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GARY MOSS LECTURE
Filmmaker Gary Moss will give a talk on Atlanta movie censorship in the silent era and present a screening of his film, Damaged Goods, on Tuesday, September 12, 2000, at 11:30am in White Hall, 112. This event is free to the community. For more information, please call 404/727-6761.
Ghost tales are a perennially popular genre in Japanese literature and theater, and have given rise to several of Japan's best-loved films. The Film Studies Program at Emory University and the Consulate General of Japan are pleased to co-sponsor a series of three films in conjunction with JapanFest 2000. Each film is directed by a member of a different generation of filmmakers: Mizoguchi Kenji, a pre- and post-war master; Kobayashi Masao, one of the post-World War II humanists; and Shinoda Masahiro, a member of the Japanese New Wave (1960s onward). In combination, these three films give us a sense of how the genre has evolved over three decades. All three films will be shown in 35mm. They are free and open to the community. For more information, please call 404/727-6761. Thursday, September 14
7:30pm, White Hall 205
Ugetsu Monogatari ("Stories of Moonlight After the Rain," 1953; 96 minutes). Master director Mizoguchi Kenji's film adapts two 18th century short stories to create one of the cinema's acknowledged masterpieces. Two poor villagers dream of wealth, power and fame. One comes under the spell of a seductive ghost princess, while the other cheats his way to becoming a samurai. As they pursue their goals in war-torn, late 16th century Japan, their wives suffer. Winner of a Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, Ugetsu is a key example of Mizoguchi's biting criticism of male vanity alongside female intelligence and compassion, and of the director's extraordinarily beautiful cinematography and staging. Cast with leading film stars of the fifties (Kinuyo Tanaka, Machiko Kyo, and Masayuki Mori), it is generally regarded as one of the greatest Japanese films ever made.Thursday, September 21
7:30pm, White Hall 205
Yashagaike ("Demon Pond," 1979; 124 minutes). Japanese New Wave director Shinoda Masahiro's version of a popular Kabuki play by B. K. Izumi. Demon Pond features stage legend Tomasaburo Bando, the most prominent onnogata of the 1970s and 1980s, as both the Shirayuki, a dragon spirit inhabiting a village pond, and Yuri, a village wife who believes her husband has abandoned her and whose garden the pond waters. As in Double Suicide and his other films, Shinoda retains the theatrical conventions of the original, and uses the town leaders' aggressive treatment of the wife as a vehicle for political allegory.Thursday, September 28
7:30pm, White Hall 205
Kwaidan ("Ghost Stories," 1963; 164 minutes). Kobayashi Masaki, best known for his samurai films Harakari, Samurai Rebellion, and his epic trilogy The Human Condition, chose for his first color film to adapt four ghost tales from the short stories of 19th century emigre author Lafcadio Hearn. In recounting the stories of a wayward husband, a blind musician, a samurai with prophetic abilities and two woodcutters, Kobayashi created an aesthetic masterpiece that is a landmark in Japanese film. Starring Nakadai Tatsuya, and the winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Kwaidan will provide an interesting comparison with the production mounted at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
Click on the links below to take you where you want to go:
A Tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, Sept. 12-26, 2002
Spiritualities, Fall 2002 semester
Artists and Models, the Spring 2003 35mm film series
Anna Everett, "Symptoms of an Archive Fetish: Reflections on Returning the Gaze" Jan. 27, 2003
Rick Butler, Production Designer, showing Chelsea Walls and Tic Code, Feb. 25-27
The Samurai in Post-War Japanese Film, Feb. 27-Mar. 20, 2003
To Have and To Hold, Feb. 21-Mar. 7, 2003
Barbara Klinger, "The Titanic Haircut," Apr. 7
Festival of Classic Indian Films, May 17-23
Class Screening Schedules , Spring Semester 2003
Festival of Classic Indian Films, May 17-23
Sponsored by the Film Studies Program, the Asian Studies Program, the Georgia-Indo American Chamber of Commerce, and the Halle Institute for Global Learning
All films will be shown in DVD format (except for Bawandar, which will be in 35mm) in White Hall 205 at 7:30 PM
All films are in Hindi with English subtitles
Saturday, May 17
Bawandar (Sandstorm)
(Jag Mundhra, director, 2001, in Hindi and Rajasthani with English subtitles, color, 120 minutes)
Sandstorm is an eloquent, visually stunning drama about the miscarriage of justice in a village outside Jaipur. Based on real events, it featues a riveting performance by Nandita Das (Fire, Earth) as Saanvri, a low caste woman wo works for a government-spon sored women’s program. Her activism rankles the community leaders who beat her husband and gang rape her in his presence. But Saanvri refuses to be silenced or to play the shamed victim, and with her spouse’s support she takes on a corrupt judicial system.
Director Jag Mundhra will speak briefly before and after the film.
There will be a $5.00 per person admission charge for this event only.
Monday, May 19
Awara (The Tramp)
(Raj Kapoor, director, 1951, black & white, 193 minutes)
Having built his won studio at Chembur in Bombay with the profits of Barsaat (1949), Kapoor launched his most famous film collaborating with the unit most closely associated with his work: scenarists Abbas and Sathe, song-writers Shailendra and Hasrat, art director Achrekar, cameraman Karmakar and composers Shankar-Jaikishen. Set in Bombay, the plot concerns Raju (Kapoor), the estranged son of Judge Raghunath (P. Kapoor), who finds a surrogate father in the criminal Jagga (Singh), the dacoit who caused Raju’s mother (Chitnis) to be thrown out of her home.
Tuesday, May 20
Bharat Mata (Mother India)
(Mehbob Khan, director, 1957, color, 168 minutes)
This film has acquired the status of an Indian Gone With the Wind (1939), massively successful and seen as a national epic, although formally the film’s rhythms and lyrical rualism seem closer to Dovzhenko’s later work finished by Yulia Solntseva. The film is a remake in color and with drastically different imagery of Mehboob’s own Aurat (1940), notably in the heavy use of psychoanalytic and other kinds of symbolism (the peasants forming a chorus outlining a map of India).
Wednesday, May 21
Kaagaz ke Phool (Paper Flowers)
(Guru Dutt, director, 1959, black & white, 153 minutes)
The commercial failure of this film on its initial release prompted Guru Dutt, by some accounts, to stop taking directorial credit for his films. The baroque, quasi-autobiographical fantasy has over time become his best-known film next to Pyaasa (1957) and could be regarded as India’s equivalent of Citizen Kane (1941). It tells, in flashback, the story of Suresh Sinha (Dutt), a famous film director. Brilliantly rendered by V. K. Murthy’s astonishing CinemaScope camerawork, the film dramatizes the conflict between open and constricted spaces, between spaces controlled by the director and spaces constraining him.
Thursday, May 22
Sholay (Flames of the Sun)
(Ramesh Sippy, director, 1975, color, 199 minutes)
Massively popular adventure film shot in 70mm. India’s best-known “curry” western patterned on Italian westerns with admixtures of romance, comedy, feudal costume drama and musicals. In addition, it is peppered with elements frome.g. Burt Kennedy, Sam Peckinpah, Chaplin and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The revenge plot has two adventurous crooks, Veeru (Dhaarmendra) and Jaidev (Bachchan) who are hired by ex-cop Thakur Baldev Singh (Kumar) to hunt down the dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) who massacred Thakur’s family.
Friday, May 23
Zubeidaa (The Story of a Princess)
Shyam Benegal, director, 2001, color, 145 minutes)
Zubeidaa is the story of a young man Riyaz’s (Rajit Kapur) quest to recover the memory of his mother Zbeidaa, a mother who he never knew and to piece together her life from the memories of those who knew her. Extremely beautiful and talented, Zubeidaa (Karisma Kapoor) is the only daughter of Suleman Seth (Amrish Puri_, a film producer in Bompay. Unfortunately Zubeidaa’s happiness more often than not falls victim to her father’s unjustified domination over her life.
The Emory University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Quadrangle Grant Fund and the Film Studies Program Present:
Barbara Klinger, Associate Professor and Director of Film and Media in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University
"The Titanic Haircut"
Monday, April 7
3 p.m.
White Hall 207
In early 2001 before the Taliban regime was overthrown, dozens of barbers in Afghanistan were jailed for giving eager youths in the nation "the Titanic haircut," that is, the hair style worn by Leonardo di Caprio in James Cameron’s blockbuster. Having seen the film through pirated copies that entered Afghanistan three years after the film’s 1997 release, young men and their barbers risked censure by imitating a Western look.
This phenomenon raises a series of issues that are not characteristically addressed by scholars in reception studies, but that are gaining increasing importance in the field. Given the widespread globalization of Hollywood products, how do citizens in other countries experience U.S. films? What are the dynamics and social forces involved in cross-cultural, trans-national acts of viewing? What role should non-theatrical venues, such as the home, and non-theatrical forms, such as videos and DVDs, play in analyses of spectatorship and fandom? The "Titanic haircut" offers a departure point for reflecting on the current state of and future directions in reception studies.
Barbara Klinger is the author of Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk and has recently completed Fortresses of Solitude: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home. She has published articles in Screen, The Velvet Light Trap, Cinema Journal, and Wide Angle, and is currently working on The Film Reception Reader as part of Routledge’s Film Reader Series.
This talk is free and open to the Emory community. A reception and booksigning will follow.
The Consulate General of Japan
and the Film Studies Program of Emory University
proudly present
The Samurai in Post-War Japanese Film
The samurai, following the bushido code of honor, loyalty and self-sacrifice, has held a special place in Japanese history, culture and lore. The Japanese film industry capitalized on the samurai’s appeal until the advent of the American Occupation, whose censorship arm banned the filming of period stories, swordfights and revenge tales. When the Occupation ended, the film industry returned to the subject with vigor, using the samurai as an occasion to produce glorious spectacles of action and production design, to explore the conflict between social obligation and personal feeling, but also to provide social commentary (sometimes bitter) on the nature of feudal society and implicitly, its residues in contemporary Japan. While the often screened masterpieces of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai and Yojimbo) about masterless samurai contributed significantly to the post-war revival of the samurai film, the genre took on a life of its own, as is evident from the three examples of the genre in our series.
Thursday, February 27
CHUSHINGURA (1962)
(TohoScope, color)
7:30 p.m., 205 White Hall (206 min)
Introduced by Professor Mark Ravina, Department of History, Emory University
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
Cast: Koshiro Matsumoto (Chamberlain Kuranosuke Oishi), Yuzo Kayama (Takuminokami Asano), Chusha Ichikawa (Kozukenosuke Kira),
Toshiro Mifune (Genba Tawaraboshi), Toko Tsukasa (Aguri Asano), Setsuko Hara ((Riku Oichi, the chamberlain’s wife), Tatsuya Mihashi (Tasubei Horibe)
Based on the 1748 kabuki play cycle Kanadehon Chushingura by Izumo Takeda, Senryu Namiki, and Shoraku Miyoshi, this may be the most lavish of the more than 200 Japanese film versions of the tale of the 47 Ronin who, after the fatal punishment of their lord, plot revenge against his accuser for years.
Thursday, March 6
SANJURO (1962)
(TohoScope, Black and White)
7:30 p.m., 205 White Hall (96 min)
Introduced by Professor Matthew Bernstein, Film Studies Program, Emory University
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshiro Mifune (Sanjuro "Tsubaki"), Tatsuya Nakadai (Hanbei Muroto), Yuzo Kayama (Iiro Izaka, leader of the Samurai), Akihiko Hirata, Kunie Tanaka, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Tatsuhiko Hari, Tatsuya Ehara, Toshio Tsuchiya, Akira Kubo, Kenzo matsur (samurai), Keiju Kobayashi (captured samurai in closet), Takashi Shimura (Kurofuji), Masao Shimizu (Inspector Kikui)
Based on a Tsubaki Sanjuro story by Shugoro Yamamoto, this gentle, comic sequel to Kurosawa’s much imitated, nihilistic samurai masterpiece Yojimbo picks up the story of the incomparable ronin who is forced to teach young samurai how to handle themselves properly. Tatsuya Nakadai returns as the most menacing villain, but Sanjuro more frequently has his hands full handling elegant ladies in distress.Thursday, March 20
GONZA THE SPEARMAN (1986) Yari no Gonza ("Spear of Gonza"), color
7:30 p.m., 205 White Hall (126 min)
Introduced by Professor Matthew Bernstein
Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Cast: Hiromi Go, Shima Iwashita, Choichiro Kawarazaki, Shohei Hino, Haruko Kato
Source: Screenplay by Taeko Tomioka, based on the play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu. This sumptuous, naturalistic adaptation of a noted 18th century bunraku and kabuki play was created by a leading director of the Japanese New Wave. As in Double Suicide, Shinoda examines the tension between obligation and feeling, this time in the tale of a handsome samurai accused of adultery while he is engaged to be married. All screenings begin at 7:30. They are free and open to the public.
The Theater Studies Department and the Film Studies Program Present
RICK BUTLER-- An Independent Film Production Designer
who will be in residence from February 25th through the 27th. In addition to screening two of his films, he will also be presenting a colloquium on February 27th from 4-5pm in the new Schwartz Center Theater Lab.
Please join us at all and any of the events.
Any questions, please call Leslie Taylor, Chair, Theater Studies 7-2574
CHELSEA WALLS February 25th at 7:30 White Hall 205
Director: Ethan Hawke (debut)
Featuring:
Kevin Corrigan, Guillermo Diaz, Vincent D'Onofrio, Greta Gaines, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Sean Leonard, Natasha Richardson, Little Jimmy Scott, Uma Thurman, Marisa Tomei, Christopher Walken, Tuesday Weld, Mark Webber, Frank Whaley, Steve Zahn (Obviously, this is a huge ensemble cast; expect several of these roles to be small; indeed, the names above only represent a fraction of the 30+ characters in the film)
Music: The soundtrack by Wilco, who also perform in the movie.
Premise:
Set in a single day at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, the place to live for artists like Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Artists who all passed through the hotel's halls. Though its glory days are over, new dreamers come, hoping to be inspired by the ghosts of the past. This movie tells five stories involving an ensemble cast of some 30-35 characters. They form a community, linked by their dreams. The Chelsea Hotel never really leaves the people who live there, nor do they ever really leave it.
Colloquium February 27th 4-5pm--Schwartz Center Theater Lab*
Independent film making in New York
*Ist floor of Schwartz, enter through the Asbury Drive side of the building.
THE TIC CODE February 27th at 7:30, White Hall 112
Title Note: Also known as Lessons in the Tic Code. The "code" in question is a reference to how the central characters negotiate their relationship with Tourette's Syndrome.
Director: Gary Winick (Tadpole)
Awards: Best Feature Film, 1999 Berlin International Film Festival; Audience Award, Special Recognition for Music, 1998 Hamptons International Film Festival.
Cast:
Christopher Marquette Polly Draper, Gregory Hines, Carol Kane, Camryn Manheim, Tony Shalhoub, David Johansen, James McCaffrey, Bill Nunn, Desmond Robertson, Fisher Stevens.
Screenwriter: Polly Draper
Story:
A 10-year-old piano genius, Miles (Christopher George Marquette), living with his mother in New York City is inspired by the jazz scene and aspires to be a jazz musician like his father. However, Miles is challenged by a neurological disorder that alienates him in school and makes his father uncomfortable. With the help of his mother (Draper he meets saxophonist Tyrone Pike (Gregory Hines)--one of his idols, who becomes a father figure to Miles-- the two form a fast bond, accelerated by their discovery that they suffer from Tourette's Syndrome. A difficult but heart-warming story, THE TIC CODE features a fantastic musical score and live New York performances.
The Emory University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Quadrangle Grant Fund and the Film Studies Program Present:
Anna Everett, Associate Professor of Film, TV and New Media in the Film Studies Department, and Director of the Center for Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara
"Symptoms of an Archive Fetish: Reflections on Returning the Gaze"
Monday, January 27
4 p.m.
White Hall 205
This multimedia presentation will address the pleasure and pain of doing revisionist historiography and the challenges of publishing new scholarship as experienced by the author of the book RETURNING THE GAZE: A GENEALOGY OF BLACK FILM CRITICISM, 1909-1949. In addition to discussing strategies for negotiating the theoretical, methodological and paradigmatic approaches to and demands for producing scholarship in the film discipline, the author will outline her current book project, INSIDE THE DARK MUSEUM: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BLACK FILM CRITICISM FROM 1909 -1959, the companion volume to RETURNING THE GAZE. Anna Everett has written several books and articles including RETURNING THE GAZE and THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DIGITIZED: AFROCENTRICITY AND THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE, the co-edited (With John T. Caldwell) forthcoming anthology entitledNEW MEDIA: THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF DIGITEXTUALITY. She is completing two book projects, DIGITAL DIASPORAS: A RACE FOR CYBERSPACE, and the anthology INSIDE THE DARK MUSEUM. She is active in the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Black Caucus, Information Technology Committee, Program Committee, and the editorial board of Cinema Journal, and she serves on the Executive Board of “Console-ing Passions.”
This talk is free and open to the Emory community. A reception will follow.
To mark the inaugural year of the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for
the Performing Arts, the Emory Cinematheque is offering a
festival/program of fourteen films that celebrate the arts of music,
painting, poetry, dance, theater and cinema. The films are themselves
works of high artistic caliber by distinguished directors representing
some of the world’s most important national cinemas. We are proud to
bring them to you this semester as part of Emory’s renewed commitment to
the arts and creativity as a mode of being in the world.
Most films will be shown on Wednesdays at 7:30pm in White Hall 205. Except for two, all of the films are in 35mm. Four exceptional films will be shown in White Hall 208 at 8:00pm. Please scroll down for more details.
Jan. 22: The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Nagisa Oshima, 1970)
([Tokyo senso sengo hiwa] Japan, 93 min., color, subtitles)
Set in 1960s Tokyo, a young liberal discovers the camera of a radical
who has leapt to his death while fleeing the police. The "will and
testament" he sees on film seems meaningless, but begins to obsess him
as he retraces the filmmaker's political and erotic past.
Jan. 29: Heart of Glass (Werner Herzog, 1976)
([Herz aus Glas] Germany, 99 min., color, subtitles, 16mm)
Based on a Herbert Achternbusch novel, Heart of Glass is a Bavarian folk
tale set in a small town that teeters on self-destruction after the
secret recipe for making its unique ruby glass is lost. Dubbed a
"chiaroscuro poem" by one reviewer, Heart of Glass is a gloriously
enigmatic film filled with striking imagery.
Feb. 5: Divertimento (Jacques Rivette, 1994)
(France, 126 min., color, subtitles)
When a once famous artist meets a young model, he is inspired to paint
again, after years of being unable to. Jacques Rivette reshaped his
four-hour film La Belle Noiseuse into a shorter work, or a divertimento,
a musical term that means "variation on a theme." The result is a
different film, a commentary not only on the original but on the
creative process itself.
Feb. 12: The Accompanist (Claude Miller, 1994)
([L’accompagnatrice] France, 110 min., color, subtitles)
In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young pianist named Sophie gets a job with
famed singer Irene Brice. As Irene's husband Charles wrestles with his
conscience over his Nazi affiliations, Sophie becomes obsessed with
Irene, taking on the role of maid as well as accompanist, living life
vicariously through Irene's triumphs and affairs.
Feb. 19: French Can Can (Jean Renoir, 1955)
(France, 105 min., color, subtitles)
This comedy-drama from the great French director Jean Renoir about an impressario who turns a washerwoman into the star of the Moulin Rouge is a valentine to the Paris of the director’s youth. Features stunning Technicolor cinematography by Michel Kelber and a concluding 10-minute can can sequence that rivals anything in Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge.
Feb. 26: Moulin Rouge (Baz Lurmann, 2001)
(US, 126 min., color)8:00pm, White Hall 208
NB: This is a special screening: it will take place in WH 208 at 8pm.
The centerpiece of our "Artists and Models" series, this spectacular film is both a landmark in the history of digital effects and one of the most original musicals ever made. Featuring bravura performances by Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGrgor, stunning cinematography (by DP Donald McAlpine), and eye-popping special effects, Moulin Rouge assaults its audience with a riot of exotic images sufficient to produce sensory overload. If you haven’t seen this movie on the big screen, you haven’t seen it. Don’t miss this chance to lose yourself in art.
Mar. 5: The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1993)
(United Kingdom, 82 min., color, 16mm)
A sequel to director Terence Davies’ (The Neon Bible [1995]; The House of Mirth [2000]) autobiographical Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), this film follows a few months in the life of a 12-year old boy growing up in an oppressive working-class environment in 1950s Liverpool. Proceeding through impressionistic vignettes rather than narrative logic, the film reveals the origin of aesthetic sensibilities in the troubled family life of a young artist-to-be. Shot by Michael Coulter in 16mm.
Mar. 12: Spring Break (No Film Will Be Shown)
Mar. 19: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971)
([Morte a Venezia] Italy/France, 130 min., color, subtitles)
NB: This is a special screening; it will take place in WH 208 at 8pm.
This late masterpiece by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti is an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s darkly romantic novella about the nexus between art, love, and death. In Visconit’s version, the novelist hero of Mann’s fiction becomes a composer modeled on Gustav Mahler, whose lush 5th Symphony underscores the entire film. Because Death in Venice no longer exists in viable 35mm or 16mm prints, we will watch the film as a laserdisc projection.
Mar. 26: Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway, 1991)
(United Kingdom, 129 min., color)8:00pm, White Hall 208
No director in the English-speaking cinema is so cerebral in his probings of the shadowline between life and art as Peter Greenaway. This film is a gloss on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, densely layered with textual images composed in a series of double exposures and transparent overlays with the aid of a digital device dubbed an electronic paintbox. The remarkable camera work by the great French cinematographer Sacha Vierny is answered to by a similarly complex soundtrack weaving together sound effects, echo chambers and Michael Nyman's neo-classical score.
Apr. 2: Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat, 1992)
(France, 155 min., color, subtitles)
A biography of the painter by one of France’s leading filmmakers, who has often been described as the only true heir to Jean Renoir. Pialat is known as an unusually demanding director of actors, from whom he generates powerful, psychologically realistic performances. Running nearly three hours, Van Gogh is no exception, providing a deeply authentic portrait of artist’s character, as opposed to the usual romantic mythology surrounding his madness and genius.
Apr. 9: Tango (Carlos Saura, 1998)
(Spain/Argentina, 112 min., color, subtitles)
Spain’s leading director Carlos Saura combined fiction and documentary in this story of an Argentine filmmaker working on a film about the tango in Buenos Aires. The dance sequences were shot with several cameras simultaneously on a specially constructed set by the distinguished cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and the film was apparently the most expensive ever made in Argentina.
Apr. 16: Ararat (Atom Egoyan, 2002)
(Canada, 126 min., color)8:00pm, White Hall 208
Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan explores his Armenian heritage and how that country's tragic history has touched several generations of the nation's expatriates in this ambitious drama. Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour), a veteran filmmaker of Armenian descent, is in Toronto shooting a film about the Siege of Van, in which invading Ottoman armies forced the evacuation of Armenian communities in 1915, leading to the genocide of over a million Armenian people at the hands of Turkish troops. The film caused a controversy when the Turkish government banned it domestically and tried to keep it out of competition at Cannes.
Apr. 23: The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953)
([Le Carrosse d’or] Italy/France, 100 min., color)
Another masterful contemplation of the relationship between art and reality by Jean Renoir, this film is set in 16th-century South America and stars Anna Magnani as an earthy Commedia Del Arte performer whose life becomes a battleground for two ardent suitors. Brilliant Technicolor cinematography by the director’s nephew and frequent collaborator, Claude Renoir.
Apr. 30: Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulus, 1998)
([Mia Aiwniothta Kai Mia Mera] Greece, 134 min., color, subtitles)
Theo Angelopoulos (Ulysses’ Gaze [1995]; Reconstruction [1970]) directed this 1998 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner about a famed author nearing the end of his life. Alexander (Bruno Ganz) lives in his old seaside family home near Thessaloniki, but his daughter and son-in-law plan to sell the house, slightly damaged by an earthquake. Alexander's current project involves completing the last unfinished work of a 19th-century poet, but he puts that aside in order to spend time finding a home for his dog. After rescuing an Albanian boy from a gang that sells children, the old man and the boy set forth on a bus trip, whose other passengers include several musicians and the 19th-century poet whose work Alexander is completing.
A Tribute to Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)
Yasujiro Ozu is regarded as a giant among the great Japanese directors who came of age in the 1930s, alongside Kenji Mizoguchi. In 1922, he began his lifelong career at Shochiku Studios, directing his first film in 1926 and extending his career through 1962's Autumn Afternoon. While he initially directed gangster films and college comedies, beginning in 1936 he focused on “home dramas,” family melodramas that examined the pleasures and struggles in family life, typically focusing on parents who struggle to honor their own parents, find work, raise their own family, and marry off their children. As a co-author of his screenplays, Ozu ensured their humorous moments, their compassionate tone and their elegant structure; as a director, he perfected a unique style that visualized these contrasts and comparisons among family members through particular shot compositions and unorthodox editing patterns.
Critics in the 1960s dubbed Ozu ‘the most Japanese of film directors’ (in contrast to Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of western literature), but the phrase is misleading. Ozu took great inspiration from international films, particularly the silent films of master comic director Ernst Lubitsch and those of worldwide icon Charles Chaplin. And while Ozu certainly dramatized the specific impact on family life of 20th century Japan’s modernization and industrialization, his work has a universal appeal; it’s fair to say that no filmmaker of any nation produced more keenly observed and compassionately represented portraits of family life and of the ways in which individuals come to accept their fate in life. Insightful and uplifting, Ozu's films are treasures in the history of world cinema.Thursday, September 12
EQUINOX FLOWER .... (1958)
16mm
7:30 p.m., 206 White Hall (120 min)
In this quintessential, lightly comic meditation on tradition and modern
life, a businessman attempts to enforce an arranged marriage for one of
his unmarried daughters, over his wife and children’s objections. With
Ozu regulars Shin Saburi, Kinuyo Tanaka and Chishu RyuThursday, September 19
TOKYO STORY (1953)
35mm
7:30 p.m., 205 White Hall (134 min)
Considered by many to be Ozu’s greatest film, TOKYO STORY depicts the
diminishing sense of family ties and obligations in post-war Tokyo. The
parents of a middle-class family leave their town and youngest daughter
to visit their older, settled children in Tokyo. They find themselves
handed off from child to child and face life-changing consequences as a
result. A premiere example of what Paul Schrader, American screenwriter
(TAXI DRIVER) and director (MISHIMA, AFFLICTION) called Ozu’s
‘transcendental style.’
Thursday, September 26
I WAS BORN, BUT ...(1932)
35mm
7:30 p.m., 205 White Hall (90 min)
An example of Ozu’s flair for brilliant comedy, I WAS BORN, BUT...
relates the delightful travails of two brothers new to the suburban
neighborhood where their father’s boss works. While playing hooky from
school and dealing with local bullies, they learn a great deal about the
importance of social hierarchy and obligation in adult lives.
SPIRITUALITIES
A Festival of Films From France, Italy, Russia, Mali, Hong Kong and Iran
All films will be shown in 35mm in White Hall 205 on Wednesdays at 7:30 pm.
All films have English subtitles.
Sponsored by the Emory CinemathequeOct. 2
THE LIFE OF JESUS [La vie de Jésus]
(Bruno Dumont, 1997)
France 96 min.
This French coming-of-age movie marked the debut of writer/director Bruno Dumont. The film bears a symbolic resemblance to the life of Christ, but it has no direct relationship with his life. The story is set in the small, economically stagnant town of Bailleul in northern France. Freddy, a 19-year-old epileptic, and his friends get unemployment benefits. They are bored and seething with unfocused resentment which they often take out on local Arab immigrants. One immigrant, Kader, enrages Freddy and his friends, so they set out to punish him. Dumont went on to direct the acclaimed drama L’humanite (1999), also set in Bailleul, which we showed at Emory last Fall.Oct. 9
ULYSSES’ GAZE [To Vlemma tou Odyssea]
(Theo Angelopoulos, 1995)
Italy, France, Greece 177 min.
Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, this drama centers on the Balkan conflict as viewed through the eyes of a filmmaker named "A" (Harvey Keitel). Director Theo Angelopoulos wrote the screenplay, drawing from personal experience as a Greek émigré director who returns to his homeland after 35 years in the U.S., ostensibly to screen his latest film, which is so controversial that it attracts religious protests. In fact, A’s real purpose is to search for three reels of undeveloped film that was shot by the Manakis brothers, pioneer Balkan filmmakers, who documented simple circa-1900 peasant life. A Homeric journey includes flashbacks into past historical events.Oct. 16
MOTHER AND SON [Mat I Syn]
(Alexander Sokurov, 1997)
Russia/Germany 75 min.
With a visually stunning, quiet intensity, director Alexander Sokurov awakens the senses to the world of nature, human relationships, and death in this film about the poignant last hours of a dying mother and the son who cares for her. The film begins before the first scene and ends after the last. Special filtered lenses were used to work with reflecting planes, to manipulate light and shadow, and to give added dimension to the full experience of living each moment before death. We showed Sokurov’s earlier Krug Vtory (1990) at Emory last spring.Oct. 23
GENESIS
(Mrinal Sen, 1986)
India 105 min.
A parable of man's exploitation of his fellow man. A weaver and a farmer live peacefully on the edge of a desert until, one day, a woman wanders into their world, and her presence slowly disrupts their routine existence.Oct. 30
GENESIS [La Genèse]
(Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999)
Mali 102 min.
Set in Africa, the movie tells the story of the Biblical Jacob and Esau, two feuding brothers who are at war over Jacob’s alleged theft of Esaü’s birthright. In Sissoko’s hands, this ancient text common to Judaism, Islam and Christianity is enlivened by revisionist storytelling techniques that make it relevant to contemporary audiences both in Africa and around the globe.Nov. 6
THE DAY THE SUN TURNED COLD [Tianguo niezi]
(Yim Ho, 1994)
Hong Kong 100 min.
This engrossing and moving film is based on an actual incident that happened in Changchun, a village in northeast China. Guan Jian tries to report a murder but is not taken seriously by the police. It seems he has never spoken of the crime before, it happened ten years previously, and he is accusing his mother of his father’s death. The real issue is not whether a woman killed a man, but if the son has the right to accuse her in public.Nov. 13
EARTH
(DEEPA MEHTA, 1999)
India 104 min.
The film, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's novel, Cracking India, is an intelligent and deeply moving personal account of the partition of India. In August 1947 the departing British colonial rulers announced the division of the subcontinent into a Muslim-controlled Pakistan and a Hindu-Sikh dominated India. Mehta portrays this period through the eyes of a child, Lenny, an 8-year-old crippled girl, from Lahore, the Punjabi city that saw some of the bloodiest pogroms. While historical and political, this movie is primarily a love story.Nov. 20
LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER [Fin août, début septembre]
(Olivier Assayas, 1998)
France 112 min.
Gabriel, an aspiring novelist, must reevaluate his personal life when his friend Adrien becomes suddenly ill. With his career in dire straits and his relationships with two women floundering, Gabriel must take stock of his life and decide what to do with himself. An oblique yet fully developed drama from veteran director Assayas.
Nov. 27
THANKSGIVING
Dec. 4
THE GLEANERS AND I [Les glaneurs et
la glaneuse]
(Agnes Varda, 2001)
France 82 min.
The Gleaners, Jean-Francois Millet's famous 19th-century painting, depicts peasants in a wheat field gathering leftovers from the harvest. That image inspired Varda to travel France with a videocamera, documenting contemporary gleaners: scavengers of cast-off food or junk. The result is a warm, witty cinematic essay that has been universally praised for its compassion and beauty. "You couldn't ask for a more loving and sensitive illumination of an activity often considered demeaning," said the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Varda's contemporary "gleaners" include dumpster divers, a prominent chef who prides himself on using leftovers, and the agricultural gleaners who still scrounge for misshapen potatoes and overlooked grapes. The Gleaners and I is also a journey of personal reflection for the director, who was 72 when she crafted it.Dec. 11
CLOSE-UP [Nema-ye Nazdik]
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Iran 90 min.
An entertaining and complex film in which documentary and fiction constantly change places to challenge the conventions of cinema. At the heart of this true story is Hossein Sabzian, an unemployed movie buff who finds himself mistaken for the enigmatic director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The misunderstanding takes on a life of its own and Sabzian ends up in jail where his trial is filmed by Kiarostami.The Emory Cinematheque is a joint effort by Emory College and the Film Studies Program to provide the Atlanta community with programs of important international films throughout the academic year in a repertory cinema environment.
Please note: that these film screenings are class related. The public is invited as long as they understand that the professor may lecture or not, introduce the film or not, stop and start the film or not, as is appropriate to their classes. No one is admitted late to the screenings, and food, drinks, pets, and talking or boistrous activity are not allowed.
As soon as we schedule our class screenings for each semester, they will be added to this screenings page.
Click here for Spring 2003 Class Screenings
For more information:
Phone: (404)727-6761
Email Address: ahall03@emory.edu