Wellington Film Society for May

Whoa… it’s May already & I have neg­lected to men­tion the won­der­ful Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety even once this year!

So… without fur­ther ado, here is what is com­ing up next month. In the words of the illus­tri­ous pres­id­ent, Dav­id Lind­say…

Hi All,

May sees the con­clu­sion of the Jean-Luc God­ard ret­ro­spect­ive, made pos­sible by the gen­er­ous sup­port of the French Embassy and Cre­at­ive New Zea­l­and. As in pre­vi­ous years we are required to report to Cre­at­ive New Zea­l­and about aspects of their sup­por­ted pro­grammes. I encour­age you to email me at the Gmail address below, your com­ments on the God­ard sea­son.

Remem­ber, all our screen­ings this year are on Mondays at 6.15pm at the Para­mount. We screen the fea­ture only and aim to start the film pretty close to the advert­ised time.

First up on 1 May, PIERROT LE FOU (France/Italy 1965), God­ard’s play­ful trib­ute to the Hol­ly­wood pulp crime movies of the Forties, executed with typ­ic­al Gal­lic cool. Essen­tially a brassy-hued remake of Breath­less, the film puts a dis­sat­is­fied bour­geois man (Jean-Paul Bel­mondo) and his wise-ass babysit­ter (Anna Karina) in a world of trouble on a sun­lit high­way. In its most fam­ous moment, Samuel Fuller, as him­self, defines movie­mak­ing as “love, hate, viol­ence, death — in a word, emo­tion.” God­ard sets him­self the task of mak­ing Pure Cinema out of coun­ter­feit ver­sions of these ingredi­ents — and, with an alchemy that defies descrip­tion, he does it.

The God­ard sea­son con­cludes on 8 May with LE MEPRIS [Con­tempt] (France/Italy 1963). A movie about the mak­ing of a movie and the unmak­ing of a mar­riage. Split between the loc­a­tions of the Villa Malaparte in Capri and the Cine­cit­tà film stu­dio in Rome, it maps out the gulfs between two squab­bling pairs: writer Paul (Michel Pic­coli) and act­ress Cam­ille (Bri­gitte Bardot) on the one hand, and dir­ect­or Fritz Lang (him­self) and pro­du­cer Jerry Prokosch (Jack Pal­ance) on the oth­er. Or should that be four squab­bling pairs? God­ard may have been obsessed with cinema, but he could­n’t help recount­ing a couple of per­son­al stor­ies here: his own battle of wills with pro­du­cer Joseph E. Lev­ine (Her­cules); and his crum­bling rela­tion­ship with his then-wife and fre­quent female lead, Anna Karina, to whom Bardot alludes in a man­ner that reveals the auteur’s own con­tempt.

On 15 May, the first of two nev­er-before-seen-in-New Zea­l­and films by Michael Haneke, whose most recent film HIDDEN [Cache], included in last year’s Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al, is cur­rently screen­ing in town. TIME OF THE WOLF (France/Austria/Germany 2003) stars Isa­belle Hup­pert as a moth­er who seeks shel­ter with her fam­ily in the coun­tryside in
the after­math of an unspe­cified cata­strophe. The title of the film, from an ancient Ger­man­ic poem, refers to the time before the apo­ca­lypse. In a sense, the uniden­ti­fied dis­aster that drives Anne and her chil­dren from their home rep­res­ents noth­ing more than an abrupt, mass refus­al to observe social con­ven­tions. The writer-dir­ect­or cre­ates a cine­mat­ic encounter that is deeply and mor­ally com­pel­ling.

The second Michael Haneke film, CODE UNKNOWN (France/Germany/Romania 2000) screens on 23 May. Juli­ette Binoche stars in one of the most uncom­prom­isingly dif­fi­cult and chal­len­ging films of the year: its either a kind of high Euro-mod­ern­ist mas­ter­piece about race, cul­ture, urb­an rage and ali­en­ated iden­tity — or a per­versely opaque and frus­trat­ing essay in enigma, a labyrinth of blind alleys, in which putat­ive solu­tions are for­bid­dingly walled off. It is there­fore a movie which requires a con­sid­er­able invest­ment of atten­tion. It offers a med­it­a­tion on the con­flu­ence of lives and cul­tures in the mod­ern city. It is bewil­der­ing and exas­per­at­ing, cer­tainly — but virile, cereb­ral film-mak­ing.

All the films thus far in May are 35mm prints, the first three in Cinema­Scope – or the European equi­val­ent. The Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety first screened our last film of the month in a 16mm print in 1978. It has recently been restored but is only avail­able in a digit­al format.

So, on 29 May: SALESMAN (USA 1969). Albert and Dav­id Maysles’ doc­u­ment­ary is about four door-to-door bible sales­men who move hori­zont­ally through the cap­it­al­ist­ic dream. It’s a fine, pure pic­ture of a small sec­tion of Amer­ic­an life that remains a social doc­u­ment and is one of the best examples of dir­ect cinema. It is dis­tin­guished by its ori­gin­al­ity, by its intel­li­gent hand­ing of its sub­ject mat­ter, and by its fidel­ity to truth. This acclaimed doc­u­ment­ary is regarded as one of the endur­ing mas­ter­pieces of 1960s Amer­ic­an cinema.

Here is fairly short notice of a film sem­in­ar run by the Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity Con­tinu­ing Edu­ca­tion depart­ment. The Ter­ri­fy­ing Won­der of Sci­ence Fic­tion Cinema will be con­duc­ted by Sean Red­mond, a seni­or lec­turer in Film at Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity, on Sat­urday 6 May, 9.30am – 4.00pm. The sem­in­ar aims to define and explore sci­ence fic­tion cinema. It will begin with a film screen­ing and then go on to explore the dom­in­ant themes, styles, and pleas­ures of a num­ber of sem­in­al sci­ence fic­tion films. Film Soci­ety mem­bers qual­i­fy for the $49 dis­count fee. The link takes you to the full descrip­tion of the course, and includes a link to the enrol­ment page.

You will remem­ber last month we said that there was to be a south­ern hemi­sphere premiere of Ken­neth Anger­’s most recent film MOUSE HEAVEN (2004) at the NZ Film Archive. It will be presen­ted by Alice L Hutchis­on, author of Ken­neth Anger: A Demon­ic Vis­ion­ary, at 7.00pm on Thursday 11 May. Entry is by koha.

Also of interest at the Film Archive, four pro­grammes of short films from Ger­many presen­ted in asso­ci­ation with the Goethe Insti­tut under the gen­er­al title Short & Sweet II, screen­ing between 5 and 13 May. 100 years ago, all films were short. Even in the six­ties, young tal­ents like Rain­er Wern­er Fass­bind­er, Wern­er Herzog and Wim Wenders were ini­tially presen­ted to the pub­lic with short film works. Inter­na­tion­ally, Ger­man short films have occu­pied a lead­ing pos­i­tion for many years. The count­less awards won at inter­na­tion­al fest­ivals are an obvi­ous indic­at­or of their suc­cess. The first series of SHORT & SWEET received an over­whelm­ingly pos­it­ive response. This second series con­sists of a cross-sec­tion of the most out­stand­ing and innov­at­ive short films made in Ger­many in recent years. They are divided into four them­at­ic sec­tions.

The Wel­ling­ton Film Soci­ety is very grate­ful to the Para­mount for mak­ing their facil­it­ies avail­able at a very reas­on­able rate. It is in all our best interests to sup­port the cinema by pur­chas­ing food and drinks from the bar on our screen­ing nights, and attend­ing the films that screen as part of their pub­lic pro­gramme.

Com­ing to the Para­mount in May:

11 May: THE PROPOSITION (John Hill­coat, Aus­tralia 2005). Return­ing from the recent World Cinema Show­case, it’s an arrest­ingly sav­age vis­ion of Brit­ish colo­ni­al ‘civil­isa­tion’ pit­ted against white out­laws and rebel­li­ous abori­gin­al slaves.

May 18 sees the open­ing of the ANPFIFF FOOTBALL FILM FESTIVAL, arrange
d by the Goethe Insti­tut to tie in with the Soc­cer World Cup which is being held in Ger­many this year. The Dir­ect­or of the Goethe Insti­tut, Chris­toph Much­er, ini­tially men­tioned this fest­iv­al to me as a Film Soci­ety pro­ject but I could not see how we could give justice to the many fea­tures and shorts involved in our once a week time slot. Rather than chose just a few of the titles on offer I sug­ges­ted that he talk to the Para­mount – hence the fest­iv­al in its present form. Some of the oth­er film soci­et­ies in the coun­try have chosen a title or two.

Also com­men­cing 18 May: DON’T COME KNOCKING (Wim Wenders, France/Germany/USA 2005). Anoth­er return from the World Cinema Show­case. 21 years after col­lab­or­at­ing on PARIS, TEXAS, Wenders and Sam Shep­herd revis­it sim­il­ar themes and fash­ion anoth­er visu­al ode to the nat­ur­al splend­our – and faded glory – of the Amer­ic­an West.

25 May: GRIZZLY MAN (Wern­er Herzog, USA 2005). This was in last year’s Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al. Self-taught nat­ur­al­ist Timothy Tread­well spent 12 sum­mers liv­ing in the wilds of Alaska, obsess­ively film­ing the activ­it­ies of grizzly bears. He was even­tu­ally killed by one of the beasts. Herzog delves into the wil­ful roman­ti­cism of Tread­well­’s quest, draw­ing extens­ively on the 100 hours of extraordin­ary foot­age he left behind.

Also 25 May: NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (Jonath­an Demme, USA 2006). A con­cert film with a touch of mel­an­choly. Neil Young, dia­gnosed with a poten­tially fatal brain aneurysm, wrote and recor­ded the songs for his recent album Prair­ie Wind in the four days before his sur­gery. Post-sur­gery, he called Demme and said he wanted to make a film – this film – which show­cases the first pub­lic per­form­ances of the songs on the new album, and some of his clas­sics.

See you at the movies.

Dav­id Lind­say
Pres­id­ent
E‑mail: FilmSociety@gmail.com