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| March 20 DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE Directed by Hubert Sauper; 2004, France, Austria, Belgium, 107 mins., Color Some time in the 1960's, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo: Kalashnikovs and ammunition for the uncounted wars in the center of the continent. This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly global alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake. In Darwin’s Nightmare, says director Hubert Sauper, ‘I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. |
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| March 13 NO SCREENING 'SPRING BREAK |
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| March 6 STOLEN Directed by Rebecca Dreyfus, 2005, USA, 90 mins. Cinematography by Albert Maysles In 1990, in the early morning hours after St. Patrick’s Day, thieves disguised as policemen gained access into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and successfully executed the largest art heist in modern history. Among the thirteen priceless works stolen was Vermeer's The Concert, one of only 35 of the master’s surviving works. To date, not a single work has been recovered. Stolen is a full exploration of this unusual crime and the fascinating disparate characters involved: from the 19th century Grand Dame Isabella Gardner to the 17th century Dutch masters to a 21st century terrorist organization with a penchant for stealing Vermeers. Director Dreyfus brings the audience on a journey to understand not just a crime but also the nature of beauty itself -- its fragility and its power. |
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| February 27 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; 1974, Germany, 93 mins., Color Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of twenty-nine, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love -- to their own surprise -- and to the shock of family, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen seele auf), Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of the melodrama to underscore the racial tensions threatening German culture. |
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| February 20 TOUKI BOUKI (The Journey of the Hyena) Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty; 1973, Senegal, in Wolof and French with English subtitles, 85 mins., Color Senagalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty's story of two young lovers who long to escape to Paris is a legend in African cinema. Like their New Wave counterparts in France, young Mory and his girlfriend Anta are alienated from their own society and imagine freedom far from the dusty streets of their hometown, Dakar. Living at the edge of the crystal-blue ocean, their dream city doesn't seem so far away, and the lovers embark on an exhilarating picaresque adventure as they try to hustle money for their passage. A rueful parable about fear and freedom, Touki Bouki has all the restless energy of modernity and all the power of traditional African symbolism. |
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| February 13 THE MIRROR Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky; USSR, 106 mins., Color/B&W Andrei Tarkovsky, the acclaimed master of Soviet cinema, takes a moving and personal turn with this striking meditation on life in Russia during the bleak days of WW II. Tarkovsky uses his own coming-of-age experiences to convey the mood and action that dominated a country ravaged by war. Through a fascinating multi-tiered time frame, the director blends his own harsh childhood with an adult life that is troubled and broken. Haunting images -- a mother faced with political terror, a divorcing couple's quarrel -- are underscored by Tarkovsky's masterful manipulation of film stocks and recorded sound. The Mirror becomes a stream-of-consciousness vision of childhood mixed with slow-motion dream sequences and stark WW II newsreels. |
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February 6 |
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