Based upon the novel "The Woman who Loved Love", by Saikaku Ihara, The Life of Oharu is a beautiful but deeply depressing experience. Hugely engrossing, Mizoguchi's film is a sophisticated tale of female oppression set in the 17th Century attacking the divide of sexes and class prevelant at the time yet also directing a subversive glance at the inequalities of 1950's Japan. This epic drama charts the extraordinarily unfortunate fate bestowed upon the daughter of an esteemed Lord. Falling in love with a lower ranking servant, Oharu finds both herself and her parents banished from the city by the courts. Forced to make a meagre living by any means possible and with the love of her life executed for his actions, Oharu finds herself drifting inexorably down a path of heartbreak and prostitution.
Today we screen WOMAN OF THE DUNES , a 1964 japanese film based on writer KOBO ABE's masterpiece.
A Japanese entomologist finds himself held prisoner in a sand pit with an alluring woman who expects him to work at her side. To his surprise, the scientist develops an intense bond with his female companion and resigns himself to an eternity of hypnotic routine. A surreal allegory reflecting man's grim fate...
"The story of a journey of inner discovery during which the protagonist remembers what it means to be human in a modern society that sometimes seems to have forgotten."
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Hiroshi Teshigahara was an avant-garde Japanese filmmaker. He was only incidentally a filmmaker. Son of the founder and grand master (Iemoto) of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana (more moribundly known as flower-arranging), he turned to film as an extension of his aesthetic explorations in other media. A graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he was a painter and sculptor, designed gardens and tea rooms, directed operas and Noh plays for the stage. And he made 21 films, most of them short documentaries on subjects as varied as Hokusai and Hispanic boxers.
This is a film based on a true story of fatal sexual obsession in 1930s Japan.The film is an exploration of how eroticism in Japanese culture is often morbid or death-obsessed.
The Japanese title of the film speaks neither of empires nor senses. It speaks of love and death, Eros and Thanatos. Ai no corrida - the Corrida of Love - links love to the bullfight, the ritualised fight to the death between the matador and the bull.
The film's full frontal nudity and graphic depiction of pubic hair were designed to provoke and affront the Japanese censors. Japanese censorship laws, which allowed graphic representations of violence, including rape, forbad the explicit display of sexual organs and pubic hair. This taboo originated in the Meiji era and was connected to the campaign of the Japanese state to be accepted by the Western powers as a modern civilized state. Prior to the Meiji Restoration, the pornography industry flourished both in literature and art.So Japanese social critics, artists and intellectuals, regarded flouting the censorship laws as an attack on the state, a radical political act.
In general the film does celebrate the pleasures and varieties of sexual intercourse. It does so by drawing on the artistic heritage of the pornographic Japanese wood-block print of the Edo era (17th - 19th century), known as shunga. illustration: Shreyas
After the Makhmalbafs, we now bring to you another key figure in Iranian
Cinema- Abbas Kiarostami, also the last film in our Iraninan package. TEN Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami casts his masterful cinematic gaze upon the modern sociopolitical landscape of his homeland—this time as seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is comprised of ten conversations with various female passengers—including her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute and a jilted bride—as well as her imperious young son. As Kiarostami’s “dashboard cam” eavesdrops on these lively, yet heart-wrenching road trips, a complex portrait of contemporary Iran comes sharply into focus.
The Director Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1940. He graduated from university with a degree in fine arts before starting work as a graphic designer. He then joined the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he started a film section, and this started his career as a filmmaker at the age of 30. Since then he has made many movies and has become one of the most important figures in contemporary Iranian film. He is also a major figure in the arts world, and has had numerous gallery exhibitions of his photography, short films and poetry. He is an iconic figure for what he has done, and he has achieved it all by believing in the arts and the creativity of his mind.
There is no family in the film world these days more fascinating than the Iranian Makhmalbafs. They've been known to sell their house and car to finance a film, buy them back when they sell the film, and start all over again the moment the next project comes up.
Richly allusive and beautifully photographed, "THE APPLE" follows the aftermath of a real-life situation, in Tehran, in which a father had kept his two daughters confined to their home since birth. Their mother is blind and their father is a strict religious man who is concerned about their honour should they be left on their own or subjected to the sinful influences of the outside world while he is out of the house.
When neighbors reported the situation to the welfare authorities in Teheran, the daughters, who are slightly retarded, were removed from the home and returned to their parents only on the condition that the father allow the two to leave home and explore the outside world.
Being the daughter of famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira’s upbringing was both privileged and liberal, and in most respects very different from the experience her two subjects in the film 'The Apple' shared.
Samira saw the story on television and wanted to film their story using the real people as themselves. She heard about the story on a Wednesday and began filming on the Sunday 4 days later.
Samira Makhmalbaf belongs to New wave movement of Iranian cinema. he left high school when she was 14, to learn cinema in the Makhmalbaf Film House for 5 years. At the age of 17, after directing two video productions, she went on to direct the movie The Apple. One year later, the 18 year old director went on to become the youngest director in the world participating in the official section of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
"The apple like the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, represents life and knowledge in Iranian poetry. We have a similar story in the Qur’an. But I actually found this element in the children’s life. Because while everyone was worried about the fate of these two girls, they were eating an apple, and truly enjoying it. So I decided to keep the symbol of the apple throughout the film".
"The best thing I've learned from my father is not to judge but to love humanity."
********************************************************** 'THE APPLE' has been invited to more than 100 international film festivals in a period of 2 years, while going to the screen in more than 30 countries.
Our flight around the world stops in Iran this week. We start with
GABBEH Mohsen Makhmalbaf
The directors life story is film worthy. The director was a poor boy from the city of Tehran he began working to support his family at the tender age of 8. By 15 he had formed an under-ground Islamic militia group. At 17 he was shot when trying to disarm a police officer he was thrown into jail. He spent his four years there, educating himself. After he was out he decided to write and make films.
Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf are considered to be responsible for the worlds recognition of Iranian cinema.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf also started a film school in Iran his children and family being its star pupils his daughter Samira made APPLE at the tender age of 18. It won the Cannes special jury award. We are screening that next on Thursday do come.
GABBEH is a film popular amongst NID faculty to introduce the colour course. A gabbeh carpet is a triple hand-knotted carpet crafted almost exclusively by women from Qashqai tribes in southwestern Iran. The film follows the story of tribal girl the carpet she weaves and the love she waits for.
They say that Iranian new wave borrows it style from the Italian neo realisim and the art films from their European counter parts But many people argue that the Iranian film making style is purely theirs. Their films drift in and out of reality effortlessly. They bridge the gap between documentary and fiction. The frames are picturesque and the stories quaint and lovely. There is something so humanistic about their films that they appeal to everyone.
We will be beginning today’s screening with an animation package from R.C.A.
As an exta special treat for you, we take you through a thousand nights in beautiful arabia following the adventures of a prince on his magical journey
THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED LOTTE REINIGER 1926
The film is animated in a style in which the character are always seen in silhouette almost like a chinese puppet show. The story is based on the elements taken from the collection 1001 Arabian Nights, prince Achmed with the assistance of Aladdin, the Witch of the Fiery Mountain, and a magic horse, battles the evil African sorcerer to win the hand of Princess Peri Banu.
About the director: LOTTE REINIGER
Born June 2, 1899, Berlin; Died June 19, 1989 She spent much of her life creating unique and often amazing silhouette animation. After a short period of at Max Rienhardt's studio, Reiniger began began working on intertitle design for Paul Wegener's films at the age of sixteen. Her titles were made of hand-cut silhouettes, and in 1919 she developed this technique to create a complete animated silhouette film. In 1921, Reiniger married Carl Koch, who served as her producer and camera operator for the next 40 years.
Between 1923 and 1926, Rieniger and Koch, with assistance from animators Walter Rutmann, Bertolt Bartosch, and Alex Kardan, created The Adventures of Prince Achmed. One of the world's first feature-length animated films, The Adventures of Prince Achmed displayed Reiniger's ability to create captivating characters through intricate design and an amazingly graceful sense of movement. The film remains unsurpassed as a demonstration of animated art.
With the advent of sound, Reiniger made a series of short films set to the music of Mozart. Through the 1930's, with the rise of Disney, Fleischer, and Warner Bros., character-based cel animation became the dominant animation form. As animated cartoons, with their costly and labor-intensive production requirements, became the standard, the works of filmmakers like Reiniger became less marketable. But because silhouette animation requires considerable patience and individual skill, but not necessarily the the production costs of cel animation, Reiniger was able to continue creating her unique animation until the 1970s.
Modern audiences seem to have an aversion to viewing silhouette animation, until they've seen the films of Lotte Reiniger. Even her later films, produced for television in the 1950s and noticably less sophisticated than her early work, possess a pure cinematic magic that is present in the work of very few animators. In all likelihood, there will never be a silhouette animator who will match Reiniger's skill, vision, and patience, and her films may well remain a unique testament to the potential achievements of the artform. Her films may easily hold their magic for audiences of the future, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years from now. If this is true, by patiently creating beautiful silhouette animation based on fable and myth, Lotte Reiniger may have created a legacy of filmwork which will offer entertainment and amazement for the ages.
Rohit Iyer made a poster for the film, clumsy me cant seem to find it, will post it once i get my hands on it again..
In Britain of the 1950s divisions of class were far more rigid than they are today. The 'new wave' films and the sources that inspired them gave a voice to a working-class that was for the first time gaining some economic power.
Tony Richardson belongs to that generation of British film directors which includes Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz, all of them university-trained middle-class artists who were sympathetic to the conditions of the working classes and determined to use cinema as a means of personal expression, in line with the goals of the Free Cinema movement.
Taking audiences out of the studio and into the streets, where the real stories were, Richardson and his partners favored realism above all: young, fresh actors, location shooting, and narratives featuring controversial subjects such as interracial dating and sex, homosexuality and class.
This 1961 film is based on an avant-garde play of the 1950s Britain. It talked frankly about the taboo subjects of pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, abortion, and adoption from the woman's point-of-view .
"If audiences throughout Britain were stunned by the in-your-face attitude of 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', they were left somewhere between tears and a sense of hope with 'A Taste of Honey',an important film in the history of British Cinema."
PLOT IN SHORT Jo is a seventeen-year-old and appears to be a loner. She lives with her mother Helen who is constantly involved in affairs with men much younger in age. Jo develops a rather positive take on everything unfavourable that is happening in her life. She keeps herself busy mostly by sketching and drawing. She meets Jimmy who she falls in love with, just before he is to go away on a long voyage. Jo’s mother abandons her after finding Peter, a rich and much younger lover. It is here that Jo meets Geoffrey, a kind-hearted gay man. Geoffrey and Jo get along well and share a very similar optimistic take on life despite all its hardships. Jo eventually discovers that she is pregnant, a shocking result of the last night she spent with Jimmy. Though scared at first, Jo decides to keep the baby...
It was not until the release of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1960 that the true effect of the ‘Wave’ was felt. Directed by Free Cinema veteran Karel Reisz and produced by another Free Cinema pioneer Tony Richardson, the film took over audiences in Britain like an avalanche over a small village in some god forsaken valley. It had all the ingredients for a controversial film: an anti-social protagonist, morally questionable behaviour and portrayal of taboo topics like unwanted pregnancy and extra-marital affairs. Albert Finney brings out the performance of his lifetime in his portrayal of the hot tempered tough guy Arthur Seaton, a role which was considered Britain’s reply to Marlon Brando.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morningwas the first film to have all its exterior shots to be filmed on location. This was a major move which would influence the following films in the New Wave to be gradually filmed entirely on location. The film was also well known for its clash with the censor board. A significant amount of dialogue in the film had to be replaced owing to the extensive use of swear words in the script. Another major problem was the depiction of Albert Finney’s character Arthur waking up on Sunday morning in bed with his colleague’s wife, a scene directly implying extra-marital affair which was not seen before in British cinema.
This month is the last month for Filmclub (this semester). So dont miss any of the screenings! I assure you, holidays result in sorely missing the films in the audi!!
We continue with our New Wave journey. After seeing films from France, Germany and Czechosolovakia, we move on to Britain (and another film from Germany), Iran, Japan and finally to India. It is interesting to see how the "New Wave" does not happen simultaneously and has a variety of causes, each different in every country.
M4- SATURDAY NIGHT & SUNDAY MORNING, Reisz Karel M6- A TASTE OF HONEY, Tony Richardson M7- THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED, Lotte Reiniger M11-GABBEH, Mohsen Makmalbaf M13-APPLE, Samira makmalbaf M18-TEN, Abbas Kiarostami M20-IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, Nagisa Oshima M25-WOMAN OF THE DUNES, Hiroshi Teshigahara M27-THE LIFE OF OHARU, Kenji Mizoguchi
A1- MEGHE DAKHA TARA, Ritwik Ghatak A3- KAAGAZ KE PHOOL, Guru Dutt
Film club transports you to Czechoslovakia in and around the Bohemian train station of Lodenice. Set near the end of the second world war the film is about Milos who works at the railway station, he is oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. . CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS Jiri Menzel
JIRI MENZEL won an academy award in the category of best foreign film for this film it was his first feature length film . The film is an adaptation of a novel by Bohumil Hrabal . The director also acts in the film as doctor brabec.
Today’s film 'Sedmikrasky'/'Daisies' is directed by a gutsy Czech woman!
This freewheeling 1966 gem of the Czech New Wave is an attack on consumerism and materialism and many other aspects of the male dominated society of the time! {This film was, like our previous screening, banned by the communist government.}
SEDMIKRASKY/DAISIES by VERA CHYTILOVA
A witty surrealist comedy about two uninhibited young women Marie and Marie who work together to create mischief and turn against the numbing state of society in a madcap flurry of pranks and material destruction that seem to be harmless but each of the moves is loaded with consequences that soon snowball into serious trouble.. Seeing the world ruined and values worthless, they decide to "go bad." 74 MINS | COLOUR | CZECH with ENGLISH subtitles | AUDI 6:15pm |
Part of the Czech New Wave of the early 1960s, Vera Chytilova made films that were acclaimed for their visual experimentation and formal innovation. While this reputation gained her international respect, it also resulted in criticism by officials in her own country, which disapproved of avant-garde styles and themes.
Everyone does what they can to avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic human trait. People don't want to think—they can't make the connection between entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People will not be human until they get pleasure from thought—only a thinking person can be a full person." —Vera Chytilova, 1978
"One should try everything" insists one of the two heroines of Daisies (1966). Heedless of clichÈ and formula, Chytilova explodes narrative and bends the frame: her films donít stop until they've filled every crevice with invention. Daisies attacks any pretense that human society is more than a mechanism for organizing the consumption of food.
Romantic love is but one of the bourgeois ideals sacrificed over the course of the film: the women also smash the cinematic illusion of three-dimensional space, as they scissor up their own film images into a jigsaw of body parts.
DAISIES was banned by the government until 1967 but when it was released it won the Grand Prix at the film festival in Bergamo, Italy. The films preferred by the Soviet-dominated Czech government included straightforward stories of industrial heroes, films based on classic literature and fairy stories,and domestic and detective comedies. There was a profound dislike and distrust of allegorical content and avant-garde experimentation, which was associated with intellectualism and elitism by the bureaucrats and politicians who controlled the film industry.Officially they complained that the imagery of the film revealed a wastage of food, referring to the scenes in which the main characters destroy a banquet setting.
After giving you the best of the German and French new wave we now move
to the Czechoslovak new wave . Trademarks of the movement contain long unscripted dialogues, dark and absurd humour, and the casting of inexperienced actors. The films often treated themes that were uncommon in communist countries, such as the love-confusion of young people or the absence of morality in Czechoslovak society.The movement came to an abrupt end following the 1968 Soviet clampdown on the liberalization of the Prague spring Milos Forman and Passer fled the country, while those who remained faced heavy censorship of their work.
THE FIREMENS BALL Milos Forman
This film was Milos Formans was the last film Forman would make in his native Czechoslovakia. It is also the first film he shot in color, and a milestone of the Czech New Wave. It is considered a cult film. He continued to make films in hollywood which include One flew over the cuckoos nest and Amadeus among others.
this film is set in a fire department in a small town which is having a big party when the ex-boss of the department celebrates his 86th birthday. The whole town is invited but things don't go as planned. Someone is stealing the prizes to the lottery and the candidates for the Miss Fire-Department beauty contest are neither willing or particularly beautiful.
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN Rainer Werner Fassbinder
The story acts as an allegory for Germany after the war, using the story of a young German woman Maria Braun the innocent who becomes a cold-hearted cynic in the post-war industrial economic rebuilding. Her free-spirited and slightly amoral character only works for total financial success. She rebuilds in a cold and calculating method. In the film's ending, Braun is the victim of her own inability to have emotion.
Fassbinder died at the age of 37 four years after making this film. His death is often considered to mark the end of the New German Cinema.
Paris, Texas is probably Wim Wenders' most well known, critically acclaimed, and successful movie, winning a number of international prizes including the Cannes Palme D'Or for Best Film in 1984.
This unusual road movie, with screenplay by acclaimed playwright Sam Shepard, tells the tale of Travis, a man lost in his own private hell. Presumed dead for four years, he reappears from the desert on the Mexico border, world-weary and an amnesiac. He traces his brother Walt who is bringing up Hunter, his seven-year-old son, his ex-wife Jane having abandoned him at Walt's door several years before.
As virtual strangers, Hunter and Travis begin to build a wary friendship and conspire to find Jane and bring her back to be a real family.
NEW GERMAN CINEMA Written and signed by two dozen German filmmakers pledging themselves to "the new German feature film," the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto boldly announced the arrival of New German Cinema, with young, innovative, and politically radical directors taking up arms against the propriety of West German society and its failing film industry. In the late sixties and early seventies, filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg set out to create smaller, more independent and artistically challenging films to investigate the state of contemporary Germany (Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s The Lost Honor of Katherine Blum), as well as to grapple with the ghosts of the past, from the Weimar era (Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz) and the Nazis (Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum) to their aftermath (Fassbinder’s “BRD Trilogy”). Like other countries’ new waves, New German Cinema, which ended in the mid-eighties, embraced politically akin but artistically disparate directors with diverse interests, working methods, and spheres of influence, from the avant-garde (Kluge’s Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed) to major international productions (Fassbinder’s Querelle).
The next screening falls on Feb 14. Whether this day concerns you or not it's worth watching these 2 Truffault films... The 1st is "ANTOINE AND COLETTE" made for the 1962 anthology collection "Love at Twenty" and the 2nd is his whimsical, nostalgic and romantic film "STOLEN KISSES".
These 2 films are a part of Truffault's sort of autobiographical series about Antoine Doinel, the character he follows from boyhood to adulthood through 5 films. ANTOINE AND COLETTE is the 2nd film and the 3rd is STOLEN KISSES.
SYNOPSES ======== 1. Title: ANTOINE AND COLETTE/Antoine et Colette Director: FRANCOIS TRUFFAULT Runtime: 47 min ANTOINE AND COLETTE catches up with Antoine Doinel as a solitary 17-year-old who works at Phillips manufacturing LPs to support himself. He meets Colette, a high-school student, at a concert and falls in love for the first time. The film traces his awkward courtship of the icy Colette, who never reciprocates.
2. Title: STOLEN KISSES/baisers voles Director: FRANCOIS TRUFFAULT Runtime: 90 min A perfect Valentines'Day film, but not mere fluff, either, this 1968 film is Truffaut's happiest and most commercially successful film. Antoine Doinel is given a dishonorable discharge from the Army. Although he yearns to pick up where he left off with his girlfriend Christine, she is somewhat chilly toward his affections.He is a hapless young adult with a chaotic love life and a string of absurd dead-end jobs, from hotel clerk to private detective to TV repairman.
TRUFFAULT TRUFFLE ================= François Truffaut (1932–1984) was one of the founders of the French New Wave in filmmaking, and remains an icon of the French film industry. In a film career lasting just over a quarter of a century, he was screenwriter, director, producer or actor in over twenty-five films. In addition to being an autobiographical extension of Truffaut, Antoine Doine
l is also a classic picaresque underdog skittering along the fringes of society, mocking its conventions and living by his wits. Stolen Kisses provides ample evidence of Francois Truffaut's belief that men know nothing about love: "They are always beginners. The heroine is always the stronger."
