SUMMER
2005
INTERNATIONAL
FILM 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 related material.
For further links about international
films, click here.
Contacts:
Rob Sica,
Sarah Tsiang, Neil Wright and The Office of International Education (622-1478)
TRAINS
May 18
CLOSELY
WATCHED TRAINS (Jirí Menzel,
1966, Czechoslovakia, 93 min.)
This Academy
Award-winning classic of the 1960s Czech New Wave
humorously depicts the political and sexual awakening of a young railway worker
in a remote village during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.
May 25
THAT
OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (Luis Buñuel, 1977, France,
100 min.)
June 1
THE
STATION AGENT (Thomas McCarthy, 2003, USA, 90 min.)
NEW ASIAN CINEMA
June 8
AFTER LIFE (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998, Japan,
118 min.)
Life, death,
memory, and the nature of film-making are some of the weighty themes
imaginatively explored in this formally adventurous blend of fictional and
documentary elements in which a diverse group of twenty-two souls arrive at a
way station between life and death where they must choose only one memory to
take with them into the afterlife.
June 15
UNKNOWN
PLEASURES (Jia Zhang Ke,
2002, China, 113 min.)
From a leading director
of China’s newest generation of filmmakers, an artfully unflinching and
atmospheric profile of contemporary Chinese youth in the provincial city of Datong under the joint impact of globalization and rapid
economic transformation.
June 22
LAST LIFE IN
THE UNIVERSE (Pen-ek Ratanaruang,
2003, Thailand, 108 min.)
In this
visually rich and narratively enigmatic meditation on
fate, contingency and attraction, a reserved and suicidal Japanese librarian
living in Bangkok becomes involved with an unruly Thai bar girl when one
evening her sister’s sudden death prevents him from jumping off a bridge.
June 29
OASIS (Lee
Chang-dong, 2002, South Korea, 132 min.)
Societal
hypocrisy and familial callousness are sharply exposed in this audacious and
unforgettable portrait of an inspiringly unlikely romance between a mentally
handicapped young man and a young woman severely afflicted with cerebral palsy.
SHORT FILMS
July 6
TEN
MINUTES OLDER: THE TRUMPET (2002, 91 min.)
A highly diverse collection
of ten minute-long films about “time” by the following directors: Aki Kuarismaki(Finland),
Victor Erice(Spain), Werner Herzog(Germany), Jim Jarmusch(USA), Wim Wenders(Germany), Spike Lee(USA), and Chen Kaige(China).
July 13
TEN MINUTES
OLDER: THE CELLO (2002, 106 min.)
The companion to THE TRUMPET,
with films by Bernardo Bertulucci(Italy), Mike Figgis(UK), Jirí Menzel(Czechoslovakia), István Szabó(Hungary), Claire Denis(France), Volker Schlöndorff(Germany), Michael Radford(UK), and Jean-Luc Godard(France).
July 20
SURVIVING
DESIRE (Hal Hartley, 1991, USA, 55
min.)
A jaded college literature
professor’s intellectual crisis of faith intensifies when he becomes amorously entangled
with an ambitious student in this comedy by one of America’s foremost
independent film-makers.
THE SKYWALK IS GONE (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2002, Taiwan, 25 min.)
A former watch vendor and one
of his customers recently returned from abroad wander separately through
downtown Taipei in this austere elegy to the demolished Taipei Train Station
Skywalk.