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Showing This 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 With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, and originally made for German television, this three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.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.
Showing Next Week
Monday 23 December: 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.
Friday 27 December: 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.
Saturday 28 December: Jan Švankmajer Shorts I
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.
Saturday 28 December: 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.
Sunday 29 December: Jan Švankmajer Shorts II
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.
Sunday 29 December: 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.
Coming Soon
30 December 2019: The Colour of Pomegranates
A breath-taking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, The Colour of Pomegranates revives the splendours of Armenian culture through the story of the eighteenth-century troubadour Sayat-Nova, charting his intellectual, artistic, and spiritual growth through iconographic compositions rather than traditional narrative.
31 December 2019: Close-Up New Year's Eve: Short Attention Span Cinema
For a Filmic New Years Eve celebration, join us for an evening of Short Attention Span Cinema with the truly eclectic 16mm films from David Leister’s Kino Club Archives. The selection will be chosen from the collection and projected continually without rhyme, reason or theme from 8.30pm until the stroke of midnight, with drinks, music and dancing in the bar until late.
1 January 2020: Paris, Texas
The wide-open spaces of the American West turn into “a place for demons, a place for heartbreak,” in Wenders’s magisterial deconstruction of multiple myths: family, masculinity, and even America itself. A slice of Americana as authentic as any John Ford film, Paris, Texas finds its darkness not in the terrain, but the heart
Calendar
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
Tue 31 Dec 8:30pm
Close-Up New Year's Eve: Short Attention Span Cinema
Close-Up New Year's Eve: Short Attention Span Cinema
Wed 01 Jan 7:00pm
Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas
Thu 02 Jan 8:30pm
Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
Fri 03 Jan 7:30pm
Solaris
Solaris
Sat 04 Jan 6:00pm
Ugetsu Monogatari
Ugetsu Monogatari
