Dir. Morshedul Islam, 1993, 70min
The film depicts the journey of two bullock-cart drivers through rural Bangladesh who are assigned to deliver a corpse to his village. Wherever they go, they face hostility from the villagers. They never can find the village; what should they do now with the corpse? A parable that combines State violence with rural imagery, it won the Grand Prix at the Dunkerque film festival in France in 1994 and also bagged three awards at Mannheim .
Mon 5 Nov 8.00pm
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
A Tree without Roots
Dir Tanvir Mokammel; 106 min, 35mm, 2000
The film, based on a renowned novel of the same title, is set in rural East Bengal in the 1940s. It tells the story of a mullah (Muslim priest) who makes his way to fame and fortune by ‘inventing’ a shrine of a holy man in the corner of a village. An interesting look at the play between religion, power and sexuality against the backdrop of Muslim rural culture in South Asia . Winner of the Bangladesh national film award and was shown in the London Film Festival.
Mon 29 Oct 8.00pm
Happy viewing
The film, based on a renowned novel of the same title, is set in rural East Bengal in the 1940s. It tells the story of a mullah (Muslim priest) who makes his way to fame and fortune by ‘inventing’ a shrine of a holy man in the corner of a village. An interesting look at the play between religion, power and sexuality against the backdrop of Muslim rural culture in South Asia . Winner of the Bangladesh national film award and was shown in the London Film Festival.
Mon 29 Oct 8.00pm
Happy viewing
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni 1912-2007
This year in the space of 2 months (July-Aug) world cinema lost three of its greatest directors. This tribute comes after our two earlier ones to Edward Yang and Ingmar Bergman.
Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetics. More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative.
This program features his most important works.
The Schedule
Sat 20 Oct
2.00pm - Il Grido (106 min)
4.00pm - L’Avventura (145 min)
6.30pm - L'Eclisse (125min)
Sun 21 Oct
2.00pm - La Notte (121 min)
4.15pm - Red Desert (116 min)
6.30pm - Blow-Up (111 min)
Mon 22 Oct
8.00pm - The Passenger (119min)
HELP Univ College Theatrette, Pusat Bandar Damansara, KL
Admission by membership, available at the door: RM60 1 year (students RM30); RM40 6 mths; RM30 4 mths
Free admission for Alliance Francaise members & HELP students
Enquiries: 012-2255136
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Il Grido (The Cry; 1957, 106 min)
Aldo, a factory worker, fails to persuade his long-time lover Irma to marry him, and leaves town with their daughter to wander all over the Po Valley. Unable to forget Irma, he returns home, only to find her now living in a new home with a baby. Deeply depressed, he mounts the high tower in his former workplace…Il Grido marks a return for Antonioni to working class stories, but it continues his exploration of social alienation. Not as widely praised as his next film L’Avventura, but some consider it a better film. Winner of the Golden Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival, and the association of Italian film critics’ Silver Ribbon for Best Cinematography (Gianni di Venanzo).
<>
L’Avventura (The Adventure; 1960, 145 min)
A girl vanishes from a group of bored and wealthy socialites on holiday, and her friends half-heartedly go in search of her. L'Avventura was Antonioni's international breakthrough, a classic study of an alienated Italian middle-class that made a star of the young Monica Vitti. Jeered by a startled audience at the 1960 Cannes film festival, it was later voted the second best movie ever made (after Citizen Kane).
La Notte (1961, 121 min)
The middle section of Antonioni’s trilogy on bourgeois alienation, La Notte covers 24 hours in the breakdown of a typical middle class marriage. Marcello Mastroianni is a novelist with a block, out of touch with his own instincts, while the wife (Jean Moreau) is a bored socialite who understands her own predicament but doesn’t know how to get past it.
L’Eclisse (The Eclipse; 1962, 125 min)
With L’Avventura and La Notte, this film completes Antonioni’s trilogy on doomed relationships in a fractured world. Lead actress Monica Vitti has a traumatic bust-up with a bookish man, and apathetically lets herself get involved with a brash young stockbroker (Alain Delon). A more formally innovative work than its predecessors.
The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso; 1964, 116 min)
Red Desert sends Monica Vitti on a confused, blasted odyssey through a modern industrial wilderness. It is arguably Antonioni's most bold and ambitious film; a peerless study of existential dread, pulsating with lurid colours. “…an aesthetic feast…perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” (Time Out)
Blow-Up (1966, 111 min)
Blow-Up, Antonioni's English-language debut, remains the archetypal Swinging 60s London thriller. David Hemmings is the modish photographer embroiled (possibly) in a murder plot, and yet nothing is quite as it seems in a film that taunts and teases the viewer. Significantly, Blow-Up climaxes with a mimed tennis match in which Hemming is lured into chasing after a lost "ball".
The Passenger (1975, 119 min)
The Passenger casts Jack Nicholson as a TV reporter who exchanges identity with a dead man and goes on the run, only to find himself hunted by his wife and some menacing strangers. Elegant and enigmatic, the film’s opening, charting the burnt-out journalist’s progress through an endless desert, and the final twenty minutes – including a virtuoso seven-minute single take – are stunning.
Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetics. More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative.
This program features his most important works.
The Schedule
Sat 20 Oct
2.00pm - Il Grido (106 min)
4.00pm - L’Avventura (145 min)
6.30pm - L'Eclisse (125min)
Sun 21 Oct
2.00pm - La Notte (121 min)
4.15pm - Red Desert (116 min)
6.30pm - Blow-Up (111 min)
Mon 22 Oct
8.00pm - The Passenger (119min)
HELP Univ College Theatrette, Pusat Bandar Damansara, KL
Admission by membership, available at the door: RM60 1 year (students RM30); RM40 6 mths; RM30 4 mths
Free admission for Alliance Francaise members & HELP students
Enquiries: 012-2255136
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Il Grido (The Cry; 1957, 106 min)
Aldo, a factory worker, fails to persuade his long-time lover Irma to marry him, and leaves town with their daughter to wander all over the Po Valley. Unable to forget Irma, he returns home, only to find her now living in a new home with a baby. Deeply depressed, he mounts the high tower in his former workplace…Il Grido marks a return for Antonioni to working class stories, but it continues his exploration of social alienation. Not as widely praised as his next film L’Avventura, but some consider it a better film. Winner of the Golden Leopard, Locarno International Film Festival, and the association of Italian film critics’ Silver Ribbon for Best Cinematography (Gianni di Venanzo).
<>
L’Avventura (The Adventure; 1960, 145 min)
A girl vanishes from a group of bored and wealthy socialites on holiday, and her friends half-heartedly go in search of her. L'Avventura was Antonioni's international breakthrough, a classic study of an alienated Italian middle-class that made a star of the young Monica Vitti. Jeered by a startled audience at the 1960 Cannes film festival, it was later voted the second best movie ever made (after Citizen Kane).
La Notte (1961, 121 min)
The middle section of Antonioni’s trilogy on bourgeois alienation, La Notte covers 24 hours in the breakdown of a typical middle class marriage. Marcello Mastroianni is a novelist with a block, out of touch with his own instincts, while the wife (Jean Moreau) is a bored socialite who understands her own predicament but doesn’t know how to get past it.
L’Eclisse (The Eclipse; 1962, 125 min)
With L’Avventura and La Notte, this film completes Antonioni’s trilogy on doomed relationships in a fractured world. Lead actress Monica Vitti has a traumatic bust-up with a bookish man, and apathetically lets herself get involved with a brash young stockbroker (Alain Delon). A more formally innovative work than its predecessors.
The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso; 1964, 116 min)
Red Desert sends Monica Vitti on a confused, blasted odyssey through a modern industrial wilderness. It is arguably Antonioni's most bold and ambitious film; a peerless study of existential dread, pulsating with lurid colours. “…an aesthetic feast…perhaps the most extraordinary and riveting film of Antonioni’s entire career.” (Time Out)
Blow-Up (1966, 111 min)
Blow-Up, Antonioni's English-language debut, remains the archetypal Swinging 60s London thriller. David Hemmings is the modish photographer embroiled (possibly) in a murder plot, and yet nothing is quite as it seems in a film that taunts and teases the viewer. Significantly, Blow-Up climaxes with a mimed tennis match in which Hemming is lured into chasing after a lost "ball".
The Passenger (1975, 119 min)
The Passenger casts Jack Nicholson as a TV reporter who exchanges identity with a dead man and goes on the run, only to find himself hunted by his wife and some menacing strangers. Elegant and enigmatic, the film’s opening, charting the burnt-out journalist’s progress through an endless desert, and the final twenty minutes – including a virtuoso seven-minute single take – are stunning.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Upcoming films
Michelangelo Antonioni Tribute 20-22 Oct:
El Grido
L’avventura
L'eclisse
La Notte
Red Desert
Blow-Up
The Passenger
Watch here for further updates!
El Grido
L’avventura
L'eclisse
La Notte
Red Desert
Blow-Up
The Passenger
Watch here for further updates!
Bangladesh Independent Cinema 1984-2007
A selection of fiction and documentary films presented by Dr Zakir Hossain Raju, Asian Research Fellow
Dr Raju is in Malaysia on an Asian Research Fellowship to study Malaysian cinema. He lectures on cinema at
the International University of Bangladesh. He obtained his PhD from La Trobe University, Melbourne, where he
studied under Chris Berry.
Dir Zakir Hossain Raju; 24 min, video, 1991
An interactive documentary on the popular upheaval against the military junta in Bangladesh in 1990. It takes a close look at what happens in a family when the son has just been martyred. The film was shown at the Hawaiian International Film Festival 1991, Independent Short Film Festival Augsburg, Germany 1991, International Film Festival Fukuoka 1992, Festival of South Asian Documentaries, Colombo 1992 and Bangladesh Film Festival, London 2004.
Mon 1 Oct 8.15 pm
Beyond the Borders
Dir Zakir Hossain Raju; 58 min, video, 1995
A reflexive documentary on everyday traumas and triumphs of intercultural Bangladeshi-Japanese families in Japan and Bangladesh . The research and production of the film was funded by a Film Production Support Grant awarded by the Japan Foundation. Winner of a Commendation of the Jury Award at International Anthropological Film Festival Romania in 1996. The film was also featured in the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 1995 and the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) film festival in Brisbane in 1995.
Mon 1 Oct 8.40 pm
Dir. Morshedul Islam; 70 min, 16mm, 1993
The film depicts the journey of two bullock-cart drivers through rural Bangladesh who were assigned to deliver a corpse to his village. Wherever they go, they face hostility from the villagers. They cannot find the village; what should they do with the corpse? A parable that mixes state violence with rural imagery, the film won the Grand Prix at the Dunkerque film festival in 1994 and also bagged three awards at the Mannheim film festival.
Mon 8 Oct 8.30 pm
A Tree without Roots
Dir Tanvir Mokammel; 106 min, 35mm, 2000
The film, based on a renowned novel of the same title, is set in rural East Bengal in the 1940s. It tells the story of a mullah (Muslim priest) who makes his way to fame and fortune by ‘inventing’ a shrine of a holy man in the corner of a village. An interesting look at the play between religion, power and sexuality against the backdrop of Muslim rural culture in South Asia . Winner of the Bangladesh national film award and was shown in the London Film Festival.
Mon 29 Oct 8.00pm
Dr Raju is in Malaysia on an Asian Research Fellowship to study Malaysian cinema. He lectures on cinema at
the International University of Bangladesh. He obtained his PhD from La Trobe University, Melbourne, where he
studied under Chris Berry.
The Red FlowerFace in the Millions
Dir Makbul Chowdhury; 11 min, digital, 2006
A visually arresting film that recalls a young boy’s experience of circumcision in rural
Bangladesh , especially how he wanted
to avoid it. Shot in digital video, the film was shown in the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. Shot by
Chowdhury himself, who also shot Zakir Hossain Raju’s Beyond the Borders.
Mon 1 Oct 8.00pm
Dir Zakir Hossain Raju; 24 min, video, 1991
An interactive documentary on the popular upheaval against the military junta in Bangladesh in 1990. It takes a close look at what happens in a family when the son has just been martyred. The film was shown at the Hawaiian International Film Festival 1991, Independent Short Film Festival Augsburg, Germany 1991, International Film Festival Fukuoka 1992, Festival of South Asian Documentaries, Colombo 1992 and Bangladesh Film Festival, London 2004.
Mon 1 Oct 8.15 pm
Beyond the Borders
Dir Zakir Hossain Raju; 58 min, video, 1995
A reflexive documentary on everyday traumas and triumphs of intercultural Bangladeshi-Japanese families in Japan and Bangladesh . The research and production of the film was funded by a Film Production Support Grant awarded by the Japan Foundation. Winner of a Commendation of the Jury Award at International Anthropological Film Festival Romania in 1996. The film was also featured in the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 1995 and the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) film festival in Brisbane in 1995.
Mon 1 Oct 8.40 pm
TowardsThe Wheel
Dir Morshedul Islam; 30 min, 16mm, 1984
A film about the status of freedom fighters in post-independence
Bangladesh . It is the first film that started a new wave in
Bangladesh cinema, termed as ‘the short film movement’. The film won the Silver Peacock at the 1985
Delhi film festival and demonstrated the possibility of creating an independent cinema with 16 mm.
Mon 8 Oct 8.00 pm
Dir. Morshedul Islam; 70 min, 16mm, 1993
The film depicts the journey of two bullock-cart drivers through rural Bangladesh who were assigned to deliver a corpse to his village. Wherever they go, they face hostility from the villagers. They cannot find the village; what should they do with the corpse? A parable that mixes state violence with rural imagery, the film won the Grand Prix at the Dunkerque film festival in 1994 and also bagged three awards at the Mannheim film festival.
Mon 8 Oct 8.30 pm
A Tree without Roots
Dir Tanvir Mokammel; 106 min, 35mm, 2000
The film, based on a renowned novel of the same title, is set in rural East Bengal in the 1940s. It tells the story of a mullah (Muslim priest) who makes his way to fame and fortune by ‘inventing’ a shrine of a holy man in the corner of a village. An interesting look at the play between religion, power and sexuality against the backdrop of Muslim rural culture in South Asia . Winner of the Bangladesh national film award and was shown in the London Film Festival.
Mon 29 Oct 8.00pm
We are Moving
We are moving from tripod to blogger. We may or may not move the old content over here, depending on public response. However the old schedule will remain at tripod for those who are interested. Please check all new schedule here.
In this new platform, we hope to have a greater participation of film lovers of Malaysia. All are welcome to post comments, personal reviews, opinions, suggestions to each other here.
Have fun.
In this new platform, we hope to have a greater participation of film lovers of Malaysia. All are welcome to post comments, personal reviews, opinions, suggestions to each other here.
Have fun.
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