4th May 2008 : Screening of Dancer in the Dark

Dancer in the Dark

A Film By Lars von Trier
Year : 2000
Run time : 140 min
English with English sub titles
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
4th May 2008;5.45 pm
Call 94430 39630

“ I’ve seen it all; there's nothing left to see." These words are sung, with keening defiance, by Selma, a Czech émigré working in a factory and raising her son alone somewhere in Eisenhower-era America, who is going blind from a hereditary disease. Her response to the impending loss of her sight is a joyful shrug: "To be perfectly honest, I really don't care."

The song — written by the Icelandic pop singer Bjork, who plays Selma, and Lars von Trier, the Danish director of "Dancer in the Dark" — expresses a sentiment that seems to attack the most basic foundations of the movie, indeed of cinema itself, which is after all an art built around the miraculous act of seeing. For Selma, music represents a retreat from a life that, if viewed starkly, would be unbearable.

Selma (Björk ) is a Czechoslovakian immigrant, a single mother working in a factory in rural America. She lives in a trailer on the property of a local policeman, Bill (David Morse), and his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour). Selma's best friend is Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), and she is courted by the shy, undemanding Jeff (Peter Stormare) Her salvation is her passion for music, specifically, the all-singing, all-dancing numbers found in classic Hollywood. Selma harbors a sad secret: she is losing her eyesight and her son Gene stands to suffer the same fate if she can't put away enough money to secure him an operation.

The musical numbers, which take place in Selma's imagination to the found music of machinery, train wheels and her own heartbeat, were shot with 100 stationary digital video cameras.

Over the course of more than two hours the viewer is thrown from moments of harrowing realism — scenes whose jumpy rhythm and raw immediacy make you feel as if you're peeking through the window at a moment of private misery — to flights of fantastic absurdity.

Dancer In the Dark does something almost inconceivable in the way it merges two disparate genres (the musical and the tragedy), and the result represents a thought-provoking, emotionally resonant, and innovative cinematic experience.

Lars Von Trier

Lars Trier was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. The young Lars found in cinema an outlet to the outside world through which he could learn about subjects. He began making his own films at the age of 11 after receiving a Super-8 camera as a gift from his mother and continued to be involved in independent moviemaking throughout his high school years.

In 1979 he was enrolled in the Danish Film School. During his time as a student at the school he made the films Nocturne (Nocturne, 1980) and Image of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder, 1982), both of which won Best Film awards at the Munich Film Festival, along with The Last Detail (Den sidste detalje 1981). His peers at the film school nicknamed him "von Trier." He graduated from the film school in 1983.

After his graduation he began work on the Europe trilogy, which started with The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens element 1984). He has made 32 films since and has received numerous international awards and honors for his films.

Von Trier often shoots his scenes for longer periods than most directors to encourage actors to stay in character. In Dogville he let actors stay in character for hours, in the style of method acting. The rules and restrictions are a break from the traditional Hollywood production. In order to create original art Von Trier feels that filmmakers must distinguish themselves stylistically from other films, often by placing restrictions on the filmmaking process.

27th April 2008; Kieslowski Film Festival

Kieslowski Film Festival

Three films of Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski
27^th April ; 9.45 am to 6.30 pm
Coimbatore Cosmopolitan Club
Race course
Call 94430 39630

Kieslowski

Kieślowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, a tuberculosis patient, could find treatment. At sixteen, he briefly attended a firemen's training school, but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 .

Leaving college , Kieślowski joined the Łódź Film School, the famed Polish film school that also produced Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda. He attended from 1964 to 1968, during a period in which the government allowed a relatively high degree of artistic freedom at the school. Kieślowski decided to make documentary films. Kieslowski also married his lifelong love, Maria (Marysia) Cautillo, during his final year in school (m. January 21, 1967 to his death), and they had a daughter, Marta (b. January 8, 1972).

Kieślowski's early documentaries focused on the everyday lives of city dwellers, workers, and soldiers. He soon found that attempting to depict Polish life accurately brought him into conflict with the authorities. His television film Workers '71, was only shown in a drastically censored form. He abandoned documentary filmmaking due the censorship of Workers '71. He decided that fiction not only allowed more artistic freedom, but could portray everyday life more truthfully.

Kieslowski’s work consists of 40 feature / documentary/ short films made during his short life span which include the evergreen classic Tricolours Trilogy of three films - Red, Blue and White and his 10 parts Dekalog. Series. The death of Krzysztof Kieslowski in March 1996 was widely mourned.

Three Colors: Blue

Three Colors: Blue is the first part of Kieslowski's trilogy. Blue is the story of Julie who loses her husband, an acclaimed European composer and her young daughter. The film's theme of liberty is manifested in Julie's attempt to start life anew free of personal commitments, belongings grief and love. She intends to spiritually commit suicide by withdrawing from the world and live completely independently, anonymously and in solitude in the Parisian metropolis. Despite her intentions, people from her former and present life intrude with their own needs. However, the reality created by the people who need and care about her, a surprising discovery and the music around which the film revolves heals Julie and irresistibly draws her back to the land of the
living.

In this movie, Kieslowski attaches an almost subconscious significance to the color blue, but primarily he focuses on Binoche's luminous face, and the way her subtle shifts in emotion flicker and disappear. Binoche's quiet, heartbreaking presence becomes spellbinding; her performance won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1993.

This is a quiet, subtle film. Kieslowski and his cinematographer do a lot with the lighting, particularly in the scenes in the swimming pool. Those shots are awash in soft, evocative blue hues that give the scenes an exquisite, dream-like feeling.

Year : 1993 Run time 98 minutes French with English subtitles

Three Colors:White

Krzysztof Kieslowski opens the trilogy of films with Blue and ends by Red. The second installment in the series, this film White is designed to explore the universal notion of equality. Zbigniew Zamachowski stars in this dramatic look at a man who, when his entire world is destroyed by his ex-wife (Julie Delpy), vows revenge, only to have the tables turned on him in a very unexpected way.

White is an ironic comedy brimming over with the hard laughs of despair, ecstasy, ambition, and longing played in a minor key by . Polish immigrant Karol is desperate to get out of France. He's obsessed with his French soon-to-be ex-wife , his French bank account is frozen, and he's fed up with the inequality of it all. Penniless, he convinces a fellow Pole to smuggle him home The story evolves into a wickedly funny antiromance, an inverse Romeo and Juliet.

Year 1994 ; Runtime 92 minutes ; Polish & French with English subtitles

Three Colors:RED

Praised by critics nationwide, RED is a seductive story -- and the unknowable mystery of coincidence. The final chapter in Krzystof Kieslowski's acclaimed "Three Colors" trilogy, RED stars Irene Jacob (THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE) as a young model Valentine living in Geneva.

Because of a dog, she meets a retired judge who spies his neighbours' phone calls, not for money but to feed his cynicism. The film is the story ofrelationships between human beings, Valentine and the judge, but also other people who may not be aware of the relationship they have with Valentine or/and the old judge.

Irene Jacob's character becomes an aural witness to the secret lives of those we think we know. Kieslowski cleverly wraps up the trilogy with a device that brings together the principals of all three films. It's a strong, unique piece that reflects upon the ubiquity of images in the modern world and the parallel subjugation of meaningful communication.

Year 1994 Run time : 100 minutes : , French with English sub titles

Lunch and refreshments will be served during the
full day screening against payment of Rs.50

Screening supported by Hollywood DVD Shoppe
S B Colony , Coimbatore.

20th April 2008; Screening of RUSSIAN ARK

Stunning, haunting, fascinating...
a powerful and moving insight
into a beautiful, complex culture.

Russian Ark

A film by Aleksandr Sokurov
Country : Russia
Year : 2002
Run time : 99 minutes
Russian with English sub titles
Call : 9443039630

20th April 2008 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium

A 44 minutes short documentary on making of this film : In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark will be screened after the main film.

"Russian Ark" is a magnificent conjuring act, an eerie historical mirage evoked in a single sweeping wave of the hand by Alexander Sokurov. The 96-minute film, shot in high-definition video in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, consists of one continuous, uninterrupted take. Thanks to recent technological innovation, it is the longest unbroken shot in the history of film. As the Steadicam operated by Tilman Büttner (the German cinematographer of "Run Lola Run") floats through the museum's galleries, a cast of 2,000 actors and extras act out random, whimsical moments of Russian imperial history that dissolve into one other like chapters of a dream.

Mr. Sokurov, who has always been drawn to historical subjects, has said that he wanted to capture "the flow of time" in a pure cinematic language that suggests "a single breath." And that's what "Russian Ark" accomplishes as it drops in on Russian monarchs from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and catches them living their lives unaware that they're being observed. These keyhole flashes from the past evoke a sense of history that is at once intimate and distanced, and ultimately sad: so much life, so much beauty, swallowed in the mists of time.

"Russian Ark" is a ghost story set in the Hermitage, the museum that is the pride of St. Petersburg and the repository — the ark, if you will — of more Russian history and culture than any other place. Among its components are the Winter Palace (the former residence of the Russian czars) and sections devoted to Russian history and to the life and work of Alexander Pushkin.

The film is narrated in a thoughtful murmur by a contemporary artist who awakens to find himself lost in the 1800's amid a jostling crowd pouring through a side entrance of the Hermitage. As he follows the flow, he catches sight of another out-of-place figure, the Marquis (Sergey Dreiden), a frizzy-haired 19th-century French diplomat dressed in black and the only person to acknowledge his presence. As the two strays wander through the galleries, they carry on a sporadic dialogue in which the Frenchman continually snipes at Russian culture.

Along the way they chance upon Peter the Great beating one of his generals, and Catherine the Great breaking away from a rehearsal of her own play to search frantically for a place to relieve herself.

In another, darker time warp, the Marquis strays through the wrong door and finds himself in a chilly outdoor workshop amid drifting snow, and listens dumbfounded to a description of 20th-century horrors that have yet to take place.

The movie culminates in what may well be the ne plus ultra of period cinematic pomp: a re-creation of the last great royal ball held at the Hermitage under Czar Nicholas II in 1913, shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution. To the strains of Glinka, hundreds of glitteringly attired courtiers dance the mazurka to a live symphony orchestra.This extraordinary sequence more powerfully evokes the historical blindness of an entitled elite blissfully oblivious to the fact that it is standing in quicksand that is about to give.

(Courtesy: New York Times)

Russian Ark's Cinematographer Tilman Buttner Interview

Tilman Buttner is the celebrated German cinematographer of "Run Lola Run". Click on the captions below for his interview on filming of Russian Ark .


INTERVIEW: Achieving the Cinematic Impossible; "Russian Ark" DP Tilman Buttner Discusses What It's Like To Make History

Alexander Sokurov

Alexander Sokurov is a Russian film maker, who possesses an enormous cinematic gift. Sokurov's style of filmmaking is often compared to that of Andrei Tarkovsky. However, Sokurov himself, while not resenting the comparison, does resist this linkage.

Both of them are "spiritual" filmmakers in the sense that, in their art they concern themselves with profound questions of human existence and seek to give visible expression to the INNER reality of their being. However, it is precisely in their inner realities that the two could not be more different from each other.

Alexander Sokurov was born in Russia in 1951 .After graduating from high school in 1968, the future filmmaker entered Gorky University (Department of History). While a student he began working as a staff member for the Gorky television .In the course of 6 years at the GorkyGorky University. television Sokurov created several films and live TV shows. In 1974 he got his first degree in History from the

In 1975 Sokurov entered the Producer's Department at the All-Union Cinematography Institute (VGIK, Moscow) (Documentary Film studio of Alexander Zguridi). As an excellent student of VGIK he was granted the Eisenstein Scholarship.

His first feature film, which later received a number of awards, was "The Lonely Voice of a Man," after an original story by the Russian writer Andrey Platonov; it was not accepted as a graduating project. It was at that time that he received support from the outstanding film director Andrey Tarkovsky, who was out of favor with the authorities at that time and very highly appreciated Sokurov's first work. Sokurov's friendship with Tarkovsky did not come to an end even when the latter left Russia.

With Tarkovsky's recommendation letter Sokurov was employed by the film studio "Lenfilm" in 1980, where he worked on his first feature films. At the same time Sokurov worked at the Leningrad Studio for Documentary Films, where he has made all of his documentaries at different times.

In the late 80s a number of his early feature and documentary films were released for public performance and represented the Russian film industry at many international festivals. In the 80-90s he sometimes made several feature and documentary films in one year.

He has been a participant and laureate of many international festivals. Every year his films are shown in various foreign countries. Several times he has received awards from international festivals.

In 1995 the European Film Academy listed Sokurov as being among the best 100 directors of world cinema. At the present moment he is in the process of founding a film studio, "Bereg," for non-commercial feature and documentary films. The foundation for this venture is laid by Sokurov's camera crew at "Lenfilm".

13th April 2008 ; Screening of 12 Angry Men

An entrancing cinema experience

12 Angry Men

A Film by Sydney Lumet
Country : USA
Year : 1954
Run time : 96 minutes
English with English sub titles

Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
5.45 pm ; Sunday, 13th April 2008
Call 94430 39630 Email:konangal@gmail.com
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com

This all-time classic takes place almost entirely in a single room, where 12 jurors debate the fate of a young man accused of killing his father. ‘12 Angry Men‘ is the gripping, penetrating, and engrossing examination of a diverse group of twelve jurors (all male, mostly middle-aged, white, and generally of middle-class status) who are uncomfortably brought together to deliberate after hearing the 'facts' in a seemingly open-and-shut murder trial case.

An eighteen-year old slum kid stands accused of murdering his father. The evidence seems insurmountable. In the preliminary ballot, there are eleven votes for a guilty verdict. The one holdout is Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. "You really think he's innocent?" asks another man. Fonda: "I don't know."

We never see the trial, save for the judge's final instructions to the jury. Apart from the brief courtroom introduction, and a short closing moment on the courthouse steps, the whole movie takes place inside the jury room.

This is afilm where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue and body language, not action; where the defendant has been glimpsed only in a single brief shot; where logic, emotion and prejudice struggle to control the field. It is a masterpiece of stylized realism--the style coming in the way the photography and editing comment on the bare bones of the content. Released in 1957, when Technicolor and lush production values were common, "12 Angry Men" was lean and mean.

The choices of shots do not just help us feel immersed in the setting; they're vital to the arc of the story. Lumet, and veteran cinematographer, Boris Kaufman, devised the film as a 'lens plot', shooting in gradually longer lenses, so that as the story progressed, there would be a sensation of the room getting smaller. Further, they shot the first third of the film predominantly above eye level, the middle passages at eye level and the third below eye level, meaning the ceiling eventually became visible, and that too seemed to be closing in. In addition, the use of sweaty close-ups becomes greater as the conclusiongets closer,
pushing us further into faces, and with them the passions of arguments.

A tight script, economical direction and fabulous performances by one of the best ensemble casts in history make this a timeless and great film.The highly talented cast makes this brilliant war of words an entrancing cinema experience.

Henry Fonda is the film's conscience, leading the other men on a path to self-discovery they'd rather not endure. Director Lumet creates energy and movement through quick editing and varying camera angles, which makes the film pulse with power and emotion despite it's one set location. A classic film that deserves your attention.

SYDNEY LUMET
















Sidney Lumet is nevertheless a master of cinema. Known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors--and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York--Lumet has made over 40 movies, often emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. He often tells intelligent, complex stories. His politics are somewhat left-leaning and he often treats socially relevant themes in his films.

As social criticism, Sidney Lumet addresses throughout his long career on numerous issues related to American society - on corrupt police (Serpico, 1973, The Prince of New York, 1981 and in the Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)), on television (A Dog Day Afternoon, 1975 ), on Justice ( Twelve Angry Men In 1957, The Verdict, 1982 ) on MacCarthyism (Daniel, 1983), on alcoholism (Lendemain From Crime, 1986) and on racism (Counter-survey, 1990).

Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s (such as "Dead End"), and his acting debut in films came in One Third of a Nation (1939). In 1947 he started an off-Broadway acting troupe that included such future stars as Yul Brynner and Eli Wallach, and other former members of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio who had become unsatisfied with Strasberg's concepts.

Lumet made his stage directing debut in 1955. He made his feature film directing debut with the critical and financial hit 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, and is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history.

Lumet has made over 40 movies, which earned nearly 50 Oscar nominations. In 1993 he received the D.W. Griffith Award of theDirectors Guild of America and in 2005 a well-deserved Honorary Academy Award.



Born: 24 August 1897, Bialystok, Russian Empire [now Poland], as son of a bookshop owner.
Died: 24 June 1980, New York City, USA.
Education: Sorbonne University, Paris, France.

Career: Left Russia in 1917. Travelled to Germany and Belgium and arrived in Paris in 1927. Entered film industry in 1928 in France as doph. During WW2 served in the French Army and, after the occupation began, went to the USA in 1942. The unions didn't give him permission to work in Hollywood, so

he turned to doc's. Worked with the National Film Board of Canada [1942-43; helped John Grierson to build a strong doc movement] and the US Office of War Information [OWI]. Retired in 1969.

Appeared in the doc 'Operator Kaufman' [1998, Rasmus Gerlach; ph: R. Gerlach & Irina Linke; 52m]. Was member of the ASC. His brothers Denis Arkadyovich [as Dziga Vertov, 1896-1954] and Mikhail [-1980] were directors.

Awards: 'Oscar' AA [ 1954; b&w] & Golden Globe Award [1955] for 'On the Waterfront'; 'Oscar' AA nom [1956; b&w] for 'Baby Doll'.

The biggest mystery about Kaufman is why he never directed a film. As a rule, any director of photography of his stature and taste for independence will, at least once in his life, wish to sit in the director's seat. Instead, that taste for independence was manifested in both frequent change of pace in his career and contract-free work on films which he obviously cared for, with directors with whom he felt at home. Vigo, Kazan, Lumet: all profited immeasurably from his work; according to Kaufman himself, his was the decision to use a hand-held camera for 'À propos de Nice'; he also convinced Kazan to make 'On the Waterfront' entirely on location. When Kaufman arrived in New York, his intention was to go to Hollywood. The unions were having none of that, however, and so his name disappeared from mainstream cinema, to resurface in the documentary tradition which was, after all, where he had started in France. It's possible that Hollywood might have tamed him, given him a contract at MGM and turned him into an unhappy technician shooting second units on Lassie films. The alternative scenario would give him the opportunity to change the cinematic look of Los Angeles in the same way he did for New York in films like 'On the Waterfront' and 'The Pawnbroker'. [Markku Salmi in 'Film Dope', #29, March 1984.]