3:30 pm
The Cranes Are Flying
Dir: Mikhail Kalatozov
(Russia/1957/96 mins, B&W)
Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) and Boris (Alexei Batalov), a couple who are blissfully in love until World War II tears them apart. With Boris at the front, Veronica must try to ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of her beau’s draft-dodging cousin. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, The Cranes Are Flying is a superbly crafted drama, cinematography(ahead of its times) by Kalatozov’s regular collaborator Sergei Urusevsky. This Film by Mikhail Kalatozov was heralded as a revelation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the international cinema community alike.
5:40 pm
Mr. Turner
Director: Mike Leigh
(UK/2014/150 mins)
Spanning the last 25 years of Britain’s most revered painter JMW Turner (1775-1851), is a rich portrait of the artist whose personal life was as turbulent as the canvases he painted. Timothy Spall (playing Mr. Turner) won the best actor award at the Cannes film festival for his performance. Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies(1996), All or Nothing(2002) and Naked(1993) were screened earlier at FSB.
August
2024
3:30 pm
Russian Ark
Director: Alexander Sokurov
(Russia/2002/96 mins)
Filmed inside the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, through the ambling of a French Marquis – witnessing scenes of Peter the Great thrashing his general, Empress Catherine during a rehearsal of her play trying to relieve herself, the last Tsar at dinner oblivious of the revolution and the last great Ball before the Bolshevik revolution. We see three hundred years of Russian history staged inside the Museum - a time machine.
The film is a technical achievement in terms of the complexity of its production and scope of narration. The film was in competition for the Palm D’or at Cannes in 2002.
August
2024
5:40 pm
The Wild Pear Tree
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
(Turkey/2018/188 mins)
Sinan is passionate about literature and harbours an ambition to be a writer. Returning to his ancestral village, he struggles to get published, but his father’s debts catch up with him.
This is the eighth feature of Ceylan. We at the film society have followed his career with interest and have screened his earlier films Uzak (2002), Climates (2006), Three Monkeys (2008), Once upon a time in Anatolia (2011), Winter Sleep (2014). Ceylan’s films attracts a considerable following across the world – particularly winning many awards at the Cannes Film Festival.
July
2024
3:30 pm
Loveless
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
(Russia/2017/127 mins)
Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears…Andrey’s earlier films - The Return (2003), Banishment (2007), Leviathan (2014) were screened earlier at the Film society screenings. Loveless is his latest film, the film went on to win major awards across the world - Jury Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for best foreign language film.
6:10 pm
The Assassin
Director: Hou Hsiao Hsien
(Taiwan/2015/105 mins)
9th century China.10-year-old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised - a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China.
After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings. A slave to the orders of her mistress, Nie Yinniang must choose: sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins.
Flowers of shanghai (1998), The boys from fengkuei (1983), the green green grass of home (1982) and Three times (2005), were earlier screened at the Film society screenings. The Assassin was awarded the best director at Cannes, this was the last film of Hou Hsiao Hsien before he retired.
April
2024
5:45 pm
Three Times
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
(Taiwan/2005/116 mins)
Three Times features two of Asia’s biggest stars, Shu Qi and Chang Chen. They play different characters in three episodes set in different years and different eras, 1966, 1911 and 2005. The central theme is love and emotion: in this film Hou Hsiao-Hsien is commenting on different expressions of love in different times.
3:30 pm
Devi
Director: Satyajit Ray
(India/1960/99 mins, B&W)
The film is set in second half of nineteenth century rural Bengal. A wealthy landlord (Chabbi Biswas), ardently believes that his young daughter-in-law (Sharmila Tagore) is the Mother Goddess incarnate, setting in motion devastation all around. The film explores religious orthodoxy, patriarchal power structures and the conflict between fanaticism and individual will. Subrata Mitra’s cinematography heightens the viewing experience. Devi takes up the position of women in a modernizing Bengal—Charulata, The Big City (1963), and The Home and the World (1984) all return to the theme—but the film stands out for the brutal honesty and cynicism with which it renders a woman’s dispossession.
3:30 pm
Do the Right Thing
Director: Spike Lee
(USA/1989/120 mins)
The film is set in the hottest day of summer, when racial tensions reach a boiling point in an inner city, Brooklyn neighborhood. The film was nominated for the academy awards under the original screenplay category. Spike Lee has been an independent voice in the American film making scene, critical of Hollywood brand of film making. His career has spanned over four decades and 25 films, he was awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2015, his film BlackkKlansman won the Oscar for screenplay in 2019 and the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival in 2018. He has been teaching Film at New York University for over three decades.
6:00 pm
The Green, Green Grass of Home
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
(Taiwan/1982/90 mins)
A substitute teacher moves to a remote village, he falls in love with a school teacher at the local school. Considered as one of the greatest living film directors in Asia. Hou Hsiao Hsien’s films were screened and awarded across major festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) of the world and has been awarded the Lifetime achievement award (Golden Horse) in 2020. Over a career spanning four decades, he has made 21 feature films. We screened “Flowers of Shanghai” and "Boys from Fengkuei” earlier.
March
2024
3:30 pm
Malcolm X
Director: Spike Lee
(US/1992/201 mins)
One of the major public figures of the 20th Century - Malcolm X- is brought to the screen by the biopic with historical insight by Spike Lee. The film draws on Malcolm X’s autobiography to trace the struggle for dignity, starting from his childhood riven by white supremacist violence to a life of petty crime to conversion to Islam and rebirth as a fighter for Black Liberation. Malcolm X inspired oppressed communities across the world.
Built around powerful performances by Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett and others - Spike Lee brings his biopic treatment of one of the critical voices of Black empowerment. Lee has been an independent voice in the American film making scene, critical of Hollywood brand of film making. His career has spanned over four decades and 25 films, he was awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2015, his film BlackkKlansman won the Oscar for screenplay in 2019 and the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival in 2018. He has been teaching Film at New York University for over three decades.
March
2024
7:20 pm
The Boys from Fengkuei
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
(Taiwan/1983/101 mins)
Three young men leave their fishing village for the city in search of a livelihood. The harsh realities hit home, as their journey becomes a process of growing up.This film established the career of Hou Hsiao-Hsien as a leading figure of Taiwan cinema, this work travelled across the world and is considered one of the director’s major works. Considered as one of the greatest living film directors in Asia, directing more than 20 films in his career. We screened “Flowers of Shanghai” last month. Over a career spanning four decades, he made 21 feature films. His films were screened and awarded across major festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) of the world.
February
2024
3:30 pm
Mandabi
Director: Ousmane Sembene
(Senegal/1968/91 mins)
Unemployed Ibrahima Dieng receives a money order for 25,000 francs from a nephew who works in Paris, news of his windfall quickly spreads among his neighbours, who flock to him for loans even as his attempts to cash the order are stymied in a maze of bureaucratic obstacles, and new troubles rain down on his head.One of Sembène’s most funny and indignant films, Mandabi—an adaptation of a novella by the director himself—is a bitterly ironic depiction of a society scarred by colonialism and plagued by corruption, greed, and poverty.
5:30 pm
Flowers of Shanghai
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
(Taiwan/1998/113 mins)
A major figure in Taiwan’s new wave, Hou Hsiao Hsien’s “Flowers of Shanghai” is an exploration of late nineteenth century aristocratic society set in the British concession of Shanghai. This film is a departure of Hou’s earlier preoccupation with Taiwan’s contemporary society, here he moves to examine the late Qing period of 1890s – the society of pleasure and its negotiation between men and women in a period drama.
Flowers an euphemism of courtesans, the houses of highly coveted courtesans was accessible to the privileged men of China. The film is based on Eileen Chang’s novel “Flowers of Shanghai”. Most of the film is set indoors, lit up with oil lamps, we hardly see the outside world, we watch four pairs of relationships between Master Wang and his lover Crimson, the rival Jasmine, Emerald the courtesan who wants to get her freedom and her relationship with Master Luo.
The film is shot almost entirely in mid-shots, the camera is a character observing all the action indoors, gloriously lit up with oil lamps. Each scene is a single take creating a sensation of staying indoors with the characters throughout the duration of the film. The painstaking research of the period is evident in its sets, detailed art design and production values evident in the costumes and objects used by the characters.
3:30pm
Timbuktu
Dir : Abderrahmane Sissako
(Mauritania, France/2014/96 mins)
In the acclaimed new film by Abderrahmane Sissako (Bamako) the people of the Malina city, Timbuktu, struggle against an oppressive regime of terror inflicted upon them by invading Jihadists who prohibit every enjoyable indulgence of life. Meanwhile, Kidane lives a peaceful life in the nearby dunes, but an altercation with a neighbour the extremists take it upon themselves to deliver their brand of draconian justice.Passionate, humanist and enormously powerful, Timbuktu was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award and screened in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
January
2024
6:00 pm
Shoplifters
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
(Japan/2018/121 mins)
From visionary director Kore-eda Hirokazu comes, a critically acclaimed portrait of a makeshift family in Japan. After a shoplifting spree, Osamu and his son rescue a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo, reluctantly agrees to shelter her. Although the family is poor, they live happily together until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance they have created, revealing long- buried secrets.
The film won the Palme d’or at Cannes and the Cesar Awards, it was nominated to the Academy awards under the foreign film category.
December
2023
3:30 pm
Black Girl
Director: Ousmane Sembene
(French/1966/59 mins)
The film is set in Senegal, Africa, Diouanna is a young woman who travels from Senegal to France in search of a better life, to work as a governess for a white family. She soon realises that she is a prisoner in the apartment. The film has proved prophetic, with the rise of globalisation, millions of women from poor areas have migrated to big cities to become domestic workers – form small towns to global cities. The film in the hands of Sembene becomes a political statement.
The film was the first African film to attract international attention and distribution and won Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival.
6:00 pm
Drive my Car
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
(Japanese/2021/179 mins)
Kafuku is a stage actor, his wife passes away suddenly, leaving behind a secret. Two years later, Kafuku meets Misaki, a reserved young woman, assigned to him as a chauffeur on a work trip to Hiroshima. As they spend time together on the road trip, the mystery of Kafuku’s dead wife comes to the fore, we see him confronting the memory of his wife. The film is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami.
The film won the best screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival, won the Academy award for international film and BAFTA award for the best film in non-english language category.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (b. 1978) , graduated with a degree in Aesthetics(2003) and film in 2008. He came into international limelight with Happy Hour (2015) which received a special mention for screenplay at the Locarno International Film Festival. His film Asako I & II (2018) was selected at Cannes.
3:30pm
Moolaade
Director: Ousmane Sembene
(French & Bambara/2005/124 mins)
The film is set in a sub-saharan Africa, Colle has refused to allow her fifteen year old daughter to be circumcised, and now offers “Moolaade” (protection from the elements) to four terrified girls who have escaped from another village. Her husband is a stickler of tradition and wants their daughter to go under the knife. Colle takes a stand against the village elders, the film sets up a tense struggle between the forces of tradition, authoritarianism and resistance. The film won under un certain regard at Cannes Film Festival.
November
2023
6:10 pm
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Director: Celine Sciamma
(French/2020/122 mins)
The film is set in 1770s France. It revolves around the relationship of Marianne (a painter), Heloise and their housemaid. Marianne is hired by a countess to paint her daughter Heloise – a wedding portrait. During the assignment, the relationship between Marriane, Heloise and the housemaid brings out the contradictions of the period, the pulls and pushes of life colours their relationship.The film won the best screenplay award and the Queer Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Celine Sciamma (b. 1978) , studied French literature at Nanterre and later at La Femis film school. She is been making films since 2007.“In all my films, it’s always the same,” she says. “It’s always about a few days out of the world, where we can meet each lover, love each other. Also it’s always about female characters because they can be themselves only in a private place where they can share their loneliness, their dreams, their attitudes, their ideas.”
November
2023
3:30 pm
Bamako
Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
(French & Bambara/2006/112 mins)
Bamako, the capital city of Mali (western Africa), the film is set within the city, a courtyard of a mud walled house. The story of an African couple on verge of breaking up is told alongside a political trial against World bark and the International Monetary Fund. The policies of these international bodies have unleashed social problems across Africa with increased unemployment, inequality and debt. The film combines drama and sharp satire to create insight into contemporary Africa.
6:00 pm
A Fantastic Woman
Director: Sebastian Lelio
(Spanish/2017/104 mins)
Marina Vidal’s life is thrown into turmoil following the sudden death of her partner, Orlando. She is suspected by the police and her partner’s relatives. Tensions rise between her & Orlando’s relatives. She is thrown out of their shared home and restricted from attending his funeral. Pushed to the wall, on the verge of losing everything, Marina finds the strength to fight back.A fantastic woman won the Academy award in the foreign film category 2018 and screenplay award at Berlin. Sebastian Lelio (b. 1974) in Argentina, moved to Chile at the age of two, lives in Berlin. His work Gloria (2013) brought him to international prominence.
3:30pm
The Salt of the Earth
Director: Wim Wenders & Julian R Salgado
(English/2014/110 mins)
The film is a biography of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Born in 1944, in Brazil and starting his career as an Economist, a staunch critic of the Brazilian military government, he was exiled in 1969. Salgado went on to photograph the working class in Latin America, his work in Serra Pelada gold mine of Brazil comes to mind, his strong composition emerges from working on long-term projects that told a story through a series of images. His work in the 90s in Rwanda brings out the horrors of war, his recent book on the Amazon was released in 2021, a result of decades long work of photographing the people of Amazon and the powerful Amazonian Landscapes. Since 1998 Salgado and his wife Lelia have devoted themselves to restore a degraded rainforest in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The still images lend itself beautifully to big screen in Wenders' film, it explores the life of Salgado with tenderness and care.
The film won awards in Cannes, San Sebastian and Tromso film festivals. It also won the Cesar award for best documentary, the national film award of France.
September
2023
5:50 pm
Il Buco
Director: Michelangelo Frammartino
(Italian/2021/93 mins)
Cavers explore Europe’s deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss is reached for the first time. The Cavers’ venture is unnoticed by the locals but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino plateau whose solitary life begins to interweave with the group’s journey. The film is a follow up to Le Quattro Volte (2011), it was screened earlier at the Film Society. Il Buco won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival.
3:30 pm
Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(Thai/2010/113 mins)
The first film of the evening is Uncle Boonme who can recall his past lives by the noted Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Set in north-eastern Thailand, neighbouring Laos and Cambodia Uncle Boonmee has to spend his last days surrounded by his loved ones in a remote forest, a place from his childhood, and, he believes a possible location of his previous lives. The ghost of his dead wife appears to care for him, and the spirit of his long-lost son returns. The film creates an enchanted world where flora and fauna converge to create a magical atmosphere. The film won the Palm D’or at Cannes film festival in 2010.
6:00 pm
Ugetsu
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
(Japanese/1953/97 mins)
The second film of the evening is Ugetsu by Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi by the 1950s was an elder statesman of Japanese cinema revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. The film is an exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant. Mizoguchi achieves with his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.
The film was awarded the Silver Lion award at the Venice film festival in 1953.
August
2023
3:30 pm
Devil's Backbone
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
(Spanish/2001/108 mins)
The first film of the evening is Devil’s Backbone (El espinazo del diablo) directed by Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican director who along with Alonso Cuaron and Alejandro Inarittu have brought a new age of Mexican Cinema to the attention of audiences across the world. Set during the endgame of the Spanish Civil War (1938-39), it tells the tale of a twelve-year-old boy who, after his father is killed fighting for the republicans, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro expertly combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish mélange that, like his later Pan’s Labyrinth, reminds us the scariest monsters are often the human ones.The Devil’s Backbone was a labour of love for Del Toro, who has frequently described it and its “sister picture,” Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), as his favourite and most personal movies. Both the films have been screened at the film society earlier.
August
2023
5:50 pm
Kwaidan
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
(Japanese/1965/183 mins, B&W)
The second film of the evening is Kwaidan, by Masaki Kobayashi, will be screened in the original three-hour cut. After more than a decade of political dramas and socially minded period pieces, Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colourful surreal sets and luminous cinematography, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn’s collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously crafted.
It was the most expensive film made in Japanese cinema, the film was recognised with the Special Jury Prize at Cannes film festival in 1965.
April
2023
3:30 pm
I Will Buy You
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
(Japan/1956/112 mins)
The first film of the evening, I Will Buy You, made in 1956, examines the corruption set in Japan’s baseball industry. It is a film unlike other sports films, takes a critical look at the inhumanity bred by business interests, by following the sharklike behaviour of a talent scout set on signing a promising player to the team of the Toyo flowers. Baseball has been Japan’s favourite sport for decades before the film was released, this film foregrounded the institutional decay beset within the Sport.
Masaki Kobayashi’s (1916-1996) in a career spanning four decades, he made 22 films. Prolific in the 50s and 60s he made 15 films in this period, examining the stresses of post war occupied Japan (1945-52) – corruption, exploitation and denial of war crimes. His works interrogated the Japanese nation, its culture, traditions and stood with the individual against the oppressive structures of society. The issues his films explored are pertinent in today’s Japan.
6:00 pm
Chess of the Wind
Director: Mohammad Reza Aslani
(Iran/1976/98 mins)
The second film of the evening is the farsi film, Chess of the Wind by Mohammad Reza Aslani, made in 1976. The film never had a theatrical release in Iran nor international distribution. The film was lost for many decades and has been recently discovered by Aslani’s children, restored and screened across major festivals starting 2020, it is one of the important works of Iran’s pre 1979 period. The film is set in 1920s Iran, follows the misfortunes of a paraplegic heiress. She is surrounded by predatory men – stepfather, her nephews, local commissar – all seeking to usurp her inheritance. She’s aided in her struggle against these men by her maid, an erotic tension between the heiress and the maid add complexity to the narrative.
Mohammad Reza Aslani born in 1943, is a renowned poet, film maker based in Tehran. His career has been a casualty of the Iran’s political changes, over the five decades his work includes ten documentaries, one experimental film (Tehran, a Conceptual Art (2011) and another feature film
(The Green Fire - 2008).
3:30 pm
Black River
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
(Japan/1956/110 mins, B&W)
The first film of the evening, Black River, made in 1956, examines the moral corruption around US Military bases in Japan following world war II. The film is set around a rented house and its tenants which houses multiple characters - a consumptive man, a communist, a couple, a gang worker. The narrative unfolds around a love triangle between a student, his girlfriend and a Gang Boss - revealing a society succumbing to lawlessness and violence.
April
2023
6:00 pm
Not One Less
Director: Zhang Yimou
(China/1999/102 mins)
The second film of the evening is the mandarin film, Not one Less by Zhang Yimou, made in 1999. The film is set in rural China, a young girl of thirteen, is ordered to be a substitute teacher in the village school. She has to keep the class intact for a month or she loses her pay. One of the students migrates to the city to find work enabling his family to pay off their debts. The young teacher follows the boy, the search begins and takes her to the city where her travails bear fruit due to the kind intervention of local TV station’s boss.The film won the best picture at Venice Film Festival in 1999. The film was screened earlier at FSB.
3:30 pm
Three Resurrected Drunkards
Director: Nagisa Oshima
(Japan/1968/80 mins)
Japanese director Nagisa Oshima (1932-2013) was one of the most inventive and provocative film artists of the twentieth century, and his works challenged and shocked the cinematic world for decades. Oshima was fascinated by stories of outsiders, misfits and social castoffs, who would populate his groundbreaking works between 1959 and 1999. Starting this month, we bring the lesser-seen films of Nagisa Oshima from the 1960s. In Three Resurrected Drunkards, a trio of bumbling young men frolic at the beach. While they swim, their clothes are stolen and replaced with new outfits. Donning these, they are mistaken for undocumented Koreans and end up on the run from outraged authorities. A strong commentary on Japan’s treatment of its Korean immigrants, this is Nagisa Oshima at both his most politically engaged and provocative. The film was released during the height of the Vietnam War, where Japan was involved in providing material support to the US forces as part of the US - Japan security treaty and the use of military bases in Japan by the US forces.
6:30 pm
Devils on the Doorstep
Director: Jiang Wen
(China/2000/139 mins)
Jiang Wen (b.1963) takes a fresh look at Japanese occupation of China during the end of 2nd world war in Devils on the Doorstep. The film is set in a small village, the story of a peasant who under gun point has to shelter two prisoners. One is a Japanese soldier who wants to be killed and the other is his Chinese interpreter who wants to live. The peasant struggles to keep the prisoners hidden from the Japanese forces, while deciding to execute them - days turns into months. The film leads to a very powerful climax. The film went on to win the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2000, banned in China, continued to have a vibrant underground life circulating through DVDs.
March
2023
February
2023
3:30 pm
Kalpana
Director: Uday Shankar
(Hindi/1948/152 mins)
Shai Heredia on “Kalpana”For decades, modern-dance pioneer Uday Shankar’s one and only film, the radical Kalpana, was locked away in the National Film Archive of India because of a copyright dispute. “A dance fantasy in celluloid,” as the posters for the film on its 1948 release boldly stated, it features hyperstylized cinematography, spectacular dance sequences, and a layered, melodramatic narrative that warns the Indian film industry and the newly independent nation itself of the perils of pursuing commerce over culture. Kalpana should have been an inspirational classic of postcolonial Indian cinema for generations of artists, academics, filmmakers, dancers, and cinephiles. But this was not to be. Needless to say, such erasures forever alter history, and it is only over seventy years later that we can discover in Kalpana a truly modern cinematic form, created by an artist who was well ahead of his time, and a manifesto for a secular, democratic-socialist India that could have been.
February
2023
5:35 pm
2046
Director: Wong Kar Wai
(Cantonese/2004/128 mins)
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to In the Mood for Love combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure andavant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his role as writerChow Mo-Wan, whose numerous failed relationships with women who drift in and out of his life (and the one who goes in and out of room 2046, down the hall from his apartment) inspire the delirious futuristic love story he pens.
3:30pm
In the Mood for Love
Director: Wong Kar Wai
(Cantonese/2000/95 mins)
Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love, along with the science-fiction fantasy 2046 (2004) are considered a trilogy about Time, History, Life, Love and a City. The breakthrough sophomore feature by Wong Kar Wai represents the first full flowering of his swooning signature style. The initial entry in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes In the Mood for Love and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie is a dreamlike drift through the Hong Kong of the 1960s in which a band of wayward twentysomethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) hopelessly enamored with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau Tak Wah) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—pull together and push apart in a dance of frustrated desire.
3:30 pm
The Last Emperor
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
(China, Italy/1987/163 mins)
The first film of the evening will be The Last Emperor (1987) by the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci. It is a grand sweep of a film - a massive, overflowing, almost ridiculously ambitious epic that covers more than six decades of turbulent political and social history. Bertolucci has a love of the intimate, which informs his best films, but he also goes after the epic, the grandiose, and the larger-than-life. Few filmmakers can marry those two impulses with any real finesse or grace, and Bertolucci certainly comes closer than most. The Last Emperor tells the amazing, but true story of Pu Yi, who, in 1908, at the tender age of 3 was taken from his mother and made emperor of China. Installed on the Dragon Throne in Beijing’s Forbidden City, the child was given command over a third of the world’s population.
December
2022
5:30 pm
Mountains May Depart
Director: Jia Zhangke
(Mandarin/2015/126 mins)
The second film of the evening will be Mountains May Depart, made in the year 2015 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The screening completes the focus on Jia Zhang-Ke’s works started in November. The film is an epic drama depicting the life of one family over several decades under China’s march towards capitalism. Structured in three parts (set in 1999, 2014 and Australia in 2025), the film follows the life of Shen Tao (played by Jia’s regular collaborator Zhao Tao) and her family over 26 years. This work of Jia is a study of Capitalist forces and globalisation on Chinese society and family life.Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today. His films Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life (2006) were screened at FSB earlier.
3:30 pm
Poetry
Director: Lee Chang-dong
(South Korea/2010/179 mins)
The first screening of the evening is the South Korean film Poetry (2010) by Lee Chang-dong. This film continues the focus on Korean films and presents Lee Chang-Dong’s works following the screening of Secret Sunshine. Mija is an old lady who lives with her middle-schooler grandson in a small suburban city located along the Han River. By chance she takes a "poetry" class at a neighborhood cultural center and is challenged to write a poem for the first time in her life. In her quest for poetic inspiration Mija is delightfully surprised with a newfound trepidation as if she were a little girl discovering things for the first time in her life. But when she is suddenly faced with a reality harsh beyond her imagination, she realizes perhaps life is not as beautiful as she had thought it is.
6:00 pm
A Touch of Sin
Director: Jia Zhang-Ke
(China/2013/133 mins)
The second film of the evening will be A Touch of Sin, made in the year 2013 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The film is inspired by real life events in modern day China. It tells the stories of four individuals, living in different provinces, drawn to acts of violence. A miner, enraged by corruption in his village; a migrant worker discovers the hidden benefits of owning a firearm; a sauna worker is pushed to the limits by a client; and a factory worker drifting through the factories and nightclubs of Dongguan. The film explores the role of everyday violence in Chinese life. It won the best screenplay award at the Cannes film Festival in 2013.
Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today. His films Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life (2006) were screened at FSB earlier.
December
2022
3:30 pm
Secret Sunshine
Director: Chang Lee-Dong
(South Korea/2007/184 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Secret Sunshine, made in the year 2007, directed by South Korean director Chang Lee-Dong. Secret Sunshine (Miryang) stars Jeon Do-yeon as a widowed piano teacher who moves with her young son from Seoul to her late husband’s provincial hometown for a fresh start. Secret Sunshine is a study of faith in all its power, strangeness, and cruelty; a look at the particularities of human nature and experience that account for the existence, perhaps even the inevitability, of religion—all of which is to say that it’s an attempt to depict the invisible in what is foremost a visual medium.Lee Chang-Dong directed his first film in his fourties, born in 1954, he was a successful novelist and scriptwriter before making films. His body of work has made him one of the foremost Asian filmmakers working in World Cinema. His film Oasis (2002) won multiple prizes at Venice Film Festival, Poetry (2010) won the screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival, Secret Sunshine (2007) won the best actress award at Cannes for the actor Jeon. The films Oasis and Poetry have been screened earlier at FSB.
November
2022
6:30 pm
24 City
Director: Jia Zhang-Ke
(China/2008/112 mins)
The second film of the evening will be 24 City, made in the year 2008 by Jia Zhang-Ke. The film is about the generations of people who worked in a state factory at Chengdu, which is just about to be demolished; it is a docu-fiction hybrid, an essay in contemporary history and an experiment in cine-portraiture, vividly shot on high-definition video. The result is a deeply serious and sombre film, trying to find a way of telling the stories of people affected by the gigantic political and economic changes sweeping the nation – 21st Century China. The focus on Jia Zhang-Ke would continue in the screening of Touch of Sin(2013) and Mountains May Depart (2015) during December 2022.
Jia Zhang-Ke is one of the most influential Chinese filmmakers working in world cinema today. His films Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life(2006) were screened at FSB earlier.
November
2022
3:00 pm
The Housemaid
Director: Kim Ki Young
(Korean/1960/111 mins)
Middle-aged composer Dong Sik has his hands full trying to provide for his pregnant wife and two kids. He hires a housemaid to help out around the house, but the strange and sultry young woman has other plans in mind as she sets out to seduce Dong Sik.
Wadjda
Director: Haifaa Al-Mansour
(Arabic/2012/97 mins)
Young Wadjda dreams of owning a green bicycle. She wants to race a boy from the neighborhood, but the law prohibits girls from riding bikes. Just as she is losing hope, she hears about a cash prize for a Quran recitation competition at her school. Wadjda decides to earn the cash to fulfil her dream.
3:30 pm
Akaler Sandhaney
Director: Mrinal Sen
(Bengali/1982/115 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Akaler Sandhaney (In Search of a Famine), made in the year 1982, directed by Mrinal Sen, A film unit led by its director (Dhritiman Chatterjee) arrives at a village called Hatui to shoot a film on the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 (Akal, in vernacular). The units shoots and resides in a semi-dilapidated zamindari palace, which has an old lady (Gita Sen) and her paralysed husband as it sole inhabitants. At the outstet, everything is fine, complications arise when one of the actors (Debika Mukherjee) starts throwing starry tantrums and is dismissed. The director’s attempt to replace her by the daughter of a village bigwig stirs up the hornet’s nest – the villagers take this as an insult and refuse to co-operate with the film unit. Finally, the unit is forced to pack-up and leave.
Akaler Sandhaney employs the ‘film within a film’ structure (and the trials and tensions of the film crew) to explore Sen’s favourite themes – poverty, exploitation and the ensuing human misery. In the process of doing so the film also turns a critical gaze into the politics of artistic representation of such misery. The film is searing cross-examination of the ethics and morals of the petit-bourgeois filmmaker/s who, as one of the villagers comment at the very beginning of the film, “invade the village in search of famine”. Dhritiman Chatterjee, who plays the nameless film-director – a deliberate choice, as all other members of the film-crew ostensibly play ‘themselves’ being addressed by their actual names – assumes the persona of Mrinal Sen himself – the concerned and intellectual filmmaker attempting to make films that tackle the “real histories of India’s poverty.” The film won the Silver Bear (Special Jury Prize) at Berlin film festival, 1981 and a clutch of National Awards.
March
2020
6:30 pm
Bhuvan Shome
Director: Mrinal Sen
(Hindi/1969/96 mins)
The second film of the evening will be Bhuvan Shome, made in the year 1969 by Mrinal Sen, the film revolves around Bhuvan Shome (Utpal Dutt), a ruthless Bengali bureaucrat working in the Indian Railways. Greatly feared by his subordinates, the middle-aged widower has spent his life trying to be righteous and has zero tolerance for the corrupt or the incompetent. As the narrator informs, he once even went to the extent of firing his own son. He is highly respected by everyone around him but being a martinet he is forced to live in abject solitude. One day, bored by his monotonous office routine, he decides to go on a bird hunting trip to Saurashtra, a region located on the Arabian Sea coast of Gujarat. Doomed to live in solitude, Bhuvan Shome, trapped in an alien land, quickly realizes that he has inadvertently pushed himself a bit too far out of his comfort zone. The rest of the movie takes us on unfolds as a journey of self-realization for Bhuvan Shome, who gradually learns to appreciate the importance of human company.A classic Hindi film written and directed by Mrinal Sen, stars the renowned Bengali actor Utpal Dutt and Marathi actress Suhasini Mulay (making her film debut) in the pivotal roles. Bhuvan Shome also marked the debut of Amitabh Bachchan, who narrates the film in a playfully sardonic voice. Sen's screenplay is based on a Bengali story by Banaphool (aka Balai Chand Mukhopadhya). The recipient of three National Awards -- Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor -- Bhuvan Shome is also said to have pioneered the Indian New Wave. Perhaps, the most striking thing about Bhuvan Shome is that it is minimalistic without being devoid of style. The plot is bereft of any structure and Sen adopts a documentary style to devise the movie's narrative. The film’s use of improvisation and humour, its naturalistic depiction of rural India established it as a landmark of Indian cinema.
January
2020
3:30 pm
Woycezek
Director: Wener Herzong
(German/1979/82 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Woyczek, made in the year 1979, directed by Wener Herzog, the screenplay is based on the unfinished German play written by Georg Buchner in 1836 shortly before he died, was itself based on the true story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a barber-solider who was beheaded in Leipzig in 1821 for murdering his mistress. Woyzeck, played by Klaus Kinski, is occupied by demons, furiously going through calesthenics that seem to be some kind of punishment. Woyzeck supplements his meager soldier's pay by allowing himself to be the guinea pig for the town's doctor, a loony man-of-science whose grand experiment requires Woyzeck to stay on a diet of nothing but peas. The doctor is bent on proving that it's possible to turn a man into a donkey.
The film won the Oscar under the foreign film category.
3:30 pm
Mephisto
Director: Istvan Szabo
(German/1981/184 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Mephisto, made in the year 1981, by Istvan Szabo. Mephisto is the story of German actor Hendrik Höfgen, a successful leftwing radical in the Weimar days, who does an apparent volte-face when the Nazis take power. After securing Hermann Göring's (one of the powerful leaders of the Nazi party) patronage, Höfgen becomes a leading member of the Nazi cultural establishment. “What do they want from me now? After all, I am just an actor.
December
2019
6:30 pm
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Director: Luis Bunuel
(French, Italian/1967/97 mins)
The second film of the evening will be The Diary of a Chambermaid, made in the year 1967, by Luis Bunuel is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era. The screenings will be followed by an interview with Jean Claude-Carriere (Screenplay of The Diary of a Chambermaid) .
December
2019
3:30 pm
The Match Factory Girl
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
(Finland/1990/70 mins)
The first film of the evening will be The Match Factory Girl, made in the year 1990, Kaurismäki took his penchant for despairing character studies to unspeakably grim depths in the shockingly entertaining The Match Factory Girl. Kati Outinen is memorably impenetrable as Iris, whose grinding days as a cog in a factory wheel, and nights as a neglected daughter living with her parents, ultimately send her over the edge. Yet despite her transgressions, Kaurismäki makes Iris a compelling, even sympathetic figure. Bleak yet suffused with comic irony, The Match Factory Girl closes out the “Proletariat Trilogy”.
6:00 pm
La Promesse
Director: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne
(Belgium/1996/90 mins)
The second film of the evening will be La Promesse, made in the year 1996, La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually coming to understand the implications of his father’s making a living through the exploitation of undocumented workers. Filmed in the Dardennes’ industrial hometown of Seraing, Belgium, La promesse is a brilliantly economical and observant tale of a boy’s troubled moral awakening.
November
2019
3:30 pm
Ariel
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
(Finnish/1988/72 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Ariel, made in the year 1988 by Aki Kaurismäki. In Kaurismäki’s crime drama, a coal miner named Taisto (Turo Pajala) attempts to leave behind a provincial life of inertia and economic despair, only to get into ever deeper trouble. Yet a minor-key romance with a hilariously dispassionate meter maid (Susanna Haavisto) might provide a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Ariel, boasts an interesting soundtrack of Finnish tango and Baltic pop music and lovely cinematography by Kaurismäki’s longtime cameraman Timo Salmimen, put its director on the international map.
6:00 pm
Through the Olive Trees
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
(Persian/1994/103 mins)
The second film of the evening will be Through the Olive Trees, made in the year 1994, the final film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy, Abbas Kiarostami takes metanarrative to masterful heights in the final installment of The Koker Trilogy. Unfolding “behind the scenes” of And Life Goes On, this film traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors—a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him—creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle.
3:30 pm
Shadows in Paradise
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
(Finnish/1986/73 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Shadows in Paradise, made in the year 1986 by Aki Kaurismäki. Lonely garbageman Nikkander (Matti Pellonpää) finds himself directionless after losing his friend and co-worker to a sudden heart attack; unlikely redemption comes in the form of plain supermarket cashier Ilona (Kati Outinen, in her first of many performances for Kaurismäki), with whom he begins a tentative love affair. Boiling down what is essentially a romantic comedy to a series of spare and beautiful gestures, Kaurismäki conjures an unexpected delight that finds hope blossoming even amid gray surroundings.
5:30 pm
And Life Goes on
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
(Persian/1992/95 mins)
The second film of the evening will be And Life Goes On, made in the year 1992, the second film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy, In the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake in Iran that left fifty thousand dead, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Koker, where his camera surveys not only devastation but also the teeming life in its wake. Blending fiction and reality into a playful, poignant road movie, And Life Goes On follows a film director who, along with his son, makes the trek to the region in hopes of finding out if the young boys who acted in Where Is the Friend’s House? are among the survivors, and discovers a resilient community pressing on in the face of tragedy. Finding beauty in the bleakest of circumstances, Kiarostami crafts a quietly majestic ode to the best of the human spirit.
November
2019
3:30 pm
Homework
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
(Iran/1989/77 mins)
The first film of the evening will be Homework, made in the year 1989 by Iranian film maker Abbas Kiarostami, the film explores the Iranian education system and raises questions about the systemic oppression faced by young pupils resonating across cultures.
October
2019
6:00 pm
Where is the Friend's House?
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
(Iran/1987/83 mins)
The second film of the evening will be Where is the Friend's House?, made in the year 1987, the first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, Where Is the Friend’s House? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.
August
2019
3:30 pm
RAN
Director: Akira Kurosawa
(France/1985/41 mins)
The first film of the evening will be RAN, made in the year 1985 by Japanese Master film maker Akira Kurosawa.
A reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear set in feudal Japan, RAN tells the story of Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, an ageing warlord who, after spending his life consolidating his empire, decides to abdicate and divide his Kingdom amongst his three sons Taro, Jiro and Saburo. This leads to a brutal and bloody war between the brothers for absolute power of the kingdom.
Kurosawa’s deployment of huge armies in vast landscapes displays a pre-digital mastery that we can only gasp at today, as Kurosawa's last epic, Ran has often been cited as among his finest achievements. The complex and variant etymology for the word Ran used as the title has been variously translated as "chaos", "rebellion", or "revolt"; or to mean "disturbed" or "confused". Ran may be seen as a morality play - something one sees and learns from. It is also, as Kurosawa himself intimated, a final statement.
One of the most important film makers in cinema history, Akira Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. His final film, RAN has been beautifully restored in 4K and we will screen the restored version.
5:30 pm
AK
Director: Chris Marker
(France/1985/71 mins)
The film screening will be followed by a documentary by French Filmmaker Chris Marker's AK - a film about Akira Kurosawa, as he worked on the making of Ran. There will be a small talk on the 'Art of the Samurai' by Jean Charbonnier.
3:00 pm
Climates
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
(Turkiye/2006/101 mins)
The first film of the evening is “Climates” made in the year 2006, directed by the noted Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan daringly casts himself and his wife, Ebru Ceylan, in the lead roles of this poignant yet hard-edged modernist melodrama, from 2006. During a beachside summer vacation, Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan),a struggling university lecturer, senses that his marriage to Bahar (Ebru Ceylan), a television art director, is falling apart, and, at his suggestion, they separate. Lonely and adrift in Istanbul, he learns that Bahar has gone to Turkey’s rural, tradition-bound East to work on a film, and he heads off to find her. Ceylan’s long takes and brooding closeups capture the faces, gestures, and longings of Istanbul’s aging bourgeois bohemians, as well as the moody nuances of actual and emotional weather. Under the guise of the universal theme of love and its mysteries, Ceylan offers a glimpse of harsh and unresolved local particulars.
August
2019
6:30 pm
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
(Turkiye/2011/157 mins)
The second film of the evening is “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” made in the year 2011, directed by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.The film is a rigorous tale of a night and a day in a murder investigation. Police, prosecutors, a doctor and the murderers themselves try to locate a buried body through one long night in the Anatolian steppes. Many long-buried thoughts and fears are also disinterred in the minds of the investigators as they go about their thankless task. With extraordinary photography from Gokhan Tiryaki, the film slowly insinuates itself as a drama of subtlety and complexity.The Film won the Grand Prix prize at 2011 Cannes Film FestivalScreening followed by Interview: i) Interview with director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (24 mins)
3:00 pm
Climates
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
(Turkiye/2006/101 mins)
The first film of the evening is “Climates” made in the year 2006, directed by the noted Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan daringly casts himself and his wife, Ebru Ceylan, in the lead roles of this poignant yet hard-edged modernist melodrama, from 2006. During a beachside summer vacation, Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan),a struggling university lecturer, senses that his marriage to Bahar (Ebru Ceylan), a television art director, is falling apart, and, at his suggestion, they separate. Lonely and adrift in Istanbul, he learns that Bahar has gone to Turkey’s rural, tradition-bound East to work on a film, and he heads off to find her.
July
2019
6:30 pm
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Turkiye/2011/157 mins)
The second film of the evening is “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” made in the year 2011, directed by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.The film is a rigorous tale of a night and a day in a murder investigation. Police, prosecutors, a doctor and the murderers themselves try to locate a buried body through one long night in the Anatolian steppes. Many long-buried thoughts and fears are also disinterred in the minds of the investigators as they go about their thankless task.
