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.]

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.