<<< September 2003 >>>

Wednesday, September 3 – 7:15 PM- 9:15 PM

THE BEST SHORTS FROM THE 2003 CLERMONT-FERRAND SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

We are proud to present a travelling program from the world’s largest and most renowned short-film festival and market. Now entering its twenty-sixth year, Clermont-Ferrand is comprised of comprises an international competition, representing approximately fifty countries, a national competition, some retrospectives and special screenings of short films. Over 400 films are exhibited, showing the scope and breadth of the art of the short film.

All the films that are submitted to the festival are also represented at the market – over 2,000 films. In addition, over sixty television channels, fifty distributors and more than sixty international film festivals come to meet, view, buy and program the short films the world will see in the next year and for years to come. We are happy to have one of Clermont-Ferrand’s leading programmers, Roger Gonin as a guest to discuss the festival, market and the short film world in general.

Wednesday, September 3 – 7:15 PM.

Program 1: Best of the 2003 French National Competition Shorts. (6 shorts, 98 min. total)

"La Boite Noire" (The Black Box) Dir. Angelo Cianci (Experimental Fiction, 15 min.); A woman, despondent over her lovers absence believes the black screen can bring loved one back to life. "Pigly" Dir. Sandrine Auvertin, Philippe Tailliez (Animation, 7 min.); A pig escapes from the slaughterhouse and is chased by a fearsome robotic guard dog. "J’attendrai Le suivant" (I’ll Wait For The Next One) Dir. Philippe Orreindy (Fiction, 4 min.); A man seeks love in the subway. "Indigen" Dir. Nicolas Chevallier, Laurent Sauvage, Alexandre Theil & Julien Vanhoenacker (Animation, 6 min.); It looks like "Tom and Jerry," but takes place in Africa and there is a lot more blood. "La Chatte Andalouse" (The Andalusian Cat) Dir. Gerald Hustache-Mathieu (Fiction, 48 min.); A young nun leads a secret double-life. "La Calvitude" (The Bald Spot) Dir. Julien Weill (Fiction, 18 min.); Benoît was dumped. Watch as he slides into a paranoid, comical state. Discussion following with Clermont-Ferrand programmer Roger Gonin.

Wednesday, September 3 – 9:15 PM

Program 2: Best of International Shorts. - (6 shorts; 97 min. total)

"Lift" Dir. Marc Isaacs (documentary, 24 min.); The filmmaker interviews residents in an elevator in a London tower block and creates a humorous and moving portrait of the inhabitants. "Whizeewhig" Dir. Chihcheng Peng (Experimental, 3 min.); A playful examination of how the city works. "15" Dir. Royston Tan (Documentary/Fiction, 25 min.); Inspired by three troubled youths and their escape into numbing worldly pleasures. "Terminal Bar" Dir. Stefan Nadelman (Documentary, 22 min.); Photo-driven documentary about one of the dirtiest, roughest bars in Times Squares in the 1970’s. "Ryusei-Kacho" Dir. Hideaki Anno (Animation/Fiction, 14 min.); Ryusei-Kacho is a skilled negotiator of the notoriously crowded Japanese commuter trains. Until he meets..."De Beste Gar Forst" Dir. Hans Petter Moland (Fiction, 9 min.); Eight old timers come upon a young woman stuck in a swamp. Discussion following with Clermont-Ferrand programmer Roger Gonin.

Thursday, September 4 – 7:30 PM

Rita Hayworth Tribute & Special Sneak Preview:

"RITA", 2003, Turner Classic Movies, 58 min. "RITA" thoroughly chronicles Rita Hayworth’s legendary career and provides behind-the-scenes glimpses into her life, classic performances in movies such as GILDA, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI and YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER, and her much-publicized marriages to high-profile men, Orson Welles and Prince Aly Aga Kahn, among others. Highlights include a rare interview with the star’s daughter, Yasmin Aga Kahn, as well as never-before-seen color home movie footage from the 1940’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, rare family photographs and commentary from Hayworth herself, from an interview taped shortly before Alzheimer’s ravaged her memory. The documentary includes interviews with actress Nicole Kidman, Hayworth’s family members and a never-before-seen interview with her last husband, James Hill. The documentary also features footage of Hayworth from "The Carol Burnett Show," footage of her weddings to Prince Aly Khan and Dick Haymes and more than 300 rare photographs. Other interviewees include her best friend, Ann Miller; co-stars Tab Hunter, Anthony Franciosa, Juanita Moore and Marc Platt; directors who worked with her, including Vincent Sherman, George Sidney and Delbert Mann; her nephew Richard Cansino; and her sister-in-law Theresa Cansino. ["RITA" will premiere on Turner Classic Movies on September 9^th.]

GILDA, 1946, Columbia, 110 min. Dir. Charles Vidor. The movie that defined Rita Hayworth’s onscreen image more than any other, and helped elevate her to Hollywood superstardom in the 1940’s. Rita stars as the sultry, torch-singing wife of a South American casino owner (George Macready), who finds herself in serious hot water when she re-connects with former flame Glenn Ford. As Hayworth herself later observed ruefully: "Most men fell in love with Gilda … and wakened with me."

September 5 – 7, 2003

"Our unknown cosmonaut" – Jean Quevel.

"A kind of one-man total cinema" – Richard Roud.

"The films of Chris Marker are unequalled in contemporary cinema for their beauty, complexity, influence and inventiveness." – James Quandt.

Chris Marker’s films are the kind of miracle you’d stopped hoping for long ago, a Travelogue of Pure Mystery where "images appear like confessions" (LA JETEE), where his beloved cats and owls materialize to remind us just how far we have to go, how much we have to remember. His favorite medium is the cinema essay: a series of impressions, snapshots, postcards from distant lands (Japan, Africa, Russia, Greece), linked together by Marker’s enigmatic voice, described as "the voice of an insomniac dreamer" (Bill Horrigan), or "a ghost whispering in your ear" (Terrence Rafferty). Marker is in love with Memory, with its melancholy beauty, and his films are an altogether heroic, perhaps doomed attempt to trace its stain on our lives, like lifting rubbings from a gravestone. As Marker has said, "I claim, for the image, the humility and the powers of a madeleine."

Marker himself is even more elusive than his work, a quicksilver character in a world of klieg lights. He was born, apparently, in 1921 in the suburbs of Paris (although he’s occasionally claimed his birthplace was Outer Mongolia). A journalist, travel-writer and photographer before he took up filmmaking, Marker has consistently refused interviews and has rarely been photographed himself. His earliest films were made in collaboration with Alain Resnais, who shares Marker’s preoccupation with time and memory; and while Marker’s career parallels the French New Wave, his films have always been too singular to be easily grouped with Godard, Truffaut and his other peers.

Since our first Marker series in 1997, he has produced a number of major new works, including the dazzling REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME (made in collaboration with Yannick Bellon) and ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI ARSENEVICH, a haunting portrait of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky – so what better time to celebrate Marker’s unique, unforgettable vision than with this short series of new and classic films?

Series compiled by Gwen Deglise and Dennis Bartok. All films in French with English subtitles except as noted.

Special Thanks to: Jonathan Miller/FIRST RUN/ ICARUS FILMS; Jonathan Howell/NEW YORKER FILMS; James Quandt/CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO.

Friday, September 5 – 7:00 PM

Los Angeles Premiere!!

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME (LE SOUVENIR D’UN AVENIR), 2001, First Run/Icarus Films, 42 min. Dirs. Yannick Bellon and Chris Marker. Genius. The latest "cine-essay" of Chris Marker is dense and demanding, a splendid reminder that his nimble, capacious mind has lost none of its agility, poetry and power. Ostensibly a portrait of French photographer Denise Bellon, focusing on the two decades between 1935 and 1955, the film leaps and backtracks, Marker-style, from subject to subject, from a family portrait of Bellon and her two daughters, Loleh and Yannick (the latter co-authored the film), to a wide-ranging history of surrealism, of the city of Paris, of French cinemas and the birth of the cinémathèque, of Europe, the National Front, the Second World War and Spanish Civil War, and postwar politics and culture. Full of Marker jokes (a great one about artists and cats), word play, filmic homages (Musidora makes a memorable appearance), peculiar art history, a consideration of the 1952 Olympics, and astounding segues from French colonialism in Africa to women in the Maghreb, to a Jewish wedding and gypsy culture in Europe, to "Mein Kampf" and the Nazi death camps (Birkenau, Auschwitz), the film opens with Dali and ends with Mompou, traversing in its short time a world of thought, feeling, and history. A small masterpiece of montage, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME is from moment to moment reminiscent of Resnais, Ivens, even Kubrick, but in its deployment of still photographs (as in LA JETEE), its theme of history and memory, its subject-skipping montage and rapid shuttle of wit and philosophy, REMEMBRANCE is pure, marvellous Marker. (Notes by James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario.) Note: this is the English voice-over version, supervised by Marker himself.

LA JETEE, 1964, New Yorker, 30 min. Marker’s most famous film (and his only work of pure fiction), LA JETEE is an agonizing cry of love to a world gone by, the story of a man drawn through time by the image of a woman standing on the jetty at Orly Airport. A candidate for one of the greatest films ever made; certainly, it’s the most romantic.

STATUES ALSO DIE (LES STATUES MEURENT AUSSI), 1953, Editions Presence Africaine, 27 min. Co-directed with Alain Resnais, STATUES casts an ultra-critical eye on European culture’s misuse of African sacred art; it also serves as a stunning testament to the art itself.

Friday, September 5 – 9:30 PM

SANS SOLEIL, 1982, New Yorker, 100 min. Dir. Chris Marker. How to describe SANS SOLEIL? A narrator (who we never see) reads a series of letters from a distant world-traveling friend (who we never see), while a haunting stream of images flash by like some techno-dream: temples in Tokyo dedicated to cats (a Marker favorite), Vatican treasures on display in a department store, and an animatronic John F. Kennedy singing "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You …" SANS SOLEIL is a film truly like no other, a love affair with textures, sounds and ideas, with Marker himself as the Ghost in the Machine, pulling us towards an uncertain future.

Saturday, September 6 – 5:00 PM

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME (LE SOUVENIR D’UN AVENIR), 2001, First Run /Icarus Films, 42 min. Dirs. Yannick Bellon and Chris Marker. (See above for description.)

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI ARSENEVICH (UNE JOURNEE D’ANDREI ARSENEVITCH), 2000, First Run /Icarus Films, 55 min. Dir. Chris Marker. "The best single piece of [Andrei] Tarkovsky criticism I know of, clarifying the overall coherence of his oeuvre while leaving all the principal mysteries in his films intact. It becomes clear early on that Marker was an intimate friend of Tarkovsky and his family, and was shooting home-video footage of some of Tarkovsky’s final days in the mid-1980’s, when he was dying of cancer, for Tarkovsky and his family’s use as well as his own. But this is handled throughout with exquisite tact and restraint and is never allowed to intrude on the poetic analysis of the features. In fact, the video interweaves biography and autobiography with poetic and political insight in a manner that seldom works as well as it does here, perhaps because personal affection and poetic analysis are rarely as compatible as Marker makes them." – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Saturday, September 6 – 7:30 PM

New 35 mm. Print:

THE GRIN WITHOUT A CAT (LE FOND DE L’AIR EST ROUGE), 1977, First Run /Icarus Films, 180 min. Dir. Chris Marker. As brilliant as it is indescribable, GRIN WITHOUT A CAT looks at the rise and fall of the worldwide revolutionary movement, from France in May, 1968 to the anti-Vietnam riots in the U.S., to the terrible crush of the Czech uprising. The French title of the film is untranslatable in English; roughly, it means "Revolution Is In The Air," a metaphor at once wistful and ever-hopeful. Given the current world situation, GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is, now more than ever, an epic event not to be missed. In one of the film’s many high points, Marker dissects the famous Odessa Steps sequence in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN – a revolutionary landmark that never actually occurred …

Sunday, September 7 – 5:00 PM

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME (LE SOUVENIR D’UN AVENIR), 2001, First Run /Icarus Films, 42 min. Dirs. Yannick Bellon and Chris Marker. (See above for description.)

THE LAST BOLSHEVIK, 1993, First Run /Icarus Films, 120 min. Dir. Chris Marker. If there’s anything to equal SANS SOLEIL, it may be THE LAST BOLSHEVIK, Marker’s astonishing look at the history of 20^th century Russia through the life and work of his dear friend, the filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin. Told in the form of six letters to the late Medvedkin, THE LAST BOLSHEVIK is a film of heartbreaking devotion (to a friend, to an ideology, to film itself), of acidic wit and endless curiosity – oh, hell, we’ve run out of superlatives on this one. It’s simply one of the best films from the past decade – don’t miss it!

Monday, September 22 -- 7:30 PM
Special Sneak Preview -- Director Wim Wenders In Person!!
THE SOUL OF A MAN, 2003, Vulcan Prod./Road Movies, 100 min.  Dir. Wim Wenders.  Narrated by Laurence Fishburne.  With performances by Nick Cave, J.B. Lenoir, Beck, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Los Lobos, Bonnie Raitt, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, James "Blood" Ulmer, T Bone Burnett, Skip James and others.  "The seven-title musical docu series "The Blues" kicks off on a high note with 'The Soul of a Man,' Wim Wenders' exhilarating and involving salute to three legendary musicians little known by the general public: Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James and J. B. Lenoir. Wenders succeeds not only in putting these American composer-performers in the context of their times and in demonstrating their influence on subsequent generations of musicians, but also succeeds in putting them in "the bigger picture" of the human spirit itself. This hugely enjoyable film, riffing from historical pastiche to archive footage, from filmed material to concert performances, has the stuff to go way beyond music fans, doing for the blues what the director did for Cuban music in 'The Buena Vista Social Club.' " -- Deborah Young, Variety. 

THE ROAD TO MEMPHIS, (2003, Vulcan Prod./Road Movies, 88 min.) produced by Robert Kenner. Director Richard Pearce traces the musical odyssey of blues legend B.B. King in a film that pays tribute to the city that gave birth to a new style of blues. Pearce's homage to Memphis features original performances by B.B. King, Bobby Rush, Rosco Gordon and Ike Turner, as well as historical footage of Howlin' Wolf and Rufus Thomas. Says Pearce, "THE BLUES is a chance to celebrate one of the last truly indigenous American art forms, before it all but disappears, swallowed whole by the rock 'n roll generation it spawned. Hopefully we'll get there before it's too late." Discussion following both films with THE SOUL OF A MAN director Wim Wenders and producer Alex Gibney and THE ROAD TO MEMPHIS director Richard Pearce, producer Robert Kenner and musician Bobby Rush.