88 min., rated R
Golden Bear, Peace Film Award, Prize of the Ecumenical
Jury—Berlin Film Festival
One of
Britain’s most prolific and versatile film-makers depicts the harrowing journey
of two Afghan refugees as they make their escape to London for a better life
after the onset of the 2001 U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.
28 April
SEPTEMBER
11 11 directors, 2002,
11 countries, 135 min., not rated
UNESCO
Award, International Federation of Film Critics Award—Venice Film Festival
The
following directors were each asked to make an eleven minute short film in
reaction to the September 11 attacks: Youssef Chahine
(Egypt), Amos Gitai (Israel), Alejandro González Ińárritu (Mexico), Shohei Imamura (Japan), Claude Lelouch
(France), Ken Loach (UK), Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran),
Mira Nair (India, USA), Idrissa Ouedraogo
(Burnkina Faso), Danis Tanovic (Bosnia), Sean Penn (USA).