Screen/Society Screening Schedule
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Spring 2008 At-A-Glance Schedule
{last updated: 4-21-2008}
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Screen/Society's Spring 2008 program features several film series, including Arts in Focus: The Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer, Celebrating Ingmar Bergman, Celebrating Michelangelo Antonioni, Cine-East: New East Asian Cinema, FVD Showcase, (a selection of outstanding recent films, hand-picked by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Mary Harron Retrospective, Sex, Love and Conflict: On the Ethics of Relationships, Special Events (combining film screenings with lectures, performances, or panel discussions), and more!
Films will be screened in the Griffith Film Theater
in the Bryan Center on Duke's West Campus,
or the East Duke Building (room 204B) on East Campus,
and are free and open to the general public.
All Screen/Society events are organized and coordinated by the
Film/Video/Digital Program
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W 1/16 Griffith (7pm) | Special Event
For the Bible Tells Me So -- with filmmaker Daniel Karslake in person!
(dir. Daniel Karslake, 2007, USA, in English, 99 min, Color, 35mm)
Filmmaker and 1987 Duke graduate Daniel Karslake will screen and discuss
his
award-winning film, For the Bible Tells Me So, that has been short-listed
for
an Academy Award nomination
for Best Documentary in 2007.
[As featured in This Month at Duke!]
Doors open at 6:30pm - the screening is free, no tickets needed
About the Film: Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, Dan Karslake's provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. As the film notes, most Christians live their lives today without feeling obliged to kill anyone who works on the Sabbath or eats shrimp (as a literal reading of scripture dictates).
Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families -- including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson -- we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, For the Bible Tells Me So offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity. [Trailer / Official Web Site]
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life, the Program in the Study of Sexualities, and the Duke University Chapel.
M 1/21 Griffith (7pm) | MLK Commemoration - special documentary screening
Durham: A Self-Portrait
-- panel discussion with filmmaker Steven Channing to follow!
(dir. Steven Channing, 2007, USA, in English, 82 min., Color & B/W, DVD)
A clandestine basketball game played between white and black college students; a deep understanding among black and white elites that allowed each community to flourish; and, a Jewish man elected mayor in 1950. It was unheard of for such events to occur in the Jim Crow South, but they happened in Durham. Channing's documentary explores Durham’s emergence, post-Reconstruction, as a model city of the new South, using the basketball game between Duke and N.C. Central as the film's metaphor for 20th Century Durham.
The film's central theme is racial cooperation. Even when other communities were tearing themselves apart over race, Durham residents, white and black, often worked together to encourage business and maintain order. This was at a time when the races were deliberately separated, by law, in nearly all aspects of life. Includes more than 70 original interviews, and rarely seen film and photo images, about the "real Durham."
Panel Discussion participants:
Kerry Watson, Sr., Associate Chief Operating Officer, Duke Hospital (panel moderator) - Dr. Steven Channing, president of Video Dialog and producer of Durham: A Self-Portrait (pictured on the right -->)
- Carl Webb, long time Durham resident and a partner in Greenfire Development, Inc., a major player in the redevelopment of Durham. (Carl appears in the film.)
- Scott Harmon, architect with Center Studio Architecture in Durham, involved in the revitalization of Durham.
- Undergraduate student - TBA
- Graduate student - TBA
Sponsored by the MLK Commemoration Committee and the Film/Video/Digital Program
Th 1/24 East Duke 204B (7pm) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema
The Housemaid (Hanyo) -- Followed by a Q&A with Prof. Kim Soyoung!
(Ki-Young Kim, 1960, 90 min. Korea, Korean, Black and White, DVD)
A consensus pick as one of the top three Korean films of all time, Kim Ki-young's masterpiece The Housemaid occupies a place all its own within Golden Age Korean cinema. A domestic thriller that builds in intensity right up until its startling resolution, the film doubles as a manic tour-de-force and a cutting satire of the aspirations and values of modern society. With inspired editing and a restless camera (not to mention that famous bottle of rat poison), Kim gradually heightens the sense of tension and claustrophobia, creating scenes of startling intensity. The performance he draws out of young actress Lee Eun-shim as the housemaid (the woman on the far left in the photo above) is unlike anything else shot in Korea in that decade, or indeed ever since. ** Followed by a Q&A with visiting professor/filmmaker Kim Soyoung! **
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian & African Languages & Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
Mary Harron Retrospective
January 28-30, 2008
The Film/Video/Digital Program is delighted to announce that we have invited independent director and screenwriter Mary Harron as the first filmmaker in the new FVD Filmmaker Residency Program, created by FVD director David L. Paletz and administered by exhibitions programmer Hank Okazaki.
[As featured in The Independent Weekly and This Month at Duke!]
In conjunction with her visit to Duke, three public screenings
of Harron's most well known films will take place
at 7:30pm on January 28th, 29th, and 30th,
in the Griffith Film Theater in the Bryan Center
on Duke's West Campus.
Guest filmmaker Mary Harron will introduce each film
and conduct
a question and answer session after the screening!
Sponsored by
the Film/Video/Digital Program,
with support from
the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute,
the Program in Women's Studies,
the Department of English,
and the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies
About the filmmaker:
Mary Harron is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She moved to England when she was thirteen and later graduated from Oxford University, where she studied English language and literature. Beginning her professional life as a punk rock journalist, Harron went on to work as the rock music critic for The Guardian, a theatre critic for The Observer, and a television and rock critic for The New Statesman. She then moved to New York City and was part of its 1970’s punk scene. She helped start and wrote for Punk magazine, and was the first journalist to interview the Sex Pistols for an American publication.
Harron made her debut as a feature-film writer/director in 1996 with I Shot Andy Warhol. The film won star Lili Taylor a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best first feature film. It was chosen to open the “Un Certain Regard” section of the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Her second feature film was the international box office hit American Psycho which she adapted from Brett Easton Ellis’s notorious bestseller. For her work on this film, she was nominated for “Director of the Year” by the London Film Critics Circle. Harron’s most recent film was The Notorious Bettie Page, that Salon.com refers to as "deeply affectionate and subversively brainy" and "a true feminist movie, but one that avoids cant and facile theories about victimization," with a portrayal that "humanizes Page without demystifying her."
In addition to directing and writing feature films, Harron also executive produced The Weather Underground, a documentary looking at the radical activists of the 1970’s. She has also directed episodes of many television series including “Homicide,” “Oz,” “The L Word,” “Six Feet Under,” “Big Love,” "The Nine" and "Six Degrees." She is currently creating an original television series for IFC called “Best American,” about an Arab limo driver and his family who live in Brooklyn.
Schedule of Screenings:
M 1/28 Griffith (7:30pm) |
I Shot Andy Warhol
(dir. Mary Harron, 1996, 103 min, UK/USA, in English, Color, 35mm)
-- Introduced by director/screenwriter Mary Harron, with Q&A to follow!
Director-screenwriter Mary Harron's first feature, I Shot Andy Warhol, is a riveting portrait of Valerie Solanas - the woman who gunned down Andy Warhol and almost killed him (later telling an arresting officer "He had too much control over my life"). The film is also a paean to Warhol - the true king of pop - and the world which he created around him in the late 1960s. Using the disturbed, but frequently brilliant, visionary-feminist Solanas as her focal point (Solanas was the founder and sole member of SCUM, the Society for Cutting up Men), Harron paints an often funny and vividly realistic picture of the subculture that surrounded Warhol and his infamous studio, the Factory.
Lili Taylor portrays Solanas with a combination of razor-sharp wit and out-of-control intelligence, as Harron tracks her through a world populated by transvestites, johns and hipsters. Despite her desperate circumstances, there's a feisty vibrancy to Solanas. The outspoken, articulate mind which wrote "The SCUM Manifesto" - an apocalyptic do-it-yourself primer for radical feminists - is ever present. Even when she subsequently spirals into a world dominated by paranoid delusions, her intelligence and wit shine through.
Tu 1/29 Griffith (7:30pm) |
American Psycho
(dir. Mary Harron, 2000, 101 min, USA/Canada, in English, Color, 35mm)
-- Introduced by director/screenwriter Mary Harron, with Q&A to follow!
For director Mary Harron's second film, she and co-writer Guinevere Turner adapted Brett Easton Ellis's controversial and hotly debated novel American Psycho for the screen, resulting in a scathing, almost Swiftian social commentary that uses a particularly compelling criminal as a barometer of his times [the 1980s on Wall Street]. The title character is a wealthy Manhattanite named Patrick Bateman [played by Christian Bale] who murders many people - or thinks he does. A superbly wrought specimen who has all the accoutrements of a young "master of the universe," from designer wardrobe to designer pharmaceuticals, Bateman is seemingly perfect - just like everyone else in his crowd.
He desperately wants to fit in yet, the more he tries to be like every other money-drenched man on Wall Street, the more faceless he becomes - and the less control he has over the terrible urges that, ironically, make him feel like an individual. Bateman is a paragon of conformity in an amoral society where to conform is to be amoral. As Harron remarks, "no one even notices he's psychotic. He takes the culture's obsessions to the nth degree?."
Although American Psycho has been criticized for its depictions of violence against women, co-writer Turner sees it as "very feminist." She explains that "It's easy to believe that because the character is mysogynist, the story is too. But it was obvious to me there was something going on beneath the horror. For instance, the book shows how the excesses of the 80s were manifested in warped relations, not only between men and women but also among men. ... It ends up being an indictment of machismo and misogyny."
W 1/30 Griffith (7:30pm) |
The Notorious Bettie Page
(dir. Mary Harron, 2005, 91 min, USA, in English, B/W & Color, 35mm)
-- Introduced by director/screenwriter Mary Harron, with Q&A to follow!
Mary Harron may be considered a provocateur, but she never resorts to shock tactics or polemics. Her approach is one of intelligence and an almost scientific detachment, tempered with a quiet tenderness towards her pariah subjects. In her latest film, Harron fixes her gaze on the figure of fifties pin-up queen Bettie Page [portrayed by Gretchen Mol]. The film follows page from her childhood in Nashville to New York, where she moves to pursue her acting dreams.
To make ends meet, Page starts modeling and soon gets into nude photography. It is not long before she is posing for sado-masochistic fetish pics. She becomes the first celebrity bondage model in the United States and finds herself at the center of a Senate investigation into pornography. Soon after, in 1958, she undergoes a rather sudden religious conversion and disappears from the public eye. The Notorious Bettie Page renders its story and its viewpoints through the finest modulations of tone, opting for a stripped-down naturalism that nevertheless retains the rich colors of fifties cheesecake. This honest, intrepid portrait has the brains and understated elegance of true seduction.
[Synopsis by Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival]
2/4 *Physics 128* (7pm) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema
Special screening with S. Korean filmmaker Kim Soyoung!
{Location: Physics building room 128 - parking available in Bryan Center garage}
Visiting scholar and filmmaker Kim Soyoung will screen the first 2 parts of her celebrated “Women’s History Trilogy”: Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea and I’ll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema.
Koryu: Southern Women, South Korea
(Kim Soyoung, 2000, 76 min., S. Korea, Korean with English subtiltes, Color, DVD)
Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea addresses specific issues surrounding women's modes of expression and existence in both pre-modern and modern Korea. The film also follows the lives of several women to construct a complex and multiple portrait of women's lives as diasporic, or koryu: temporary living in an alien land – women living in man's land.
and
I’ll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema
(Kim Soyoung, 2003, 51 min., S. Korea, Korean with English subtitles, Color & B/W, DVD)
I'll Be Seeing Her is a documentary on women in Korean cinema that deliberately eschews the traditional modes of documentary filmmaking. It manipulates and selectively re-presents the images of women in the Golden Age of Korean cinema (1950s-1960s), blending realistic and fantastic modes of presentation, while celebrating the women both on the screen and in the theaters of those times.
-- Followed by a Q&A with director Kim Soyoung!
About the director:
Any discussion of Korean film study would be lacking without mention of Kim Soyoung. As the head of the Department of Cinema Studies in the School of Film and Multimedia at the Korean National University of the Arts, she stands out not only as a scholar providing challenging theoretical analyses of Korean film but also as a successful filmmaker and feminist activist in her own right. Her impact extends also to the numerous women she has instructed who are now working in various roles (directors, producers) within the modern Korean film industry. Her books include Specters of Modernity: Fantastic Korean Cinema; Kim Soyoung's Film Reviews; Cinema: Blue Flower in the Land of Technology. She served as editor of Cine-Feminism: Reading popular Cinema. She has also published several essays in Anglophone journals or books. Her film works include Koryu: Southern Women/South Korea (2000), I'll Be Seeing Her: Women in Korean Cinema (2002), and new women: her first song (2004).
Kim Soyoung is very active as an international editor, film archivist, and festival curator. She has been a major factor in bringing international attention to such neglected directors of previous generations as Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid/Hanyo) and restoring critical respectability to many films of the late 1950s and early 60s. She has also played an important role in getting prominent film scholars, curators, and critics from other nations in both Asia and the West to include Korean films in festivals and to write about them.
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian & African Languages & Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
Tu 2/5 Griffith (7:00pm) | Sex, Love and Conflict: On the Ethics of Relationships
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007, 129 min, USA, English, Color, 35mm)
-- Followed by refreshments and a discussion led by Professor Suzanne Shanahan and Ada Gregory of the Kenan Institute for Ethics!
Knocked Up is a hilarious, poignant and refreshing look at the rigors of courtship and child-rearing, with a sometimes raunchy, always witty script that is ably acted and directed. Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy) and Seth Rogan star in this hilarious and touching comedy as two mismatched people brought together by a one-night-stand that results in an accidental pregnancy. Using many of the same actors from his previous film, The 40-Year Old Virgin, and his cult television series' Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks, director Judd Apatow once again finds fresh humor in relationships and sex.
Young, bright, and talented, Alison (Heigl) has everything going for her. After being promoted to an on-camera role at E! Television, Alison goes out to celebrate with her older sister, Debbie (Leslie Mann). Not long into the evening Debbie is called home to her kids, leaving Alison in the eager company of charming slacker Ben (Rogen). In the dark of the nightclub and in the ensuing drunk hours, Ben seems like a great guy. But in the sober light of day, Alison quickly discovers the man in her bed is nothing more than an overgrown child with no job, no money, and the social habits of a teenager. Brushing him off politely as a one-time affair, Alison goes on with her life, until two months later she realizes that the unthinkable has happened.
Apatow establishes the differences between his protagonists early in the film, bringing their contrasting worlds to life with stellar performances by secondary characters. Paul Rudd has never been better in his role as Alison's bitter brother-in-law, whose somewhat dysfunctional marriage to Alison's feisty but insecure sister unfolds in parallel to Alison and Ben's story. Meanwhile, Ben's home resembles a frat house, and his friends (Jay Baruchel, Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, and Martin Starr), while hilarious, are hardly role models.
Knocked Up will have audiences cracking up from start to finish, and it also deals with some serious issues about commitment, life choices, and becoming an adult. The film asks universal questions in a sweet and touching way, achieving a sad humor that distinguishes it from other films of its genre.
Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 2/12 Griffith (7pm) | Special Event:
Buffalo Boy -- Special screening with director Minh Nguyen-Vô!
(Minh Nguyen-Vô, 2004, 102 min, Vietnam, Belgium, France, Vietnamese, Color)
A teenager coming of age in Vietnam in the '40s is faced with new challenges and troubling news as he asserts his independence in this drama. Kim (Le The Lu) is a 15-year-old living in a rural area where a six-month rainy season causes frequent flooding, threatening the lives of the water buffalo which are crucial to the livelihood of the farmers.
Eager to prove himself, Kim is given the important task of leading two buffalo to higher ground by his father Dinh (Nguyen Huu Thanh), but the flooding proves to be more than Kim counted on, and he returns with the news that one of the animals died during the journey.
After an angry confrontation with Dinh, Kim strikes out on his own and goes to work for a farmer named Det (Kra Zan Sram), while striking up a friendship with Ban (Nguyen Thi Kieu Trihn), a woman who works with Det. Kim and Dinh resolve their differences shortly before Dinh's passing, but now Kim must deal with the responsibilities of burying his father and the startling revelation that his mother is not who he believed she was.
Minh Nguyen-Vô presents this mythic tale with indelible images of the majestic and sacred buffalos charging through flood waters contrasted with the solitary rower gliding through the waters, each representing opposite phases of the spiritual and moving journey.
** Top Prize, New Director's Competition, 2004 Chicago Film Festival
** 2004 Locarno Film Festival
** 2005 Toronto Film Festival
** 2005 Vietnamese Film Festival
** 2005 Bangkok Film Festival
-- Followed by a Q&A with director Minh Nguyen-Vo!
About the director: Nguyen-Vô Nghiem-Minh grew up near an American Air Force base, in a rural area of Vietnam, during the years of the Vietnam War. His parents operated a one-room cinema, and the boy grew up with movies that provided both a means of escape, from the violence of the war, and a window to the world. Nghiem-Minh studied engineering in France and earned a PhD in applied physics from UCLA in 1984, where he developed a special interest in the interaction between light and sound in physics. This led to studies in cinema and new media at UCLA. He directed Crimson Wings (1999), a short film, and Places and Times, a travel documentary. The script for Buffalo Boy, based on short stories Nghiem- Minh remembered from childhood, was selected by IFP/West Screenwriters Lab 2000. Buffalo Boy is his first feature film.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, the Vietnamese Students Association, the University Writing Program, the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, and the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature.
M 2/18 Griffith (7pm) | North Carolina premiere!
Terror’s Advocate -- comments and Q&A with visiting Duke Law Prof. Michael Tigar to follow!
(Barbet Schroeder, 2007, 135 min, France, French, German, English, Khmer, Color, 35mm)
About Barbet Schroeder's controversial new documentary:
Communist, anti-colonialist, right-wing extremist? What convictions guide the moral mind of Jacques Vergès? Barbet Schroeder takes us down history’s darkest paths in his attempt to illuminate the mystery behind this enigmatic figure, who agreed to be interviewed for the film. As a young lawyer during the Algerian war, Vergès espoused the anti-colonialist cause and defended Djamila Bouhired, ‘la Pasionaria,’ who bore her country’s hopes for freedom on her shoulders and was sentenced to death for planting bombs in cafes. He obtained her release, married her and had two children with her. Then suddenly, at the height of an illustrious career, Vergès disappeared without trace for eight years.
He re-emerged from his mysterious absence, taking on the defense of terrorists of all kinds, from Magdalena Kopp and Anis Naccache to Carlos the Jackal. He represented historical monsters such as Nazi lieutenant Klaus Barbie. From the lawyer’s inflammatory and provocative cases to his controversial terrorist links, Barbet Schroeder follows the winding trail left by this ‘devil’s advocate,’ as he forges his unique path in law and politics.
Schroeder explores and questions the history of ‘blind terrorism’ through his penetrating investigation of this compelling man and leads us towards shocking revelations that expose long-hidden links in history.
Comments + Q&A w/ Prof. Michael Tigar to follow!
About the guest speaker:
Michael Tigar has represented many American radicals including Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, the Chicago Eight, the Seattle Eight, Kiko Martinez and Lynne Stewart, as well as other controversial figures ranging from accused Oklahoma bomber Terry Nichols and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He has lectured and written on the work of Jacques Verges at universities in the United States and France.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/digital Program with support from the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Center for International Studies, the Center for French & Francophone Studies, the Department of Romance Studies and the Department of Political Science.
Tu 2/19 Griffith (7:00pm) | Sex, Love and Conflict: On the Ethics of Relationships
Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999, 139 min, USA, English, Color, 35mm)
-- Followed by refreshments and a discussion led by Martin Liccardo of the Duke University Women's Center and Professor Suzanne Shanahan and Ada Gregory of the Kenan Institute for Ethics!
Fight Club is narrated by a lonely, unfulfilled young man (Edward Norton) who finds his only comfort in feigning terminal illness and attending disease support groups. Hopping from group to group, he encounters another pretender, or "tourist," the morose Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who immediately gets under his skin.
However, while returning from a business trip, he meets a more intriguing character--the subversive Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). They become fast friends, bonding over a mutual disgust for corporate consumer-culture hypocrisy. Eventually, the two start Fight Club, which convenes in a bar basement where angry men get to vent their frustrations in brutal, bare-knuckle bouts. Fight Club soon becomes the men's only real priority; when the club starts a cross-country expansion, things start getting really crazy.
Like Tyler Durden himself, director David Fincher’s Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is startlingly aggressive and gleefully mischievous as it skewers the superficiality of American pop culture. Outstanding performances by Norton and Pitt are supported by a razor-sharp script and an arsenal of stunning visual effects that include computer animation and sleight-of-hand editing. One of the most unique films of the late 20th century, Fight Club is a pitch-black comedy of striking intensity.
Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 2/26 Griffith (7pm) | Celebrating Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)
Blow Up
(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 111 min, UK/Italy/USA, in English, color, DVD)
Michelangelo Antonioni delivers yet another masterful cinematic expose with BLOW UP, a provocative mystery set in the seamy mod culture of London. The film follows a photographer (David Hemmings) who captures evidence of a murder when he takes some innocent snapshots of a couple in the park. As he digs deeper and deeper into the photograph's actual negative in order to unravel the mystery, he also must contend with a seemingly dangerous woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who knows more than she is letting on.
Atmospheric, tense, with a refreshing jolt of humor, Antonioni's stylish thriller influenced the work of many of cinema's most celebrated directors, including Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION, Brian De Palma's BLOW OUT, and David Lynch's BLUE VELVET.
-- The first of 2 films by cinema legend Michelangelo Antonioni [see also March 25]
"The natural world is arrayed against the artificial scene; conscience is deployed against convention. If you’ve never seen Blow Up, see it now, if only to see what part of the world was like 40 years ago." -- Andrew Sarris, New York Observer
"Pop-culture icon that has become a cult classic. Antonioni's adaptation of Cortazar's short story is an engrossing study of imagery and one's perception of the image." -- TV Guide's Movie Guide
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Freewater Presentations, and the Duke University Union.
W 2/27 Love Auditorium (7:30pm) | Love=Love: LGBTQ film series
Savage Nights (Les nuits fauves)
(Cyril Collard, 1992, 126 min, France, French with English subtitles, Color, VHS)
If a movie's quality were measured by its courage, Savage Nights, a rebellious celebration of unsafe sex and suicidal romantic passion in the age of AIDS, would have to be reckoned some sort of liberating achievement. Written and directed by its star, Cyril Collard, who died of AIDS at age 35, this award-winning drama follows the romantic and sexual misadventures of a bisexual, HIV-positive Frenchman as he searches for meaning in his life. Jean (Cyril Collard), a successful photographer, dates women but has furtive sex with men. When he meets Samy (Carlos Lopez), an aimless, half-Spanish young rugby player, Jean easily steals him right from under his girlfriend's watchful eyes. Just months after learning that he's HIV-positive, Jean only practices safe sex with his male partners. The same isn't true of his relationship with Laura (Romane Bohringer), an intense 17 year old whose combination of youthful exuberance and world-weary cynicism captivates him. The first night they make love, Jean struggles to warn Laura of his HIV status, but her emotional nakedness and his own confusion prevent him. When he finally does tell her, she's more concerned about living life without him than she is about the danger into which he has put her.
Vacillating from one extreme and one lover to the other, Jean unwittingly wreaks emotional havoc in Laura's life. Meanwhile, Samy finds himself slowly drawn into Jean's orbit and seems to have no problem with the ambiguity involved. He also dabbles in violent sex and even racist nationalism -- all reactions to his complex, troubled family life. As Laura spins out of control and Samy drifts away, Jean tries to make some sense of his own destructiveness; all the while, his illness progresses.
Adapted from director Collard's own novel, Savage Nights won the filmmaker a French Cesar award for Best Debut Director just days after he died of AIDS-related illness.
Sponsored by DukeOUT, the Duke University Union, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, FuquaPride, Duke Allies, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities, the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Office of Institutional Equity, Nosh Eclectic Foodstuffs, the Human Rights Campaign, Club Steel Blue, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
M 3/3 Griffith (8pm) | Arts in Focus: Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer
Le Louvre Imaginaire
(Alain Fleischer, 1993, 90 min, France, French with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)
The Louvre is one of the most famous museums in the world, attracting millions of visitors each year. Alain Fleischer offers a dream-like tour of the spaces and mythical works of the Louvre: the flight of a falcon, the dreams of a child, and the words of poet Yves Bonnefoy serve as guides through this visual poem.
Sponsored by the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Visual Studies Initiative, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 3/4 Griffith (7:00pm) | Sex, Love and Conflict: On the Ethics of Relationships
Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2007, 92 min, Canada, English, Color, 35mm)
-- Followed by refreshments and a discussion led by Professors Anne Allison and Suzanne Shanahan!
In this sharp psychological thriller, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett give fierce, memorable performances as two schoolteachers locked in a battle of wits.
Dame Judi Dench and Kate Blanchett face off with searing performances in this riveting tale of obsession and desire. Based on the novel by Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal is the story of Barbara Covett (Dench), a hard-nosed spinster schoolteacher, and her poisonous friendship with fellow teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett). When the young and beautiful Sheba shows up as the new art instructor, everyone is charmed by her, including the embittered Barbara. Barbara is thrilled when her lonely life is shaken up by Sheba's overtures of friendship, as Sheba invites her to share in family dinners, and opens up to her about her marital troubles and personal longing. Barbara narrates her own feelings of longing to us from her meticulous diaries, and it becomes increasingly clear that her take on the friendship is uncomfortably intense, if not borderline delusional.
Things reach a fever pitch when Barbara happens upon Sheba dallying in the art room with a 15-year-old student. She tells Sheba that she must end the affair at once, but decides not to report her to the school, and instead, to use her knowledge of the indiscretion to draw Sheba closer to her, and put her in her debt. But when Barbara's demands on Sheba become too high, things soon unravel, setting off a chain of events that will leave viewers chewing their nails to the quick, but unable to tear their eyes away.
Both Blanchett and Dench are dazzling to watch as they deftly handle the barbed wit of Patrick Marber's screenplay. Directed by Richard Eyre of the Northern Theatre of London, and with a score by Philip Glass, Notes on a Scandal takes what could serve as mere tabloid fodder and plays it out on the level of Shakespearean tragedy.
Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
W 3/5 Griffith (7pm) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema
Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006, 141 min, USA, English, Japanese, Color, 35mm)
-- Introduced by screenwriter Iris Yamashita, with Q&A to follow!
The island of Iwo Jima stands between the American military force and the home islands of Japan. Therefore the Imperial Japanese Army is desperate to prevent it from falling into American hands and providing a launching point for an invasion of Japan. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi is given command of the forces on the island and sets out to prepare for the imminent attack. General Kuribayashi, however, does not favor the rigid traditional approach recommended by his subordinates, and resentment and resistance fester among his staff. In the lower echelons, a young soldier, Saigo, a poor baker in civilian life, strives with his friends to survive the harsh regime of the Japanese army itself, all the while knowing that a fierce battle looms. When the American invasion begins, both Kuribayashi and Saigo find strength, honor, courage, and horrors beyond imagination.
Clint Eastwood’s companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers presents a powerful and artistic rendering of the events leading up to the Battle of Iwo Jima. A sympathetic portrait of the Japanese soldiers who fought to defend the island from U.S. Marine Corps, the film has earned Eastwood universal praise for de-mythifying the often sanctimonious portrayal of war combat while sensitively evoking the experiences of an American foe.
-- First-time Japanese-American screenwriter Iris Yamashita joins us to discuss her adaptation of Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s first hand account of the epochal event.
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
M 3/17 Griffith (8pm) | Arts in Focus: Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer
Le roi Rodin (Alain Fleischer, 2002, 80 min, French with English Subtitles, DVD)
Filmmaker, photographer, writer – Alain Fleischer enters Rodin’s kingdom to lay bare his passion for the human body, revealing the source of Rodin’s creative energy.
The genius of sculpture’s technique comes to life through the film, which was shot in Rodin's workshop at Meudon, at the Musee Rodin in Paris, and during various exhibits.
Le roi Rodin was screened at the Locarno Film Festival and the Montreal International Art Film Festival.
Le roman de Rodin (Alain Fleischer, 2002, 18 min, French with English Subtitles, DVD)
Rodin’s life as told in his own words, over a montage of rare unpublished early photos from the Rodin Museum’s private collection, with commentary from Rilke, Mirbeau, Goncourt and more.
and
La restauration des ‘Burghers of Calais’ (Alain Fleischer, 2002, 24 min, French with English Subtitles, DVD)This film deals with the transportation to Rome of the famous sculpture and its restoration in the gardens of the Villa Medici, then its journey back to Calais.
Sponsored by the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Visual Studies Initiative, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 3/18 Griffith (7:00pm) | Sex, Love and Conflict: On the Ethics of Relationships
In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2002, 130 min, USA, English, Color, 35mm)
-- Followed by refreshments and a discussion led by Professors Susan Roth and Suzanne Shanahan!
Todd Field's In the Bedroom is an artistic and realistic portrait of domestic trouble in small-town America. Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson star as Ruth and Matt Fowler, the parents of a recent high school graduate, Frank (Nick Stahl), who has an affair with a married woman, Natalie (Marisa Tomei). A tragic event near the beginning of the film seems to stunt its action and dialogue, allowing the film to change into a largely visual piece based on memories, feelings, and silent communication; while the film's slow-moving camera, soft sunny lighting, and cautious pacing give it a resonating intensity.
Set in coastal Maine, the Fowlers are a well-liked family with simple, straightforward values. Dr. Fowler has his own small medical practice. Mrs. Fowler directs the chorus at the high school. Frank is a good kid who is working on the fishing docks for the summer, waiting for college in the fall. Frank falls into a summer romance with Natalie, an older woman with two young sons and a creepy, lurking husband (William Mapother) from whom she is separated. The relationship is worrisome to Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, but they want to be supportive of their son so they gently nudge him to think about the bigger picture, without being overbearing. But when the unthinkable happens, Mr. and Mrs. Fowler come face to face with their worst nightmare.
Quietly, calmly, and with the most logic they can muster, they begin a dark and dangerous psychological journey. The result, reinforced by stunning performances from Wilkinson and Spacek, is a pensive, penetrating, and utterly believable story.
Sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
W 3/19 Griffith (7pm) | Special Events
Oscar Winning Short Documentaries
-- Special screening with Academy representative Margaret Lazarus, who will talk about short documentaries, the history of the Academy and documentaries, the selection process, and other topics.
-- Q&A to follow!
- Chernobyl Heart (Maryann De Leo, 2003, 39 min., USA, English, color, DVD)
Sixteen years after the worst nuclear accident in history, award-winning filmmaker Maryann De Leo takes her camera back to ground zero, following the devastating effects of radiation on hospitals, orphanages, asylums, and evacuated villages.
- Interviews with Mai Lai Veterans (Joseph Strick, 1971, 22 min., USA, English, color, DVD)
Interviews with five former American soldiers who were present at the March 16, 1968 attack on the village of Mai Lai during the Vietnam War; they discuss the orders that were issued leading up to the attack, their expectations of what they would find there, and the subsequent massacre of the inhabitants and destruction of the village, as well as possible motivations for the killings and rapes which took place.
- A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin (Eric Simonson, 2005, 39 min., USA, English, color, DVD.)
The Golden Age of Norman Corwin examines the greatest radio presentation in the history of the medium and shows how it remains eerily prescient in light of current events. Now a forgotten figure, Corwin was the unofficial poet laureate of WWII America. His 1941 radio broadcast "We Hold These Truths" captured 60 million listeners, more than half the nation, and "On a Note of Triumph,' his exclamatory celebration of VE-Day ("Take a bow, G.I. Take a bow, little guy"), was praised by Carl Sandburg as "one of the great American poems." A flamboyant performer in the mold of Orson Welles, who himself once intoned Corwin's muscular verse, Corwin sported a pencil moustache and a shock of electrified black hair; a vintage photo spread testifies to contemporary fascination with his Stokowskian gesticulations. Not surprisingly, most of those who pay testimony to Corwin's greatness are well into their golden years—Robert Altman, Norman Lear, Walter Cronkite and a near-deaf Studs Turkel among them. But the generous excerpts from Corwin's broadcasts blow the dust off his legend with hurricane force, and Corwin himself demonstrates a still-sharp wit. Corwin's recordings are available through his Web site, and Simonson makes an airtight case for his overdue rediscovery.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Th 3/20 East Duke 209 (7pm) | Special Events
Special screening with documentary filmmaker Margaret Lazarus, who will present 3 of her films.
-- Q&A to follow!
Margaret Lazarus is an independent documentary film producer and director. Her documentary film Defending Our Lives won the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary Film. Throughout her career she has combined her political activism with documentary filmmaking. With Renner Wunderlich, she founded Cambridge Documentary Films a non profit producing and distribution organization that distributes films about social justice to over 20,000 organizations and theaters that show documentary films. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Tisch School at Tufts University.
- Defending Our Lives (Margaret Lazarus, 1994, 30 min., USA, English, color, DVD)
-- Academy Award winner for Best Short Documentary Film!
Domestic violence is the single greatest cause of injury to women in America - more than muggings, rapes, and car accidents combined. A woman in the United States is more likely to be killed by her partner than by any other assailant. Sarah Buel, a district attorney, outlines the problem throughout the video - not merely as a member of the criminal justice system, but as a former battered woman. Every person in this documentary is an expert; each has experienced first-hand the terror of domestic violence.
- Strong at The Broken Places: Turning Trauma Into Recovery (Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, 1998, 38 min., USA, English, color, DVD)
Strong at the Broken Places is about people, devastated by trauma and loss, who find common ground for their journeys to recovery. A new film from the producers of Defending Our Lives, it is the story of vastly different lives; but the death camps of Cambodia, the violent streets of South Boston, the amputee ward of a V.A. hospital and the cell of an alcohol and drug addicted inmate yield remarkable survivors, all of whom heal themselves by helping others. Their stories are both inspirational and instructional, helping to infuse the word "hero" with meaning for our daily lives.
- Rape Is... (Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, 2005, 30 min., USA, English, color, DVD)
Rape is... explores the meaning and consequences of rape. This documentary looks at rape from a global and historical perspective, but focuses mainly on the domestic cultural conditions that make this human rights violation the most underreported crime in America. Many types of sexual assault are not considered a serious crime by the legal system and our society refuses to see the true cost of this brutal denial of basic rights. Rape is... expands the narrow ways we think of sexual violence, and demonstrates that it is not a sporadic and rare occurrence, but a cultural and criminal outrage that affects millions of women, children and men all over the world.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program and the Program in Women's Studies.
F 3/21 Richard White (8pm) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema
Tsui Hark’s The Warrior (animated) ("Tiger" Fu Yan and Chen Yue Hui, 2006 88 min, Hong Kong, Cantonese or Mandarin with English subtitles, Color, DVD)
-- New Location: this screening has been moved to the Richard White Auditorium (East Campus)!
The legendary Tsui Hark (Seven Swords, Zu Warriors) returns to the wonderful world of animation after his acclaimed A Chinese Ghost Story with this dazzling feature, based on the Wong Fei hung character from Tsui's famous Once Upon a Time in China film series! Wong must save the world from falling into a catastrophe when an evil spirit is unleashed by foreign enemies determined to conquer China. With amazing animation in the style of Miyazaki and wonderful fights choreographed by Tsui himself, the warrior is an eye-popping kung fu fantasy adventure for both fans of animation and martial arts alike!
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
M 3/24 Griffith (8pm) | Arts in Focus: Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer
Three films about Christian Boltanski (Total: 75 Min.)
- Quelques activités de Christian B (Alain Fleischer, 1970, 11 min, France, B&W, 16mm)
The first film about Christian Boltanski. - Boltanski par Fleischer ou Les ombres (Alain Fleischer, 1984, 16 min, France, color, 16mm)
Christian Boltanski in his workshop during the period of his photography work.
- À la Recherche de Christian B (Alain Fleischer, 1989, 45 min, France, color, French w/ English subtitles, 16mm)
The work of Boltanski is centered on such notions as absence-presence, memory, loss of identity, and the individual in mass society. In a kind of "personal mythology," the celebrated artist pieces together episodes of a life he never lived. The narrator of this film, who hasn't seen Boltanski in twenty years, attempts to reassemble the images of the artist's life and career. His investigation draws upon a variety of sources: the artist's known and accredited works are set against a kaleidoscope of diverse images. Each sequence evokes Boltanski's recurring themes: the cumulative effect of lives, beings, events, objects, remnants.
Sponsored by the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Visual Studies Initiative, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 3/25 Griffith (7pm) | Celebrating Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007)
The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975, 126 min, Italy, in English, Spanish, German and French, Color, 35mm)
—Special commemorative 35mm screening!
The Passenger is, on the simplest level, a suspense story about a man trying to escape his own life. Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a disillusioned American reporter who is sent on a grueling mission to North Africa. When he stumbles across the body of a dead man in his hotel room, Locke, long desirous of starting life over again, assumes the corpse's identity. He soon discovers that the man he's pretending to be is involved in espionage activities on behalf of a terrorist group. Making the acquaintance of a mysterious woman (Maria Schneider from Last Tango in Paris), he finds a kindred spirit -- a woman as "lost" as he.
The film was shot on location and takes Nicholson on an incredible journey through Africa, Spain, Germany and England. As with all of Antonioni's work, however, there is another dimension. From beginning to end we are witnessing a probing study of the human condition. The protagonist's fate reflects each individual's own private thoughts about real and/or imagined destiny.
"Nicholson gives one of his best performances in this magnificently shot and lingeringly powerful thriller." -- John Fortgang, Channel 4 Film
"One of the deepest, most rigorous, and most rewarding films of its era." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe
"To watch Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 masterpiece is to see film the way it once was and may never be again." -- Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Star
"I consider The Passenger my most stylistically mature film." -- Michelangelo Antonioni
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Freewater Presentations, and the Duke University Union.
W 3/26 Griffith (8pm) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema
Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005, 114min, Japan, Japanese, Color, 35mm)
Four schoolgirls put the axiom "the show must go on" to the test in this rock & roll teen comedy drama from Japan. Nozumi (Shiori Sekine) and Kyoto (Aki Maeda) are two friends who attend the same high school and have decided to put together a rock band to play the school's talent show. Things are going well until two days before the show, when the group's lead guitarist quits for fear of breaking her fingernails and the singer walks due to lack of interest. Determined to make a showing one way or another, Nozumi takes over as bass player, Kyoto becomes the group's drummer, and their pal Kei (Yu Kashii) is drafted as lead guitarist, even though keyboards are her first instrument. Needing a singer, the girls literally take on the first likely candidate who crosses their path. However, the new vocalist turns out to be Song (Doona Bae), a Korean exchange student who not only hasn't sang before, but has only the most rudimentary command of Japanese. The girls give themselves the goal of being able to play "Linda Linda Linda," a hit for the Japanese pop-punk band the Blue Hearts, in time for the show, but is there any way Kei and Song can overcome their steep learning curve? Linda Linda Linda received its North American premiere at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival.
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
Thu 3/27 Love Auditorium (7:30pm) | Love=Love: LGBTQ film series
Wild Side (Sébastien Lifshitz, 2004, 93 min, France, French with English subtitles, Color, DVD)
This film tells the story of Stéphanie (played by real-life transsexual Stéphanie Michelini), a jaded transsexual prostitute who leaves Paris to take care of her dying mother (Josiane Storelu) in the country. She brings along her two lovers, a street-hustling Arab boy, Jamel (Yasmine Belmadi), and a Russian ex-soldier named Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine). While Stephanie and her mom come to grips with their troubled past, Mikhail has his own problems dealing with his mother back in Russia, as does Jamel who finds his lifestyle not warmly accepted by his conventional family. This is a film about crossing barriers sexually, personally, and even--to comical effect--linguistically, as Mikhail does not speak French, so everyone has to communicate in the commonly shared broken English.
Screening location: Love Auditorium, Levine Science Research Center (LSRC) room B101.
Sponsored by DukeOUT, the Duke University Union, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, FuquaPride, Duke Allies, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities, the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Office of Institutional Equity, Nosh Eclectic Foodstuffs, the Human Rights Campaign, Club Steel Blue, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
F 3/28 French Sci 2231 (7:30pm) | Love=Love: LGBTQ film series
Nina’s Heavenly Delights (Pratibha Parmar, 2006, 94 min, UK, in English, Color, DVD)
Nina's Heavenly Delights is a surprising love story where Scottish humor meets Bollywood spectacle! It follows the mixed fortunes of a Glaswegian family, the Shah’s and their award winning Indian restaurant, The New Taj. The story is told through the eyes of Nina Shah, a young Scottish Asian woman. Nina had left home under a cloud after an argument with her father but when he dies suddenly, Nina is forced to return. Her return reunites her with her childhood friend Bobbi, a wannabe Bollywood drag queen, and brings her face to face with Lisa, a charismatic young woman who now owns half the restaurant.
Then Nina discovers her father's secret – The New Taj has been selected for The Best of the West Curry Competition. In the turbulent, but exhilarating days that follow, Nina, with Lisa's help, embarks on a personal mission to win the trophy for the third time. But Nina's feelings are thrown into turmoil when she realizes that she is falling in love with Lisa. Can her feelings ever be reciprocated? And, if they are, what will this mean for Nina and her family?
Screening location: French Family Science Center, room 2231.
Sponsored by DukeOUT, the Duke University Union, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, FuquaPride, Duke Allies, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities, the Office of Institutional Equity, Nosh Eclectic Foodstuffs, the Human Rights Campaign, Club Steel Blue, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
M 3/31 Griffith (8pm) | Arts in Focus: Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer
Un Monde Agité (Alain Fleischer, 1996, 90 min, France, French with English subtitles. Color, 35mm)
A fictional work made up of excerpts from early films, dating back to the beginnings of cinema.
Sponsored by the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Visual Studies Initiative, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
April 2008
Tu 4/1 Griffith (7pm) | Celebrating Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955, Sweden, Swedish, Black and White, 35mm)
This romantic comedy, written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, was inspired in part by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream and later became the basis for both the musical A Little Night Music and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. The principal events take place at a turn-of-the-century manor house where Desirée Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck), an actress, and her aging mother are giving a party. Two of the invited guests--Count Malcolm (Jarl Kulle) and Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand), a middle-aged lawyer--are romantically involved with Desirée, a cause for murderous jealousy between the two. Meanwhile, Egerman's youthful wife, Anne (Ulla Jacobsson), who has thus far repulsed all sexual advances on her husband's part, is showing a considerable interest in her stepson (Björn Bjelvenstam)...During the course of the evening, various alliances are formed and dissolved, partners are switched, and all the guests take part in the resulting erotic escapades and intrigue--but in the end, everyone finds their true love. This is lighter, airier fare from a director often associated with existential angst and despair; nevertheless, Bergman's spicy, sophisticated movie received rave reviews and earned him widespread critical acclaim.Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Freewater Presentations, and the Duke University Union.
W 4/2 Griffith (7pm) | Muslim Women in Film
Half Moon (Bahman Ghobadi 2006, 114 min, Iran, Kurdish & Persian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)
In less than a decade the Iranian Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has become one of cinema's most potent lyric poets. From an amalgam of broad comedy, gentle absurdity and the harrowing consequences of war, he sparks a deeply humanist alchemy in unsentimental tales peopled by nonprofessional actors. Half Moon, Ghobadi's fourth feature since his 2000 debut, A Time for Drunken Horses, strikes a more forthrightly elegiac tone than any of his preceding work. At the center of the story is a revered elderly composer named Mamo who's determined to travel from Iranian to Iraqi Kurdistan to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein with a performance of long-banned Kurdish music. Despite failing health and his offspring's fluctuating commitment to the dangerous enterprise, Mamo is resolute; neither callous border guards nor his own recurring premonitions of disaster will derail the performance. Fateful and funny, haunting and magical, Half Moon balances delicately between the harsh realities of its location and the mystical power of Mamo's visions. Shooting mainly in Iranian Kurdistan, the cinematographers Nigel Bluck and Crighton Bone find an unearthly beauty amid the gambling frenzy of a cockfight and in the film's boldest symbolic moment, when the 1,334 residents of a cloistered village -- female singers all, and forbidden to perform publicly in Iran -- trill from perches atop the roofs.. As the end of the journey draws near, the line between the natural and the supernatural becomes increasingly difficult to discern. Inspired by Mozart's "Requiem" and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna, Half Moon is an affecting contemplation of resilience in the face of tragedy. When a higher purpose beckons, death itself must take a back seat.
Sponsored by the FOCUS Program, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature, the Program in Women's Studies, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
M 4/7 Griffith (6pm) | Russian documentary films program
--3 short films, followed by a Q&A with 2 of the directors!
Sarafan (Aleksandra Strelyanaya, 2006, 21 min, Color, DVD) {trailer}
This spectacularly visual film depicts a Russian village in the Pskov area on the eve of a wedding, as the communal elders reminisce about their youth and the community’s wedding traditions. With black and white pictures and old women’s stories juxtaposed against living traditions and ceremonies, this film captures one moment in the experience of a young girl waiting for happiness. The author manages to create a collage of raw images that are both unique and traditional for Russian cinematography.
Coal Dust (Maria Miroshnichenko, 2006, 20 min, Color & B&W, DVD)
This film is about life in a small mining town near the Ural mountains, where miners spend their whole lives working for a state-run industry that values the coal dust more than the individuals it employs.
Coal dust is dangerous – hardly visible, but highly explosive. To detect it on a daily basis is the job of a young miner, whose off-voice monologue leads us through the film. But misfortune is what the mates from Kopejsk expect: Privatization of the mine leading to a decline in working conditions. Silicosis after a few years below ground. A salary so low that the family cannot be fed. This may lead them to explode just like the coal dust, to go on strike – or to throw themselves into the pit out of desperation. The only certainty seems to be that the lift door will close in front of their serious faces. And they become small, blurred points of light – the people who once made the world a brighter place, according to the lyrics of a song from better times. But soon it will be over with the mines and who knows what will happen to Kopejsk? The image of the miner with his black face and a jackhammer in his hand was one of the icons of socialism. Miro challenges the myth without harming its heroes. The magnificent camera of Nikolai Karpow shows them as the ruler of an apparently mystic underground 'realm of shadows'. Yet the clever montage reveals the desperate struggle for existence outside of this realm.
Being Director Berezovsky (Sergey Kachkin, 2007, 22min, Color, DVD)
Sergey Kachkin's debut film tells the story of a retired Soviet era director who made one internationally popular and award-winning film before sinking into obscurity.
Sponsored by Open World Cultural Leaders Program, the Film/Video/Digital Program, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, and the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies.
M 4/7 Griffith (8pm) | Special Event - documentary screening + discussion
USA vs Al-Arian
(Line Halvorsen, 2007, 99 min, Norway, in English & Arabic w/ Subtitles, Color, DVD)
--followed by a Q&A w/ director Line Halvorsen, attorney for the appeal Peter Erlinder, and Al-Arian family members Nahla, Abdullah and Laila!
(Photo Courtesy Dalchows verden)
Sami Al-Arian is a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years. In 2003, Professor Al-Arian was accused of giving material support to a terrorist organization and held in solitary confinement for over three years. His six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict. The failure to convict Dr. Al-Arian was seen as a stinging rebuke for the federal government.
(Photo Courtesy Dalchows verden)
While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he has been targeted in an attempt to silence his political views. Because the jury hung on some of the counts, however, Dr. Al-Arian remained in jail as the prosecution threatened to retry him. In May 2006 he agreed to a plea bargain with the US Government in order to put an end to the ordeal and to be reunited with his family. However, a federal judge ignored the government's recommendation of releasing him and sentenced him to 57 months in prison and subsequent deportation. Today, one year after his release date, Al-Arian is still being held in prison without a release date in sight. He is currently on a hunger strike to protest the government's treatment of him. The case of Sami Al-Arian is one of the first major tests of the USA Patriot Act.
In happier days, the Al-Arian family celebrates Abdullah’s 2002 graduation from
Duke University. (Photo Courtesy Al-Arian Family)
From left: Laila, Ali, Abdullah, Lama, Nahla, Leena and Dr. Sami Al-Arian.
The film follows Sami Al-Arian’s wife Nahla and their five children throughout his 6 month-long trial. It is an intimate family portrait that documents the strain brought on by the trial, a battle waged both in court and in the media. In the film a tight-knit family unravels before our very eyes as trial preparations, strategy and spin consume their lives. This documentary, winner of Best Film in the 2007 New Orleans Human Rights Film Festival, shows a nightmare coming to life, as a man is prosecuted for his beliefs rather than his actions.
Currently, Sami Al-Arian is in the Federal Medical Center in Butner, NC.
For an editorial about the case by attorney for the appeal, Peter Erlinder, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/11/7622/
For more info about the film, see:
http://www.usavsalarian.com
Sponsored by the Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), the Focus Program, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 4/8 Griffith (7pm) | Celebrating Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1983, 188 min, Sweden, Swedish, German, Yiddish, English, color, 35mm)
Director Ingmar Bergman had intended Fanny and Alexander to be his final theatrical film and a summing-up of sorts of his entire cinematic career. (It was followed by 1984’s after the rehearsal, which was also made for Swedish television and subsequently released theatrically abroad.) Fanny and Alexander is the story of two children belonging to a wealthy, extensive theatrical family in provincial Sweden in the early years of the 20th century--10-year-old Alexander (Bertil Guve) and his younger sister, Fanny (Pernilla Alwin).
When their father dies unexpectedly during a performance and their mother decides to remarry, the children are forced to relocate to the austere (and possibly haunted) home of their stern and rather coldhearted stepfather, Bishop Vergerus (Jan Malmsjö).
A means of escape is eventually provided by Isak Jacobi (Erland Josephson), a longtime friend of the Ekdahl family's who seems to possess magical powers. In this somewhat autobiographical movie--which was filmed in the director’s hometown of Uppsala--the gifted, precocious Alexander is a stand-in for Bergman himself, who had a problematic relationship with his own father, a strict clergyman. At once festive, spooky, and bawdy--and uncharacteristically life-affirming—Fanny and Alexander is one of Bergman’s most universally appealing and accessible works.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Freewater Presentations, and the Duke University Union.
W 4/9 Griffith (7pm) | Muslim Women in Film
Love for Share (Berbagi Suami)
(Nia Dinata, 2006, 120 min, Indonesia, Indonesian w/ English subtitles, Color)
-- Special screening with director Nia Dinata in person! Q&A to follow.
This is a movie about polygamy in modern Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. It is a film about three women from three different social classes and ethnic backgrounds, conveying their challenges in dealing with polygamy: sharing a husband's love and attention with several other women. The film reveals their troubles and internal conflicts. In their course of finding the answers to their problems, sometimes they meet with each other without even realizing that they share a similar story.
Berbagi Suami, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April 2006, won the awards for Best Film at the 2006 Hawaii International Film Festival and Best Director at the 2007 Brussels International Independent Film Festival.
It's the latest feather in Nia Dinata's cap as one of the most exciting directors to emerge in Indonesia over the last 10 years. Although her first feature film, Ca Bau Kan (The Courtesan) was released in 2001, Nia has been honing her craft since the mid-1990s. In 1995, following a degree in mass communications from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and a course in film production at New York University, in the United States, the Jakarta native returned to Indonesia to work in television. In 1998, Nia won the best drama award at the Indonesian Film for TV Festival for a telemovie called Mencari Pelangi (In Search of the Rainbow). Since then she has won several other honours, including the most promising new director and best art director awards at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea, in 2002, for Ca Bau Kan; and the best film and best editing awards at the 2004 Indonesian Film Festival, for Arisan (The Gathering), a film which portrays Jakarta's gay community.
Nia Dinata deftly weaved together the stories of three women in Berbagi Suami to underscore the point that polygamy plagues women irrespective of age, race and social class. Her willingness to tackle such controversial issues has won her warm praise and respect in the industry.
Sponsored by the FOCUS Program, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature, the Program in Women's Studies, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Th 4/10 French Sci 2231 (7:30pm) | Love=Love: LGBTQ film series
Small Town Gay Bar (Malcolm Ingram, 2006, 81 min, USA, in English, Color, DVD)
Moving documentary about two gay bars, Rumors and Crossroads, in the middle of redneck America (the Deep South) which provide safe havens in the midst of great prejudice, hatred, and fear.
Screening location: French Family Science Center, room 2231.
Sponsored by DukeOUT, the Duke University Union, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, FuquaPride, Duke Allies, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities, the Office of Institutional Equity, Nosh Eclectic Foodstuffs, the Human Rights Campaign, Club Steel Blue, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
M 4/14 Griffith (7pm) | Arts in Focus: Documentary Films of Alain Fleischer
Fragments of Conversations With Jean-Luc Godard (Alain Fleischer, 2007, 116 min, France, French w/ English subtitles, Color, DVD)
-- Special screening of the documentary, rarely shown in the U.S.!
Shot in Rolle at the filmmaker's home, in the Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts (in front of students), and in the exhibition rooms of the Pompidou Centre, the film features encounters between Jean-Luc Godard and various different people such as Dominique Païni, André S. Labarthe, Jean Narboni, Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, and Christophe Kantcheff. These discussions develop thinking about history, politics, cinema, and time, and the issues raised are taken from the series of lectures that Godard proposed to the Collège de France, but which were rejected. This aborted project engendered a desire to make nine films constituting a theoretical, historical and critical look at film and television.
Sponsored by the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Visual Studies Initiative, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
Tu 4/15 Griffith (7pm) | Celebrating Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
Bergman’s Island (Marie Nyreröd, 2004, 85 min, Sweden, Swedish with English subtitles, Color, DVD)
-- Special screening of the documentary, rarely shown in the U.S.!
This documentary visits Ingmar Bergman, one of the 20th century's greatest film directors, in his home on Sweden's Fårö Island, where he ruminates on his own masterpieces, including Persona and Cries and Whispers, as well as the influences that have had such lasting importance for him.
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, Freewater Presentations, and the Duke University Union.
W 4/16 Griffith (*8:15pm*) | Cine-East: East Asian Cinema <-- new time, 8:15pm!
Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004, 95 min, China, Cantonese, Mandarin, Color, 35mm)
-- Experience the mayhem on the big screen, in 35mm!
Stephen Chow's follow-up to Shaolin Soccer ups the over-the-top action quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow--who wrote, produced, and directed--doesn't step in as the star here for quite a while, letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabers from lyre strings, and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named "the Beast" (Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers.
Buoyed by Shaolin Soccer's box office success, Kung Fu Hustle uses bigger production values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts (imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in The Matrix). It's full of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti westerns and '70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino's Kill Bill (fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping worked on both films). It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W. Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong's inspired score matches each cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera circles and swoops around the sprawling sets.
This is a real treat, more than a great action film or comedy, it's a great film period, and one that set box office records in the East.
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Film/Video/Digital Program, with support from the Department of Asian and African Languages and Literature and the Duke University Center for International Studies.
M 4/21 Griffith (7:00pm) | Music/Dreams series
The Silence Before Bach (Pere Portebella, 2007, 102 min, Spain, in Spanish, German, and Catalan with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)
The Silence before Bach is an approach to music and the trades and subjects that surround it through Bach’s works. A look at the profound dramaturgic relationship between image and music where the latter is not merely conceived as subsidiary to the image but as a subject of the narration in its own right. The film springs from a previously defined musical structure. The soundtrack feeds on works by J.S Bach and two of Felix Mendelssohn’s sonatas to create an architectural vault beneath which the story of the film unfolds ; a promenade through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries led by the hand of J.S. Bach.
Real life drama and documentary-style filmmaking blend with surrealistic whimsy in director Pere Portabella's passionate look at the ties between classical music and the construction of contemporary Europe. From a scene of Bach patiently teaching his son Christoph Friedrich how to play the piano to a truck driver who plays the composer's music on his harmonica, a pianist who plays the "Goldberg Variations" while rolling through his enormous loft, a Bach impersonator leading tourists through Leipzig, and Felix Mendelssohn's curious discovery of the "St. Matthew Passion" via a piece of meat wrapped in sheet music, this puckish, almost kitsch collection of skits takes a playful look at the legacy of a classical composer whose music still retains the power to inspire and influence.
Winner:
-- Special Jury Award, 2007 Gijón International Film Festival
-- Award for Best 'Audiovisual', Barcelona Film Awards
Official Selection:
-- 2007 Venice International Film Festival
Read the New York Times review at:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/movies/30sile.html?ref=movies
Critics' Comments:
- “One of the year’s major film events. The Catalan master hasn’t lost his cutting-edge instincts or the enigmatic meter that underlies his work… his writing like calligraphy, his treatment of space architectonic, and his narrative free-floating.” – Film Comment
- “DELECTABLE! Gorgeous lensing and art direction and some of the world’s most beautiful music!” – V.A. Musetto, New York Post
- “A meditation on the power of music to transcend geography and time and unite humanity in a kind of universal ecstasy. Evokes the spirit and legacy of this artist, shedding light on the lasting beauty of his work.” – S. James Snyder, The New York Sun
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program and the Department of Music.
Tu 4/22 * Griffith* (7:30pm) | Love=Love: LGBTQ series <-- new location: Griffith film theater!
Blueprint (Kirk Shannon-Butts, 2007, 75 min, USA, in English, Color, DVD)
Keith is a reserved, straitlaced transplant to New York City from Los Angeles; Nathan is a street-smart, pot-smoking Brooklynite who lives on the edge—or so he’d like Keith to believe. At first glance, nothing about these two young African American college students suggests romantic compatibility. But a casual courtship gradually develops amidst minor bickering and disagreements—those familiar interstices inside which nascent love restlessly takes shape. After a chance meeting in a Harlem coffee shop—in which Keith dismisses hip hop as mere pop music while Nathan defends it as the reflection of a society—the two embark on a first date to the countryside on Nathan’s motorcycle. As the day unfolds a strong bond forms between them, demonstrating the fragility of youth and the first flushes of love. But Blueprint is more concerned with the quiet, contemplative moments of this blossoming romance than with stealth sex and simmering anger. Equal parts urban valentine and pastoral romance, Blueprint is a winsome tribute to self-discovery and young love.
Screening location: Griffith film theater, Bryan Center, West Campus
Sponsored by DukeOUT, the Department of African & African American Studies, the Duke University Union, the Graduate & Professional Student Council, FuquaPride, Duke Allies, the Office of Student Activities and Facilities, the Office of Institutional Equity, Nosh Eclectic Foodstuffs, the Human Rights Campaign, Club Steel Blue, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Film/Video/Digital Program.
W 4/23 Griffith (7:00pm) | Music/Dreams series
Great World of Sound (Craig Zobel, 2007, 106 min, USA, in English, Color, DVD)
In today's American Idol culture, the road to success and fame is paved with deceit and manufactured talent. Great World of Sound astutely addresses the growing trend of people looking for a shortcut to fame, as well as examines the people who promise such an easy path. The story follows Martin, who answers an ad from a company training prospective "music producers." During training, he pairs up with Clarence, a middle-aged man trying to change his career path. As record producers, the two travel to towns where the company has placed newspaper ads to find undiscovered musicians. They're seeking talent for the record label, signing new artists and giving them a chance to let their music be heard…for a small fee. It's going great until cracks start appearing in the company's sheen, and Martin and Clarence begin to question whether the company is as virtuous as it claims to be.
Pat Healy fully inhabits Martin, using the depths of his talent to channel a contemporary Willy Loman. When paired with the equally impressive Kene Holliday, the two form an unlikely duo with an uncanny chemistry. Director Craig Zobel seamlessly incorporates footage of real people into his painfully authentic story of achieving wealth and success by exploiting the hopes of others. With humor and pathos, Great World of Sound critiques the dark side of the American Dream.
Winner:
-- Grand Jury Award, 2007 Atlanta Film Festival
-- Breakthrough Director Award, 2007 Gotham Awards
-- Best Actor Award (Kene Holliday), 2007 Newport International Film Festival
-- Critics Award, 2007 Sarasota Film Festival
Read the Entertainment Weekly review at:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20056217,00.html
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program and the Department of Music.
F 4/25 Griffith (6pm-11pm) | Special Event
Duke Student Film Showcase
"The best of the current crop of student films produced at Duke this semester."
-- Student Filmmakers appearing in person!
Screening Schedule:
- 6:00pm: Intermediate Animation (instructor: Fred Burns)
- 6:20pm: FVD Capstone course (instructor: Josh Gibson)
- 7:00pm-7:30pm: PIZZA BREAK
- 7:30pm: Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking (instructor: Gary Hawkins)
- 9:15pm: Individual Projects (instructor: Josh Gibson) - works by Rhea Joannou, Varun Lella, Jeff Smith, Anthony Watkins
- 9:45pm: Freewater Productions -- works by Shaun Dozier, Shang Gao
- 10:15pm (tentative): From Stories to Movies / A Sense of Place (instructor: Elisabeth Benfey)
Sponsored by the Film/Video/Digital Program, the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, the Center for Documentary Studies, and Freewater Productions (DUU)..
Have questions about our schedule? Contact Hank Okazaki at hokazak@duke.edu