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Showing This Weekend
Saturday 14 December: Pont De Varsòvia
Behind the frivolous facade of life in a happy Europe, where lies the tension of broken memories and personal and historical cataclysms. As the Berlin wall falls, so too does the bridge of Warsaw constituting the film’s title, a link shattered and fragmented in a European landscape haunted by the dark imagine of history. Preceded by Plan Hidrológico Nacional and introduced by the Liberated Film Club's curator, Winstanley Schtinter.
Saturday 14 December: Silence Before Bach
Portabella's Die Stille vor Bach investigaties the profound relationship between image and music, where the latter is not conceived as subsidiary, but as a subject of narration in its own right. Preceded by Poetes Catalan and introduced by Irene Solà.
Sunday 15 December: Informe General
Shot in the months following the death of General Franco, Portabellas's Informe General is a documentary film shot as a fiction film. The speakers are concerned with one question alone: How do we go from a dictatorship to a democracy? Introduced by independent curator and writer Mark Nash.
Sunday 15 December: Informe General II
Portabella's 2015 follow up to Informe General was made in the context of severe systemic crisis in the cultural, economic-financial, political and energy fields: how can and does civil society defeat a crisis by ordinary people reclaiming politics? Introduced by audiovisual programmer, director and essayist, Ingrid Guardiola.
Showing Next Week
Wednesday 18 December: Querelle
Emphasizing through the use of studio sets the heightened artificiality that fascinated Fassbinder late in his career, Querelle tells the story of tangled and nightmarish erotic passions set in the underworld of the French port of Brest. The script is based on Jean Genet’s infamous novel Querelle de Brest, concerning a sailor’s discovery of his homosexuality through rape.
Thursday 19 December: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
In the early 1970s, Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register. One of the first and best-loved films of this period in his career is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director’s roots in experimental theater.
Friday 20 December: World on a Wire
World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, and originally made for German television, this three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.
Saturday 21 December: Effi Briest
Fontane’s 1894 novel Effi Briest holds a position in Germany analogous to that of Madame Bovary in France. Fassbinder’s film is both a faithful adaptation of the novel and a subtle manipulation of its structure. The result is a unique double perspective that recreates the 19th century and offers a modern analysis of it in terms of the rise of fascism and the oppression of women.
Saturday 21 December: A Tribute to Jonathan Miller
In memory of Jonathan Miller (1934-2019) we present a double-bill of the late British director's 1960s BBC masterpieces, Alice in Wonderland and Whistle and I'll Come to You. Introduced by Gareth Evans.
Sunday 22 December: Eight Hours Don't Make a Day
A brilliantly layered chamber drama about an eccentric family and their economic and cultural environment, which functions as both trenchant social critique and populist entertainment. Screened in across one afternoon, with intervals.
Coming Soon
24 December 2019: Ugetsu Monogatari
By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art.
27 December 2019: The White Reindeer
Shot in the Arctic Circle’s snowy expanses, Erik Blomberg’s The White Reindeer is a marvel of film fantasy starring Mirjami Kuosmanen as a bewitched young woman wed to an often-absent reindeer herder. Blomberg and Kuosmanen blend documentary travelogue with avant-garde experimentation to produce an art house horror film without compare. Introduced by Antti Alanen.
28 December 2019: Wings of Desire
Angels perched atop the buildings of Berlin listen in on the innermost thoughts of mere mortals in Wim Wenders’s lovely, lyrical Wings of Desire, a soaring high-point of the director’s cinema and a moving, melancholic elegy to a Berlin still divided.
28 - 29 December 2019: Jan Švankmajer Shorts
A selection of thirteen short films – spread across two programmes – by the legendary Czech Surrealist filmmaker-animator Jan Švankmajer. Technically and conceptually astonishing in their own right, these films are also as remarkable for their philosophical consistency as for their frequently mind-boggling imagery.
29 December 2019: Take Two: Alice / Jabberwocky
Jan Švankmajer's Alice is a unique adaptation of Lewis Carroll's original vision. Combining a live-action Alice with a stop-motion Wonderland filled with threatening, bizarre characters, the film brilliantly marries a sly visual wit with piercing psychological insight.
Calendar
Sat 14 Dec 6:00pm
Pont De Varsòvia
Pont De Varsòvia
Sat 14 Dec 8:00pm
Silence Before Bach
Silence Before Bach
Sun 15 Dec 5:00pm
Informe General
Informe General
Sun 15 Dec 8:15pm
Informe General II
Informe General II
Wed 18 Dec 8:15pm
Querelle
Querelle
Thu 19 Dec 8:15pm
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Fri 20 Dec 7:00pm
World on a Wire
World on a Wire
Sat 21 Dec 5:00pm
Effi Briest
Effi Briest
Sat 21 Dec 8:00pm
A Tribute to Jonathan Miller
A Tribute to Jonathan Miller
Sun 22 Dec 12:00pm
Eight Hours Don't Make a Day
Eight Hours Don't Make a Day
Mon 23 Dec 8:15pm
Ugetsu Monogatari
Ugetsu Monogatari
Fri 27 Dec 8:00pm
The White Reindeer
The White Reindeer
Sat 28 Dec 6:00pm
Jan Švankmajer Shorts I
Jan Švankmajer Shorts I
Sat 28 Dec 8:00pm
Wings of Desire
Wings of Desire
Sun 29 Dec 6:00pm
Jan Švankmajer Shorts II
Jan Švankmajer Shorts II
Sun 29 Dec 8:00pm
Alice + Jabberwocky
Alice + Jabberwocky
Mon 30 Dec 8:15pm
The Colour of Pomegranates
The Colour of Pomegranates
Wed 01 Jan 7:00pm
Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas
