Suggest a film for 2014-15
As in previous years, we’re looking for your ideas for films for next season. We’re keen to screen films that could attract a hundred people, as well as those that aren’t necessarily too widely known, and to cover a balance between serious and light. Films should cover all of cinema’s history, and from anywhere in the world. We’re also keen to know about any great shorts we could screen.
We do review the suggestions from previous years as well, since there are always good ideas in those lists. You might want to have a look at them:
It would be ideal if you can also add a short note about why you think we should screen it, and how long ago you last saw it.
First off, my list of possibles from ones I saw at this year’s London Film Festival (assuming they get UK distribution in time):
“Henry” Yolande Moreau excellent
Suggested last year, and again this year, the great French hit Untouchable.
A small list suggested at the AGM:
A Town Called Panic
Delicatessen
Goodbye Lenin!
Duck Soup
Recent films, highlighted in the Sight & Sound review of 2013:
The Act of Killing (top in the critics’ poll)
The Great Beauty
12 Years a Slave
Gloria
Hannah Arendt
The Great Beauty I saw it excellent
And I loved Gloria by Jim Jarmush
12 years a slave going to see it tomorrow will let you knows
Then, in addition to The Act of Killing some more possibles for a documentary strand:
1. Restrepo
2. Sweetgrass which could be part of a Western-themed weekend with Meek’s Cutoff and Hell’s Hinges (1916)
3. Chasing Ice
4. Bomb Harvest
and the rather fantastic Black Sun
Some classics:
Paul Fejos’ extraordinary 1928 film Lonesome
The Czech masterpiece Valley of the Bees
Lois Weber’s amazing Suspense (1913)
Light and enjoyable: Sunshine on Leith
This has to be essential, after the great success of The Great White Silence
There was some great films on at the recent Independent Cinema festival in Brighton. Many of these would go well at the Film Society!
Vi är bäst! (We are the best!)Swedish director Lukas Moodysson’s latest work celebrates the joys of being a teenager in 1980s Stockholm. Moodysson’s light touch extracts some wonderful, funny but natural performances from his young cast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfPytPjV1xc
La Jaula de Oro (The Golden Dream) is Diego Quemada-Diez’s (Ken Loach’s camera assistant) debut feature follows three Guatemalan teenagers as they journey across perilous Mexico to illegally cross the border in to the US, in search of a better life. Loach’s influence can be clearly seen here, its a bleak matter of fact, unsentimental and powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBBNmC2JWGU
Alice by Czech surrealist director Jan Svankmajer mixes one live actor with stop-go animation creatures from the a complex White Rabbit through to the Caterpillar who is created from a sock, a couple of glass eyes and a pair of false teeth. Whilst the film follows Lewis Carroll tale, this is probably not a film for children but one that should achieve high scores from a friday night audience.
Trailer
Algorithms is an Indian film (made in 2012 and yet to be released) directed by Ian McDonald that follows the thriving though little known blind community in India. This is a mesmerising observational treatment of a world that few of us can imagine. While touch provides the blind players with a vision of the board as it is, foresight gives them the ability to see beyond the immediate and calculate probabilities of future actions.
Algorithms Trailer
What about exhibitions on screen or one of the music films produced by Phil Grabsky?
We could have:
Manet: Portraying Life, which was at the Royal Academy earlier this year
Vermeer and Music, from the National Gallery
Munch 150
and there will be some others next year…
and for music docs, there are the acclaimed:
In Search of Beethoven
In Search of Haydn
In Search of Mozart
and In Search of Chopin is currently in production
Next year is also the centenary of the start of the Great War. What could we show? There’s going to be loads of things on TV and about then, so it would be best to do things that are not so obvious, perhaps.
Documentaries such as The Act of Killing and Restrepo mentioned above would fit, for me.
I also like the idea of screening films from the period, just on the cusp of the outbreak of the war, and then from the war years. Possible candidates could be:
Lois Weber’s Suspense (1913)
Feuillade’s fantastic Fantomas
Alice Guy Blaché’s A House Divided
Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm
One of the Onesime films of Jean Durand
The animation Gertie the Dinosaur
etc etc… Lots more research required. Anyone else interested?
Next year is the anniversary of the start of the ‘Great’ War, so we’ll have four years to have related films. Some that I’d like to screen include:
– Lawrence of Arabia. Apart from being an amazing film itself, it gives some insights into the make up of the current Middle East and the role the British (and French) played in shaping it.
– The History of Oil. Robert Newman. Both very funny and insightful history that shows up WW1 as a war for resources.
Joyeux Noël/Merry Christmas is a 2005 French film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers.
http://www.joyeuxnoel-lefilm.com
Details on wikipedia.org
Good reviews, eg Time Out, Film Journal International
La Grande Illusion (1937) Directed by Jean Renoir with Jean Gabin concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape. The title of the film comes from the book The Great Illusion by British economist Norman Angell, which argued that war is futile because of the common economic interests of all European nations. The perspective of the film is generously humanistic to its characters of various nationalities. It is regarded by critics and film historians as one of the masterpieces of French cinema and among the greatest films ever made.
The Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hctrYzVYmfM
More on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Illusion
Paths of Glory
Set in 1916 in the French trenches, Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb.The film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack. Dax attempts to defend them against a charge of cowardice in a court-martial.
Trailer http://www.criterion.com/films/27522-paths-of-glory
More details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paths_of_Glory
Given that the war went on for 4 years these WW1 don’t all need to be candidates for the 2014/5 season
Jackie also suggest Which Way is the Front Line from Here?, doc about the war photographer Tim Hetherington.
Telegraph review
Alan Bennett’s first television play, A Day Out, was written in 1969.
In 1911, a Halifax cycling club has a day trip to the ruins of Fountains Abbey, on the way discussing their lives and concerns, blithely unaware of what will happen to them and their country over the next few years.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/505033/
It would also be interesting to do a double bill of films by Manoel de Oliviera, whose first film was a silent in 1931, and is still making films today at 105. I’ve only seen two of the ones on the following list, but Jonathan Romney’s article is a useful source.
Start with the 1931 short: Labour on the Douro River
and then one of:
1. Inquietude
2. No, or the vain glory of command
3. My Case
4. I’m Going Home
5. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl
6. The Strange Case of Angelica
And in 2014 Halloween falls on a Friday so we could screen Dreyer’s marvellous Vampyr
Read more:
Criterion
Guardian
carlthdreyer.dk
or Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, which should be getting a BFI re-release.
See also the piece on the BFI website
Vampyr: Alfred Hitchcock said was “the only film worth watching… twice”
We need more films from south Asia. A few have been suggested to me:
Water, and there’s a bit of background
Ramchand Pakistani
Need to explore this option a bit more, I think.
More generally, the dilms screened at the Dubai Film Festival should give some ideas for interesting-sounding films that probably have never been released here, including some shorts. Also the Scene Club in Dubai screens some interesting things, which we should review.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ukrainian) [also called Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, Shadows of Our Ancestors, or Wild Horses of Fire] – is a 1964 film by the Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov based on the classic book by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. The film was Parajanov’s first major work and earned him international acclaim for its rich use of costume and colour. The film also features a detailed portrayal of Ukrainian Hutsul culture, showing not only the harsh Carpathian environment and brutal family rivalries, but also the beauty of Hutsul traditions, music, costumes, and dialect.
On its release, the film’s presentation contrasted with the common socialist realism style that had government approval. After refusing to change the film, Parajanov was soon blacklisted from Soviet cinema.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GoXMSAMOyg
“Der fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman”)
A beautiful, masterly DEFA(East German) music film from 1964, B&W. Being screened throughout the world in 2013 as part of the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth is the newly-restored version of one of the first complete (or nearly complete – in this case) Wagner operas on film. Probably available through Goethe Institute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ1_ZwMbstg&list=LLqkx_81Lmt5FrZExaDraibw&index=8
Documentaries
Mark Cousins: “A Story of Children and Film”
A fabolous journey through the way children are portrayed in film.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/17/story-of-film-and-children-cannes-review
http://astoryofchildrenandfilm.com/
Marc Wiese: Camp 14 Total Control Zone, Germany 2012
A quiet film about a young man who managed to escape one of the labour camps in North Korea.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-camp-14-total-control-zone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4
Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel: Leviathan, USA 2012
This isn’t your typical observational documentary. Castaing and Paravel’s images are frequently surprising, at times taking on an other-worldly quality that pushes the film into experimental territory.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/18/leviathan-fishing-film-moby-dick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEQoB_aRB3c
Classics:
Akira Kurosawa: Drunken Angel (BFI)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwqzBTTn-Uo
Michael Curtiz: Mildred Pierce
http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2008/03/mildred-pierce-1945.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmG8Sy8Bckg
Jean Cocteau: La Belle et la Bete
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/sep/28/drama.dvdreviews1
http://www.criterion.com/films/177-beauty-and-the-beast
Short film Classic: Hilton Edwards: Return to Glennascaul, Irl 1951, 23mins, with Orson Welles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iJdmCEzS5Y
Silents:
Victor Sjöström: The Phantom Carriage, 1921
Long Saturday:
Kieslowski: Dekalog
And two more:
Istvan Szabo: Father (Apa)
A drama about a boy who lost his father and remembers him as a hero – wonderful insight into Hungarian mid century life.
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D06E7D91238E53BBC4151DFBF66838C679EDE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqEXKRKF_8
Essay film: Patience (After Sebald) by Grant Gee
An exploration of the work and influence of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Sebald, author of “The Emigrants,” “Austerlitz” and “The Rings of Saturn.”
Grant Gee follows Sebald’s journey through Suffolk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBvnzr1v5k
Kievslovski decalog saw it loved it
Mustn’t forget the new Kore-eda film, Like Father, Like Son
Saw it in France fantastic film very moving.
More suggestions from Jackie:
Stories We Tell
Jeff, Who Lives At Home
Submarine
More interesting possibilities in the Sight & Sound list of best films of 2013, and some notes from the editorial team on their own personal favourites.
Norte (but it is very long…)
All This Can Happen
Études sur Paris (1928)
La Venus a la Fourrure the last Polanski . His best film since Le Pianiste .
Looks like I’m covered here. My suggestions are:
The Great Beauty
Stories We Tell
Which Way is the Frontline From Here
I don’t think either Stories We Tell or Which Way is the Frontline From Here were available on general release. I have both on dvd, if anyone wants to view them. Stories We Tell is charming, life-affirming, funny, thought provoking. Which Way … is a personal, touching and fascinating account of the life and work of Tim Hethrington. I preferred it to Restrepo.
Thinking of some lighter films for friday nights – how about Michael Radford’s Il Postino from 1994, pure sentimental innocence whilst being the original ‘feel good’ movie featuring amongst others the wonderful Philippe Noiret.
Check out the trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wrM1ptyHM
Another film that would go down well is Fellini’s Amarcord from 1973 which examines daily life in the Italian village of Rimini during the reign of Mussolini. This won the 1974 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5PsIpaRIFs
A nominee for this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar is Omar directed by Hany Abu-Assad – a thriller (as well as love story) set in the occupied territories about betrayal imagined and real. The reviewers across the pond have liked it – “an incredible love story” Betsy Sharkey from the LA Times, “A MASTERPIECE!…the perfect balance of romance and action!” Maysoon Zayid from The Daily Beast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5dSeBD-qiY
Two more suggestions from Jackie:
Cutie & the Boxer
A charming, gentle and thought provoking film about the nature of the artistic life, lives driven by art, artistic relationships and relationships in general, what’s lost and what’s found. It could go down very well in Forest Row.
And
The Crash Reel
A good one for families with older children. The sheer spectacle of snowboarding and the very poignant, inspiring and ultimately life-affirming portrait of a young man and his very wonderful family winning as they say, through failure. It’s about trying and failing and trying again, growing up, parenting in the very best sense, family dynamics, friendship and love.