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edinburgh
film
guild
The Edinburgh Film Guild, established in 1930, is
the oldest continuously running film society in
the world.
The Guild has its own cinema and clubrooms
within the Filmhouse building, which are
located next to Screen 3.
The Guild is run and managed by volunteers.
Our 30 seat cinema has a state-of-the-art
digital projector and a 5.1 sound system.
You can enjoy a drink and a chat in the Guild
Clubrooms before a screening.
How to join:
Becoming a member is easy. You must be aged 18
or over, and you can join in person before any of
our screenings or online at:
www.edinburghfilmguild.com
Membership:
Full Membership...........£60
(complete 2016/17 season of films)
Basic Membership.........£20
(admission to any 5 films)
Top-Up Subscription......£20
(admission to any 5 films).
Members can purchase additional ‘top-ups’
until they reach a total of £60, when they
automatically become Full Members with access
to the full 2016/17 season of films.
THE GUILD ROOMS, FILMHOUSE, 88 LOTHIAN ROAD, EDINBURGH EH3 9BZ
www.edinburghfilmguild.org.uk
The Edinburgh Film Guild is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in Scotland. Scottish Charity Number SC041851.
PROGRAMME
2016/2017
Film Calendar:
OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2016
The Samurai Trilogy 04
The Emigrants & The New Land
05
Costa-Gavras06
Larisa Shepitko07
Alien-Ation08
Heroic Bloodshed: Ringo Lam & Chow Yun-Fat
09
Special Screening: Hallowe’en30
NOVEMBER — DECEMBER 2016
Antonio Pietrangeli10
Court Martial11
Screwball Comedy
12
Nasties II / II Nasties14
Sci-Fi: Time Travel15
Special Screening: Christmas30
16
JANUARY — FEBRUARY 2017
World Cinema18
Samuel Fuller20
Alejandro Jodorowsky22
Pinky Violence with Meiko Kaji23
FEBRUARY — MARCH 2017
The Gamblers24
Matarazzo Melodramas25
Imagining 18th Century Europe26
Going Underground28
Sergio Corbucci’s West29
THE
SAMURAI
TRILOGY
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
Sunday, 9 October 2016 at 4.30pm
Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1954 | 93 min |
Japanese with English subtitles
Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple
Sunday, 16 October 2016 at 4.30pm
Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1955 | 103 min |
Japanese with English subtitles
Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island
Sunday, 23 October 2016 at 4.30pm
Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1956 | 105 min |
Japanese with English subtitles
The Samurai Trilogy depicts the ascension of
the legendary ronin Musashi Miyamoto from
confused but talented youth to Master Samurai.
At the heart of The Samurai Trilogy is the brilliant
performance by Toshiro Mifune as the legendary
swordsman.
Awards: Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto won an
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
4
“Portraying the traditional quest for honor and
self-possession as a noble pursuit that can so easily
become one’s own funeral pyre, The Samurai Trilogy
attains timelessness by finding a perfectly tuned
balance between the glories of the past and the great
hindsight of the present.” (Slant Magazine)
The Samurai Trilogy is “a rousing, emotionally
gripping tale of combat and self-discovery.
Based on a novel that’s often called Japan’s
‘Gone with the Wind’, this sweeping saga...
is a passionate epic that’s equal parts tender
love story and bloody action.” (Blu-ray.com)
“It’s a tale with as many
clashing realities as there
are multi-dimensional
characters, and it stands in
all its grandeur as Troell’s
defining accomplishment.”
(Slant Magazine)
The Emigrants
The New Land
The Emigrants
(Utvandrarna)
Sunday, 30 October 2016 at 3.00pm*
Jan Troell | Sweden 1971 | 191 min | Swedish with
English subtitles
The New Land (Nybyggarna)
Sunday, 6 November 2016 at 3.00pm*
Jan Troell | Sweden 1972 | 202 min | Swedish with
English subtitles
The monumental mid-nineteenth-century epic The
Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972) charts,
over the course of two films, a poor Swedish farming
family’s voyage to America and their efforts to put
down roots in this beautiful but forbidding new world.
Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann give remarkably
authentic performances as Karl-Oskar and Kristina,
a couple who meet with one physical and emotional
trial after another on their arduous journey.
Awards: The Emigrants won the Golden Globe Awards
for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress (Liv
Ullmann). In Sweden it won the Guldbagge Awards for
Best Film and Best Actor (Eddie Axberg). It received
five Academy Awards nominations including: Best
Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress.
(*Please note earlier 3.00pm start.)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER2016
2016| | SUNDAY
FRIDAYSAFTERNOONS
AT 8:00PM
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER
“Troell’s epic film is infinitely
absorbing and moving.” (Roger Ebert)
5
Costa-Gavras
A trilogy of films from the master of the political thriller
Z
The Confession (L’Aveu)
State Of Siege (Etat de Siège)
Sunday, 9 October 2016 at 7.00pm
Costa-Gavras | France, Greece 1969 | 127 min |
French with English subtitles
Costa-Gavras’ landmark feature about an incorruptible
judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who investigates the
killing of a reformist politician (Yves Montand) at a
peace demonstration.
Sunday, 16 October 2016 at 7.00pm
Costa-Gavras | France, Italy 1970 | 138 min | French
with English subtitles
Based on a harrowing true story from the era of
Stalinist Soviet bloc show trials, the film stars Yves
Montand as a Czechoslovak Communist Party official
who, in the early fifties, is abducted, imprisoned,
and interrogated over a frighteningly long period,
and left in the dark about his captors’ motives. Also
starring Simone Signoret and Gabriele Ferzetti, the
film is an unflinching, intimate depiction of one of the
twentieth century’s darkest chapters, told from one
bewildered man’s point of view.
Sunday, 23 October 2016 at 7.00pm
Costa-Gavras | France 1972 | 121 min | French with
English subtitles
Costa-Gavras puts the United States’ involvement in
Latin American politics under the microscope in this
arresting thriller. An urban guerrilla group, outraged
at the counter-insurgency and torture training
clandestinely organised by the CIA in their country,
abducts a U.S. official (Yves Montand) to bargain for
the release of political prisoners. The kidnapping
soon becomes a media sensation, leading to violence.
Co-written by Franco Solinas, State of Siege piercingly
critiques the American government for supporting
foreign dictatorships, while also asking difficult
questions about the efficacy of radical violent acts to
oppose such regimes.
“With democracy disappearing in a fog of dirty tricks,
conspiracy and cover-up, ‘Z’ was an indictment of the
US-backed coup in Greece. With dark humour, a fauxdocumentary style...it made Gavras' name as master of a
genre that married the pace and suspense of the action
thriller with political critique.” (Maya Jaggi, The Guardian)
367
Awards: Jury Prize and Best Actor award (Jean-Louis
Trintignant), Cannes Film Festival. Academy Award for
Best Foreign-Language Film.
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM
Larisa Shepitko
The career of Larisa Shepitko, an icon of
sixties and seventies Soviet cinema, was
tragically cut short when she was killed in a
car crash in 1979, aged forty, just as she was
emerging onto the international scene. The
body of work she left behind, though small, is
masterful, and her genius for visually evoking
characters’ interior worlds is never more
striking than in her two finest works.
Wings
The Ascent
Sunday, 30 October 2016 at 7.00pm
Larisa Shepitko | Soviet Union 1966 | 85 min |
Russian with English subtitles
For her first feature after graduating, Larisa Shepitko
trained her lens on the fascinating Russian character
actress Maya Bulgakova, who gives a marvellous
performance as a once heroic Russian fighter pilot now
living a quiet, disappointingly ordinary life as a school
principal. Subtly portraying one woman’s desperation
with elegant, spare camera work and casual, fluid
storytelling, Shepitko, with Wings, announced herself
as an important new voice in Soviet cinema.
Sunday, 6 November 2016 at 7.00pm
Larisa Shepitko | Soviet Union 1976 | 111 min |
Russian with English subtitles
Shepitko’s emotionally overwhelming final film
won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival
and has been hailed around the world as the finest
Soviet film of its decade. Set during World War II’s
darkest days, The Ascent follows the path of two
peasant soldiers, cut off from their troop, who trudge
through the snowy backwoods of Belarus seeking
refuge among villagers. Their harrowing trek leads
them on a journey of betrayal, heroism, and ultimate
transcendence.
7
onn
AA lliieenn--AAttiio
They’re cheap, gory and a lot of fun.
Two B-movies inspired by Ridley
Inseminoid
Scott’s Alien...
(aka Horror Planet)
Friday, 21 October 2016 at 8.00pm
Norman J. Warren | UK/Hong Kong 1981 | 93 min
A crew of interplanetary archaeologists is
threatened when an alien creature impregnates one
of their members (Judy Geeson), causing her to turn
homicidal and murder them one by one.
Contamination
(aka Alien Contamination)
8
“First it’s an Italian sci-fi which means low budget,
corny dialog, bad dubbing, and the ripping off of some
successful American film. That’s a formula for fun
times if there ever was any.” (The Film Connoisseur)
Friday, 14 October 2016 at 8.00pm
Luigi Cozzi | Italy 1980 | 95 min
A former astronaut helps a government agent and a
police detective track the source of mysterious alien
pod spores, filled with lethal flesh-dissolving acid,
to a South American coffee plantation controlled by
alien pod clones. Branded as a ‘video nasty’ in the UK,
director Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination takes the premise of
Ridley Scott’s classic Alien and peppers it with exploding
guts galore and a dangerously infectious soundtrack
from the celebrated Italian prog-rockers Goblin.
Inseminoid “stands out above many low budget sci-fi
pictures of the era thanks to strong production values...
recommended to fans of the more obscure sci-fi space
movies and British exploitation.” (Mondo Esoterica)
Ringo Lam & Chow Yun-Fat
The term ‘heroic bloodshed’ was coined in the
late 1980s to refer to a type of Hong Kong cinema
revolving around stylized action sequences
and themes of brotherhood, duty, honour,
redemption and violence, where gun play took
the place of martial arts.
City On Fire
Though John Woo may be the best known Heroic
Bloodshed director, Ringo Lam has his own
distinctive approach to both the genre and its most
iconic performer, Chow Yun-Fat.
City On Fire
Prison On Fire
Full Contact
Friday, 28 October 2016 at 8.00pm
Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1987 | 105 min | Cantonese
with English subtitles
An undercover cop (Chow Yun-Fat) infiltrates a gang of
jewel thieves, but things go terribly wrong during a heist.
Friday, 4 November 2016 at 8.00pm
Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1987 | 98 min | Cantonese
with English subtitles
Sentenced to three years in prison, Yiu (Tony Leung
Ka Fai) is “fresh meat” for the hardened criminals and
triad stooges that run things, and is preyed upon by
sadistic guard Scarface (Roy Cheung). The virtuous
Ching (Chow Yun-Fat) intervenes, teaching him the
ropes of prison life, and a tender friendship develops
between the two.
Friday, 11 November 2016 at 8.00pm
Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1992 | 104 min | Cantonese
with English subtitles
Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat), a tough guy with a sense of
honour, saves his debt-ridden friend Sam from loan
sharks. Hooking up with gay gangster Judge (Simon
Yam) and his dubious henchmen, the friends are
double-crossed in a violent heist. Sam saves his own
skin, while Jeff is left for dead. Big mistake. When Jeff
comes back, he’s mad.
“Prison on Fire was one of the last truly unique and
good films to come out of Hong Kong during the late
80s. Nominated for eight Hong Kong Film Awards.”
(Blu-Ray.com)
A “blast of pure, adrenaline pumping carnage from start
to finish. If brutal, over the top thrills and deranged,
darkly funny criminals sound like your bag, give this
unhinged Cult classic a spin.” (Cult Movie Guide)
“Lam’s heist flick – despite its riveting action – is
perhaps better appreciated as a character study of
a world-weary undercover cop and law-enforcing
protagonist (Chow Yun-Fat, playfully intense) who
is torn between his police duty and loyalty to his
criminal friends.” (Time Out, Hong Kong)
“The movie that gave us Quentin Tarantino’s career.”
(Indiewire)
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM
Heroic Bloodshed
9
Antonio Pietrangeli
The work of this overlooked master of Italian
cinema combines the moral urgency of
Neorealism with the satirical eye of commedia
all’italiana. Antonio Pietrangeli’s films most
often focus on the evolving role of women in
Italian society as they experience the promises
and perils of a new, ambiguous freedom in the
“boom” years of Italy’s modernisation.
Adua and Her Friends
Adua and Her Friends
Adua and Her Friends
(Adua e le compagne)
Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 4.30pm
Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1960 | 129 min | Italian
with English subtitles
Adua, Lolita, Marilina and Millie are four sex workers
who become unemployed when new laws lead to the
closure of all legal brothels. Under Adua’s leadership,
they pool their savings to open a restaurant on
the outskirts of Rome. However, as they try to rid
themselves of a life they no longer want to be part of,
they soon discover they cannot escape their past. The
extraordinary cast of this nearly forgotten film includes
Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni, Sandra Milo
(Juliet of the Spirits), Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima mon
103 amour), and Gina Rovere (Big Deal on Madonna Street).
The Visit
(La Visita)
Sunday, 20 November 2016 at 4.30pm
Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1963 | 111 min | Italian
with English subtitles
Pietrangeli’s exquisite miniature describes the day-long
encounter of two would-be lovers who meet through
a lonely-hearts ad. Adolfo (François Périer) is a fussy
Roman bookstore clerk who travels to the Po Valley to
meet Pina (Sandra Milo), who works for an agricultural
supply firm. Worried that their marriageable days are
numbered, the two have already decided to fall in love
with each other—but first they have to get acquainted.
”Despite the fact that La Visita is an outrageously
funny film with plenty of zesty scenes its core is
disturbingly serious.” (DVDTalk)
I Knew Her Well
(Io la conoscevo bene)
Sunday, 27 November 2016 at 4.30pm
Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1965 | 115 min | Italian
with English subtitles
Unfolding in a series of episodic snapshots, the film
documents the life of Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli), a
young woman who moves to Rome in the early 1960s
to pursue a career as a model and actress.
“A tragicomic portrait of one woman’s struggle to find
her way in a society she longs to be a part of, I Knew Her
Well offers both a critique of Italian celebrity culture and
an impressively progressive examination of femininity.
[It] is a thrilling rediscovery, by turns funny, tragic, and
altogether jaw-dropping.” (Criterion review)
Sunday, 4 December 2016 at 4.30pm
Joseph Losey | UK 1964 | 87 min
During World War I, an army private (Tom Courtenay)
is accused of desertion during battle. The officer (Dirk
Bogarde) assigned to defend him at his court-martial
finds out there is more to the case than meets the eye.
Awards: Best Actor (Tom Courtenay), Venice Film
Festival, where the film was also nominated for
the Golden Lion. Nominated for four BAFTA awards,
including Best Film.
“Director Joseph Losey attacks the subject with
confidence and vigor, and the result is a highly
sensitive and emotional drama, enlivened by sterling
performances and a sincere screenplay.” (Variety)
Court Martial
Two classic films.
Breaker Morant
Sunday, 11 December 2016 at 4.30pm
Bruce Beresford | Australia 1980 | 107 min
At the turn of the twentieth century, three Australian
army lieutenants (Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown,
and Jack Thompson) are court-martialled for alleged
war crimes committed while fighting in South Africa.
With little time to prepare, an Australian major,
appointed as defence attorney, must prove that they
were just following orders and are being made into
political pawns by the British military leadership.
Awards: Best Foreign Film, Golden Globe Awards.
Winner of 10 major Australian Film Institute
awards, including Best Film and Best Director.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 | SUNDAYS, 4.30PM
King and Country
“A palpable, and justifiable, air of anger,
bewilderment and injustice permeates Bruce
Beresford’s Boer War drama, a major entry of the
Australian New Wave of the late 70s and early 80s.”
(Electric Sheep Magazine)
11
2
Screwball
Comedy
Hailing from the tradition of Shakespeare’s
battle-of-the-sexes comedies, like Much
Ado About Nothing and Taming of the Shrew,
Screwball Comedy developed as a distinctive
genre in 1930s and 40s Hollywood. It brought
to the fore an array of strong and exciting
female characters who, despite their eventual
‘taming’ as per the genre convention, have
lingered in the cultural imagination at their
most vibrant and dominant.
THIS SEASON SHOWCASES SOME OF THE
BEST EXAMPLES OF SCREWBALL COMEDY
12
Design For Living
Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 7.00pm
Ernst Lubitsch | USA 1933 | 91 min
A risqué relationship story and a witty take on creative
pursuits, the film concerns a commercial artist (Miriam
Hopkins) unable—or unwilling—to choose between
the painter (Gary Cooper) and the equally dashing
playwright (Fredrich March) she meets on a train en
route to Paris. Design for Living is film director Lubitsch
at his sexiest, an entertainment at once debonair and
racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure.
“A daring movie that satirizes sexual mores and heaps
irony upon irony.” (Scene Stealers.com)
My Man Godfrey
Sunday, 20 November 2016 at 7.00pm
Gregory La Cava | USA 1936 | 94 min
Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)
needs a “forgotten man” to win a scavenger hunt, and
no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park (William
Powell), who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene
hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged
family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia
(Gail Patrick), who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As
Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables
and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.
“My Man Godfrey, one of the treasures of 1930s
screwball comedy, doesn't merely use Lombard and
Powell, it loves them... God, but this film is beautiful.”
(Roger Ebert)
Design For Living
My Man Godfrey
The Doctor Takes A Wife
Sunday, 27 November 2016 at 7.00pm
William Wellman | USA 1937 | 77 min
Certain she was dying from radium poisoning, Hazel
Flagg (Carole Lombard) is delighted to learn from her
doctor that it was a false alarm. But when New York
City reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) shows up
looking for a story about a young girl braving terminal
illness, Hazel decides that she’s sick again. Wally whisks
her off to Manhattan, where her supposed courage
wins her many admirers. The toast of the town, she
falls in love with Wally and dreads being discovered.
Sunday, 11 December 2016 at 7:00pm
Alexander Hall | USA 1940 | 88 min
June Cameron (Loretta Young) is the successful
author of the book “Spinsters Aren’t Spinach”, about
how women don’t need men to feel fulfilled. She
makes the mistake of hitching a ride with Dr. Timothy
Sterling (Ray Milland) in a car festooned with a “Just
Married” sign. When reporters assume she’s married,
it’s the end of her book about the joys of the single
life, but also the start of a new career as the voice
of the married woman. When Sterling finds this
perception of marriage to be a career boost, he’s ready
to go along with the charade. Trouble is, Sterling’s
fiancee isn’t so thrilled with his bogus marriage.
“It’s one of the great screwball comedies of the ‘30s, one of
Carole Lombard’s best roles...shot in beautiful, understated
Technicolor, a real rarity in its time.” (Blu-Ray.com)
Holiday
Holiday
The Doctor Takes A Wife
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM
Nothing
Sacred
Nothing
Sacred
Nothing Sacred
Sunday, 4 December 2016 at 7.00pm
George Cukor | USA 1938 | 95 min
“Marvellous ‘sophisticated comedy’ about a prototype
dropout (Cary Grant in one of his best performances)
who takes a rich upper class family by storm: arriving
engaged to the conventionally snobbish younger
daughter, stirring up latent doubts and resentments
through his carefree disregard for material proprieties
and properties, he ends up by showing the yearningly
dissatisfied elder sister (Katharine Hepburn) the way
to a declaration of independence.” (Time Out)
“Katharine Hepburn is in her best form...her acting
is delightful and shaded with fine feeling and
understanding throughout.” (Variety)
13
Snuff
Friday, 18 November 2016 at 8.00pm
Michael Findlay, Roberta Findlay | USA 1976 | 76 min
A so-called “snuff” movie depicting the exploits of
a cult figure who leads a gang of bikers in a series of
supposedly real killings on film.
“Snuff might not be the ‘best’ film produced in the
Americas in the 1970s, but it may be the decade’s
most important ‘worst’ film. Rumoured to depict the
actual murder of a female crewmember in its final
moments, its notoriety consolidated the urban legend
of snuff film.” (Alexandra Heller-Nicholas)
Nasties II / II Nasties
Two of the more notorious entries from the
Video Nasties moral panic of the early 1980s.
I Spit On Your Grave
(aka Day Of The Woman)
Friday, 25 November 2016 at 8.00pm
Meir Zarchi | USA 1978 | 101 min
An aspiring writer is repeatedly gang-raped,
humiliated, and left for dead by four men whom she
systematically hunts down to seek revenge.
14
“There are some movies where the story behind the
film is more interesting that the story in the film.
Snuff is one of those movies, and the story behind the
film had repercussions that are with us to this day.
Though shoddily made and not nearly as controversial
as its reputation, Snuff has been at the centre of a
maelstrom of sex, death and politics ever since it was
first released in 1976.” (Stomp Tokyo)
“A surprisingly well-executed revenge story that
plays like a brutally raw nerve – a terrifyingly stark
view of the real horror of rape, painted by bizarre,
skewed cinematography, gory violence, and a keen
sense of creeping atmosphere and dread. To some,
I Spit on Your Grave is a masterpiece of the torture
genre because it presents a brutal reality and forces
audiences to endure it. To others, the film is nothing
more than filth. And to be frank, neither side is
entirely right or wrong.” (R. L. Schaffer)
“This movie is an expression of the most diseased and
perverted darker human natures. Because it is made
artlessly, it flaunts its motives. There is no reason to
see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of
sadism and suffering.” (Roger Ebert)
Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scald
Myself With Tea
The Sticky Fingers Of Time
Primer
Friday, 2 December 2016 at 8.00pm
Jindřich Polák | Czechoslovakia 1977 | 90 min
Sci-fi crazy comedy where, in the near future, a
technology enabling time travel has been developed
and is now in commercial use. A group of former Nazis
conspire to alter the results of the Second World War
by travelling back in time and supplying Adolf Hitler
with a hydrogen bomb. To this end, they bribe corrupt
time-machine pilot Karel, who agrees to assist them.
But only time will tell whether their plan can succeed.
Friday, 9 December 2016 at 8.00pm
Hilary Brougher | USA 1999 | 82 min
Tucker Harding (Terumi Matthews) is a female writer of
hard-boiled fiction from the 1950s, who is mysteriously
transported from 1950s to 1990s Brooklyn. There she
meets Drew (Nicole Zaray) who stumbles across a copy
of one of Tucker’s novels in a local book store and is
intrigued to find, inside the book, a newspaper clipping
describing Tucker’s death 40 years earlier. Drew tries to
unravel the mystery.
“A classically-structured farce which adds temporal
displacement to the traditional causes of comic
misunderstanding: twin brothers, duplicate suitcases,
small errors with knock-on effects. It really hits its
stride when it explores the best time-travel trope of
all – that if something goes wrong, you can always
go back in time again and try to fix it. It’s a brilliantly
plotted climax.” (MostlyFilm)
“Take that old favourite of filmmakers — the trials
and tribulations of relationships in New York — and
add to the equation the rather odd dimension of timetravel and what you get is this rather sweet number.
A distinctly low (even negligible) budget and a fresh
young cast of unknowns make this offbeat drama come
to life, and the witty script...keeps things bubbling
along nicely.” (Film4)
Friday, 16 December 2016 at 8.00pm
Shane Carruth | USA 2004 | 77 min
Engineers Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David
Sullivan) build and sell technology with the help of
their friends Robert (Casey Gooden) and Phillip (Anand
Upadhyaya). But when Aaron and Abe accidentally
invent what they think is a time-machine, Abe builds
a version capable of transporting a human and puts
the device to the test. As the two friends obsess over
their creation, they discover the dark consequences of
their actions.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM
TIME
TRAVEL
Awards: Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
2004. Best Feature Film, London International Festival
of Science Fiction 2005.
“Primer was head-scratchingly baffling for an awful lot of
the time... Yet it had me completely gripped like nothing
else around.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
15
PROGRAMME 2016
NOVEMBER 2016
OCTOBER 2016
Date
16
Film
DECEMBER 2016
Time
Date
Film
Time
Date
Film
Time
Sun
9 Oct
Musashi Miyamoto (p.4)
Z (p.6)
4.30
7.00
Fri
4 Nov
Prison on Fire (p.9)
8.00
Fri
2 Dec
Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald
Myself with Tea (p.15)
8.00
Fri
14 Oct
Contamination (p.8)
8.00
Sun
6 Nov
The New Land (p.5)
The Ascent (p.7)
3.00
7.00
Sun
4 Dec
King and Country (p.11)
Holiday (p.13)
4.30
7.00
Sun Duel at Ichijoji Temple (p.4)
16 Oct The Confession (p.6)
4.30
7.00
Fri
11 Nov
Full Contact (p.9)
8.00
Fri
9 Dec
The Sticky Fingers of Time (p.15)
8.00
Fri
21 Oct
Inseminoid (p.8)
8.00
Sun
13 Nov
Adua and Her Friends (p.10)
Design for Living (p.12)
4.30
7.00
Sun
11 Dec
Breaker Morant (p.11)
The Doctor Takes A Wife (p.13)
4.30
7.00
Sun Duel at Ganryu Island (p.4)
23 Oct State of Siege (p.6)
4.30
7.00
Fri
18 Nov
Snuff (p.14)
8.00
Fri
Primer (p.15)
16 Dec
8.00
Fri City on Fire (p.9)
28 Oct
8.00
Sun The Visit (p.10)
20 Nov My Man Godfrey (p.12)
4.30
7.00
Sun The Man Who Came to Dinner (p.30)
18 Dec (Christmas Special & Guild AGM)
4.30
Sat Carnival of Souls (Hallowe’en Special
29 Oct Screening) (p.30)
7.00
Fri
25 Nov
I Spit on Your Grave (p.14)
8.00
Sun
30 Oct
3.00
7.00
Sun
27 Nov
I Knew Her Well (p.10)
Nothing Sacred (p.13)
4.30
7.00
The Emigrants (p.5)
Wings (p.7)
Note: Brackets (p.1,2,3 etc) show the page number with details of each film.
PROGRAMME 2017
FEBRUARY 2017
JANUARY 2017
Date
Film
MARCH 2017
Time
Date
Film
Time
Date
Film
Time
Sun
15 Jan
Redes (p.18)
I Shot Jesse James (p.20)
4.30
7.00
Fri
3 Feb
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (p.23)
8.00
Fri
3 Mar
Death Line (p.28)
8.00
Fri
20 Jan
El Topo (p.22)
8.00
Sun
5 Feb
A River Called Titas (p.19)
The Crimson Kimono (p.21)
4.00
7.00
Sun
5 Mar
The Gambler (p.24)
Barry Lyndon (p.27)
4.30
7.00
Sun
22 Jan
The Housemaid (p.18)
The Steel Helmet (p.20)
4.30
7.00
8.00
Fri
Django (p.29)
10 Mar
8.00
Fri
27 Jan
The Holy Mountain (p.22)
8.00
Fri Female Convict Scorpion: Beast
10 Feb Stable (p.23)
Sun Trances (p.19)
12 Feb White Dog (p.21)
4.30
7.00
Sun Nobody’s Children (p.25)
12 Mar The Lady and the Duke (p.27)
4.30
7.00
Fri Lady Snowblood (p.23)
17 Feb
8.00
Fri
The Hellbenders (p.29)
17 Mar
8.00
Sun The Rocking Horse Winner (p.24)
19 Feb La Marseillaise (p.26)
4.30
7.00
Sun The White Angel (p.25)
19 Mar A Royal Affair (p.27)
4.30
7.00
Fri Quatermass and the Pit (p.28)
24 Feb
8.00
Fri
The Great Silence (p.29)
24 Mar
8.00
Sun California Split (p.24)
26 Feb Fellini’s Casanova (p.26)
4.30
7.00
Sun Touki Bouki (p.19)
29 Jan Run of the Arrow (p.21)
4.30
7.00
Note: Brackets (p.1,2,3 etc) show the page number with details of each film.
17
WORLD CINEMA PROJECT
THE FILM FOUNDATION'S WORLD CINEMA
PROJECT, ESTABLISHED BY MARTIN
The Housemaid (Hanyo)
SCORSESE, IS DEDICATED TO PRESERVING
Sunday, 22 January 2017 at 4.30pm
Kim Ki-Young | South Korea 1960 | 110 min |
Korean with English subtitles
A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal
is unleashed under one roof in this venomous
melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-Young.
AND RESTORING NEGLECTED FILMS FROM
AROUND THE WORLD.
Redes
THIS SEASON OFFERS A RARE OPPORTUNITY
Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 4.30pm
Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann | Mexico
1936 | 59 min | Spanish with English subtitles
In this vivid, documentary-like dramatisation of the
daily grind of men struggling to make a living by
fishing on the Gulf of Mexico, one worker’s terrible
loss sparkes a political awakening in he and his fellow
labourers. A singular coming together of talents,
Redes, commissioned by a progressive Mexican
government, was co-written and gorgeously shot by
the legendary photographer Paul Strand.
TO EXPERIENCE THE RICH DIVERSITY OF
THESE FILMS.
18
The Film Foundation has helped to restore nearly
700 films, which are made accessible to the public
through programming at festivals, museums, and
educational institutions around the world.
Redes is “packed with extraordinary imagery and a
powerful message. Redes hearkens back to Soviet
films from the decade prior and points toward the
Neorealist films in the decade to come.” (PopOptiq)
“The Housemaid is almost operatic in its depiction of a
presumably mild-mannered housekeeper who takes
revenge on her employer, his family, and anyone who
might have the least bit of affection for the pianoplaying patriarch. Formally quite radical, the film
jumps perspectives, breaks the fourth wall, and just
generally disregards conventional rules of storytelling.
And it’s all the more exciting for this restless, nearbaroque approach to narrative.” (Slant Magazine)
“The Housemaid, is one of the true classics of South
Korean cinema, and when I finally had the opportunity
to see the picture, I was startled. That this intensely,
even passionately claustrophobic film is known only to
the most devoted film lovers in the west is one of the
great accidents of film history.” (Martin Scorsese)
A River Called Titas (Titash Ekti Nadir Naam)
Trances (El Hal)
Sunday, 29 January 2017 at 4.30pm
Djibril Diop Mambéty | Senegal 1973 | 89 min |
Wolof with English subtitles
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the
naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid,
fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In
this French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama,
two young lovers (Magaye Niang and Mareme Niang)
long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of
France, but their escape plan is beset by complications
both concrete and mystical. Characterised by dazzling
imagery and music, the alternately manic and
meditative Touki Bouki is widely considered one of the
most important African films ever made.
Sunday, 5 February 2017 at 4.00pm*
Ritwik Ghatak | India 1973 | 158 min | Bengali with
English subtitles
The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly
beautiful, elegiac saga focuses on the tumultuous
lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of
the Titas River in pre-Partition East Bengal.
(*Please note earlier 4.00pm start.)
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 4.30pm
Ahmed El Maanouni | Morocco/France 1981
| 87 min | Arabic with English subtitles
The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is
the dynamic subject of this captivating musical
documentary. It tells the story of how this group of
musicians caused a social revolution in Morocco in the
early 1970s. By choosing a form of expression which
was a radical departure from the invasive “languid
Oriental sound”, they became the spokesmen for a
generation of rebellious youth.
Awards: Cannes Film Festival International Critics Award
“Shot through with French New Wave fizz that flies
in the face of conventional African cinema. Full of
experimental touches, frenetic editing, inspired flights
of fantasy...Mambéty’s debut has enough energy to get
to the moon - and back.” (Empire)
“What makes this epic movie so memorable is
Ghatak’s poetic feeling for landscapes and the
ordinary villagers whose lives play out against its
cyclical, natural rhythms...There is certainly nothing in
American cinema that feels anything remotely like A
River Called Titas.” (White City Cinema)
“The film is a work of pure genius. A passionate elegy
for a dying culture, it moved me profoundly, and
continues to haunt me to this day. Based on a novel
by the Bengali author Advaita Barman and adapted
for the screen by Ghatak, A River Called Titas, tells the
raw and powerful story of a dying river and a dying
culture.” (Deepa Mehta)
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 | SUNDAY AFTERNOONS
Touki Bouki
“What you see here is a mix of the poetry, the music
and the theatre that goes way back to the roots of the
Moroccan culture. And I think the group was singing
damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings
and their prayers all came through their singing.
And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El
Maanouni.” (Martin Scorsese)
19
Samuel Fuller
“The daring films of maverick American
filmmaker Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) were so
far ahead of their time that only now are they
fully appreciated as some of the most bravely
outspoken, politically progressive and visually
audacious works of the Hollywood studio era.
While his films bravely addressed urgent and
deeply sensitive historical and social issues
rarely touched by the studios, they were also
deeply entertaining.
Fuller is perhaps best summarised as, above
all, a master storyteller whose ardent love of a
good “yarn” gave his films their unique spark
of unexpected drama and emotional depth.”
(The Harvard Film Archive)
20
I Shot Jesse James
Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 7.00pm
Samuel Fuller | USA 1949 | 81 min
Bob Ford (John Ireland) murders his best friend Jesse
James (Reed Hadley) in order to obtain a pardon that
will free him to marry his girlfriend (Barbara Britton),
but is plagued by guilt and self-disgust.
I Shot Jessie James
“At once modest and intense, I Shot Jesse James is an
engrossing pocket portrait of guilt and psychological
torment, and an auspicious beginning [directorial
debut] for the maverick filmmaker.” (Criterion)
The Steel Helmet
Sunday, 22 January 2017 at 7.00pm
Samuel Fuller | USA 1951 | 81 min
A ragtag group of American soldiers battle against
superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist
temple during the Korean War.
The Steel Helmet
“A surprise commercial hit that celebrated the heroism
of the American G.I. while pointedly critiquing the
Korean War and the racist policies of the Army and
US government, The Steel Helmet defined a mixture
of genuine patriotism and skepticism unprecedented
in Hollywood and absolutely key to Fuller’s cinema.”
(Harvard Film Archive)
The Steel Helmet
White Dog
Sunday, 29 January 2017 at 7.00pm
Samuel Fuller | USA 1957 | 86 min
A embittered Confederate soldier (Rod Steiger) is unable
to accept the defeat of the South. Immediately after the
end of the Civil War, he heads West to seek out the still
proudly free Native Americans who, like him, have no
respect for the government of the United States.
Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 7.00pm
Samuel Fuller | USA 1982 | 90 min
Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American
racism was misunderstood and withheld from release
when it was made in the early eighties; today, this
notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and
gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a
young actress who adopts a lost German Shepherd
dog, only to discover through a series of horrifying
incidents that the dog has been trained to attack
black people, while Paul Winfield plays the animal
trainer who tries to correct this behaviour. A snarling,
uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait
of the evil done by that most corruptible of animals:
the human being.
“Fuller’s courageous and gripping scrutiny of race,
prejudice and patriotism was...far bolder than anything
Hollywood had seen...as a result [the film] was woefully
misunderstood and neglected.” (Harvard Film Archive)
The Crimson Kimono
The Crimson Kimono
White Dog
Sunday, 5 February 2017 at 7.00pm
Samuel Fuller | USA 1959 | 81 min
The friendship between Detectives Joe Kojaku (James
Shigeta) and Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) runs
deep and is seemingly impervious to racial tensions.
In the course of investigating a stripper’s murder they
meet Christine Downs (Victoria Shaw), who painted
her portrait. Both men fall in love with Christine, but
she only has eyes for Joe. Tensions rise between the
trio, and Joe can’t help seeing race as part of the issue.
“Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono is mostly a
hard-boiled cop thriller, but also manages to make
a defiant anti-racist statement without ever getting
on a soapbox. Fuller [also] keeps up equally with the
tricky murder case, never faltering or failing to provide
a gut-punch of a scene.” (Combustible Celluloid)
“Hate is a dog from hell in White Dog, Samuel Fuller’s
abused and abandoned late-career masterpiece about
homegrown racism. It’s easy to see why people did not
want to face Fuller’s unmuzzled provocation: Rather
than a reassuring pat on the back, the film leaves...[the
audience] with the view of conditioned hate spinning
among the characters like a Russian roulette, until it
attacks with precisely the kind of power that wrestles
the filmmaker’s audacity from its B-movie roots and
into politicized art.” (Slant Magazine)
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM
Run of the Arrow
Run of the Arrow
21
Alejandro Jodorowsky
El Topo
El Topo
The Holy Mountain
Chilean film and theatre director, screenwriter, and actor “venerated by cult
cinema enthusiasts” for his work which “is filled with violently surreal images
and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation.” (Senses of Cinema)
El Topo
The Holy Mountain (La montaña sagrada)
Friday, 20 January 2017 at 8.00pm
Alejandro Jodorowsky | Mexico/USA 1970 |124 min
| Spanish with English subtitles
A black-clad gunfighter (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
embarks on a symbolic quest in an Old West version
of Sodom and Gomorrah. The film takes place in two
parts. The first half resembles a Western, albeit a
surreal one. The second is a love story of redemption
and rebirth.
Friday, 27 January 2017 at 8.00pm
Alejandro Jodorowsky | Mexico/USA 1973 |115 min
| Spanish with English subtitles
A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque
scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious
imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces
him to seven wealthy and powerful people, each
representing a planet in the solar system. These
seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the
guide’s assistant, divest themselves of their worldly
goods and form a group of nine who will seek the Holy
Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there
and become immortal.
“El Topo is a gloriously wild, over-the-top tale that puts
the gory into allegory. It’s a surreal, biblical spaghetti
western with a strong shot of Zen.”
(Philip French, The Guardian)
The Holy Mountain is “astonishing, outlandish; unlike
anything made before or since...the movie comes
riddled, top to tail, with all manner of
extraordinary setpieces.” (Xan Brooks, The Guardian)
The Holy Mountain
The Holy Mountain
22
El Topo
with Meiko Kaji
Pinky Violence, a genre of Japanese
exploitation films that emerged in the
late 60’s, mixes the erotic elements found
in Pink Films with the action and violence
found in Yakuza crime films. They typically
feature sexy women being dragged through
hell and kicking ass because they’ve been
wronged and are looking for revenge, or
they’re just part of a bad ass gang of chicks
looking to keep hold of their turf.
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter
Female Convict Scorpion: Beast Stable
Lady Snowblood
Friday, 3 February 2017 at 8.00pm
Yasuharu Hasebe | Japan 1970 | 85 min | Japanese
with English subtitles
Mako (Meiko Kaji) and her girl gang “The Alleycats!”
enter a dispute with male rival street gangsters “The
Eagles”, a band of racist macho pigs who hate ‘halfbreeds’ (the offspring of mixed-race Afro-American/
Japanese couples). When one of the girls starts dating
a half-breed, the “The Eagles” begin a terror campaign
against them. Mako and her gang fight back.
Friday, 10 February 2017 at 8.00pm
Shunya Itô | Japan 1973 | 87 min | Japanese with
English subtitles
Following her successful prison break, Scorpion (Meiko
Kaji) is hiding in a brothel. Her friend tries to keep her
identity secret, but the brothel’s madam discovers
that Scorpion is the ex-girlfriend of the vice officer
who killed her lover. Torture follows, as the madam’s
lover was a member of the Yakuza, and his thuggish
cohorts try to frame Scorpion and get her re-arrested.
Friday, 17 February 2017 at 8.00pm
Toshiya Fujita | Japan 1973 | 96 min | Japanese
with English subtitles
Gory revenge is raised to the level of visual poetry in
Toshiya Fujita’s stunning Lady Snowblood. A major
inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga, this
endlessly inventive film, set in late nineteenthcentury Japan, charts the relentless path of vengeance
taken by a young woman (Meiko Kaji) whose parents
were the victims of brutal criminals.
“Youth! Violence! Meiko Kaji leading a girl gang called
“The Alleycats!” This is Japanese exploitation at an artful
and unexpectedly moving apex.” (Joseph A. Ziemba)
“A heady mix of fierce attitude, visual potency, and
unflinching violence...a stylish slice of Japanese
exploitation cinema that helped cement the fiendishly cool
Meiko Kaji’s status as an iconic screen siren.”
(Electric Sheep Magazine)
“Lady Snowblood is a classic...[offering] fans of martial
arts and samurai films plenty of action, a beautiful,
tragic heroine, a gripping tale of revenge, all set against
a fascinating historical backdrop.” (Beyond Hollywood)
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM
Pinky Violence
23
The Gamblers
The Rocking Horse Winner
California Split
The Gambler
Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 4.30pm
Anthony Pélissier | UK 1949 | 91 minutes
A young boy receives a rocking horse for Christmas and
soon learns that he is able to pick the winning horse at
the races. This adaptation of a story by D.H. Lawrence
works on several different levels: as an indictment of
the consuming nature of rampant materialism, as an
Oedipal nursery tale of a boy desperately trying to
earn the love of his cold mother, and as a tale of the
supernatural.
Sunday, 26 February 2017 at 4.30pm
Robert Altman | USA 1974 | 108 minutes
Charlie (Elliott Gould) is a motormouth gambler who
sucks Bill (George Segal) into his on-the-fly life after
they are mistaken for a pair of grifters at an old-folks’
poker house. Charlie is a magnetic personality who
always has the inside information and a new line on
a big score. Bill can’t help but follow him–he makes
everything sound so exciting!
Sunday, 5 March 2017 at 4.30pm
Karel Reisz | USA 1974 | 109 minutes
New York City English professor Axel Freed (James
Caan) outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But
privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling
addiction that threatens to destroy him.
“One of the most underrated post-war British movies.” (Film4)
“A British film which explores the complex links between
sex, money and power is rare indeed.” (Time Out)
24
“It’s funny, it’s hard-boiled, it gives us a bond between
two frazzled heroes trying to win by the rules in a
game where the rules require defeat. California Split
is a great movie and it’s a great experience, too; we’ve
been there with Bill and Charlie.” (Roger Ebert)
“James Caan is unforgettable in this tense
examination of a college professor who can’t stop
gambling. One of the many overlooked gems of the
1970s.” (Fantastica Daily)
“James Caan is excellent and the featured players are
superb...James Toback’s script commingles candor and
compassion, without hostility or superficial sociology
or patronizing.” (Variety)
“Love and death dance an endless tango in Raffaello Matarazzo’s
emotionally lavish melodramas.” (Slant Magazine)
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, film critics,
international festivalgoers, and other cinephiles
were swept up by the tide of Italian Neorealism.
Meanwhile, mainstream Italian audiences were
indulging in a different kind of cinema experience:
the sensational, extravagant melodramas of director
Raffaello Matarazzo.
Though turning to Neorealism for character types and
settings, these box office hits about splintered love
affairs and broken homes, all starring mustachioed
matinee idol Amedeo Nazzari and icon of feminine
purity Yvonne Sanson, luxuriate in delirious plot
twists and overheated religious symbolism.
“Check out any of Matarazzo’s films you can get your
hands on, but especially the twin bill of Nobody’s
Children and The White Angel. They are literally
loaded with magic.” (Films Worth Watching)
“The wonderfully precise characterizations and
costly thematic ripples anticipate Douglas Sirk and
the Coen brothers, yet Matarazzo’s films feel wholly
unique in terms of narrative pacing. Ebbs and flows
in a character’s life aren’t just built around cause and
effect, but a godly omniscience that is predetermined,
prefabricated to see how far these people are able to
bend.” (Slant Magazine)
Nobody’s Children
(I figli di nessuno)
Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 4.30pm
Raffaello Matarazzo | Italy 1952 | 96 min |
Italian with English subtitles
Nobody’s Children is the first half of an
overflowing diptych of melodramas chronicling
the labyrinthine misfortunes of a couple torn
cruelly apart by fate (and meddling villains).
When Guido (Amedeo Nazzari), a young count,
falls for Luisa (Yvonne Sanson), the poor daughter
of one of the miners who works at his family’s
quarry, his mother and her nefarious henchman
scheme epically to separate the two forever.
The White Angel
(L’angelo bianco)
Sunday, 19 March 2017 at 4.30pm
Raffaello Matarazzo | Italy 1955 | 155 min | Italian
with English subtitles
In The White Angel, Raffaello Matarazzo’s sequel to
his blockbuster Nobody’s Children, the perpetually
put-upon Guido and Luisa (Amedeo Nazzari and
Yvonne Sanson) return for a new round of trials and
tribulations. This time, the reversals of fortune are
even more insanely ornate, a plot twist involving
doppelgängers beats Hitchcock’s Vertigo to the punch
by three years, and the whole thing climaxes with a
jaw-dropping women-in-prison set piece.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 | SUNDAYS, 4.30PM
Matarazzo Melodramas
“Matarazzo maintains a narrative logic and emotional
authenticity that defy ridicule and race to the sublime.
Here is a unique, thrilling talent.” (The New York Times)
25
IMAGINING
18th CENTURY
EUROPE
Barry Lyndon
HISTORY, ADVENTURE, ROMANCE,
REVOLUTION. EUROPE DURING THE TIME
OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, AS REIMAGINED
IN THE WORK OF SOME OF EUROPE’S
GREATEST FILMMAKERS.
26
La Marseillaise
Fellini’s Casanova
Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 7.00pm
Jean Renoir | France 1938 | 132 min | French with
English subtitles
La Marseillaise focuses on the early part of the French
Revolution, shown primarily from the viewpoint
of the ordinary citizens of Marseille. While Renoir’s
sympathies clearly lie with the common people,
celebrating the common man bringing to an end the
feudal system and moving toward the idea of a nation
based on principles of liberty and equality, his film
also humanises the king and queen.
(Il Casanova di Federico Fellini)
La Marseillaise is “one of the finest and richest
historical films ever made.” (Martin Scorsese)
Adapted from the autobiography of Giacomo
Casanova, the 18th century adventurer and writer.
“Powerful and poignant, Renoir manages to make a
direct, humanist statement about the decadence of
the rich and the power of the masses without fuss or
extravagance, never patronising or posturing.” (Film4)
“A spectacular visual fantasy which succeeds in
capturing the emotional and moral void at the heart
of the Casanova myth.” (Film4)
Sunday, 26 February 2017 at 7.00pm
Federico Fellini | Italy 1976 | 154 min | Italian with
English subtitles
Vainly seeking wealthy patrons for his scholarly
pursuits, Casanova (Donald Sutherland) is seen as
both an intellectual figure of the Enlightenment and a
licentious voluptuary of a corrupt society about to be
swept away by the French Revolution. He’s inexorably
drawn by his inclinations and reputation into a
succession of chilly, unfulfilling sexual encounters.
The Lady and the Duke
A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære)
Sunday, 5 March 2017 at 7.00pm
Stanley Kubrick | UK 1975 | 184 min
Stanley Kubrick’s exquisitely detailed adaptation
of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about
the picaresque exploits of an 18th century Irish
adventurer. Despite the obstacle of his relatively poor
Irish birth, Raymond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) manages
by various stratagems and devices to become the
wealthy but ill-respected Barry Lyndon.
(L’Anglaise et le Duc)
Sunday, 19 March 2017 at 7.00pm
Nikolaj Arcel | Denmark 2012 | 137min | Danish and
English with English subtitles
The struggle between a conservative, repressive
aristocracy and the ideas of the Enlightenment
are played out in this story of the love affair in the
1770s between England’s Princess Caroline Matilda
(Alicia Vikander), wife of the mentally ill Danish King
Christian, and the king’s German physician, Johann
Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), both social progressives.
Awards: British Academy Award for Best Director.
Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Costume
Design, Art Direction, and Adapted Musical Score.
“Kubrick’s pictorial sense is consistently mesmerising
and engaging...You can’t tear your eyes from it...
[the film] creates a world that is sumptuously, even
shockingly, vivid.” (Anthony Quinn, The Independent)
Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 7.00pm
Eric Rohmer | France 2001 | 129 min | French with
English subtitles
During the French Revolution, Scottish aristocrat Grace
Elliott (Lucy Russell) and her former lover, the Duke
of Orleans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), find themselves on
opposite sides of the conflict. Elliot’s friendship with the
Duke is tested severely when he votes in the revolutionary
convention for the King’s death.
The story is adapted from the 18th-century journals of
Edinburgh-born expatriate Scotswoman Grace Elliott.
Rohmer’s ”masterstroke is to evoke 18th century Paris
in the style of paintings from the period — the actors
were shot on blue screen with the paintings dropped
in afterwards. They look as if they are in a pop-up
book...the effect is strangely artificial and hyper-real.”
(BBC Film Review)
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM
Barry Lyndon
“Arcel gives this true story the shape and bite of a wellcrafted fiction, and its political themes are every bit as
stirring as the romance.” (Robbie Collin, The Telegraph)
“This struggle between a conservative, repressive
regime and representatives of Enlightenment
preceded the French Revolution and is crucially related
to the issues of their day and to the present.” (Philip
French, The Guardian)
27
Quatermass and the Pit
(aka Five Million Years to Earth)
Going Underground
Where cannibals and spaceships are just
another part of the daily commute.
28
Friday, 24 February 2017 at 8.00pm
Roy Ward Baker | UK 1967 | 97 min
When a team of anthropologists led by Dr. Mathew
Roney (James Donald) and his assistant (Barbara
Shelley) discover a cylindrical object and primate
bones in an underground construction site, rocket
scientist Dr. Quatermass (Andrew Keir) is called in to
decipher its origins and explain its strange effects on
people. The film was written by Nigel Kneale.
“Quatermass and the Pit stands out as one of Hammer
Films Productions most artistically successful
ventures, offering...a world troubled by violence
and demon-haunted ancient fears that is a long
way removed from the optimistic spirit of the age
so often conveyed in popular culture of the period.”
(Horrorview.com)
“The narrative, and the concepts that drive [the
film] ...are both brilliant and original, and all that is
required is to allow them to dazzle. Effectively, the
script is the star. The influence of Kneale’s masterwork
is always lurking in modern sci-fi, where his original
ideas have now become ubiquitous staples. As
such, the legacy of Quatermass and the Pit is hard to
underestimate.” (Independent Cinema Office)
Death Line
“A minor masterpiece of British horror.“ (Film4)
(aka Raw Meat)
“One of the great British horror films, Death Line is a
classic example of what Hellraiser director Clive Barker
calls ‘embracing the monstrous’.“ (Time Out)
Friday, 3 March 2017 at 8.00pm
Gary A. Sherman | UK 1972 | 87 min
An underground tunnel collapses in London in 1892,
and those trapped under its rubble survive only by
eating one another’s flesh. Subsequent generations
live on via similar means, but eventually only one
person remains. Forced out of hiding, the diseaseridden cannibal begins to look for his nutrition on the
platform of Russell Square tube station. The film stars
Donald Pleasence as Inspector Calhoun.
“This is one of the best of the contemporary-set British
horrors , and competes with the stronger American
movies with its very clever, gruesome premise, dollops
of splatter, lots of cynicism and some nice, down-atheel London locations...a very inventive and effective
thriller, with a fantastic turn from Pleasence.” (Empire)
“It’s a bleak, brilliant and violent vision
of an immoral West.” (PopOptiq)
Django
The Hellbenders (I Crudeli)
Friday, 10 March 2017 at 8.00pm
Sergio Corbucci | Italy/Spain 1966 | 92 min | Italian
with English subtitles
Django (Franco Nero) rides into a town controlled by
two rival factions: a gang of racist KKK types wearing
red hoods and a gang of gold-hungry Mexicans.
In Fistful of Dollars style, Django plays both gangs
against each other in an attempt to get money and
possibly revenge. Django's motivations for his actions
are left vague throughout, although...hinted at.
Friday, 17 March 2017 at 8.00pm
Sergio Corbucci | Italy/Spain 1967 | 90 min | Italian
with English subtitles
Colonel Jonas (Joseph Cotton) is a fanatical and
unrepentant ex-Confederate who led a regiment
called ‘The Hellbenders’ in the recently ended Civil
War. Colonal Jonas and his sons now plan to use
stolen money as a way to revive the Confederacy.
“Django is considered the finest example of the Spaghetti
Western genre outside of the famous Sergio Leone films,
and rightly so. Its director, Sergio Corbucci, had a stronger
stomach for violence and took his stories further around
the bend than Leone.” (Combustible Celluloid)
The Great Silence
The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio)
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM
Sergio Corbucci’s West
Friday, 24 March 2017 at 8.00pm
Sergio Corbucci | Italy/France 1968 | 115 mins |
Italian with English subtitles
Set in the Utah Territory during a bitter cold winter of
1899, a mute gunslinger appropriately named Silence
(Jean-Louis Trintignant) faces off against a gang of
blood-thirsty bounty hunters led by their vicious
German leader, Loco (Klaus Kinski). With a haunting
musical score from maestro Ennio Morricone.
“Silence is cool, calm and silent and Loco is ruthless
and cunning and talks too much. Watching them
onscreen together is utterly engrossing. Director
Sergio Corbucci’s unrelenting spaghetti western is a
must see.” (PopOptiq)
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Carnival of Souls
Special Screenings
Hallowe’en and Christmas
Saturday, 29 October 2016 at 7.00pm
Herk Harvey | USA 1962 | 78 min
Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is enjoying the day by
riding around in a car with two friends, when the car
is forced off a bridge. It appears that all are drowned,
until Mary, quite some time later, amazingly emerges
from the river. After recovering, Mary is dogged by a
mysterious phantom figure (Herk Harvey) that seems
to reside in an old run-down pavilion. It is here that
Mary must confront her personal demons and lack of
spiritual self-awareness.
The Man Who Came to Dinner
Sunday, 18 December 2016 at 4.30pm
William Keighley | USA 1942 | 112 min
A classic comedy in which a pompous lecturer is
forced to spend the winter in a prominent Ohio
family’s home due to injury and proceeds to meddle
with the lives of everyone in the household. Cast
includes: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Jimmy Durante,
Mary Wickes and Monty Woolley.
The screening will be followed by the Edinburgh Film
Guild AGM and Christmas Party.
30
“This is one of the most original and unsettling horror
movies to come out of America during its B-movie
saturated, drive-in friendly period.” (Film4)
A “macabre masterpiece”. (Criterion)
“It’s difficult to overstate how important Carnival
Of Souls is in the history of the independent horror
movie. Legions of subsequent micro-budget horror
directors owe Harvey...a debt of gratitude. From
George A. Romero, who openly acknowledges the
visual influence that Carnival had on his black and
white classic Night Of The Living Dead...independent
horror filmmakers are all treading in Harvey’s
footsteps.” (Empire Magazine)
“The great cast mirthfully brings on the savage
dialogue and relishes in the malicious nature of the
satire.” (Dennis Schwartz)
“It’s rather unimaginatively directed, but the
performers savour the sharp, sparklingly cynical
dialogue with glee.” (Time Out)
“Vive the
Guild!”
A bit of History: Philip French on the Edinburgh
Film Guild, marking its 75th anniversary in 2004
Before the coming of television, video cassettes,
media studies, the art house, the National Film
Theatre and its regional equivalents, the principal
source of systematic serious film-going was the film
society movement. That’s where we saw – often
in joyfully masochistic discomfort – new foreign
language movies, the canon from the silent and the
talking eras. There are few alive today who attended
the first British institution of its kind, known simply as
the Film Society, launched in London in 1925 to show
avant-garde work and films banned by over restrictive
censors. Its founding members included Bernard
Shaw, H G Wells, Roger Fry and John Maynard Keynes,
and it was one of the few occasions when all kinds of
artists and intellectuals came together in Britain to
celebrate the great new art of the 20th century. This
Film Society was already a legendary organisation
when my friends and I began to pay serious attention
to the cinema in the years following World War II and
discovered with something like awe that in 1929 the
Society had put on a double bill of John Grierson’s
Drifters and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin,
with both directors present. The Film Society closed
in April 1939, but a decade before it expired, it had
inspired the creation of the Edinburgh Film Guild,
which to this day shows no sign of dimming the lights.
From the Guild came the Edinburgh Film Festival that
has run alongside and complemented the Edinburgh
International Festival since its inception in 1947.
From the start, the Guild spread its net as those
trawlers celebrated in Drifters, including classics
from the silent period which had just then come to
a close, documentaries, foreign movies and works
from the international avant-garde. “The old London
Film Society” wrote Grierson in 1951, “was the first
to break from somewhat exclusive attention to the
avant-garde and take the longer and harder way of
the Russians and more purposive users of the cinema.
But it was the Edinburgh Film Guild which completed
the movement – as the London Film Society did
not – and saw the infinite variety of a Film Society’s
obligations to all categories of the medium”. Having
been inspired by London, the Guild did not take its
cues from there or look to the English metropolis
for leadership. Like the Auld Alliance with France, it
looked directly abroad, establishing its own cultural
links and exerting its own vision, as has its creation,
the Film Festival.
Long before Ingmar Bergman achieved belated
fame in London with The Seventh Seal and Wild
Strawberries, which led to the screening of his earlier
films there, his work was well known in Scotland
through the percipience of the Guild’s organisers.
Among those, I must mention my late friend Forsyth
Hardy, co-founder of the Guild and the Festival,
who died in 1994. Long-time film critic of The
Scotsman, biographer of Grierson, author of books
on Scandinavian Cinema, Scotland on Film, and a
charming history of the Guild and the Film Festival
itself, he produced a couple of hundred films for
the various Scottish Government Departments. He
was also co-editor of the seminal Cinema Quarterly,
another offshoot of the Guild, published between
1932 and 1935. Hardy was a beacon of common sense,
a man of catholic tastes and wide sympathies, but
an enemy of cant, pretentious jargon and ideological
judgements. Meeting him every August at the
Festival was one of the highlights of my cinema-going
year. No one, not even Grierson, has made a greater
contribution to the Scottish film culture. It is good to
find that what he helped to create – the Guild and the
Festival – is flourishing and responsive to change.
On this auspicious occasion, I can only resort to the
language of the Auld Alliance and say, Vive the Guild!
— Philip French, 2004
Philip French (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film
critic who began writing for The Observer in 1963, and continued to write
criticism regularly there until his retirement in 2013. Upon his death,
French was referred to by his Observer successor Mark Kermode as “an
inspiration to an entire generation of film critics.”
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