6th April 2008 ; Screening of A Woman Under the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence

A Film by John Cassavetes
Country : USA
Year : 1974
English with English Sub titles
6thApril 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Films like A Woman Under the Influence defy a century’s worth of film theory, screenwriting tips, and film school orthodoxy.

What is A Woman Under the Influence? If you look at it from one end of the telescope, it’s a hyper-realistic portrait of a woman going mad, a bravura performance in a vaguely working-class setting . The film is study in shared emotional impotence and individual emotional frustration.

John Cassavetes’s devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple, deeply in love, yet unable to express their love in terms the other can understand, the film is an uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil.

The story follows Nick on the job, working as a foreman for some city's water department, and Mabel as a depressed housewife. He's a foul-mouthed, ignorant, and often physically and emotionally abusive husband and person, while she's a flaming nut case. It is a dysfunctional household, in the modern sense.

What Cassavetes does better than any other filmmaker is give viewers archetypal situations from which we immediately viscerally understand where his characters are in their lives, as we first enter them through film. When you look at a close-up in a film by almost anyone else, you are looking at a representation of the idea of an emotion, no matter how detailed the acting. In Cassavetes, every blink, every shrug, every hesitation counts and drives the story forward.

If there is one quality that separates John Cassavetes movies from almost everybody else is, it’s the density of detail in the storytelling. His films need to be read closely, from beginning to end. There are no lulls with Cassavetes, no breaks in rhythm; they are not broken down the way most films are. You have to apprehend them from gesture to gesture, breath to breath. Very few filmmakers in the sound era have chosen to work this way, at least in the realm of fiction. Only Carl Th. Dreyer, of whom Cassavetes was a great admirer, comes to mind. This is not to slight other filmmakers with a different approach to their art, who either break up their scenes in clearly articulated units (Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Bresson), build tableau effects that take the action into an eerie timelessness (Stanley Kubrick), isolate certain visual or behavioral events as the focal point of a given shot (Jean Renoir), or dig into the marrow of time to make an event out of duration itself (Andy Warhol, Andrei Tarkovsky).

John Cassavetes

John Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, screenwriter, and director. He is considered a pioneer of American independent film. An independent film, or indie film, is a film that is produced outside, "independent", of the Hollywood Studio system.

Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of Katherine Demetri (who was to feature in some of his films) and Nicholas John Cassavetes, Greek immigrants to the U.S. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned, at the age of seven, he spoke no English. He grew up in Long Island, New York and attended high school at Blair Academy in New JerseyAmerican Academy of Dramatic Arts. On graduation in 1950, he continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as Alcoa Theatre.
before moving to the

During this time he met and married actress Gena Rowlands. By 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching method acting in workshops in New York City. An improvisation exercise in one workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, Shadows (1959). Cassavetes raised the funds for production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd's late-night radio talk show "Night People". Cassavetes was unable to get American distributors to carry Shadows, so he took it to Europe, where it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import.

His next film as a director (and his second independent film) was Faces. Around this time, Cassavetes formed "Faces International" as a distribution company to handle all of his films. Husbands (1970) stars Cassavetes himself with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They play a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends. Minnie and Moskowitz, about two unlikely lovers, has Rowlands with Seymour Cassel.

His three masterpieces of the 1970s were produced independently - A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977).

Cassavetes died in 1989 at the age of 59.

With every passing year, the films of John Cassavetes are becoming more and more central to debates on cinema. Moving uneasily between Hollywood and independent American cinema traditions, Cassavetes created a body of work which was sometimes difficult but which has also had a lasting influence on the way independent filmmaking is conceived.

23rd March 2008 ; Screening of Mandela - Son of Africa, Father of a Nation

A fascinating portrait of Nelson Mandela

Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation
Documentary / biography
By Angus Gibson &
Jo Menell
Year : 1996
Country : South Africa
English with English sub titles
Run time : 118 minutes

23^rd March 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call 9443039630

Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation is the film biography of the first democratically elected president of the racially united South Africa. Directors Jo Menell and Angus Gibson give us an up-close and personal portrait of this black hero. Mandela was interviewed extensively and who allowed the film makers into his home.

"The struggle is my life," Mandela wrote in a letter from underground on June 26, 1961. "I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days." More than anything else, Nelson Mandela is the living embodiment of the struggle for freedom by South Africa's blacks.

What a fascinating portrait this film paints of Mandela! Named ``Nelson'' by a teacher who did not like his tribal name, Mandela was one of nine children of a polygamist father who had four wives (how did Mandela feel about that? The movie doesn't ask). When his father died, the bright boy was adopted by a chief and prepared to become counselor to the king. He ran away to Johannesburg in the early 1940s to escape an arranged marriage and had soon moved into the Soweto Township home of Walter Sisulu.

The Xhosa tribesman was trained to be a leader. Mandela studied law in Johannesburg and helped found South Africa's first black law firm. He went on to become a forceful presence in the African National Conference (ANC). Freedom was the holy grail that compelled him to initiate nonviolent campaigns against the government's policy of apartheid. And when the ANC was banned, Mandela went underground and organized a nationwide strike.

Mandela's quest for freedom for his people put a strain on his two marriages. During Mandela's 27 years in prison his second wife Winnie courageously stood her ground in the face of bannings, imprisonment, and eventual banishment to the village of Brandfut in 1977. Mandela's sister says of him in the film, "I realize he isn't ours. He belongs to the nation." This inspiring and edifying screen biography celebrates Mandela as a freedom fighter and a liberator — the father of a nation.

16th March 2008; Screening of Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac

A Film By Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Runtime:137 min
Country :France
French with English Sub titles
16^th March 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call 9443039630

At the heart of 19th-century playwright Edmond Rostand's popular "Cyrano de Bergerac" is a great story about unrequited love and a nobleman whose soul is as beautiful as his nose is unsightly.

In Jean-Paul Rappeneau's French production of "Cyrano de Bergerac," the director streamlines much of that flabbiness, preserves the iambic verse (with thoughtful, subtitled translation from Anthony Burgess) and creates, for the most part, a pleasurable interpretation with costume-bedecked romance, intrigue and comedy.

As the title character, Gerard Depardieu, France's one-man acting industry, brings to the role not only his own formidable nose (which nevertheless nuzzles under a special-effects schnozz) but also a swashbuckling swagger that enlivens the production.

"Lug your guts away, Salami," he bellows at a stage performer whose overacting he particularly despises. "Or I'll remove you slice by slice."

When Cyrano cannot have his beautiful cousin Roxane, he helps his friend Christian. He ghostwrites letters and ghost-recites speeches in the moonlight, and because Roxane senses that the words come from a heart brave and true, she pledges herself to Christian.

This 138-minute film, comprising two thousand performers and a helluva lot of musketry, has several good scenes, including the well-known one in which Christian utters romantic praise to Roxanne from below her balcony, while de Bergerac feeds him lines.

The moral may be uniquely French, but the story remains a universal treasure. One of the nation's most expensive productions ever, it is fairly jostling with musket-armed extras and details of the 17th century, in which the story takes place. There's a Dickensian look to the movie, so shadowed and dark it's as if Rappeneau didn't really want us to get a good glimpse of the storied nose. But as Roxane, the French ingenue Brochet brings light and grace to the proceedings.

"Cyrano de Bergerac" is played full tilt, like Don Quixote against the windmills. An enthusiastic melodrama, it spills emotions like stars across the noble screen.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Born 8 April 1932

Jean-Paul Rappeneau entered films in a traditional way, as a second assistant to Jean Dréville on Suspects, as collaborator on Vilardebo's short film Entre la terre et le ciel, and as the director of the short Chronique provinciale. During the next few years he concentrated on writing, and acquired a solid reputation with scripts for Signé Arsène Lupin, two films by Louis Malle, Zazie dans le métro and La Vie privée, and a short film by René Clair in La Française et l'amour. The commercially successful L'Homme de Rio, directed by Philippe de Broca and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, was followed by an international co-production, La Fabuleuse Aventure de Marco Polo.

These films had crystalized his own tastes and ambitions, and in 1966 he directed his first long film, La Vie de château, a brilliant comedy situated in Normandy on the eve of the invasion by the allies during the Second World War.The film is revealed as the work of an elegant filmmaker who is also sensible to the playing of the actors, particularly Catherine Deneuve, Pierre Brasseur, and Philippe Noiret. His next film was Les Mariés de l'an II, a comedy where heroism is mixed with romance and burlesque with tragedy.

After working previously with his own original scripts, Rappeneau turned his attention to adaptation, and to works he deemed initially to be unfilmable: Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Jean Giono's Le Hussard sur le toit. With Gérard Depardieu cast as the larger-than-life, swashbuckling romantic hero, Cyrano deservedly brought Rappeneau international attention. The director's meticulous preparation is evident from the opening sequence in the theatre, the carefully choreographed sword fights and the impressively orchestrated battle scenes involving over 2000 extras. Careful attention to period detail once more characterizes the director's approach in his beautifully crafted evocation of 1830s France. Both films, along with productions such as Berri's Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, or Germinal, are indicative of a particular trend in French filmmaking (not so far removed from post-war literary cinema) in which classic texts are transformed through film to become a new cultural phenomenon: heritage cinema.

9th March 2008 ; Screening of Fiddler On The Roof

Fiddler On The Roof
A Film By Norman Jewison
Year : 1971
Run Time : 181 Minutes
English with English Sub titles
9th March 2008; 5.45pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

Fiddler on the Roof, based on the short story "Tevye and His Daughters" by Sholom Aleichem, was one of the first musicals to defy Broadway's established rules of commercial success. It dealt with serious issues such as persecution, poverty, and the struggle to hold on to one's beliefs in the midst of a hostile and chaotic environment. Criticized at first for its "limited appeal", Fiddler on the Roof struck such a universal chord in audiences that it became, for a time, the longest running production in the history of Broadway.

The 1971 film version of this Broadway musical was directed by Norman Jewison. The film won three Academy Awards, including one for arranger-conductor John Williams. It was nominated for several more, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Chaim Topol as Tevye, and Best Supporting Actor for Leonard Frey.

The film follows the plot of the stage play very closely, although it omits the songs "Now I Have Everything" and "The Rumor". It takes place in the Jewish village of Anatevka in Tsarist Russia in 1905 and centers on the character of Tevye, a poor milkman, and his daughters' marriages. As Tevye says in the introductory narration, the Jews have relied upon their traditions to maintain the stability of their way of life for centuries; but as times change, that stability is threatened on the small scale by Tevye's daughters' wishes to marry men not chosen in the traditional way by the matchmaker, and on the large scale by pogroms and revolution in Russia.

Much of the story is told in musical form. "Fiddler on the Roof," has traveled a long way from its source, from pre-revolutionary Russia, from the pages of Sholem Aleichem, even from the Broadway stage. The show focuses on one man's issues within his own family and faith. From that alone the show won universal appeal. Everyone can relate with Tevye's struggle. There on stage or screen we can see another adult who has choices to make everyday. That is a lot of stress and the musical expresses the sentiments wonderfull.

Norman Jewison

Producer, director, screenwriter, actor, cattle breeder, cabdriver . . .
Sometimes Credited As: Norman Frederick Jewison

A consummate craftsman known for eliciting fine performances from his casts, Norman Jewison has addressed important social and political issues throughout his directing and producing career, often making controversial or complicated subjects accessible to mainstream audiences.

Norman Jewison was born in Toronto in 1926. He attended Kew Beach School, and while growing up in the 1930's displayed an aptitude for performing and theatre. He served in the Navy (1944-1945) during World War II, and after being discharged travelled in the American South, where he encountered segregation, an experience that would influence his later work.

Jewison attended Victoria College in the University of Toronto, graduating with a B.A. in 1949. As a student he was involved in writing, directing and acting in various theatrical productions, including the All-Varsity Revue in 1949. During the summer he worked as a waiter at the Banff Springs Hotel, as well as doing local theatre production. Following graduation he was determined to work in show business, preferably as an actor, and ventured to Hollywood and New York in search of opportunities.

Norman Jewison's career as a film director began in 1962. He has directed 41 films till date which include a number of unforgettable movies that deal with many important issues of our world today. His noteworthy films include In the Heat of the Night (1967) ,The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966) , The Cincinnati Kid (1965),...And Justice for All. (1979) , F.I.S.T (1978), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) , Fiddler on the Roof (1971) ,Moonstruck (1987) , Agnes of God (1985) , A Soldier's Story (1984) , The Statement (2003).

Despite his fame for directing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof and The Statement, as well as the appearance of his surname, Jewison is not Jewish.