|
30+ Years of Film @ International House
THE JANUS COLLECTION
Truly one of our national
treasures, American film culture without Janus Films is unimaginable.
Film @ International House is celebrating our 30th birthday
with a selection of titles from Janus’ extraordinary collection,
all in brand-new or restored 35mm prints. Here’s your chance
to celebrate their achievements and to be dazzled all over again
by highlights from their incomparable collection.
Saturday,
February 16, 2008
The Spirit of
the Beehive
dir. Victor Erice,
Spain, 1973, 35mm, 95 mins, color, Spanish w/ English subtitles
The Spirit of the
Beehive is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film
of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, directly
following the country’s devastating Civil War, six-year-old
Ana (played by the luminous Ana Torrent) attends a traveling
movie show of Frankenstein and then becomes seemingly possessed
by its memory. Produced as Franco’s long regime was nearing
its end, The Spirit of the Beehive, a bewitching portrait of
a child’s haunted inner life, is one of the most visually arresting
movies ever made - from one of cinema’s most elusive auteurs.
CLICK
HERE for Spirit of the Beehive Program
Notes
Saturday,
March 15, 2008
Cleo from 5 to
7
dir. Agnes Varda,
France, 1962, 35mm, 90 mins, b/w and color, French
w/ English subtitles
We are with pop singer
Cleo Victorie for 90 minutes of nearly real time as she awaits
the results of a doctor’s test for cancer. Varda’s Cleo
is an exhilarating and deeply penetrating film: just beyond
the beguiling surface, the spectre of mortality is always waiting. “Through
an arresting use of Paris as both visual centerpiece and reflection
of a woman’s inner journey,” writes Molly Haskell, “Varda paints
an enduring portrait of a woman’s evolution from a shallow and
superstitious child-woman to a person who can feel and express
shock and anguish and finally empathy."
CLICK
HERE for Cleo from 5 to 7 Program Notes
Saturday,
April 26, 2008
Confidential
Report
dir. Orson Welles,
1955, US, 35mm, 105 minutes, b/w
Orson Welles’ Mr
Arkadin (aka Confidential Report) tells the story
of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to
investigate his past, leading to a dizzying descent into a Cold
War European landscape. The film’s history is also marked by
this vertigo. There are at least eight Mr Arkadin's:
three radio plays, a novel, several long-lost cuts, and the
controversial European release known as Confidential Report.
At last Janus Collection is unraveling one of cinema’s great
mysteries.
CLICK
HERE for Confidential Report Program Notes
Saturday,
May 17, 2008
Tokyo Story (Tokyo
monogatari)
dir. Yashujiro Ozu,
Japan, 1953, 35mm, 135 mins, b/w, Japanese w/ English subtitles
Borrowing its premise
from Leo McCarey's Depression-era masterpiece Make Way for
Tomorrow (1937), as well as incorporating elements from
Ozu's own Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family,
Tokyo Story follows the journey of an elderly couple
(Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) from the countryside, whose
visit to the titular metropolis finds them callously treated
by their self-absorbed offspring. Only the surprising kindness
of their widowed daughter-in-law (a luminous Setsuko Hara) provides
a measure of spiritual relief.
The occasion for the
most inspired pairing of Hara and Ryu since their collaboration
in Late Spring, Tokyo Story climaxes with a poignant,
quietly electrifying exchange between the in-laws acknowledging
life's inevitable disappointments that Ryu's otherworldly serenity
renders little short of sublime. Deservedly a perennial favorite
of the Greatest Films Ever Made polls (among its many directorial
partisans are Jim Jarmusch, Paul Schrader, Lindsay Anderson
and Aki Kaurismaki), Tokyo Story was also Ozu's first
film to receive theatrical distribution in the US, introducing
American audiences to the director posthumously in 1972.
CLICK
HERE for Tokyo Story Program Notes
Saturday,
June 14, 2008
Cria Cuervos
dir. Carlos Saura,
Spain, 1976, 35mm, 107 mins, color, Spanish w/ English subtitles
Ana Torrent (star of
Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive) plays Ana,
witness to (and perhaps responsible for) her father’s death.
Communicating with the spirit of her beloved mother (Geraldine
Chaplin), she wanders through a tragically curtailed childhood. Torrent’s
wide dark eyes were made to absorb the sins of the adult world
and reflect them back to the audience; and they are perfectly
matched, visually and spiritually, with the haunted adult eyes
of Chaplin, who also plays the grown-up Ana.
Click
Here for Cria Cuervos Program Notes
Saturday,
July 12, 2008
6th
Bastille Day Celebration
The
Cousins (Les Cousins)
dir. Claude Chabrol,
France, 1959, 35mm, 103 mins, b/w, French w/ English subtitles
This tale of a country
cousin trying to make it in the big city and destroyed in the
process, gets offbeat treatment from promising new and youthful
director Claude Chabrol. The Cousins is an impressive
display of experimentation, and makes the film a treat for the
eyes if not for the heart.
CLICK
HERE for The Cousins Program Notes
Commemorating
the 40th Anniversary of the Protests of May 1968
In
Paris, Henri Langlois, president of the National Cinematheque
Francaise and revered godfather of the French New Wave, was
removed from his post by France’s Minister of Culture. As young
cinephiles reacted with outrage, their angry protests flowed
into a tide of political and social discontent. Highlighting
works which exemplify the continuing radical influence of '68,
these selections reflect the
filmmakers’ direct revolutionary action through cinema and invention
of new film forms along the way.
Saturday,
October 18, 2008
Death
of a Cyclist (Muerte
de un ciclista)
dir.
Juan Antonio Bardem, Spain, 1955, 35mm, 87 mins, b/w, Spanish
w/ English subtitles
Upper-class
professor Juan and his wealthy, married mistress accidentally
hit a cyclist while driving back from a late-night rendezvous.
This exquisitely shot tale of guilt, infidelity and blackmail
reveals the wide gap between the rich and the poor in Spain,
and surveys the corrupt ethics of a society seduced by decadence.
This charged melodrama was a direct attack on 1950s Spanish
society under Franco’s rule.
CLICK
HERE for Death
of a Cyclist Program Notes
Saturday,
November,
2008
WR:
Mysteries of the Organism
dir.
Dusan Makavejev, Yugoslavia/West Germany, 1971, 35mm, 85 mins,
b/w
&
color, English and Serbo-Croatian w/ English subtitles
What
does the energy harnessed through orgasm have to do with the
state of communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Makavejev’s surreal
documentary-fiction collision begins as an investigation of
controversial psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and
explodes into a free-form narrative of a beautiful young Slavic
girl’s sexual liberation. Banned upon its release in the director’s
homeland, this art-house smash is both whimsical and bold in
its blending of politics and sexuality.
CLICK
HERE for WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Program Notes
Saturday,
December 20,
2008
Pierrot
le fou
dir.
Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1965, 35mm, 110 mins, color, French
w/ English subtitles
Dissatisfied
in marriage and life, Ferdinand takes off with the babysitter
(and ex-lover) Marianne and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet
this is no normal road trip: it’s a stylish mash-up of consumerist
satire, politics and comic-book aesthetics, and a violent, zigzag
tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple."
With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina at their most animated,
Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French
new wave.
CLICK
HERE for Pierrot le fou Program Notes
Click
Here for The Janus Collection 2009 Archive
Click
Here for The Janus Collection
2010 Archive
|
