Suggest a film for 2013-14
Please let us have your ideas for films for next season. We’re keen to screen films that could attract a hundred people, and those that aren’t necessarily too widely known. We’re also keen to know about any great shorts we could screen.
We do keep reviewing the suggestions from previous years, since there are always good ideas in those lists. You might want to have a look at them:
Most of the films we screen are sourced from one of three distributors, and you can check out their catalogues:
But, we license films from other sources as well, so we have a large number of things to choose from.
Grateful if you can also add a short note about why you think we should screen it.
I’ll kick off with my ideas:
Mandala, Im Kwon Taek, 1980: A buddhist Narziss and Goldmund, which I saw again at NFT recently, and is as good as I remember it from 20 years ago. Forest Row would love it. Not yet available on DVD though a release has been implied after the recent restoration…
No, Pablo Larrain, 2012: Recently in competition at LFF, and several of the committee saw a preview at BFFS conference. It’s fab, and 40 years since fall of Allende next year. It is also on the BFFS booking scheme.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Robert Guédiguian, 2011: A big hit in France, popular with the BFFS conference audience, and I loved it when it was at LFF last year. Ideal for us.
The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg, 2012: Tense and gripping, lots of good reviews, with Mads Mikkelsen, and is available from BFFS.
Wadjda, Haifaa al-Mansour, 2012: Saudi film about a girl and a bike. Wonderful reaction after the LFF screening.
NB: The DVD Of Mandala is now available (via the Korean Film Archive)
and there is a useful interview with Im Kwon-taek
How about Las Acacias (2011) 85 mins. Director Pablo Giorgelli. Guardian review: eloquent, unforced, beguiling, moving … a very satisfying love story.
I suggest Burnt by the sun Mikalkov, Shop around the Corner, l’important c’est d’aimer A Zulawski, Kaos Taviani Brothers.
Can get DVDs of Burnt by the Sun; Shop around the corner. The Zulawski is available from Mondo Vision, and had great review in Sight and Sound. Kaos also available but very long. We’d need to source licence-holders for all of them.
Could we have some current films. Other film societies in the area seem to screen popular films not too long after they have gone off general release.
Jane, what sort of things have you in mind? Our opening film this season, Even the Rain, had only just been in cinemas, and next month’s A Royal Affair only came out a few months ago. If you mean more mainstream, English language films, on the few occasions we have done this we’ve not had terribly large audiences.
Dersu Uzala
A film based in the book “Dersu the Trapper” from V.K. Arseniev. I recommend the version from Akira Kurosawa (1975) although I think there is one from Agasi Babayan (1961).
I think it can be a nice Transition Film. It is a quiet and nice film to think on nature and friendship. I do not know if maybe is a bit long for the Film Society.
“The film explores the theme of a native of the forests who is fully integrated into his environment, leading a style of life that will inevitably be destroyed by the advance of civilization. It is also about the growth of respect and deep friendship between two men of profoundly different backgrounds, and about the difficulty of coping with the loss of strength and ability that comes with old age.”
Thanks Teresa, the Kurosawa is now available on DVD, so we’d need to find out if the non-theatrical rights are easily available. I think the committee have spoken about it before.
A strange Japanese film called ‘Onibaba’ impressed me years ago.
Also another strange one called ‘Koyannisqatsi’ (not sure the spelling is correct).
I keep looking at Onibaba in the shops. Looks interesting. And Koyaanisqatsi is a good idea too; it is year since I saw it, but it is very mesmerising. Thanks!
Anthony Asquith’s Underground is to get a theatrical release. If it also gets a DVD release that would be a perfect candidate for our pre-1929 programme next season. I saw it at LFF a couple of years ago and it is one of the best British silent films.
DVD due out in June. Read more in this excellent piece on the Guardian blog
Material is a new South African comedy that I saw at LFF and was very enjoyable, and I could imagine it appealing to our audience.
The Norwegian Kitchen Stories is also quite funny in a wry, sardonic kind of way, and it was one i enjoyed very much.
Michael Haneke’s new film Amour has had stunning reviews everywhere, and seems essential programming to me.
and, for a silent film, Sjostrom’s The Outlaw is wonderful, with fantastic location filming and a great, morally ambiguous story.
Definitely want to see Koyaanisqatsi. May I suggest the Human Condition trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi?
Hmm, Human Condition looks fantastic, though programming all of it would be a challenge; we’d need a whole day, with meal breaks and (by the sound of it) counselling. I don’t think I’ve seen any Kobayashi at all.
The massive French hit Intouchables is also a great choice, suggested over on the FRFS Facebook page
The marvellous music documentary Searching for Sugar Man was a huge hit when shown at Saffron Screen; everyone I know that has seen it has loved it and it has had great reviews from Empire to Roger Ebert.
It has also just won the award for best documentary at the BAFTAs
Tony Britten’s In Love with Alma Cogan, which was screened at the BFFS conference in September and which the committee loved.
A huge personal favourite is Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain, which came out a year or so ago but didn’t get a UK release, despite its good reviews (eg Time Out. I would trade all other options for this one…
and for older films, one of the fabulous medieval films of František Vláčil, either Valley of the Bees
or (the longer) Marketa Lazarova:
Also suggested over on the Forest Row Film Society Facebook site is Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
See the fantastic reviews: Eye for Film, Empire, Roger Ebert, and Philip French.
Other possibilities, which are among the most-frequently-booked films from BFFS last year are:
Incendies
Loose Cannons (see the comments as well as the review)
Mademoiselle Chambon
Pomegranates and Myrrh
Came across a documentary about life in Brittany a hundred years ago, Le Cheval d’Orgueil (translated as The Horse of Pride or The Proud Ones) dir. Claude Chabrol 1980 from the book by Pier-Jakes Helias. There are only two brief clips on YouTube It only scored 6.2 on the IMDB and it may be difficult to get hold of a DVD with English subtitles as part of it is in Breton. Perhaps worth following up though – I will try.
Here a few possibilities that crossed my mind for next season:
Dreams of a life
I’m not there (Biopic/Music/Bob Dylan)
Babette’s Feast
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita)
Marlene (documentary by Maximilian Schell)
Spirit of the Bee Hive
Cosmopolis (Cronenberg)
Existenz (Cronenberg)
The Royal Tenenbaums
Jean Vigo! Atalante / A propos de Nice/ Zero de Conduite
The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergej Paradjanov)
Cinema Paradiso
Silent: Turksib
Silent The House on Trubnaya Street (DVD: Landmarks of Early Soviet Film, but don’t know if available in the UK)
again: Le Quattro Volte
The Master (Anderson)? Haven’t seen yet, but sounds very interesting
There is a good piece on the Sight and Sound site about The House on Trubnaya Street
Silent Souls
An Italian film set in Russia and released in 2012.
“When Miron’s beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye to her according to the rituals of the Merja culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero, a picturesque region in West-Central Russia. Although the Merja people assimilated into Russians in the 17th century, their myths and traditions live on in their descendants’ modern life. The two men set out on a road trip thousands of miles across the boundless land, with them, two small birds in a cage. Along the way, as is custom for the Merjans, Miron shares intimate memories of his conjugal life. But as they reach the banks of the sacred lake where they will forever part with the body, he realizes he wasn’t the only one in love with Tanya.”
Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwITu17zD6w
Suggested at last week’s film:
The History of Mr Polly
and an Oscar-winning short:
The Bespoke Overcoat
Hadewijch
The film LEMON TREE (Israeli / Palestinian ?) won many awards and was recommended by a friend who saw it recently on Film Four. From seeing the trailer on the Internet it looks like a great film for our film society.
Hi Hanna, that’s a good suggestion. There is a good review in Time Out, and here’s the trailer:
On 11 September this year it is the fortieth anniversary of the fall of Salvador Allende, so it would be very wonderful to have a screening of Patricio Guzman’s The Battle of Chile (he is also the director of Nostalgia for the Light. It is a completely brilliant documentary about the events leading up to the coup. It is long, and we’d need two breaks (there are three parts), and present it as a special Saturday screening. Available from Icarus.
Here’s a clip (no subtitles):
Dark Horse (Voksne Mennesker) (2005) – Dagur Kari.
Dersu Uzala – Akira Kurosawa
A few kilos of dates for a wedding – Saman Salur
Together – Lukas Moodysson
Reprise – Joachim Trier
Nothing left to do but cry – Massimo Troisi & Roberto Benigni
La citta delle donne – Federico Fellini
The Legend of 1900 – Giuseppe Tornatore
Be Kind Rewind – Michel Gondry
Reykjavik 101 – Baltasar Kormakur
The Tears of the Black Tiger – Wisit Sasanatieng
Dirt! the Movie – Bill Logan
Little Tibet is another good candidate since Joe Brett is from Forest Row, and it is a very engaging documentary….
The Naked Night/Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas Afton) Ingmar Bergman | Sweden | 1953 | 92mins | Available Now on Blu-Ray only
An early, expressionistic master-piece, this title is considered one of Bergman’s finest films. The story centres around a small, run down circus company, touring the south of Sweden in very early 1920s. Every day is a fight for survival, for food, shelter and human dignity. Under the circus canvas a wide variety of human feelings are exhibited: passion, wrath, envy, jealousy, failure, endurance, humiliation, pride and the blessing of good laughter. One day, when the circus stops in the home town of Albert, the director, the result is a performance never to be forgotten.
Children of Nature (Börn náttúrunnar)
Friðrik Þór Friðriksson | Ice, Ger, Nor| 1991 | 82mins | Available now on DVD only An aging couple decide to make the most of the time they have left in this lighthearted but poignant drama. Thornier Kristmundsson has spent most of his life working a farm in the northern part of Iceland. Thornier decides to retire, so he relocates to Reykjavik, where he moves in with his daughter and her family. However, the younger members of the family don’t get along with Thornier, and in time his daughter sends him off to a retirement home. While at the home, he meets a fellow resident named Stella (Sigridur Hagalin), whom Thornier loved as a young man. Thornier and Stella quickly renew their friendship, and one day they sneak away from the home, swipe a jeep, and head for the country, hoping to pay a final visit to the town where they both grew up. Children of Nature was the first film from Iceland to earn an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Film.
The Growth of the Soil (Markens grøde)
Gunnar Sommerfeldt | Norway | 1921 | 107mins | Available now on DVD only
Based on Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s Nobel Prize-winning novel The Growth of the Soil, this silent movie was enthusiastically received when it was first released in 1921. Assumed lost for decades, it appears in a carefully restored version, in which the drama of the pioneer farmer Isak and his struggle to conquer the wilderness and wring a living out of it for himself and his family, is accompanied by the much acclaimed original music score by Leif Halvorsen, performed by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra conducted by Frank Strobel
These are all available from BFFS. I don’t know the first two, but have seen The Growth of the Soil. It is a fascinating drama, with lots of outdoor filming, though I didn’t find it as compelling as Sjostrom’s The Outlaw (see above, 11 December)
Suggested via email:
Der Muede Tod (Destiny) by Fritz Lang (1921)
Read reviews
Suggested at the committee meeting and thereafter:
Shower
I Wish
Adam’s Apples
The Awful Truth
My Night with Maud
Thinking about I Wish here is a lovely video essay on Koreeda on the Sight and Sound site, The world according to Koreeda.
After our Hendrix evening, it would be great to do more music-themed films. Searching for Sugar Man is one, mentioned above.
Could also include:
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
and some of the rather wonderful sounds of Sigur Rós
Just to clarify: a series of films made in response to Sigur Ros’ ‘Valtari’ album http://sigur-ros.co.uk/valtari/videos/
also shown as an evening event at ‘a small cinema’ in Manchester
The Royal Tenenbaums – concur!
Withnail & I
Shawshank Redemption
Cinema Paradiso – concur!
The recent Jane Eyre is terrific and I don’t think it got that much of a release, did it?
Considering how successful The Fairy it has also been suggested we show more of their films:
Rumba
Iceberg
Several people have suggested Berberian Sound Studio, which has had lots of great reviews.
And let’s not forget that Babette’s Feast has just been re-released, and it is the new pope’s favourite film.
Two suggestions from Friday:
Daniel Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Roland Joffé’s City of Joy (1992)
The Real Dirt on Farmer John.
Not sure if you’ve played this film or not, but it’s a great documentary about one man’s experience at his farm over the years.
Hi Andrew
Thanks for the suggestion. We have indeed screened this, probably a couple of years ago.
Two (musical) suggestions for future inspirational film viewings….
http://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie
http://www.allegrofilms.com/film/Alice_Sommer_Herz_EVERYTHING_IS_A_PRESENT_Alice_Sommer_Herz_music_documentary.php
I love the sound of The Smallest Show on Earth, since it is about a tiny cinema, and stars Peter Sellars.
A suggestion from Cesca: Angel-A by Luc Besson.
Also suggested My Name is Khan (161 mins)