SLING BLADE A film by Billy Bob Thornton, Year 1996 Country : USA Run time : 135 minutes English with English sub titles 27th July 2008 ; 5.45 pm Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
``Sling Blade'' begins with a remarkable monologue delivered straight to the camera. A man with a raspy voice, an overshot jaw and a lot of pain in his eyes says he reckons we might like to hear about his story, and so he tells it. His name is Karl Childers, he is retarded, and he has been in a state facility since childhood, when he found his mother with her lover and killed them both. But now, he says, ``I reckon I got no reason to kill no one. Uh, huh.'' Karl is talking to a reporter about his release from the institution. They reckon he has been cured. They are probably right. He is not a killer, would not kill without good and proper reason, and now understands how, as a child, he misinterpreted the situation. As he talks, we are struck by his forceful presence; he is retarded, yes, but he is complex and observant, and has spent a lot of time thinking about what he should and shouldn't do. ``Sling Blade.'' The movie is a work of great originality and fascination by Billy Bob Thornton, who wrote it, directed it and plays Karl Childers. He says that the character ``came to him'' one morning while he was shaving, and he started talking to himself in the mirror, in Karl's voice.
Thornton is a former country musician turned screenwriter (he wrote the remarkable ``One False Move'' and ``A Family Thing''). He plays Karl as a man of limited intelligence but great seriousness, who reasons as well as he can, and feels deeply. There is pain, humor, irony and sweetness in the character, and a voice and manner so distinctive, he is the most memorable movie character seen in a long time.
The movie's ultimate destination is not hard to guess, but we feel a certain satisfaction when it arrives there. And by then we have come to know Karl with a real understanding and fondness. He is a character unlike any other in the movies, an original, and in creating him, Thornton has made a place for himself among the best new filmmakers. As an actor, he creates a difficult character and finds exactly the right way to play him. (Source : http://rogerebert.suntimes.com )
Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an American, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, actor and occasional director, playwright, and singer. Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas.he attended Henderson State University, in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. In the late 1980s, Thornton settled in Los Angeles, to pursue his career as an actor, with future writing partner Tom Epperson Thornton initially had a difficult time succeeding as an actor, and worked in telemarketing, offshore wind farming, and fast-food management between auditioning for acting jobs. He also played drums and sang with South African rock band Jack Hammer. While Thornton worked as a waiter for an industry event, he served film director Billy Wilder and struck up a conversation with Wilder, who advised Thornton to consider a career as a screenwriter.
Thornton first came to semi-prominence as a cast member on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire with John Ritter and Markie Post. His role as the villain in 1992's One False Move, which he also co wrote, brought him to the attention of critics. He also had small roles in the early 1990s films Indecent Proposal, On Deadly Ground, Bound By Honor, Grey Knight, and Tombstone.
Thornton went on to write, direct and star in the independent film Sling Blade, which was released in 1996. The film, an expansion of a short film titled Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, introduced the story of Karl Childers, a mentally handicapped man imprisoned for a gruesome and seemingly inexplicable murder. Sling Blade garnered international acclaim. Thornton's screenplay earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award, while his performance received Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor.
Billy Bob Thornton has directed 4 movies and acted in about 60 films.
We thank all cinema lovers who attended Orson Welles Film Festival held at Coimbatore Cosmopolitan club on 20th July 2008
We thank Mr.Baskaran of Hollywood DVD Shoppe for supporting the event and Mr.G.D.Gopalakrishnan for all the help.
We also record our grateful thanks to our member M.Anand (Film distributor) for providing us with funds for a brand new screen.
It’s the greatest railroad train a boy ever had. —Orson Welles, after coming to Hollywood in 1939 May we be accursed if we ever forget for one second that he alone with Griffith—one in silent days, one sound—was able to start up that marvelous little electric train. All of us, always, will owe him everything.
Two masterpieces from one of the greatest film maker of our times
20th July 2008 ; 10 am to 6 pm Coimbatore Cosmopolitan Club Race course Call : 94430 39630
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Orson Welles
Hollywood Rebel & Founding Member of The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers
Though little appreciated in his time, Orson Welles is today one of classic Hollywood's most acclaimed cinematic visionaries Always an outsider to the studio system which dominated filmmaking at the time however, Welles never condescended to play by Hollywood's rules and his arduous four-decade career was pocked with moments of brilliance, excess and waste.
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an Academy Award-winning American director, writer, actor and producer for film, stage, radio and television. Welles first gained wide notoriety for his October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Adapted to sound like a contemporary news broadcast, it caused a number of listeners to panic. In the mid-1930s, his New York theatre adaptations of an all-black voodoo Macbeth and a contemporary allegorical Julius Caesar became legendary. Welles was also an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years. During this period he became a serious political activist and commentator through journalism, radio and public appearances closely associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1941, he co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, often chosen in polls of film critics as the greatest film ever made. And in 1941, at 26, he achieved his greatest ambition through formation of his own Mercury Productions, Inc. The rest of his career was often obstructed by lack of funds, incompetent studio interference and other unfortunate occurrences, both during exile in Europe and brief returns to Hollywood. Despite these difficulties Othello won the 1952 Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival and Touch of Evil won the top prize at the Brussels World Fair, while Welles himself considered The Trial and Chimes at Midnight to be the best of his efforts.
Although Welles remained on the margins of the major studios as a director/producer, his larger-than-life personality made him a bankable actor. In his later years he struggled against a Hollywood system that refused to finance his independent film projects, making a living largely through acting, commercials, and voice-over work. Welles received a 1975 American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement award, the third person to do so after John Ford and James Cagney. Critical appreciation for Welles has increased since his death. He is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important dramatic artists of the 20th century: in 2002 he was voted as the greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute's poll of Top Ten Directors.
"It is the epitome of filmmaking, a masterpiece for which Welles, one of the greatest practitioners of the cinematic art, will be forever remembered."
The fresh, sophisticated, and classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly-rated film, with its many remarkable scenes and performances, cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound). Its director, star, and producer were all the same genius individual - Orson Welles (in his film debut at age 25!), who collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz on the script (and also with an uncredited John Houseman), and with Gregg Toland as his talented cinematographer Toland's camera work on Karl Freund's expressionistic horror film Mad Love (1935) exerted a profound influence on this film.
More importantly, the innovative, bold film is an acknowledged milestone in the development of cinematic technique. It uses film as an art form to energetically communicate and display a non-static view of life.
Its complex and pessimistic theme of a spiritually-failed man is told from several, unreliable perspectives and points-of-view (also metaphorically communicated by the jigsaw puzzle) by several different characters (the associates and friends of the deceased) - providing a sometimes contradictory, non-sequential, and enigmatic portrait. The film tells the thought-provoking, tragic epic story of a 'rags-to-riches' child who inherited a fortune, was taken away from his humble surroundings and his father and mother, was raised by a banker, and became a fabulously wealthy, arrogant, and energetic newspaperman. He made his reputation as the generous, idealistic champion of the underprivileged, and set his egotistical mind on a political career, until those political dreams were shattered after the revelation of an ill-advised 'love-nest' affair with a singer. Kane's life was corrupted and ultimately self-destructed by a lust to fulfill the American dream of success, fame, wealth, power and immortality. After two failed marriages and a transformation into a morose, grotesque, and tyrannical monster, his final days were spent alone, morose, and unhappy before his death in a reclusive refuge of his own making - an ominous castle filled with innumerable possessions to compensate for his life's emptiness.
The discovery and revelation of the mystery of the life of the multi-millionaire publishing tycoon is determined through a reporter's search for the meaning of his single, cryptic dying word: "Rosebud" - in part, the film's plot enabling device - or McGuffin (MacGuffin). However, no-one was present to hear him utter the elusive last word. The reporter looks for clues to the word's identity by researching the newspaper publisher's life, through interviews with several of Kane's former friends and colleagues. Was it a favorite pet or nickname of a lost love? Or the name of a racehorse? At film's end, the identity of "Rosebud" is revealed, but only to the film audience.
Source: http://www.filmsite.org
Touch of Evil (1958)
Run time : 95 min
Touch of Evil (1958) is a great American film noir crime thriller, dark mystery, and cult classic - another technical masterpiece from writer-director-actor Orson Welles. It was Orson Welles' fifth Hollywood film - and it was his last American film. Touch of Evil was the last great film noir during the so-called 'classic' era of noirs, from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. The movie opens with a famous three-minute, thirty second continuous tracking shot that film critics generally consider to be one of the greatest long shots in cinematic history..
The best approach for anyone seeing the film for the first time: to set aside the labyrinthine plot, and simply admire what is on the screen. The movie begins with one of the most famous shots ever made, following a car with a bomb in its trunk for three minutes and 20 seconds. And it has other virtuoso camera movements, including an unbroken interrogation in a cramped room, and one that begins in the street and follows the characters through a lobby and into an elevator. The British critic Damian Cannon writes of its ``spatial choreography,'' in which ``every position and movement latches together into a cogent whole.''
Welles and his cinematographer, Russell Metty, were not simply showing off. The destinies of all of the main characters are tangled from beginning to end, and the photography makes that point by trapping them in the same shots, or tying them together through cuts that match and resonate. The story moves not in a straight line, but as a series of loops and coils.
The story takes place in Los Robles, a seedy Mexican-American border town (``border towns bring out the worst in a country''). It's a place of bars, strip clubs and brothels, where music spills onto the street from every club. In the opening shot, we see a bomb placed in the trunk of a car, and then the camera cranes up and follows the car down a strip of seamy storefronts, before gliding down to eye level to pick up a strolling couple. They are newlyweds, Mike and Susan Vargas (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh); he's a Mexican drug enforcement official.
At a border checkpoint, they're eventually joined by the doomed car, which has been delayed by traffic and a herd of goats. Mike and Susan are completing the check when there's an offscreen explosion--and then finally a cut, to the burning car lifting in the air. Everyone awaits the arrival of Sheriff Hank Quinlan (Welles), a massive, sweaty, rumbling figure who looms over the camera. (Welles was not that big when he made the picture, and used padding and camera angles to exaggerate his bulk.) Quinlan takes charge, ``intuiting'' that the explosion was caused by dynamite. Vargas, a bystander, finds himself drawn into the investigation, to Quinlan's intense displeasure; the movie becomes a competition between the two men, leading to the sheriff's efforts to frame Vargas and his bride on drug and murder charges.
It was regarded as a rebellious, unorthodox, bizarre, and outrageously exaggerated film, affronting respectable 1950's sensibilities, with controversial themes including racism, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, frameups, drugs, and police corruption of power.
Thanks to http://rogerebert.suntimes.com / www.filmsite.org
A Film by Roman Polanski Year 2002 Run time : 150 minutes English with English subtitles. 13th July 2008 : 5.45 pm Ashwin Auditorium
Crafted without a whiff of melodrama, this motion picture takes a steady, unflinching look at the plight of Jews in Warsaw during the years when Poland was occupied by the Nazis. For director Roman Polanski, this represents his most effective film in nearly three decades. Not since 1974's Chinatownhas Polanski reached such dramatic heights.
There are no concentration camp scenes. Instead of taking us into the depths of Auschwitz, the film leaves us on the streets of Warsaw, where life and death was as uncertain a prospect as it was in the camps. In addition, Polanski does not flinch from showing the naked horrors perpetrated by Nazis on Jews. There is no attempt to sugar-coat this bitter pill – we see frequent gunshots to the head, torture, and the effects of starvation. The tone and style of the film are documentary-like - Polanski observes from a detached perspective, detailing atrocities without manipulating his audience. The result is bleak and powerful, and may overcome more sensitive viewers.
The Pianist opens in 1939 Warsaw, shortly after Poland's defeat to Germany. The film's protagonist is celebrated Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), who, along with his family, is forced to watch as the restrictions against Jews become increasingly more odious. Initially, Jews are forbidden from eating in certain establishments, walking in public parks, or sitting on public benches. Soon, they must wear distinguishing armbands, bow to Nazis passed in the streets, and walk in the gutters. Eventually, all Jews in Warsaw – approximately 500,000 –are moved into a ghetto, where whole families are crammed into single small rooms. After the Nazis begin implementing their "Final Solution," most of the Jews in Warsaw are shipped to the concentration camps to be exterminated.
Recognizing that The Pianist is a true story adds another layer to its impact. However, it is Polanski's mastery that makes this movie unforgettable. While The Pianist has a strong, clear narrative, the director uses music and images to emblazon Wladyslaw's struggle on our memories.
Roman Polanski
Roman Raymond Polanski (born August 18, 1933) is an Academy Award-winning film director, writer, actor and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974). Polanski is considered one of the world’s great film directors.
1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union, in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Polański family was a target of Nazi persecution and forced into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of other Polish Jews. Roman Polański's mother was subsequently gassed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His father barely survived the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. Polański himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto.
He was educated at the Polish film school in Łódź, Poland, from which he graduated in 1959. Polański speaks six languages: Native Polish language, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. He lived in German-occupied Poland during WWII and in 1969, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1977 he was involved in an American sex scandal, he fled to France where he has lived a rather reclusive life with his wife the gifted and skilled actress Emmanuelle Seigner and their two children.
He has continued to direct films from Europe, including Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate, the Academy Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005).
Polanski is admired by many other filmmakers all over the world for his genius as a director.
A film by Shyam Benegal Original Screenplay : Vijay Tendulkar Year : 1975 Run time :140 minutes Hindi with English sub titles 6th July 2008 ; 5.45 pm Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Contemporary Indian filmmake Shyam Benegal’s second film, NIshant (1975)explores the corrupt world of landowners and local bureaucracy in India on the cusp of independence.
Shyam Benegal has a well-deserved reputation for making hard hitting social dramas which tell true Indian stories in a realistic manner. He seems to be ever pre-occupied in supporting the forces which are taking India from tradition to modernity, from a deeply conservative and rigidly hierarchical society to a more open, democratic and egalitarian one. In Nishant the oppressed revolt openly against the long reign of terror let loose by a family of landlords. Significantly, the revolt does not come from the land, it is brought about by the middle class - the school teacher and the priest. The plot is brutal and compelling which reveals how people's lives play out in the many parts of the world where civilization is still primitive and brutal. Nishant was nominated for Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival (1976).
Shabana gives a rangy and volatile performance There is a certain raw tension in Nishant, an anticipatory mood that is compelling even when nothing is happening. Shyam Benegal's dusty, dusky visuals, along with many silent or near-silent scenes, seem to enhance the tension with their spareness. And it is a great treat to see so many giants of parallel cinema displayed in their unpolished youth - Shabana, Smita, Naseer, Kulbushan, and Mohan Agashe and Anant Nag (as the zamindar's other two brothers) are all fresh out of school; none of them had more than two films' experience prior to Nishant, and even Amrish Puri had only played half a dozen roles.
The film won the 1977 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi,and was invited to Cannes Film Festival, the London Film Festival 1976, Melbourne Film Festival 1977, and the Chicago Film Festival 1977, where it was awarded Golden Plaque.
Contemporary Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal has been an important figure in the new wave of Indian directors. Benegal originated what has come to be called "middle cinema". He was initially involved in the advertising industry and produced over 900 advertisements before his interest turned to films.
Shyam Benegal was born on 14 December 1934 at Aliwal, Hyderabad, British India (now Andhra Pradesh, India). The son of a still photographer and one of 10 children, Benegal's love affair with motion pictures began when he made his first home-movie using a hand-cranked camera at age 12. He is nephew of the famous Indian Actor Director Guru Dutt.
As a young man, he went on to found a film society and get involved in acting while studying at OsmaniaUniversity where he earned an MA in economics. After graduating, Benegal found a job as a copywriter at a large ad agency in Bombay. Soon he was promoted to writing scripts and directing advertising shorts and commercials. He remained there for over a decade.
In 1969 he received a special fellowship to study operations of the Children's Television Workshop in New York. Later he did a brief stint as a TV producer in Boston.
Since then he has become a popular director in India, noted for creating films sensitive to the role of women in Indian societies. His films have also gained international recognition and acclaim.
His film directorial debut was Gher Betha Ganga in 1962. Benegal shot to fame with Ankur 1973, which introduced Shabana Azmi, who also starred in Nishant 1975. The success that New India Cinema enjoyed in the 1970s and early 1980s could largely be attributed to Shyam Benegal's quartet Ankur (1973), Nishant (1975), Manthan (1976) and Bhumika (1977), which were artistically superior yet commercially viable films. Tapping fresh talent mainly from the FTII and NSD, Benegal has made several sensitive and stimulating films.
He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991. On 8th August 2007, he was awarded the highest award in Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005. He is only director to have won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi five times.
Casablanca A Film by Michael Curtiz Year : 1942 Country : USA Run time :102 minutes English with English sub titles 22nd June 2008 ;5.45 pm Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Against the electric background of a sleek cafe in a North African port, through which swirls a backwash of connivers, crooks and fleeing European refugees, the Warner Brothers are telling a rich, suave, exciting and moving tale in theirfilm, "Casablanca,"
The story, as would be natural, has its devious convolutions of plot. But mainly it tells of a tough fellow named Rick who runs a Casablanca cafe and of what happens when there shows up in his joint one night a girl whom he had previously loved in Paris in company with a fugitive Czech patriot. The Nazis are tailing the young Czech; the Vichy officials offer only brief refuge—and Rick holds the only two sure passports which will guarantee his and the girl's escape. But Rick loves the girl very dearly, she is now married to this other man—and whenever his black pianist sits there in the dark and sings "As Time Goes By" that old, irresistible feeling consumes him in a choking, maddening wave.
Don't worry; we won't tell you how it all comes out. That would be rankest sabotage. But we will tell you that the urbane detail and the crackling dialogue which has been packed into this film by the scriptwriters, the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch, is of the best. We will tell you that Michael Curtiz has directed for slow suspense and that his camera is always conveying grim tension and uncertainty.
The performances of the actors are all of the first order,especially those of Mr. Bogart and Miss Bergman in the leading roles. Mr. Bogart is, as usual, the cool, cynical, efficient and super-wise guy who operates his business strictly for profit but has a core of sentiment and idealism inside. Conflict becomes his inner character, and he handles it credibly. Miss Bergman is surpassingly lovely, crisp and natural as the girl and lights the romantic passages with a warm and genuine glow.
In short, we will say that "Casablanca" is one of the most exciting and trenchant films.
Michael Curtiz
(December 24, 1886 - April 10, 1962)
Michael Curtiz was one of Hollywood's most prolific and colorful directors. Born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Budapest, he ran away from home at age 17 to join a circus, then trained for an acting career at the RoyalAcademy for Theater and Art. He worked as a leading man at the Hungarian Theatre before directing stage plays and then films.
His first cinematic effort was Az Utolsó Bohém (1912), which was also the first feature-length film ever made in Hungary. Curtiz soon moved on to the more progressive Danish film industry, returning to his homeland in 1914 and serving a year in the Austro-Hungarian infantry before resuming his film career.He directed 21 European pictures in a seven-year period, including the epic Sodom and Gomorrah (1923).
In 1926, Curtiz was brought to Hollywood by Warner Bros. He had a lengthy and prolific Hollywood career, with directing credits on over 100 films in many film genres..Prime examples of his work in the 1940s are The Sea Wolf (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945). Michael Curtiz died at the age of 73 and was almost working till the last days of his life.
"In a world as badly made as ours, there is only one road -- rebellion." . . . LUIS BUNUEL The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
A Film by Luis Bunuel Country : France Year : 1972 French / Spanish with English subtitles Run time : 102 minutes
All movies toy with us, but the best ones have the nerve to admit it. Most movies pretend their stories are real and that we must take them seriously. Comedies are allowed to break the rules. Most of the films of Luis Bunuel are comedies in one way or another, but he doesn't go for gags and punch lines; his comedy is more like a dig in the ribs, sly and painful.
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) is about people who are trapped on the other side of the mirror: They constantly arrive for dinner and sometimes even sit down for it, but are never able to eat. They arrive on the wrong night, or are alarmed to find the corpse of the restaurant owner in the next room, or are interrupted by military maneuvers.
Dinner is the central social ritual of the middle classes, a way of displaying wealth and good manners. It also offers the convenience of something to do (eat) and something to talk about (the food), and that is a great relief, since so many of the bourgeoisie have nothing much to talk about, and there are a great many things they hope will not be mentioned.
The joke in "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is the way Bunuel interrupts the meals with the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of his decaying European aristocracy: witlessness, adultery, drug dealing, cheating, military coups, perversion and the paralysis of boredom. His central characters are politicians, the military and the rich, but in a generous mood he throws in a supporting character to make fun of the church.
The movie is broken into self-contained sequences, showing the bland surface of polite society and the lusts that lurk beneath.
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" was Bunuel's most successful film; it made more money even than his famous "Belle de Jour" (1967), won the Oscar as best foreign film and was named the year's best by the National Society of Film Critics. It was released in a year when social unrest was at its height, the Vietnam War was in full flower, and the upper middle class was a fashionable target of disdain. How different to see it again in the 2000s, when affluence is once again praised and envied.
Luis Buñuel
Painting by Salvador Dali 22 February 1900, Spain .- 29 July 1983 Mexico
The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium,
“ I have a soft spot for secret passageways, bookshelves that open into silence, staircases that go down into a void, and hidden safes. I even have one myself, but I won't tell you where. At the other end of the spectrum are statistics which I hate with all my heart. “
Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior). Bnuel subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein.
With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalouin 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent Âge d'or, L' (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career.
After the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros. Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins, Olvidados, Los (1950), which won him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country -and Bunuel promptly paid back by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Journal d'une femme de chambre, Le (1964). The films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour. After saying that every one of his films from Belle de jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with Cet obscur objet du désir (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films -a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.
A true story of the mystery of music and the miracle of love
SHINE
A Film by Scot Hicks Year : 1996 Country : Australia English with English sub titles Run time : 105 minutes 8th June 2008 ; 5.45 pm AshwinHospital Auditorium
Shine is a deceptively simple title for an amazingly powerful motion picture based on the true life story of Australian pianist David Helfgott.
Long before its American theatrical debut, Shine had already attained the status as one of 1996's few "must see" films. At Sundance, where it was among the hottest properties, the war for distribution rights exploded into a public confrontation. The movie has also earned 9 Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards.
Shine has its roots in 1986, when director Scott Hicks read a newspaper story about David Helfgott, a pianist who performed a flawless classical repertoire at a Perth restaurant. Hicks' interest was piqued, and he arranged to see Helfgott in concert. For the better part of the next year, he worked to earn the man's trust with the goal of presenting his story in a motion picture. That odyssey, which is admittedly fictionalized to some degree in Jan Sardi's wonderful screenplaybecame Shine, one of 1996's most stirring and inspirational tales.
As "Shine" begins, the adult David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) appears pitiably, trying to come in out of the rain. Clearly damaged somehow, David fidgets and chatters nervously, keeping his eyes half-shut, clutching too eagerly at the people he sees. He repeats words frenetically and chuckles oddly at words that really aren't funny. "Ridiculous tragedy" is one of the phrases he mutters.
Love can have many faces, and Shine shows two of the most extreme. The first is David’s father Peter's obsessive, domineering love. Hicks's graceful exposition explores the pathos in David's relationship with his father.. The film watches helplessly while this father's love and pride destroy his son. The other face of love is the healing, undemanding one, as embodied by a middle-aged Gillian (Lynn Redgrave). She offers her strength and understanding to David, helping him to rebuild his life.
The film's final scene directly contrasts Peter and Gillian's approaches, as David attempts to bring closure to one of the great, unresolved issues of his life.
SCOTT HICKS
SCOTT HICKS was propelled to the forefront of international filmmakers in 1996, following the release of his film Shine. Its triumphant premiere at the Sundance Film Festival was just the beginning of world-wide box office success and numerous honors, including seven Academy Award nominations.
Even before Shine, however, Hicks had made his mark as a documentarian. He won an Emmy in 1994 for Submarines: Sharks of Steel and a coveted Peabody Award in 1989 for The Great Wall of Iron.
The progeny of adventurous parents, Hicks was born in Uganda and lived in Kenya, just outside Nairobi, until the age of ten. His family then moved, first to England and, when he was 14, on to Adelaide, Australia.
Hicks entered FlindersUniversityto major in English and Dramaandcinema studies were part of the curriculum. Instantly attracted to the medium, he threw himself headlong into the study of great directors, film movementsand filmmaking techniques.
By the mid-1980s, he had managed to make a couple of low budget features, one for the South Australian Film Corporation. In 1988, he came to Los Angeles for the American Film Market with his children's movie, Sebastian and the Sparrow. Hicks began to make non-fiction films. But Hicks was not able to rest on the laurels of his documentary achievements because he was passionately involved with the development of the filmShine,inspired by the life of pianist David Helfgott.
Hicks continues to live in Adelaide with his wife and collaborator, Kerry Heysen, and their two sons. He has projects in varying stages of development at several studios.
ershot jaw and a lot of pain in his eyes says he reckons we might like to hear about his story, and so he tells it. His name is Karl Childers, he is retarded, and he has been in a state facility since childhood, when he found his mother with her lover and killed them both. But now, he says, ``I reckon I got no reason to kill no one. Uh, huh.'' Karl is talking to a reporter about his release from the institution. They reckon he has been cured. They are probably right. He is not a killer, would not kill without good and proper reason, and now understands how, as a child, he misinterpreted the situation. As he talks, we are struck by his forceful presence; he is retarded, yes, but he is complex and observant, and has spent a lot of time thinking about what he should and shouldn't do.
plays Karl as a man of limited intelligence but great seriousness, who reasons as well as he can, and feels deeply. There is pain, humor, irony and sweetness in the character, and a voice and manner so distinctive, he is the most memorable movie character seen in a long time.
