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
30 + years 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,
December 23, 2009
Jeanne
Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
dir.
Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 1975, 35mm, 201 mins, color,
French w/ English subtitles
A singular
work in cinema history, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending
doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow whose chores
include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son and turning
the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film
seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Jeanne
Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment
that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.
CLICK
HERE for Jeanne Dielman Program Notes
Saturday,
January 23, 2010
Tunes
of Glory
dir.
Ronald Neame, UK, 1960, 35mm, 106 mins, color
The
incomparable Alec Guinness inhabits the role of Jock Sinclair
– the
whiskey-drinking, up-by-the-bootstraps commanding officer of
a peacetime Scottish battalion. Sinclair is a lifetime military
man who expects respect and loyalty from his men. But when Basil
Barrow (John Mills, Best Actor, 1960 Venice Film Festival),
an educated, by-the-book scion of a traditionally military family,
enters the scene as Sinclair’s replacement, the two men become
locked in a fierce battle for control of the battalion and the
hearts and minds of its men.
CLICK
HERE for Tunes of Glory Program Notes
Saturday,
February 20, 2010
The
Woman Next Door
dir.
Francois Truffaut, France, 1981, 35mm, 106 mins, color, French
w/ English subtitles
Madame
Jouve knows all about the mad love of Bernard Coudray (Gerard
Depardieu) and Mathilde Bauchard (Fanny Ardant). They had been
lovers seven years before the picture begins and parted violently.
Each married and had a son named Thomas. Then one day, the Coudrays
discover that they have new next-door neighbors named Bauchard.
Clearly Truffaut’s most Jamesian film in its mastery of oblique
narrative and ironic perspective. He weaves an intricate tapestry
of background detail and the narrative never loses its thrust
or tension, despite repeated shifts in the point of view. Truffaut
not only continued a grand tradition of sensibility, he broke
new ground in his own career.
CLICK
HERE for The Woman Next Door Program Notes
Saturday,
March 20, 2010
Fires on the
Plain
dir. Kon Ichikawa,
Japan, 1959, 35mm, 104 mins, b/w, Japanese w/ English subtitles
Co-presented by the Japan
America Society of Greater Philadelphia as part of the 2010
Cherry Blossom Festival
An agonizing portrait
of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during
World War II, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is
a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion.
Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into
the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine
landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross-section
of Imperial Army soldiers who eventually give in to the most
terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the
Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese
cinema’s most versatile filmmakers.
CLICK
HERE for Fires on the Plain Program Notes
Saturday,
April 24, 2010
Le roman d'un
tricheur - The Story of a Cheat
dir. Sacha Guitry,
France, 1936, 35mm, 81 mins, b/w, French w/ English subtitles
From the casual, familiar
and self-confident running commentary of the film's introductory
behind-the-scenes footage of the cast and crew, Sacha Guitry
sets the infectiously humorous and disarming tone of The
Story of a Cheat. Propelled through anecdotal, first-person
narration, the film is a droll, infectiously effervescent and
charming satire on greed, opportunism, chance and destiny. Guitry's
briskly paced, reflexive tone is further reflected in the circular
nature of the film, most notably in the Cheat's repeated encounters
with his former lovers and his military comrade Serge (Roger
Duchesne, Bob le flambeur).
CLICK
HERE for Le roman d'un tricheur Program
Notes
Saturday,
May 15, 2010
I Fidanzati
dir. Ermanno Olmi,
Italy, 1962, 35mm, 77 mins, b/w, Italian w/ English subtitles
Ermanno Olmi’s masterful
film is the tender story of two Milanese fiances whose strained
relationship is tested when the man accepts a new job in Sicily.
With the separation come loneliness, nostalgia, and, perhaps,
some new perspectives that might rejuvenate their love. Olmi’s
deep humanism charges this moving depiction of ordinary men
and women, and the pitfalls of the human heart.
CLICK
HERE for I Fidanzati Program Notes
Saturday,
June 12, 2010
The Phantom
Carriage – NEW 35MM PRINT
dir. Victor Sjostrom, Sweden, 1921, 35mm, 93 mins, b/w,
silent w/ English intertitles
One of the most highly regarded films of the silent era, this
moody, surrealistic fable takes its title from Death’s
favorite mode of transportation, which must be driven by the
last sinner to die before year’s end. Based on Nobel Prize
for Literature winner Selma Lagerlof’s rendition of a
Swedish folktale, Victor Sjostrom both directs and stars in
the film, fashioning a supernatural morality tale replete with
atmospheric lighting and superimpositions that were ahead of
their time and still chill today. The gorgeous new 35mm print
was specially created for Janus’ 50-year anniversary.
Saturday,
July 17, 2010
8th Bastille
Day Celebration
Pickpocket
dir. Robert Bresson,
France, 1959, 35mm, 75 mins, b/w, French w/ English subtitles
Robert Bresson’s incomparable
tale of crime and redemption follows Michel, a young pickpocket
who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train
stations of Paris. As his compulsion grows, so does his fear
that his luck is about to run out. Tautly choreographed and
crafted in Bresson’s inimitable style, Pickpocket reveals
a master director at the height of his powers.
Saturday,
August 21, 2010
Close-up
dir. Abbas Kiarostami,
Iran, 1990, 35mm, 98 mins, color, Persian w/ English subtitles
Internationally revered
Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most
inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years.
A fiction-documentary hybrid, Close-up uses a sensational
real-life event - the arrest of a young man on charges that
he fraudulently impersonated filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf as
its theme. Close-up may be Kiarostami most radical,
brilliant work; a stunning, multilayered investigation into
movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence in which
the real people from the case play themselves.
Click
Here for The Janus Collection Fall 09 Archive
Click
Here for The Janus Collection Summer 09
Archive
Click
Here for The Janus Collection Winter 09
Archive
Click
Here for The Janus Collection Fall 08 Archive
|
