—SPRING 2006—

INTERNATIONAL CINEMA SERIES

SUMMER 2004 FALL 2004 SPRING 2005 SUMMER 2005 FALL 2005

Wednesdays, 6:30pm, Crabbe Library 108

All screenings are free and 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

MAKHMALBAF

January 18

A MOMENT OF INNOCENCE (Iran, 1997, 77 min.)

In 1974, as a 17 year-old Islamic militant rebelling against the reign of the Shah, Mohsen Makhmalbaf stabbed a young policeman and served six years in prison until his release after the Islamic revolution. Over two decades later, the renowned film-maker returns to this fervent moment of his past with pathos, humor and wisdom in a cinematic meditation on the nature of memory, the film-making process, and the redemptive power of art.

January 25

THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN (Iran, 2000, 78 min.)

Structured around three distinct seasons of life and shot off the southern coast of Iran on Kish Island, this stylistically variegated triptych concerning the plight of contemporary Iranian women marks a powerful and uncommonly assured directorial debut by Marziyeh Meshkini – wife of Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

February 1

BLACKBOARDS (Iran, 2000, 84 min.)

Two itinerant teachers with blackboards strapped to their backs wander through the harsh mountainous border region between Iran and Iraq in search of pupils in an affirmative allegory of the human condition portrayed with documentary intensity.  Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s daughter Samira was only 20 years old when she directed this film, and she remains the youngest winner of the Cannes Jury Prize.

YOUTH

February 8

NOBODY KNOWS (Japan, 2004, 140 min.)

Hirokazu Koreeda’s resolutely unsentimental but unfailingly compassionate portrait of a resourceful 12 year-old boy’s efforts to sustain himself and his younger siblings who have been abandoned by their mother in a Tokyo apartment was inspired by actual events in 1988 known as “The Affair of the Four Abandoned Children of Nishi-Sugamo.”

Thursday, February 9, 6pm – The EKU HISTORY CLUB presents

MISSISSIPPI BURNING (USA, 1988, 127min.)

Alan Parker’s controversial historical thriller based upon the FBI’s investigation of the 1963 murders of three civil rights workers will be followed with discussion led by the History Department’s Dr. Carolyn Dupont.

February 15

THE PROMISE (Belgium, 1996, 94 min.)

In the Dardenne brothers’ trenchant tale of moral awakening inspired by an exchange in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a 15 year-old boy finds himself in the grip of a transformative crisis of conscience when, in order to honor his promise to a dying man, he must defy his corrupt father, an Antwerp slumlord who smuggles and exploits illegal immigrants.

February 22

LILYA 4-EVER (Sweden, 2000, 109 min.)

Loosely based on the short life of Dangoule Rasalaite, a 16 year-old Lithuanian girl who, in January 2000, took her life in the city of Malmö after months of forced prostitution, Lukas Moodysson’s harrowing and unforgettable film has been promoted by the United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, the U.S. State Department, and other international organizations in their campaign to raise awareness of human trafficking and the global sex trade.

OLD & NEW

March 1

THE HOLE (Taiwan, 1998, 93 min.)

It is the final week of the 20^th century in Taipei, rain is pouring down incessantly, an epidemic is causing people to behave like cockroaches, entire sections of the city have been quarantined, and the water supply will soon be cut off in acclaimed Malaysian-born Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang’s intimate allegorical exploration of urban loneliness and the yearning for connection – punctuated by four effervescent musical fantasy sequences.

March 8

BROTHERS (Denmark, 2004, 110 min.)

In Susanne Bier’s devastatingly intense psychological drama, the return home of a deeply traumatized Danish soldier presumed killed during UN military operations in Afghanistan sets the stage for a conflagration when he suspects that his wife has become amorously involved with his shiftless younger brother.

Tuesday, March 21, 6:30pm – THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & THEATRE Presents

THE WOODSMAN (USA, 2003, 87 min.)

In perhaps the most demanding performance of his career, Kevin Bacon portrays a pedophile struggling to secure a normal life after serving twelve years in prison. Nicole Kasell’s carefully sympathetic debut is based on a play by co-writer Steven Fechter who will be present for an after-screening Q&A and reception in the Library’s Grand Reading Room.

March 22

THE WORLD (China, 2004, 105 min.)

In the first of his four films to enjoy approval from the Chinese government and be shown legally within mainland China, internationally-renowned film-maker Jia Zhang-Ke subtley scrutinizes the cultural, interpersonal and existential impact of the rapid economic development underway in his country by focusing on the wistful lives of young provincial workers at Beijing’s World Park.

March 29

THE SWAMP (Argentina, 2001, 100 min.)

Eschewing conventional narrative expectations, writer and director Lucrecia Martel leapt into international prominence with this densely atmospheric and acutely detailed profile of the Argentinean middle class set on a humid plateau in the northwestern province of Salta, the city in which she was raised.

April 5

DISTANT (Turkey, 2002, 105 min.)

As a jaded and disillusioned photographer living in Istanbul adapts to the intrusion into his solitary life by an aimless cousin from the countryside, the discovery that his ex-wife will soon be moving to Canada with her new husband stimulates him to a subtly transformative reconsideration of life in this patiently observed and semi-autobiographical meditation on modern urban life written, directed, photographed, co-edited, and produced in his place of birth by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

VISIONS

April 12

HUKKLE (Hungary, 2002, 77 min.)

In this pleasantly bizarre, nearly wordless, and triumphantly unclassifiable debut by 27 year-old György Pálfi, a murder mystery in a rural Hungarian village on a hot summer day provides the unlikely material for an extraordinary naturalistic portrait of intricate and fragile inter-dependencies among humans, animals, and the world we share.

Tuesday, April 18, 7:00pm – THE EKU CAMPUS GREENS Present

THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE (USA, 2005, 62 min.)

Former Christian fundamentalist Brian Flemming’s controversial examination of contemporary Christianity and several of its central historical assumptions – featuring scholars of history, religion, anthropology, and evolutionary biology – will be followed by discussion in Room 108.

April 19

VISIONS OF EUROPE (25 countries, 2004, 140 min.)

Twenty-five directors representing each country of the new European Union were invited to “give a personal vision of current or future life in this coming melting pot” in the form of a five minute short film. Among the featured directors are Peter Greenaway (UK), Bela Tarr (Hungary), Barbara Albert (Austria), Aki Kaurismäki (Finland), and the late Theo Van Gogh (Netherlands) who was assassinated on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004.

April 26

IF YOU WERE ME (South Korea, 2003, 110 min.)

Among the prominent Korean directors asked by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea to direct this stylistically eclectic compilation of six short films creatively devoted to the topics of discrimination and human rights in Korea is internationally-celebrated “Oldboy” director Park Chan-wook whose compassionate and virtuosic segment focuses on the true story of a disoriented Nepali immigrant woman.

May 3

TROPICAL MALADY (Thailand, 2004, 118 min.)

In his atmospheric “memoir of love and darkness” shot in the jungles of northeastern Thailand, leading experimental Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul uses uniquely cinematic resources to transform a romance between a handsome forest ranger and a shy young country boy into a mysterious contemporary engagement with indigenous folklore and myth.

May 10

TIME OF THE WOLF (Austria/France/Germany, 2003, 109 min.)

Though he had written it nearly a decade earlier, not until after the September 11 attacks was renowned Austrian director Michael Haneke able to raise finances for this austere, allegorically suggestive, and ultimately hopeful vision of a family's struggle to survive in the aftermath of an unspecified global catastrophe.   Recent commentators have noted an additional poignancy to this film in light of the dire events surrounding the dramatic breakdown in social order in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.