6 minute read
Visionary
The boundaries containing what we think of as cinema are mere illusion, as these penetrating films capably demonstrate. See worlds beyond human perception, listen to sounds both strange and exciting and discover new ways of knowing as these inventive features redefine the cinemagoing experience.
Director: Tony Stone USA 2021 | 120 mins
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Cast: Sharlto Copley, Drew Powell, Amber Rose Mason Producers: Matt Flanders, Tony Stone, Sharlto Copley Screenplay: Gaddy Davis, John Rosenthal, Tony Stone Cinematography: Nathan Corbin Editors: Tony Stone, Brad Turner Music: Blanck Mass Festivals: Berlin 2021
“Tony Stone’s Ted K is an eerily plausible and unsettlingly mesmeric realisation of the inner world of Ted Kaczynski: that is, the private life of the “Unabomber”, America’s most notorious domestic terrorist who, working largely from his primitive cabin in the Montana wilderness, killed three people and injured 22 more in a mail-bombing campaign lasting from 1978 to 1995... The South African actor Sharlto Copley plays Ted: a fierce, gaunt, angry man, whose sharp and rather distinguished features are mostly blurred by a straggly beard. He is a former brilliant mathematician and college professor who turned away from academia in favour of a radical hermit existence... Copley and Stone show how Kaczynski is driven by hate and revenge... The movie spends long stretches of time alongside Kaczynski [as] he roams the forests of his mind, or haunts the desolate roadways and back-alleys, smugly awaiting a detonation... It is a riveting, dreamlike evocation of this man’s tortured, unhappy life, whose transient successes bring him no pleasure of any kind.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Screenings
LUM Sun 31 Oct, 7.30 pm LUM Wed 3 Nov, 3.30 pm LUM Fri 5 Nov, 9.00 pm
tbc NZ Classification tbc
Beginning
Dasatskisi
Director: Dea Kulumbegashvili Georgia 2020 | 130 mins
Cast: Ia Sukhitashvili, Rati Oneli, Kakha Kintsurashvili Screenplay: Dea Kulumbegashvili, Rati Oneli Cinematography: Arseni Khachaturan Language: In Georgian with English subtitles Festivals: Cannes (Selection), Toronto, San Sebastián, New York 2020; Rotterdam 2021
“Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s fierce feature debut, about a Jehovah’s Witness whose faith is tested, opens with an act of hostility. The camera observes from a fixed point at the back of a Kingdom Hall as the space fills and blinds are eventually drawn. Minutes into the service, someone throws a firebomb into the room. The camera continues to watch as flames start to spread. Beginning centres on Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili), former actress and dutiful wife of congregation leader David (Rati Oneli, who co-wrote the film). Yana must navigate both her domineering husband and Alex (Kakha Kintsurashvili), a dangerous man who insists he is a police detective from Tbilisi. Kulumbegashvili draws parallels between the local contempt for Jehovah’s Witnesses – a religious minority in the Georgian mountain town of Lagodekhi – and a broader patriarchal contempt for women. Sukhitashvili’s subtle performance brings interiority to a character who might otherwise be defined entirely by her suffering. The director favours a static camera and extended takes that give her compositions a holy quality... Through this rigorous aesthetic, a distinctive point of view emerges.” — Simran Hans, The Guardian
Screenings
LUM Mon 1 Nov, 7.45 pm LUM Sun 7 Nov, 3.15 pm LUM Thu 11 Nov, 12.15 pm
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives NZIFF 2010) returns to feature filmmaking after six years with this singular metaphysical mystery. Tilda Swinton stars as Jessica Holland, a foreigner in Colombia who finds herself pursued by a jarring sound of unknown origin. Western medicine, indigenous folklore and even heroic feats of sound engineering seem to offer no explanation. A series of encounters tantalise with tentative revelation: her sister has been hospitalised after investigating a reclusive Amazon tribe known as the Invisible People; an archaeologist met by chance shows her what has been found at an ancient burial site; a man she finds scaling fish in a small village claims to remember everything. But all these incidents only lead Jessica deeper into the mystery. Is she hallucinating or haunted? Or is there some even more esoteric supernatural explanation awaiting her out in the jungle? Weerasethakul’s distinctive way of unfurling his extraordinary stories in slow, dreamlike sequences that vault the viewer into new states of awareness – or daydream – remains intact, despite the transference into distant climes and two foreign languages. We follow Jessica through a series of sharply imagined worlds as she stumbles towards an answer: a hushed and eerie university campus, vast underground tunnels, the lulling calm of a riverside reverie. Tilda Swinton has always excelled at playing the stranger in strange lands, so she is just the intrepid traveller to accompany Weerasethakul on his latest journey into terra incognita. — Andrew Langridge “I’m not being facetious when I say that watching this film reminded me of when I was 17, hearing “Revolution 9” on The White Album for the first time. It left a residue of happiness in my heart.”
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Director/Screenplay: Apichatpong Weerasethakul Thailand/Colombia 2021 136 mins
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Elkin Díaz, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego, Daniel Giménez Cacho Producers: Diana Bustamante, Julio Chavezmontes, Charles de Meaux, Simon Field Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom Editor: Lee Chatametikool Music: César López Language: In Spanish and English, with English subtitles Festivals: Cannes (In Competition) 2021 Awards: Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2021
Screenings
ITR Tue 2 Nov, 12.45 pm ITR Tue 9 Nov, 8.30 pm MM Timaru Thu 18 Nov, 7.45 pm
tbc NZ Classification tbc
Nine Days
“We are born, we live, and we die. Before we can get on that particular merry-go-round, however, we must first be interviewed. The interrogator is tall, quiet, fastidious, well-dressed. Small granny spectacles perch on his nose as he asks questions of those who sit before him. And when he’s not doing that, he’s reviewing former ‘vacancies’ he has filled, watching on a bank of monitors displaying numerous lives in progress. If we are lucky, we are chosen to go forth, from cradle to grave. If not, perhaps the man will do what he can to give us one fleeting moment of happiness, before we disappear into the ether. This is the premise of Nine Days, Edson Oda’s odd, affecting portrait of a pre-life purgatory, a cross between a Gondry-esque chinstroker and a Zen Buddhist tweak on The Good Place. A Japanese Brazilian filmmaker with a background in commercials, Oda is taking big philosophical swings with his debut: What is the nature of souls? Is a life something to be earned rather than gifted? Does the beauty of being human outweigh the pain of existence, or do these two elements symbiotically feed off each other, yin to yang? Who are we, before we are anything at all? It’s heavy, heady stuff, coming at you via a delivery system of catalogue-worthy set design, magic-hour cinematography, and often tamped-down, deadpan performances. And somehow, it all works in harmony to create a ripple effect of feeling that reverberates strongly under its placid surface.” — David Fear, Rolling Stone “The strength of Nine Days is not so much the scenario… but the mood Oda sets, the clarity with which he establishes this world, how it operates, its rules and traditions.”
Cast: Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, Jeffrey Hanson, David Rysdahl, Bill Skarsgård Producers: Jason Michael Berman, Mette-Marie Kongsved, Matthew Lindner, Laura Tunstall, Datari Turner Cinematography: Wyatt Garfield Editors: Jeff Betancourt, Michael Taylor Music: Antonio Pinto Festivals: Sundance 2020 Awards: Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (Dramatic), Sundance Film Festival 2020
Screenings
ITR Tue 2 Nov, 8.30 pm ITR Mon 8 Nov, 1.00 pm
