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21 Mar
Director Leos Carax - Boy Meets Girl
Leos Carax | France | 1984 | R16, 35mm, 100mns
Leos Carax’s critically acclaimed debut feature. “Shot in luminous black and white, Boy Meets Girl moves with the youthful, anarchic spirit of Godard's early work, endlessly detouring through surreal comedy, romantic philosophizing, and spontaneous flights of fancy.” –AV Club
28 Mar
Director Leos Carax- Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont Neuf)
Leos Carax | France | 1991 | M violence, offensive language, 35mm, 125mns
Leos Carax earned the title of enfant terrible with this ambitious love story set along the banks of the Seine. Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche portray two lovers from very different walks of life drawn together by l'amour fou. “The great urban expressionist fantasy of the 90s.” – Chicago Reader
04 Apr
On The Road - Two Lane Blacktop
Monte Hellman | USA | 1971 | M offensive language, DV, 102mns
With its gorgeous widescreen compositions and sophisticated look at American male obsession, this stripped-down narrative from maverick director Monte Hellman is one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema, and possibly the greatest road movie ever made.
11 Apr
Director – Claire Denis - 35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums)
Claire Denis | France/Germany | 2008 | M, DV, 100mns
This subtle, intimate portrait of the easygoing bond between a young woman and her widower father stars Alex Descas and Grégoire Colin. “The warmth radiating from 35 Shots of Rum… reminds viewers how rarely movies capture the easygoing love embodied in a functional family.” – Variety
18 Apr
Director – Claire Denis Beau Travail
Claire Denis | France | 1999 | M low level offensive language, DV, 93mns
Denis reimagines Melville’s Billy Budd as a tale of jealousy and homoerotic desire among a company of French Legionnaires in remote Djibouti. “Denis’ visual style is hypnotic, rapturous… she makes barren landscapes look gorgeous, hard men look vulnerable.” – Entertainment Weekly
25 Apr
Director – Claire Denis White Material
Claire Denis | France/Cameroon | 2009 | R16 violence, content may disturb, DV, 102mns
Isabelle Huppert is mesmerising as a French coffee plantation owner refusing to budge from a West Africa riven by civil war in Denis’ apocalyptic vision of the postcolonial present. “A tense, convulsive portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty.” – Village Voice
02 May
Documentary - Every Good Marriage Begins in Tears Simon Chambers, UK, 2006, + Cowboys in India Simon Chambers, UK, 2009, Every Good Marriage Begins in Tears, DV, 62mns
Director Simon Chambers follows the lives of young Bengali sisters—and close personal friends of his—as they travel from London to Bangladesh to undertake the arranged marriages that have long been planned for them.
Cowboys in India, DV, 72mns – (total 134mns).
British journalist Simon Chambers, director of this gently self-mocking travelogue, journeys to India in the hope of finding the answer to an honorable journalistic question: is it possible for a large industrial company to help a local community through corporate social responsibility? But the local community of Orissa will surely regret the day that Chambers drove into their town…
09 May
Classics - Deep End
Jerzy Skolimoski, UK/West Germany, 1971, R18, HD, 90mns
London’s swinging ’60s get a gothic makeover in this tale of an awkward teenager’s crush on a mod coworker, set in a seedy public bath. Starring Jane Asher, with music by Cat Stevens and Can. “The most brilliantly baleful British comedy of the era”– Guide to World Cinema
16 May
Classics - The Seashell and the Clergyman
Germaine Dulac, France, 1928, PG 40mns DV + The Blood of a Poet, Jean Cocteau, France, 1932, PG, 55mns, DV
Two typically enigmatic surrealist classics. The Seashell and the Clergyman is commonly regarded as the first surrealist film. Blood of a Poet is the debut film of artist Jean Cocteau, whose dreamlike imagery is still influencing filmmakers in the 21st century.
23 May
On The Road - Badlands
Terrence Malick | USA | 1973 | R16 violence, DV, 94mns
Malick’s first film is still one of American cinema’s most powerful and daring debuts. Starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. “Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a mid-western background.” – Dave Kehr
30 May
Classics - The Last Bolshevik (Le tombeau d’Alexandre)
Chris Marker | France/Finland | 1993 | PG coarse language, DV, 120mns
Although ostensibly about the life and works of the little-known Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin, Chris Marker’s masterful study provides an engrossing interrogation of Soviet cinema as an expression of Soviet history. “Eloquent and mordantly witty… Not to be missed.”– Chicago Reader
06 Jun
Contemporary Cinema - The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos)
Juan José Campanella | Argentina | 2009 | R16 violence, sexual violence, offensive language, DV, 129mns
A recently retired criminal court investigator decides to write a novel based on a 25-year-old cold case, which still haunts him. “This Oscar-winning Argentinian thriller packs emotional punch and a dazzlingly virtuosic narrative.” – The Observer
13 Jun
Pop Surrealism - Eraserhead
David Lynch, USA, 1977, M violence, DV, 85mns.
Three decades on, David Lynch’s debut feature, a self-described “dream of dark and troubling things”, remains a work of queasy genius. “It astounds through its expressionist sets and photography, the startling, sinister soundtrack, and relentless imaginative fluency.” – Time Out
20 Jun
Classics - Viva Maria
Louis Malle, France, 1965, PG, HD, 122mns
Starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as a pair of feisty vaudeville dancers and Mexican revolutionaries, Louis Malle’s campy comedy-adventure is an underappreciated jeu d’esprit gleaming with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière’s surrealist gags and anticlerical hijinks.
27 Jun
German Cinema – Dreileben Trilogy - Beats Being Dead (Etwas Besseres als den Tod)
Christian Petzold, Germany, 2011, HD, 88mns. Public Welcome.
A convicted killer escapes from police custody at the start of Petzold’s genre-bending and wonderfully unpredictable first installment. While the focus shifts to an offbeat romance between a shy hospital orderly and the Bosnian refugee he rescues from her abusive boyfriend, a police manhunt proceeds apace.
04 Jul - German Cinema – Dreileben Trilogy - Don't Follow Me Around (Komm mir nicht nach)
Dominik Graf, Germany, 2011, Censor’s rating tbc, HD, 88mns Public Welcome.
The second installment introduces a big-city police psychologist drafted into the manhunt who finds solace with an old friend with whom she shares a strange secret. Graf’s film deftly juxtaposes their personal drama with the ongoing search for the killer and a corruption scandal engulfing the police force.
11 Jul
German Cinema – Dreileben Trilogy - One Minute of Darkness (Eine Minute Dunkel)
Christoph Hochhäusler, Germany, censor’s rating tbc, HD, 90mns. Public Welcome.
Hochhäusler’s dark, memorably strange fairytale brings the escaped convict into sharp focus for the nail-biting conclusion of the series. As a grizzled police inspector hot on the trail uncovers some strange inconsistencies in the killer’s conviction, the man himself flees deeper into the possibly enchanted forest.
18 Jul
Documentary - Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgie de la luz)
Patricio Guzmán | France/Germany/Chile | 2010, DV, 90mns
Astronomy, archaeology and history are mesmerisingly interwoven and juxtaposed in this visually breathtaking meditation on Chile’s far distant and more recent past by the remarkable documentarian Patricio Guzmán. “Electrifying and unexpected.” – Hollywood Reporter
25 Jul
Contemporary Cinema - Black Sun
Werner Herzog, USA, 2010, G, DV, 90mns.
This profoundly beautiful film, which pushes the boundaries of documentary, was inspired by the experience of artist Hugues de Montalembert, who was blinded by muggers in 1978. “A film about blindness that makes us see the world hungrily, deeply, anew.” – Daily Telegraph
01 Aug
Classics - Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Oshima Nagisa UK/Japan, 1983, M violence, HD, 123mns.
Oshima’s startlingly unconventional war movie stars David Bowie as a NZ major imprisoned in a WWII Japanese POW camp who engages in a battle of wills with the fanatical camp commander, played by composer Sakamoto Ryuichi. “A thinking man’s Bridge on the River Kwai”– Cinematheque Ontario
08 Aug
Documentary - Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Pip Chodorov, France, 2011, DV, 82mns
Pip Chodorov’s film delves into the history of avant-garde cinema in Europe and the USA from early post-war pioneers through to the founding of New York’s Anthology Film Archives, survbeying a generation of artists who pushed the boundaries of the medium.
15 Aug
German Cinema - Kinshasa Symphony
Claus Wishman and Martin Baer, Germany, 2010, HD, 95mns. Public Welcome.
“A study of people in one of the world’s most chaotic cities doing their best to maintain one of the most complex systems of joint human endeavour: a symphony orchestra. A film about the Congo, the people in Kinshasa, and the power of music.” – New York African Film Festival
22 Aug
Documentary - Ilsa Negra Ilsa Blanca
Ventura Durall, Chile/Spain, 2004, DV, 56mns
After having travelled around the world, the poet Pablo Neruda had four homes built and renovated for him in his native Chile and in France. He wrote a good part of his work in these houses where he lived until 1973. This film explores the history of these houses which the poet and the architect erected together.
19 Sep
Contemporary Cinema - Anton Chekhov's The Duel
Dover Kosashvili, USA, 2010, M violence, nudity, DV, 95mns
This superbly acted English-language adaptation of an 1891 Chekhov novella brings shrewd understanding to its ageless tale of indiscretions, infidelity, rivalry and blackmail in a summer holiday resort. “Very satisfying and tonally precise” – NY Times
26 Sep
Contemporary Cinema - Tony Takitani
Ichikawa Jun | Japan | 2004 | M, DV, 75mns
An elegantly stylised adaptation of celebrated Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki’s strange story about a solitary illustrator who tastes fulfilment with a woman who can never have too many clothes. “An exquisite film, as elegant and precise as an impeccably cut diamond.” – LA Times
03 Oct
Screwball Comedy - Trouble in Paradise
Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1932, PG, DV, 83mns
More Continental sophistication and precise comic timing from Lubitsch, this time featuring a pair of prodigiously talented and charming con-artists (Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins) who target widow Kay Francis’s vast fortune by posing as her personal assistants.
10 Oct
Contemporary Cinema - Twin Sisters (De Tweeling)
Ben Sombogaart | The Netherlands | 2002 | M violence, offensive language, sex scenes, DV, 137mns.
As the Nazis rise to domination in Europe, twin sisters find themselves affiliated, inextricably, to opposite sides. This Dutch Oscar nominee is a lavish absorbing WWII historical drama adapted from Tessa de Loo’s bestseller. “Has the engrossing quality of a big historical novel.” – Variety
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