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June 10
Adrift (Choi Voi), Director: Bui Thac Chuyen, Vietnam, 2009 Soon after her wedding, newlywed Duyen’s excitement begins to fade as she realizes her young husband is not only sexually naïve, but overly occupied by his job and doting mother. As her marriage goes unconsummated and her emotional isolation grows, she reaches out to her closest girlfriend, Cam, who secretly desires her, but pushes her into the arms of a dangerous and provocative suitor. The resulting sexual awakening and infidelity puts Duyen in a precarious love triangle, challenging her notions of conventional relationships and also the stability of her new family. Saturated with erotic tension, director Bui Thac Chuyen’s sensuous and absorbing second feature traces the emotional and psychological landscapes of lust and desire, weaving an atmospheric tale of love and life in modern Hanoi. |
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June 17
Becloud (Vaho), Director: Alejandro Gerber Bicecci On a dry lakebed in 1964, a trucker and his companion find a baby boy at the dry breast of its dead mother. Years later the trucker operates an ice factory in a poor urban district with his son, José, who dreams of one day striking out on his own. Neighbor Felipe, meanwhile, works at an Internet café and another neighbor, Andrés, lives with his alcoholic father but spends his free time studying Mexico’s pre-Columbian golden age. All three share a defining incident from their childhood, linking the destinies of their entire neighborhood to the lakebed and baby from years earlier. In this shrewd and well-acted story, director Alejandro Gerber Bicecci turns a tangled neighborhood tale into an enthralling mix of history, memory and atonement, creating an unexpected parable of modern Mexico itself. |
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June 24
GODS (Dioses), Director: Josué Méndez
In director Josué Méndez’s stylishly composed second feature, Elisa—the soon-to-be-wife of a wealthy industrialist—is eager to shed her working-class background in favor of the opulence of her fiance’s elite lifestyle. To her dismay, she soon realizes her hopes to slip into magazine-ready images of domestic splendor must also include her future stepchildren: Diego, who is hounded by his overbearing father and reluctantly preparing to enter the family business, and Andrea, Diego’s party-girl sister and the object of both his desire and disgust. As Elisa embraces her new life of lavish parties and beachfront estates, Diego and Andrea rebel against their upper-class upbringing, setting the stage for an ironic contrast of fate and ambition in this biting satire on upper-crust wealth and privilege. |
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July 1
Leo’s Room, (El Cuarto De Leo), Director: Enrique Buchichio
In the heart of Montevideo, the affable but secretly troubled Leo wraps himself in the comfort of his small rented room, unmotivated to finish his college thesis or find a job, and content with infrequent visits from his girlfriend. After their six-month relationship ends, Leo begins to break out of his shell by cruising the Internet for a new companion, enlisting the aid of a sympathetic therapist along the way. However, it isn’t until he has a chance reunion with a classmate that he is forced to consider the true meaning of his reclusive lifestyle, and a future outside the metaphoric safety of his room. Featuring an affecting soundtrack and an equally endearing cast of characters, director Enrique Buchichio’s affirming drama is a unique vision of isolation and coming-of-age set against a modern tale of romance and friendship. |
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July 8
Masquerades, Director: Lyes Salem
After working for much of his life as a gardener in his dusty Algerian village, Mounir dreams of improving his family’s fortune and gaining a measure of respect by marrying off his narcoleptic sister, Rym, to a “real gentleman.” However, Rym has other plans—she dreams of marrying Mounir’s best friend, Khliffa, who has secretly courted her for years. When Mounir lashes out at village gossip with a fib that he has promised Rym to a wealthy outsider, she comes out of her sleepy stupor to embrace the rumor and press her real betrothed into action. Beautifully brought to life by a memorable cast—including director Lyes Salem as the cocky but compassionate bumbler Mounir—this heartfelt comedy suggests that when dreams become reality, it’s time to wake up. |
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July 15My Tehran for Sale, Director: Granaz Moussavi In this riveting, insider’s perspective on life in Iran’s capital city, Marzieh—a terminally ill actress—wearily relates her desperate quest for political asylum through a series of interviews with an unsympathetic government official. Beginning with details of her doomed relationship with an Iranian-born Australian and their plan to relocate to Adelaide, she recounts her struggle to work as an actress under Iran’s current regime, her hope for a future ultimately dashed by the devastating discovery of her illness, and her need to “escape” the only home she has ever known. Set against the backdrop of Tehran’s thriving arts culture, and framed through a series of artful and dramatic flashback sequences, poet-turned-filmmaker Granaz Moussavi boldly registers the trials of a modern woman struggling to flourish in Iran’s contemporary political climate. |
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July 22
Ocean of an Old man, Director: Rajesh Shera
In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and amid the stunning natural beauty of India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands, an elderly British teacher struggles to run a small primary school despite the loss of many of the islands’ children to the recent tragedy. Ignoring the overwhelming grief that washes over the islands, he continues to teach his few remaining students until a government official delivers a relocation order to all residents, causing him to embark on a heartbreaking search for his missing students, convinced they must still be alive. Blending exquisite vistas with the ubiquitous sound of the ocean to convey the precarious balance between human life and the inexorable forces of nature, Rajesh Shera’s debut feature quietly unfolds as a delicate meditation on grief and loss. |
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July 29
Ordinary People, Director: Vladimir Perisic
On a seemingly average day, a busload of young soldiers is sent to a remote location in the countryside and given a macabre task: the execution of a number of civilians. Dzoni, a green recruit, initially objects, but as he moves from one killing to the next, he is swept up by the spectre of military authority, and quickly becomes desensitized by the apparently routine nature of his task. As he nears the end of his assignment, the quiet horror of the day slowly begins to affect him, forcing a painful reconciliation with his actions. Set in an unspecified time of conflict in the Balkans, director Vladimir Perisic’s highly attuned and unsentimental lens captures the psychological toll of war on its participants, and the universal struggle of all soldiers to reconcile morality with action. |
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August 5
The Shaft (Dixia De Tiankong), Director: Zhang Chi
In a poor mining town in western China, the stories of a father and his two children intersect and intertwine, illuminating complicated relationships hidden beneath the community’s hardened exterior. Accused of an affair with her manager, the attractive daughter of the household finds herself spurned by her boyfriend and forced to accept an arranged marriage. Her brother dreams of being a singer, but after an unforeseen stint in prison, reluctantly heads into the mines like his father, who spends his days searching for the wife who left him many years ago. Writer-director Zhang Chi’s wise and poetic debut delicately expresses the turmoil of emotion and expectation wrought by a calloused and difficult existence. |
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August 12
Shirley Adams, Director: Oliver Hermanus
In this deeply affecting portrait of ordinary courage in present-day South Africa, a single mother—Shirley Adams—struggles to care for her paraplegic teenage son, Donovan, in a depressed district on the outskirts of Cape Town. Wearied but resolute, she desperately clings to him as he withdraws from the world following a suicide attempt, and is hopeful when his spirits are momentarily lifted by the appearance of Tamsin, a pretty but overeager social worker. But when the relationship between Donovan and Tamsin sours, his fragile emotional health declines, and Shirley's faith and perseverance are put to the ultimate test. First-time director Oliver Hermanus's observant camera holds close to its subjects, capturing the claustrophobia, intimacy and hushed anguish surrounding the tender daily routines of a mother and her child. |
Cinephilia: Post-War Auteur Essentials
August 19 - September 9
Featuring four 1950s art-house classics containing beautiful cinematography and a balance of subtlety, action, humor, sentiment, and tragedy, these films present stories of the emotional and physical experiences of family and children. The term auteur, meaning “author,” gained popularity after the 1940s with the influence of French and English language film critics, notably those from the cinema review magazine Cahiers du cinema. Eventually applied to film theory and scholarship, it is most widely recognized as a term used to distinguish excellent filmmakers who display a distinctively recognizable voice throughout their work. Film culture in postwar Europe embraced the role of the director as the auteur responsible for the overall look and meaning of the film, and the ability to infuse one’s personal worldview into the piece. While all films differ in style, genre, and nation, they are all lasting testaments to the power of cinema’s universal language. Each auteur has an innovative, influential and recognizable style that has enabled their creative visions to remain distinct, transcending the collaborative and industrial nature of filmmaking.
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August 19 Tokyo Story, Director: Yasujiro Ozu
An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their children and are confronted by indifference, ingratitude and selfishness. When the parents are packed off to a resort by their impatient children, the film deepens into an unbearably moving meditation on mortality. |
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August 26La Strada, Director: Federico Fellini In La Strada (meaning “The Road”) Gelsomina is sold by her very poor mother to Zampanò, an itinerant strongman. She follows him on the road ("la strada") and helps him during his shows. Zampanò ill-treats her. She meets "The Fool", a funambulist. She feels like going with him, but he puts confusion in her mind by pointing out that perhaps Zampanò is in fact in love with her. |
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September 2The Man Who Knew Too Much, Director: Alfred Hitchcock Dr. Ben McKenna, his wife Jo and their son Hank are on a touring holiday of Africa when they meet the mysterious Louis Bernard on a bus. The next day Bernard is murdered in the local marketplace, but before he dies he manages to reveal details of an assassination about to take place in London. Fearing that their plot will be revealed, the assassins kidnap Hank in order to keep the McKenna's silent. Ben and Jo go to London and take matters into their own hands in this remake of Hitchcock’s 1934 version. |
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September 9The 400 Blows, Director: Francois Truffaut This semi-autobiographical treasure from the French New Wave film movement follows the misadventures of a neglected young Parisian boy, based largely on the director’s own experiences growing up. A young Parisian boy, Antoine Doinel, neglected by his derelict parents, skips school, sneaks into movies, runs away from home, steals things, and tries (disastrously) to return them. Like most kids, he gets into more trouble for things he thinks are right than for his actual trespasses. Unlike most kids, he gets beaten with a big stick. He inhabits a Paris of dingy flats, seedy arcades, abandoned factories, and workaday streets, a city that seems big and full of possibilities only to a child's eye. |
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