Cinema being the dynamically collective and comprehensive art-form that it is, it would be meagre-spirited of us to dedicate the 1978 Festival to any single artist. W e humbly and gratefully acknowledge, therefore, the splendid immortal work of the following film-artists w ho have died in the year that has passed since our last Festival-dedication: Charles Chaplin Joan Crawford Ding Crosby Peter Finch Howard Hawks Groucho Marx Roberto Rossellini Rosalind Russell
W elcom e Film distribution and exhibition practices, both nationally and locally, frequently operate in a climate ripe with cautiousness and expedien cy. Port of this is judicious business insight, but more of it is cretinous ignorance. And it is this lock of solicitous, for-seeing concern that prevents the extensive exposure of most films that film festivals feature and promote, films deem ed of dubious or negligible 'commer cial' worth— it is up to the various festivals to prove the interest-cum-revenue generating potential of these films. The First Seattle International Film Festival w as organized in 1976, to extend the cinematic tastes and possibilities of and for the filmgoing audience in the Pacific Northwest. We discovered on audience starved for something more than the flotsam and jetsom that drifted onto the screens of the major neighborhood theatres; the only enterprising spirits seem ed to be specialty houses, the film societies, and the college campus programs. The audience-response to the First Festival— in terms of tickets sold os well os feedback provided— w as overwhelming beyond even our most indulgent fantasies. Lost year's Festival w as on even greater suc cess. So 1978 come along, and w e joked about out-doing our own post record— well, guess whot, kids, w e DID! Four months of tenacious negotiating, in on industry pregnant with evasions and duplicity, hove resulted in o con centrated showcase of films sound in concept and execution from oil over the world: more than 40 films representing 17 countries. Most film festivals, here or abroad, ore either subsidized or underwritten by benevolent bodies or single benefactors, generally the city in which the event takes place. The fate of the Seattle International Film Festival, on the other hand, is dependent on the ebb and flow in the fortunes of the Moore Egyptian, which is the sole bocker of the Festival. So we
scrimp our hard-earned pennies for this event, for us, for you. Almost everything w e bring you this year has been controversial on som e notional or inter national scale, and w e hove more films direct ly from their other majorfestival showings than ever before. Unlike our programming in the post, w e ore screening most of ourfilms only once, because of contractual limitations on the few prints available. So don't snooze and lose. Mobilize and avail yourselves of this experience. Every film in this year's Festival represents a premiere showing of som e kind, and we hove several newfilms that hove never been shown in the United States and / or North America. We hove also organized o retrospectivetribute to o Hollywood veteran, Stanley Kramer, w hose prolific career encompasses and reflects the concerns of four of the most volatile decodes of American history, the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s. Mr. Kramer will appear onstage to respond to questions on his work, following on hour-long selection of scenes from the films he has been involved with either os producer or director. At the end of oil this, it m ay appear platitudinous and self-serving to be thanking you, the ticket-buying audience, but our gratitude to oil of you is considerable and sin cere. Without you to shore oil this exhilaration, things wouldn't be os much fun. See you at the movies. Rajeeve Gupta Director, Seattle International Film Festival Don Ireland Darryl Macdonald Producers, Third Seattle International Film Festival Owners, Moore Egyptian Theatre Greg Kochel Consultant, Seattle Internotionol Film Festival
THURSDAY, M A Y 1 1, 3,00 PM G A L A OPENING Seattle Premiere
M ADAM E RO SA France/lsrael 1977,103 minutes Directors M oshe Mizrahi Screenplays M oshe Mizrahi, based on "M o m o ” by Emile Ajar Cinematographys Nestor Almendros Principal Casts Simone Signoret, Sarny Den Youb
Den Youb: hers glassy, warm, then suddenly adrift in frightened memories; his dark, somber and private. The dimension of mystery that these two astonishing performers bring to their roles — the sense that they don't always know why they do what they do — keeps Modam e Roso honest and surprising. Decause they cannot be reduced to mere archetypes, or their story to a fable of an old Jew and a young Arab, their experience becomes uncommonly moving." David An sen in Newsweek
FRIDAY, M A Y 12, 7.00 PM SUNDAY, M A Y 14,2.00 PM Seattle Premiere
FRIDAY, M A Y 1 2 ,9.30 PM NORTHWEST PREMIERE
SUMMER PARADISE Sweden 1977,112 minutes Director. Gunnel Lindblom Producer. Ingmar Dergmon Screenplay. Gunnel Lindblom, Ulla Isaaksson, based on the novel by Ulla Isaaksson Principal Cast. Dirgitta Valberg, Sif Ruud, Margaretha Dystrom
THE TOY France 1977,92 minutes Director. Francois Veber Principal Cast. Pierre Richard, Michel Douquet
"Her old legs failing, her painted face sagging like a collapsed cake, M ad am e Rosa w heezes up the six flights of her rundown Paris building to reach the crowded flat where she tends the children of the local hookers. A former whore herself, a victim of Auschwitz, M adam Rosa (Simone Signoret) is a wily survivor passing on her worldly knowledge to kids w ho will surely need it, just os she needs her boarders to pay the rent, to fill her days, to return her love. Most of oil she needs M om o (Sarny Den Youb), her favorite, o brooding Arab boy she has raised since infancy, w ho she fears will abandon her for the squalid life of the streets. And Mom o, though angry with her for keeping the secret of his parentage, fears that his surrogate Jewish mother — with her bod heart and slipping mind — will soon leave him too. She is oil he has, and she is preparing to die. if this sounds like a stocked deck, it is. Madam e Rosa, a French film by the Egyptianborn, Israeli director M oshe Mizrahi, teeters on the brink of the most exploitative sort of sentimentality. Now and then it tips over. Dut for the most port, Mizrahi, employing on elliptical, understated style, keeps such a careful watch on his two extraordinary characters that his film stays rooted in its own eccentric, beguiling reality. It's o story of love that arises from mutual need, and Mizrahi acknowledges both the beauty and the near savagery in that dependency which soon must end. The soul of the movie, a considerable one, rests In the eyes of Simone Signoret and Sarny
The memorable persona that France's leading comedian, Pierre Richard, has established is relatively recent, but also a direct descendant of the classic tradition bequeathed to the world by such great lyrical loons as Chaplin, Keaton, Langdon, Lloyd and Dea Lillie: a character who is lovable because he is without malice, resourceful when in danger, solicitous about the downtrodden, the victim of simple accidents and the catalyst of complex ones. In The Toy, Richard plays a diligent reporter who is "bought" by a publishing tycoon as a "toy" for his spoiled teenage son. The boy's intentions are in no w ay salacious, merely whimsical. Richard goes along with the arrangement, but with missionary intentions — to publish a tract attacking corrupt business practices, and to hopefully reform the boy before he becomes as absurdly acquisitive as the father. The Toy is delectable physical comedy (with plausibility governing each pratfall), and also sly, insightful social satire in the impassioned Capra-Sturges mould.
Gunnel Lindblom, a lead player in many of Ingmar Dergman's films, m akes a tremen dous directorial debut in this bitter-sweet story of a family w hose intermutual affection is strong but w hose cohesiveness is neverthe less dissipating. Four generations of this family meet for their annual summer reunion at the family retreat. Paradise Place, and signs soon appear amid the rituals and cele brations that various relationships are soon to be outside the reach of restoration. The film involves 15 characters, each with a crisis to resolve. The skill in the script and direction is best shown by the fact one never gets the feeling of having to wait till each character gets a turn, as on a long vaudeville bill. The scenes of alternating ribaldry and sorrow are very genuinely funny and touching. The import of this film has all the strength and substance of truths immediately applicable to our ow n lives.
SATURDAY, M A Y 13,2,00 PM SATURDAY, M A Y 13,9,30 PM Seattle Premiere
BLACK JOY Great Britain 1977,97 minutes Director. Anthony Simmons Producer. Elliott Kastner Screenplay. Anthony Simmons, Jamal All, based on the play by Jamal All Principal Cast. Norman Deaton
This rousing com edy is in m any w ays the other side of The Harder They Come. The characters in Black Joy are ultimately all win ners, even in the context of the London Ghetto where the film takes place. An earnest, impressionable immigrant arrives from the Caribbean and finds himself exploited as much by his fellow islanders as by the white establishment. His transition from minnow to shark, from victim to preda tor, unravels in the colorful and vital Jamaican community in London.
than anyone else. He doesn't butt into a scene; he seem s to let it play itself out. His understatement makes most of w hat is thought of as film technique seem unnecessary, and even decadent, because he does more without it. No Western director has been able to imitate him." — Pauline Kaei The Chess Players is the latest film by the greatest poet-humanist working in cinema today. Based on a classic Indian short story set in 1857 during the opulent last days of the Moghul Empire, the script is concerned, as in all Ray films, with its characters on an immediate as well as a greater, more transcendent level. Two Indian noblemen, the Mir and the Mirza, ore so hedonistically devoted to their daily chess ga m e that they abandon their social as well as personal responsibilities in order to play chess. Focusing almost exclusively on the two fanatical players, with short illuminating diversions to the troubled hom es of the two men and a reel-long exposition of the socio political conditions in Indio at the time, Ray creates a powerful cautionary parable about the general state of decadence and the reasons w hy India cam e under British rule.
The characters ore oil infectiously buoyant in spite of the seaminess of the setting — and perhaps because of it — and the cast makes each and every one of them interesting and accessible. The vibrance and driving energy of the reggae score and the unrestrained humor of the hybrid slang used throughout odd to the enormous pleasure this film provides.
SATURDAY, M A Y 13, 7,00 PM Northwest Premiere
THE CHESS PLAYERS Indio 1977,100 minutes Director! Satyajit Ray Screenplays Satyajit Ray, based on the short story by Munshi Premchand Musics Satyajit Ray Cinematography! Soumendu Roy Principal Casts Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Richard Attenborough "Satyajit Ray's films can give rise to a more complex feeling of happiness in me than the work of any other director. His means as a director are am ong the most intuitively right in all movie-making: he knows when to shift the camera from one face to another to reveal the utmost, and he knows how to group figures in a frame more expressively
The tragedy of the latter fact is as difficult for Western audiences to comprehend as the sheer immensity and horror of the five million "m a n -m ad e " famine deaths Ray w as concerned with in his lost masterwork. Distant Thunder. Just as in that film, in The Chess Players also he opts for im ages of beauty rather than of shock to register his anguished protest. His narratives are all plangent elegies to the terrible mutability of oil things, and it is because he involves us so intensely with his people and his situations that w e experience the full, devastating impact of his work. In The Chess Players, as in all Ray's films, there are no real heroes or villains, no real social or cultural polarizations, but rather an overriding sense of som e great human continuum: the awareness that no matter how much w e m ay wish to burst the bounds of experience, there is only so much w e con do.
SUNDAY, M A Y 14, 7>00 PM SATURDAY, M A Y 20,2.00 PM Northwest Premiere
W HO ARE THE DEDOLTS, AND WHERE DID THEY GET 19 KIDS? United States 1977, 72 minutes Directors John Korty Screenplays John Korty Cinematography! Jon Else Narrations Sidney W alker Principal Casts The DeBolt Family
The DeBolt family encompasses m any races, nationalities, ages, and handicaps, but what they all share is a mutual trust, respect, and most of all a deep love for one another ond for life. The film lets us participate in their lives, both on ordinary days and on special occasions, and one comes to know these people and how they heroically m anage to keep a group of nineteen functioning from d ay to day. W ho Are The DeBolts is certainly one of the most moving films w e have ever played.
SUNDAY, M A Y 14,9.30 PM M O NDAY, M A Y 22,9.30 PM Seattle Premiere
THE ASCENT Soviet Union 1977,105 minutes Director. Larissa Shepitko Screenplays Larissa Shepitko, Yuri Klepikov Cinematography. V. Chuhnov Principal Cast. Boris Plotnikov, The Grand Prize Winner at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival, The Ascent is the fourth feature film by one of the most talented filmmakers in the New Soviet Cinema, the Ukrainian Larissa Shepitko. O n the surface. The Ascent begins
MO NDAY, M A Y 15,9.30 PM Northwest Premiere
THE PROMISED LAND Poland 1977,100 minutes Director. Andresz W ajda Screenplay. Andresz Wajda, based on the novel by W ladyslaw Reymont Principal Cast. Daniel Olbrychski, Wajiech Pszoniak
as on ordinary Russian or East European film about the partisan struggle against the Nazis in occupied areas. However, about m idway through, an extraordinary psychological drama unfolds— centering on a Russian collaborator w hose characterization is unique in all Soviet Cinem a— which lifts the film to another dimension, to Christian allegory and beyond, to the level of a work of art which speaks to moral questions very much alive and unresolved today.
M O N D A Y ,M A Y 15,7:00 PM Northwest Premiere
LA MERVEILLEUSE VISITE France 1976,102 minutes Directors Marcel Carne Screenplays Marcel Carne, based on a novel by H.G. Wells Principal Casts Gilles Kolher, Deborah Derger, Roland Lasaffre
film" so often effused over by film critics and distributors is frequently saccharine or cloying — but now and again a true charmer comes along that isn't, and The Dakar's Dread is one such charmer. W e are very pleased to share it with Seattle.
TUESDAY, M A Y 16,9.30 PM Northwest Premiere
DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND Wajda's films Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds won him his first critical acclaim in the late 1950s. Since then he has come to be perhaps the most influential Eastern European director. The Promised Land is an adaptation of o Nobel prize-winning novel about corporate corruption and the effects of the Industrial Revolution in the town of Lodz, outside Warsaw. Factory workers are exploited; landowners are bankrupt; the new businessman's morality is relentlessly unscrupulous. Wajda's politics ore as indelible as his talent is undeniable. The seedy, sickly netherworld of acquired wealth is expertly mapped, with Wajda's famous and familiar conjunction of the baroque and the ironic.
Australia 1977,107 minutes Director. Peter Schepisi This irresistible black-comedy is a new indict ment against an old subject, the rigorous restrictiveness of life at a boys' seminary, wherein religiosity com pounded by Victorian smallmindedness leads only to combusted acts of willed ferocity. The Devil's Playground w on practically all the available prizes given last year by the prestigous Australian Rim Institute. In its native country, it has already garnered a massive cult following.
TUESDAY, M A Y 16, 7.00 PM West Coast Premiere
BAKER'S DREAD Germany 1977,117 minutes This long-awaited new film by the director of that enduring gem. Children of Paradise, promises to be as eternally luminous as its director's past work. The plot is a droll allegory about an angel w ho falls to Earth and arouses curiosity, joy, and finally, terror, am ongst the mundane inhabitants of a rural French village. The breathtaking, misty beauty of the setting seems as much the stuff of dreams as the story. This film provides all the pleasures of old-fashioned story-telling in im ages that in dividually and collectively become a visual feast.
Director. Erwin keusch This engaging and stylish film is the first feature by its young director. It w as honored this month at the Museum of Modem Art as part of the New Directors retrospective, and w as unanimously praised at the recent Locarno Rim Festival. The plot is a low-key account of the progress of an apprentice in a small-town bakery, crammed with the fascinating, authentic details of such a life. The "charming little
WEDNESDAY, M A Y 17, 7.00 PM Seattle Premiere
BAHIA France 1977,93 minutes Director. Marcel Camus The lush, soaring loveliness of Drazil's Dahia coast is the backdrop for a series of exotic adventures involving a prostitute whose beauty enthralls every m an she encounters.
The intensity of Fassbinder's visual style — gleaming surfaces sharply etched against pole backgrounds; the elaborate use of mirrors, screens and curtains; and the desolate landscapes of sand dunes and pine forests — mokes Effie Driest the director's most classical and elegant film.
THURSDAY, M A Y 16, 7*00 PM Seattle Premiere
BONJOUR AM OUR This is a sensuous fantasy-film, with brash and brawling characters all seemingly impervious to any urgencies other than singing, dancing, drinking and making love. The im ages and rhythms in Dahia are as dizzyingly seductive as those in Camus' masterwork, Black Orpheus.
France 1977,100 minutes Director* Roger Andrieux Screenplay* Roger Andrieux, Jean-Marie Denard Principal Cast* Pascal Meynier, Guilhaine Dubos, Druno Raffaelli
WEDNESDAY, M A Y 17,9,00 PM Seattle Premiere
EFFIE DRIEST Germany 1976,140 minutes
Director* Carlos Saura Screenplay* Carlos Saura Principal Cast* Jose Luis lopez Vasquez, Una Canalejas, Fernando Delgado Cousin Angelica, which w on the honorable Jury Prize at the Cannes Rim Festival, again exemplifies Sauro's extraordinary ability to visualize psychological action. It is also the first Spanish film to provide sustained focal attention to the Spanish Civil War and the psychological devastation caused by the Nationalist victory. Luis, the central character, returns to his hom e town after a thirty-year absence, and recalls the episodes of his childhood, especially his relationship with his cousin Angelica and the trauma of the punishment w hen this is discovered. Whot Sauro is sug gesting is that the forces of repression and reaction that punish the boy— the crippling traditional combination of church and family— are the sam e forces which supported and advanced the trauma of Franco's rebellion. As in Cria and Garden of Delights, Sauro here also disdains having characters at different oges played by different actors, so that there is no difference in the appearance of charac ters in the scenes set in the present from scenes set in the post. This device contributes
Director! Rainer Werner Fassbinder Screenplay* Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on the novel by Theodor Fontane Principal Cast* Hanna Schygulla, W olfgang Schenck, karl-Heinz Dohm This charming gem of o film provides one of those special opportunities to discover fresh new talent in a rare state — direct, disciplined, unpretentious.
Theodor Fontane's Effie Driest is probably the most famous 19th-century German novel; it holds a position in its ow n country analogous to that of M adam e Dovary in France. Fassbinder's brilliant film is both a faithful adaptation of the novel and a subtle manipulation of its structure. The result is a unique double perspective that both recreates the 19th century and offers o modern re-analysis of it in terms of fascism and the oppression of women. Effie Driest, o vivacious mixture of anti conformity and mediocrity, is married while very young to o staid, pedagogical older man. Carried to o remove Baltic port by her husband, she drifts into a brief, passionless affair with o local womanizer. The full effects are com pounded only six years later, in o chilling manifestation of the Prussian code.
The plot is a funny and meaningful story of teenage love and bourgeois repressiveness, but avoiding oil the banal cliches that such plots usually brings out in filmmakers. A 15year-old student foils in love with o 1 7 -yearold store clerk, but his parents immediately disapprove and start obstructing the involvement. The boy relies on his older brother for advice and assistance, but the brother is undergoing a moral crisis of his own. The French cinema seems to abound with more manifest interest in the banes and benedictions of childhood than any other — if film records of such conditions are an indicative measure — and Donjour Amour can easily be assigned to the luminous gallery that contains Truffaut's 4 0 0 Blows, Malle's Murmur of the Heart, and Miller's The Best Way.
THURSDAY, M A Y 16,9,00 PM Northwest Premiere
COUSIN ANGELICA Spain 1975,106 minutes
to the success of Cousin Angelica by going further than Sauro's others in analyzing and commenting on the forces and influences which constitute contemporary Spain.
FRIDAY, M A Y 19,7,00 PM North American Premiere
SUMMER OF SECRETS Australia 1977,120 minutes Director* Jim Sharman Cinematography* Russell Boyd Principal Cast* Arthur Dignam, Rufus Collins, Nell Campbell, Andrew Sharp, Kate Fitzpatrick
Anyone w ho sow The Rocky Horror Picture Show (First Seattle International Film Festival) should rush to see this new cam py mysterycom edy by the som e director. As in Rocky Horror, Summer of Secrets revolves around an absurd plot with equally absurd charac ters— Kim and Steve, a couple right out of a sixties' beach blanket movie; a slnister"mad" doctor; a faithful, if som ewhat abnormal, ser vant; and a com atose body to be brought back to life. Loose ends and non-sequiturs abound; it all m akes very little sense and adds up to a great deal of fun. The technical credits, as with Rocky Horror, are superb, reflecting Sharm an's stage background and heightening the general surrealism of the proceedings.
FRIDAY, M A Y 19,9.30 PM Northwest Premiere
THE AMERICAN FRIEND
love of old Hollywood (he casts two of his idols, directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller, in bit parts) while making an uneasy comment on the Americanization of European culture. Ripley, the title character, is a very am biguous friend indeed. As played with manicfinesse by Dennis Hopper, he's a tortured and thoroughly amoral jet-set cow boy w ho turns his innocent new-found pal, Jonathan (Bruno Ganz), into a murderer. Convinced that he is dying of a rare blood disease, Jonathan, a quietframemaker in Hamburn, is coerced into shooting a Mafia bigwig for the m oney that he can leave behind for his wife ond son. This isjust the first step in his journey into violence— a queasy yet exhilarating voyage that takes him far beyond the boundaries of his orderly life to a place where his worst enem y becomes his closest friend, his wife his interrogator, and crime his only option.
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Maria M ontez is legendary. She epitomized glamor in the most extravagantly consum mate M ovie Star manner. She w as 'Q ueen of the Technicolor Adventures' in the 1940s, and whether you consider her pictures seriously or as high camp, you have to agree that they are the best of their type. Plot w as distinctly secondplace to Presence in her phenomenally popularfilms, with her beauty and behavioral charm generating far more electricity than the dramatic wiring of the scripts deserved.
SATURDAY, M A Y 20, 7,00 PM A Rare Revival
COBRA W OMAN
Germany 1977,127 minutes
UNITED STATES 1944,90MINUTES
Director Wim Wenders Screenplay! Wim Wenders, based on “Ripley's G a m e " and "R ip le y Underground" by Patricia Highsmith Cinematography! Robby Muller Principal Casti Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray
Director i Robert Siodmak Principal Cast i Maria Montez, Lon Chaney, Sabu, John Hall
Probably more people have read about the new German cinema than seen it. The American Friend, Wim W ender's brilliantly stylish thriller, should change all that. While the iconoclastic visions of Werner Herzog and the savagely theatrical morality plays of Rainer Werner Fassbinder have begun to at tract a faithful coterie, the lesser-known W en ders, 32, working from a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, has m ade the first broadly accessible film of thelot, a movie that can be enjoyed for its spine-tingling suspense, its e d gy existential psychology, or purely for the mastery of its sumptuous images. A bom filmmaker w ho grew up on a diet of American movies, Wenders pays tribute to his
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In Cobra Woman, commonly considered her best film, she plays a dual role as the wicked ruler of a Pacific Island w ho dances tantalizingly around giant cobras and has people thrown into live volcanos, and the good twin sister w ho returns from exile to free the victims of her sister's tyranny. Maria Montez is the embodiment of kitsch, that innocent, wonderful exercise in stylistic hyperbole; even more than Carmen Miranda and Yvonne de Carlo, she is glorious proof of the magical, all-stops-pulled-out theatricality that a certain kind of filmmaking achieved. Our print of Cobra Woman is the only known remaining print of the film in its 35 mm and gorgeous 3-strip technicolor form, and for its being here w e have Mr. Robert Lawrence of Universal Pictures to thank.
SATURDAY, M A Y 20,9,30 PM SUNDAY, M A Y 21, 2,00 PM North American Premiere "M a ria w as a good w o m a n !"«The subject of this rallying refrain from "The Boys In The Band " w as Maria Africa Vidal de Santos Silas, w ho came to the United States as a desper ately poor emigrant from the Dominican Re public, and achieved wealth and immortality in the cinema as Marla Montez. It is for her exquisite, exotic looks, rather than any advanced skills as an actress, that
SOLDIER O R ORANGE The Netherlands 1977,153 minutes Director i Paul Verhoeven Producer, Rob Hauwer Screenplay i Gerard Soeteman, Paul Verhoeven Principal Cast, Rutger Hauer, Susan Penhaiigon, Jeroen Krabbe
From the director of Cothy Tippel and Turkish Delight comes a sumptuous, sensual and devastating saga of World War II. Set in Holland from the early stages to the decline of the Third Reich, the film shows how the war first gradually and then suddenly changed the lives of six hitherto blithe young schoolmates.
A dramatic new re-telling of Tolstoy's great romantic tragedy, different from any past treatment of the original in the w a y it firmly fuses the characters' private dilemmas to their public, epochal context. This version is loaded with the sort of spectacular production values that only the Russians seem to succeed with on such a grand scale: a budget of $12 million invested in a cast of, quite literally, thousands of actors, lavish sets and costumes, elaborately extravagant production designs.
TUESDAY, M A Y 20, 7«00 PM Northwest Premiere
PAFNUCIO SANTO Mexico 1977,97 minutes
M ONDAY, M A Y 22, 7t00 PM Northwest Premiere
VO YAGE TO GRANDE TARTARY France 1975,100 minutes What m akes Soldier of O range such a special film about war is its concern for people; the heroic situations seem almost secondary. The Dutch invest their films with a zest and vitality that is unique in European cinema, and it is these qualities that make Soldier of O range the powerful human document that it is. W e are honored to be presenting the first American showing of this film.
SUNDAY, M A Y 21, 7,00 PM A SPECIAL EVENT«
Director« Jean-Charles Tachella Principal Cast« Jean-Luc Dideau, Micheline Lanctot The keen eye for social parody that marked Tachella's style in Cousin Cousine is again ef fectively employed in this film. The plot of V oyage To Grande Tartary is reminiscent of the absurdist parable of a man w ho decides to shoot himself and then becom es so fascinated with the mechanical workings of the gun that he forgets his original intention.
Stanley Kramer: A Retrospective-Tribute SUNDAY, M A Y 22,9,30 PM Northwest Premiere
ANNA KARENINA Soviet Union 1977,110 minutes
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Director« Rofoel Corkidi Cinematography« Rofoel Corkidi Principal Cast« Pablo Corkidi, Mario de la Luz Zendejas, Jorge Humberto Robles Described by one critic as a "b o ld , baroque epic opera," Pafnucio Santo is an extraor dinary story about a search for the mother of a new Messiah, utilizing famous operatic music and stunningly photographed by the cameraman w ho shot Jodorowsky's El Topo and other films. Pafnucio is a holy man w ho is asked to find the right w om an to give birth to the new Savior. His wanderings bring him in contact with the Devil, the Empress Carlotta, Diego Rivera's activist wife Frida Kahlo, Cor tes' mistress Malinche, the American guerrilla Patricia Kane and even Shakespeare's Juliet. All are unwilling or unable to bear the child, and Pafnucio begins looking am ong ordinary peasants.
TUESDAY, M A Y 2 0 ,9<30 PM SNEAK PREVIEW W est Coast premiere
Director« Alexondr Sorji Cinematography« Leonid Kalashnikov Principal Cast« Tatyana Samoilova, Vasily lanovoi, Nikolai Gritsenko
SNEAK PREVIEW Tachella has a happy knack for debunking conventional perspectives of potentially tragic impulses and situations; what he a p pears to be saying is that people frequently judge the ramifications of their actions a little too intellectually and seriously. The main protagonists of V o y a g e are an emotionally adrift w om an and a man w hose wife has been murdered. They meet and decide to travel through France, and to cap their trip by committing suicide together. For tunately, their intention is not realized, and the stuff of the script is the hilarious record of this thwarting distilled in a series of funny and tender vignettes. Tachella's dear-eyed ren ditions of the foibles of his contemporaneous countrymen is consistently rewarding.
Sneak previews are just not the w ay they used to be, w hen a sneak preview w as really a SNEAK preview: literally nobody knew what the feature would be. Even the projectionist wouldn't have more than a suspicion of what would be screened until the film cans were opened. The point of such an old marketing trick is that it works. Enthusiasm is generated by curiosity, and the curiosity is heightened as the en thusiasm spreads and grows. Before long, the entire community should be buzzing with the passionate need to know which new film will be previewed. And then comes the best magic of all. If the information is carefully guarded, if no leaks are permitted, there is only one w a y to find o u t... So take a seat. Take a chance.
WEDNESDAY, M A Y 24, 7.00 PM Northwest Premiere
M IKEY & NICKY United Stotes 1977,117 minutes
other, characterize this push. The Wild Duck, with its daring juxtaposition of comic and tragic elements, is one of Ibsen's most thoroughly modern plays. Geissendorfer's fluid, visually and dramatically dynamic
Director« Eloine M o y Screenplay: Elaine M a y Principal Cast: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes
Since films from Black Africa, let alone Sembene's, are as rare in these parts as palm trees on the shores of Lake Washington, this showing is valid for anthro pological as well as kinesthetic reasons.
THURSDAY, M A Y 25,9,30 PM Northwest Premiere
ONIBABA
Nicky is a small-time hood w ho has outlived his operative value to the local mob. Mikey is his friend w ho is out to set him up for the final dot on his contract. M ikey and Nicky is a film about the fragile base of all friendships, no matter how long-standing and substantive they seem. From the outset, the film places a great deal of weight on the capacities of its two principal players, and enough cannot be said here about their contributions to the finished film. Despite all the protestations of selfindulgence which hove affixed themselves to Cassavetes' films, his characterizations, along with Folk's, reverberate far beyond the immediate scope of any single work.
electrifying cross-century leaps, the whole, agitative African Experience.
Japan 1953,105 minutes Director, Kaneto Shindo Screenplay, Kaneto Shindo
screen version employs a very filmic sense of physical space, setting and objects to describe the family of the photographer Hjalmarand their comfortable life of delusion. A radiantly prosaic Dutch interior is used to frame their existence "in the depths of the ocean," where the very wild of the forest has been imported into the attic. Then a fanatic do-gooder breaks in on their reveries, and, in the shattering final act, "the forest takes revenge.”
The eerie, stylized look and terrifying climax of this remarkable film by the great Japanese director of The Island, has already established it as a cult horror classic. However, it Is equally noteworthy as a teethgrindingly realistic depiction of Japanese feudal history.
THURSDAY, M A Y 25, 7,00 PM Northwest Premiere
CEDDO Japan 1977,120 minutes Director: Ousmane Sembene Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene Principal Cast:
Together, the machine-gun swiftness of their interplay is ruefully engrossing and funny. Elaine M a y must surely possess the most darkly awry sense of humor at work in Cinema today.
WEDNESDAY, M A Y 24, 9:30 PM Seattle Premiere
THE WILD DUCK Germany 1976,106 minutes Director: Hans Geissendorfer Screenplay: Hans Geissendorfer, based on the play by Henrik Ibsen Principal Cast: Jean Seberg, Druno Ganz, Anne Dennent, Peter Kern The drama of late 19th century playwrights working in the m odes of "realism" and "naturalism" seem ed to be pushing the bounds of theatre itself into a new, as yet un born, medium. Of course, this medium w as film. The plays of Henrik Ibsen, more than any
A remarkable director's most ambitious work, and perhaps the most important film that Dlack Africa has produced to date. The script is an exciting thriller Involving the use of a princess' kidnapping as a springboard for a national epic of opposing forces in the face of Moslem expansion during the 19th century. However, Ceddo is not strictly a historical film. It encompasses fantasy, philosophy, militant politics, and, with a couple of
An elderly peasant woman, w hose son has gone off to war, and her daughter-in-law m anage to survive during a period of feudal wars by killing w ounded samurai and selling their armor. O ne day, a neighbor returns with news of the son's death and enrages the elderly w om an further by making love to the daughter-in-law. The mother attempts revenge, but the act boom erangs back horribly. Not recommended for demonophoblacs, or anyone susceptible to the thought of things that g o bump in the night.
FRIDAY, M A Y 26, 7,00 PM Northwest Premiere
LULU United States 1978,94 minutes
Director! Ronald Chose Cinem atographer Ronald Chose Editor! Ronald Chose Musici Alban Derg Principal Cost! Paul Shenor, Elisa Leonelli, Norma Leistiko, John Roberdeau A remarkable first film, originally conceived as a multimedia backdrop to the Houston Grand O pera's production of Alban Derg's masterwork. This is an intensely erotic film, photographed in lush, striking tableaux with compellingly beautiful imagery connecting movement by movement with the rich score.
The script is W edekind's Pandora's Dox — from which G.W. Pabst's film of the sam e title is also derived — but with the original material dramatically heightened and ex panded to an atmospheric complexity that is impossible to forget. The recreation of silent film styles in counterpoint with music from the opera is vibrant and compelling, with shifting, dreamlike passages of m ood ond pace.
FRIDAY, M A Y 26,9.30 PM Northwest Premiere
W ORD IS OUT United States 1977,124 minutes Producer i Peter Adair Directors/Cinematographers/Editorsi Mariposa Film Group
that, they are as diverse as the human race — which is very much the point of this affectionate, stirring and surprisingly witty film. 'W e 're all bom naked and anything anybody wears at any time is drag," says Tede Mathews, an eloquent, seif-described drag queen w hose casually self-assured androgyny will be taken by som e as a confirmation of heterosexual stereotypes of the homosexual and by others as a rebuke to such attitudes. It is the whole notion of sexual stereotypes that this movie so vividly shatters. M ad e by the Mariposa Film Group, a band of six San Francisco filmmakers w ho interviewed 2 0 0 potential subjects before selecting these final 26, 'W ord Is Out is informed by the spirit of ga y liberation, but it never stoops to sloganeering or sensationalism. Instead of rhetoric, the movie offers individual experience: a sexagenarian couple, Harry Hay and John Durnside, w ho tartly recall the style of ga y life in the '30s; a farm boy w ho underwent shock therapy for foiling in love with another boy and is now an openly ga y San Francisco politician; a hilarious, heavyset ex-WAC w ho speaks with nostalgia of her "closet, secret days"; a veterinarian from North Carolina w ho wonders how her parents would react to seeing this film; o black athlete from Princeton trying to deal with the double bias against his race and his sexuality. If you put these people in a room, you would have a bizarre clash of ages, classes, attitudes and life-styles. Put them side by side in a movie together, where they discuss their childhoods, first loves and the often painful road to seif-acceptance, and you have a remarkably coherent chronicle of whot it is like to grow up "different" in America. — David Ansen in "N ew sw eek"
SATURDAY, M A Y 27, 7.00 PM Northwest Premiere
famous jailhouse. Short Eyes is the most im passioned cryfor reform in our present jail system.
This is probably the most potent film ever m ade about the despair and abusive sexual and moral confusion of prison life. Pinero based the play on his ow n hellish incarcerations, and he makes his points savagely but without being arbitrary or gratuitous. The film opens with a suspect being thrown in to the Tombs, waiting to be booked for child molesting. The term "Short Eyes" is prison slang for child molester. When the other in mates, black, white, and Puerto Rican, find out Short Eyes' crime, their seething frustrations explode. The entire cast is uni formly superb. If you like your coffee strong, don't miss this riveting film. It is a dynamic ex perience.
SATURDAY, M A Y 27,9.30 PM W est Coast Premiere
SALOsTHE 120 DAYS OF holy SODOM 1977,117 minutes
Director! Pier Paolo Pasolini Screenplay! Pier Paolo Pasolini based on "The Last Days O f Sodom " by the Marquis de Sade.
SHORT EYES United States 1977,104 minutes Director! Robert M. Young Screenplay! Miguel Pinero, based on his ow n play. Principal Casti Druce Davison, Jose Perez, Shawn Elliott, Miguel Pinero
The 2 6 men and w om en w ho are the subjects of the extraordinary documentary Word Is Out, have one thing in common: each one is a declared homosexual. Deyond
Last September, when Short Eyes m ade its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival, it caused a sensation. Dased on the award-winning play by Miguel Pinero, Short Eyes mokes the transition from stage to screen retaining ali of its electrical impact. Filmed entirely in the "Tombs," New York's in
This is the last film m ade by Pasolini before his recent brutal death, it has by now becom e universally notorious for the intensity
and extremity with which every film festival showing of it has been cursed or defended, it is certainly not advised viewing for those with w eak stomachs or w eak consciences, or for the intellectually diminutive and morally moribund. The title is dearly indicative of the content: people performing mortifying physical and psychological indignities on each other and themselves. The plot is germinolly De Sode's, but updated from 16th century France to that miserable "Italian Social Republic" established by Mussolini in September, 1943. W e ore very proud to be permitted the only West Coast showing of the final work by o great and daring film-artist. Solo is the strongest polemic ever delivered against the infliction of oil violence ond suffering, it should also be considered os a great deal more: o Platonic allegory on the despotidsm of physical desire; a metaphor for the exploitation of the m any by the few, for the corruption by m eans of which political power transforms people into objects. It is certainly the film that Pasolini hod been striving towards throughout his entire, dynamically creative career.
SUNDAY, M A Y 26,2,00 PM A KIDDIE MATINEE (W E'RE NOT KIDDING!)
Our program will include
WINNIE THE POOH THE UGLY DUCKLING United States 64 minutes A W alt Disney Presentation Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger ond their nucleus of friends ore brought to vivid animated life in this Disney version. See ing the film is to really understand how and w hy the characters hove becom e so enduringiy lovable.
THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD United States 1940,106 minutes Alexander Korda's justly famous rendition of o fairy tole set in exotic Baghdad, with fierce and lovable genies, w inged horses, magic fly ing carpets, ond on assortment of other spec tacularly retina-shattering special effects. Starring Sobu, Conrod Veidt and June Duprez So, bring your children of all ages and sizes, crawlers, brawlers and caterwaulers. Afternoons like today ore what memories ore m ode o f . . . .
House, the original negative has been restored, the soundtrack re-recorded; oil the missing footage hos been located, matched to the re-timed negative and inserted (thanks to Twymon Rims). After years of bottling studio executives ond unappreciative critics in this country, von Sternberg wos invited to Japan to re-create the timely and dramatic story of Japanese sailors ond one w om an discovered living in isolation on on island, unaware that World War II hod ended some years before. This became the basis for on analysis of seething passions ond conflicts. Von Sternberg enshrouds this engrossing dromo in o hypnotically poetic interplay of light and shadow.
SUNDAY, M A Y 26,9,00 PM Northwest Premiere
HEART OF GLASS Germany 1976,90 minutes Director, Werner Herzog Cinematography, Jorb Schmidt-Reitwin, Music, Popul Vuh Principal Cost, Josef Dierbichler, Stefan Guffler, Clemens Scheitz
SUNDAY, M A Y 26, 7,00 PM Northwest Premiere
ANATAHAN United States/Japan 1950,95 minutes Director, Josef von Sternberg Cinematography, Josef von Sternberg Principal Cost, Akemi Negishi, Todoshi Suganama
Remem ber how enticing the matinee ot your neighborhood theatre used to look on Sunday afternoons? Rem em ber how the er satz ecstasy of those flickering im ages in the dork seem ed more real ond immediate than the over-fomilior components of your everyday reality? Well, indulge yourself and your children in re-living the heightened e n chantment of those long-ago yet lingering moments. W e ore devoting more than 4 hours of prime time to recoil the pleasures of the post: clowns, jugglers, free balloons, laughably low ticket prices, and som e glorious films (classic cartoons ond actionpacked adventures) that ore bound to iQscinote you oil over again just os much os they will overwhelm your kids for the first time.
American audiences hove never viewed the complete, uncut Anathan — the lost film by one of this country's pantheon directors. Censorship problems in the '5 0 's forced von Sternberg to release o truncated version of his masterpiece. Now, through close co operation with the director's w idow ond son, the American Rim Institute ond Eastman In May, 1975, after seeing Every M on For Himself and God Against All (The Myster of Kaspor Houser) at the Cannes Rim Festival, Francois Truffaut declared its director, Werner Herzog, "the world's greatest living film maker." A year a g o ot the Second Seattle International Rim Festival and through the following summer, Aguirre, the Wroth of God sparked a city-wide interest in Herzog, and m any of his films hove enjoyed local exhibition since. This year, w e ore proud to present Herzog's eighth feature film. Heart of Glass, o work of incredible apocalyptic vision. In his parables of spiritual quest, Herzog explores ond pushes the cinema to its furthest limits, creating "n e w im age s"—
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entirely revolutionary w ays of seeing the world. In Heart of Glass, to achieve on atmosphere he describes as "a rapture of hallucination, of prophecy, of the visionary," Herzog subjected all of his actors but one to hypnosis, and the consequent trance-like rhythm of the film is absolutely aw esom e. The story, set in 19th century Bavaria, begins with the death of the inventor of on extremely precious Ruby glass and with him, the secret of its manufacture. The owner of the gloss factory tries to find the secret by scouring old books, but to no avail. He sends for the shepherd/prophet Hias and presses Hios for the precious formula, but again fails. Madness speaks out of the factory owner when he proclaims that he is in possession of the secret. The people believe him willingly, for am ong the glassblowers madness is rompont. The factory owner determines that the blood of o virgin is essential to the formula for the Ruby glass. Hios' vision be comes nightmare reality, ot once frightening and fascinating.
against needless political martyrdom. The visual import and impact of this film is reminiscent of that other record of the fate of another community of innocent unfor tunates, Picasso's Guernica.
MO NDAY, M A Y 29,9.30 PM Northwest Premiere
ROSELAND United States 1977,110 minutes Director. James Ivory Producer. Ismail Merchant Screenplay. Ruth Prawar Jhabvala Principal Cast. Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Walken, Lilia Skala, Helen Galagher, Teresa Wright
The performances are all uniformly fullscaled, and Lilia Skala is particularly dazzling as an aging Middle European whose governing resolution is to be winner of the exuberant Peabody Cham pagne Hour Contest.
TUESDAY, M A Y 30, 7.00 PM Northwest Premiere
TENT OF MIRACLES Brazil 1977,122 minutes Director. Nelson Pereira dos Santos Screenplay. Nelson Pereira dos Santos, based on a novel by Jorge Am ado Cinematography. Hello Silva Principal Cast. Hugo Carvana, Sonia Dias, Anecy Rocha The Cinema Novo movement that dos Santos himself established with Vidas Secos in 1963, and advanced with How Tasty W as M y Little Frenchman in 1971, finds its ultimate fruition in this delightful new fiim.
MO NDAY, M A Y 29,7.00 PM Northwest Premiere
Tent of Miracles employs a complex film within a film framework— two dneastes making a film about a sociologist— to fuse a beguiling mixture of anthropology, 16th cen tury history, m acum ba rites and sam ba dancing, and to evoke the Bahia of the early 19 0 0 s as well as that of today. It would be abusive to objectify in too m any words the brawling vitality and visual excitement of this film.- they should be experienced first-hand.
LETTERS FROM MARUSIA Mexico/Chile 1977,110 minutes Director. Miguel Littin Principal Cast. Gian-Mario Volonte
TUESDAY, M A Y 30,9.30 P.M. A World Premiere
GAS CITY United States 197Ô, 102 minutes
The massacre at Marusia does not exist in of ficial Chilean history books. However, popular memory is a force more powerful than official record in Latin America, where illiteracy is rampant and the spoken word lingers longer than the written text. The cen tral incident in Letters From Marusia, m ade in Mexico where Littin has lived in exile from his native Chile since Allende's overthrow, is the slaughter of o community of miners by the mine owners, with the eager connivance of the Chilean Army. Letters From Marusia is probably one of the most powerful political films you will ever see, certainly as moving as He W ho Must Die, The Organizer and Z, its predecessors in the film tradition of impassioned indictments
The unique, cross-cultural collaborative team of Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvola have become best known for the gentle irony and wistfulness of their narratives, "Householder," "Shakespeorewolloh," "Savages," and "Autobiography of a Princess." Given their joint predilection for the decorously decoying and gallantly outmoded, the setting of their latest film is recognizably appropriate: Roseland, the famous New York donee hall, a lonely though crowded arena of movement for misty reminiscences and illusory endeavors. The simple, sensitive script consists of three modestly O. henryish vignettes on the isolation that people unwittingly impose on themselves through the self-absorption of their own illusions. The connective tissue for the three tableaux is the cynical narration provided by o dancing instructor, w ho appears to know the various characters in a lucid, de-mystifying w ay they don't themselves.
Director. Jeff Meyer Producer. Jeff Meyer Screenplay. Jeff Meyer Cinematography. Sam loci, Joe Centenero Editor. Jeff M eyer
Principal Casts Jeff M eyer Stan Yale Gail Rosella, Darry Garen, Joyce Durdick, Here's the film that will irretrievably put Seattle on the world filmmaking map. Gas^ City is a work of such consummate technical skill, keen wit, and with so m any ruefully as well os enjoyably recognizable samplings of human achievement and folly, that it will definitely and deservedly achieve success on o notional and international scale. W e feel that Gas City is on a par with such classic "road-pictures" about drifters os Five Easy Pieces and Fat City, and were simply transfixed every minute of it. Although it involves familiar characters and situations, everything in it appears brilliantly new and original. The use of milieu and music is particularly fascinating and lovely. This is o very moving and funny film and you would be doing yourselves a disservice by not seeing it. It certainly will be cherished and talked about by anyone w ho sees it.
W EDNESDAY, M A Y 31, 7.00 PM Seattle Premiere
OPERATION THUNDERBOLT
budget to budget. As naturally, however, the selection process involved in choosing the films for a festival like ours has to apply one absolute standard that must remain uncom promised and without consideration of coun tries, cultures and budget: this absolute stan dard is the assessment of STYLE in any film and, as the phrase goes, you either got it or you ain't. Style is what sets one film opart from another, and style is what people wont to see and pay to see. We feel that no otherfilm in our very potent line-up this year represents STYLE as in tensely and extravagantly as Wim Wenders' "The American Friend." It is, therefore, fitting that no otherfilm should close the show.
HOT TOMORROWS United States 1977,73 minutes Director. Martin Brest Screenplay. Martin Brest Cinematographer <Jacques Haitkin Editor. Martin Brest Principal C a st. Ken Lerner, Ray Sharkey Herve Villechaize
Director. Menahem Golan Principal Cast. Klaus Kinsky, Yehoram Gaon, Assaf Dayan
WEDNESDAY, M A Y 31 ,9 .30 PM
CLOSING NIGHT THE AMERICAN FRIEND Any international film festival is organized to showcase activity in the field of filmmaking all over the world. Kinesthetic styles and concerns naturally vary from country to country, culture to culture,
Stanley Kramer has hod such a prolific and illustrious career os o Hollywood producerdirector that almost anyone growing up in America during the 19 4 0 s and '50s simply couldn't ovoid being exposed to his nam e in som e w ay or other. This isn't just glib hyper bole. Consider the irrefutable record:
SUNDAY, M A Y 28, MIDNIGHT Northwest Premiere
Israel 1977,125 minutes
O n the 6th of July, 1976, a bold Israeli com m ando attack completely thwarted a savage PLO strategy at U ganda's Entebbe airport. The event is recent, heroic history but Operation Thunderbolt m akes even the most familiar details im mediate and thrilling. The film shows the precise planning that went into the counter-attack, as well as the personal plight of the passengers held hostage by the PLO, and is not m ade in the facile, bastar dized manner of the two quickie versions of the event churned out for American TV. It w as nominated fora 1 978 Academ y Aw ard for Best Foreign Rim, in the sam e auspicious league as M adam e Rosa, That Obscure O b ject of Desire, Iphigeneia and A Special Day. German actor Klaus Kinskky, the mesmeric Aguirre in Herzog's triumph, is the hero of Operation Thunderbolt— only nominally, of course, since the real hero is the event.
Stanley Kramen A Retrospective-Tribute
As Producer - So Ends Our Night (1941), The M ood and Sixpence (42), So This Is New York (48) , Hom e of the Brave (49), Champion (49) , The M en (50), Cyrono de Bergerac (50) , Death of a Salesman (51), High Noon (52) , Mem ber of the W edding (52), The Fourposter (53), The 5 0 0 0 Fingers of Dr. T. (53) , The Wild O ne (54), The Coine Mutiny (54) , Pressure Point (62), A Child Is Waiting (62), Invitation To A Gunfighter (64). As Director - Not As A Stronger (55), The Pride and the Passion (57), The Defiant Ones (58), O n The Beach (59), Inherit The Wind (60), Judgment At Nuremburg (61), It's A Mod, Mod, Mod, M od World (63), Ship of Fools (65), Guess W ho's Coming To Dinner (67), Secret of Sonto Vittorio (69), R.P.M. (70), Bless the Beasts and the Children (71), Oklahom a Crude (73) and The Domino Prin ciple (77).
A talented newcomer with a distinct and unsettling point of view, Martin Brest wrote, directed, edited and exec-produced this ec centric tragic com edy— or comic tragedy— about a young man obsessed with death and movies. Hot Tomorrows takes place in Los Angeles, but it is a Los Angeles of the d e a d empty bars, lonely streets, old folks homes and mortuaries. This black and white feature, produced by the American Rim Institute, has a style alter nately naturalistic and surreaiisitc, rather as though Buñuel tried to remake Marty. Its high degree of success can be credited to the direc tor's consistency of vision and tone, the edgy, funny performances, imaginative photography, and a marvelous jazzy score that includes Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, James P Johnson and a sensational virtuoso Busby Berkeley-like production number by the Mystic Knights of the O ingo Boingo.
His approach has always been that of o quiet revolutionary. He has hod the integrity and courage to consistently select scripts that dealt humanistically with subjects considered either unsavory or taboo in films: racial in justice, fascism, pacifism, war crimes, war veterans, paraplegics, adolescent delinquents, the nuclear holocaust, military and political corruption, the needless slaughter of animals, ond campus radicalism. Films being the potent medium of per suasion they ore, the cumulative effect of Mr. Kramer's work in moulding our conceptions of these subjects is considerable. To no other single Hollywood director does the em an cipation of American socio-political thinking ow e so much. Several now-prominent directors, whose early workes he produced, ow e him o great deal too, including Fred Zinnemon, Mark Robson, John Cassavetes, Edward Dmytryk ond Laslo Benedek.
FESTIVAL CALENDAR
third smith iniffinflTionflL run m i \ m — InooRE Eorrnnn mmire [ ■
---- HFESTIVALCniinDM DATES
MATINEES 2:00 P.M.
7:00 P.M.
EVENINGS 9:30 P.M.
MIDNIGHTS
FIRST W EEK MAY 11
MADAME ROSA Golo Opening 6 PM
MAY 12
THE TOY
SUMMER PARADISE
DESPERATE LIVING
THE BEAST
MAY 13
BLACK JOY
CHESS PLAYERS
BLACK JOY
MAY 14
THE TOY
WHO ARE THE DEDOLTS
THE ASCEHT
MAY 15
LA MERVEILLEUSE VISITE
THE PROMISED LAND
MAY 16
BAKER'S DREAD
THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND
MAY 17
BAHIA
EFFIE DRIEST
SECOND W EEK MAY 16
BONJOUR AMOUR
COUSIN ANGELICA
MAY 19
SUMMER OF SECRETS
THE AMERICAN FRIEND
REASON TO LIVE TRUE, BLUE & DREAMY NUDES
WHO ARE THE DEDOLTS
COBRA WOMAN
SOLDIER OF ORANGE
G8§S
SOLDIER OF ORANGE
KRAMER RETROSPECTIVE
ANNA KARENINA
MAY 22
VOYAGE TO GRANDE TARTARY
THE ASCENT
MAY 23
PAFNUCIO SANTO
SNEAK PREVIEW
MAY 24
MIKEY & NICKY
THE WILD DUCK
MAY
20 MAY 21
^
THIRD W EEK MAY 25
CEDDO
ONIDADA
MAY 26
LULU
WORD IS OUT
FEMMES FATALES
BAHIA
SHORT EYES
SALO
ERASERHEAD
THE UGLY DUCKLING WINNIE THE POOH THIEF OF BAGHDAD
THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN
HEART OF GLASS
HOT TOMORROWS
MAY 29
LETTERS FROM MARUSIA
ROSELAND
MAY 30
TENT OF MIRACLES
GAS CITY
OPERATION THUNDERBOLT
THE AMERICAN FRIEND
MAY 27 MAY 26
MAY 31
The calibre and range of actors and actresses he has worked with is formidable: Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hep burn, Fredric March, Spencer Tracy, Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Maximillian Schell, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Simone Signoret, Montgomery Clift, Oskar Werner, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Perkins, George C. Scott, Faye Dunnaway, Candice Bergen, Kirk Douglas, Gene Hackman, Cary Grant, Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Olivia de Haviland, Syd Ceasar, Ann-Margret and on and on. Our retrospective-tribute to Mr. Kramer is finally fitting because he has recently decided to make Seattle his home. Today we will feature an hour-long selection of his representative work— Mr. Kramer has himself m ade the selections— after which Mr. Kramer will spend some time onstage answering whatever questions the attendant audience m ay have to pose. W e urge you not to miss this event. The admission price is $2.00.
FRIDAY, M A Y 12, Northwest Premiere
DESPERATE LIVING United States 1977,90 minutes Directors John Waters Screenplays John Waters Principal Casts Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Liz Renay, Hean Hill
Director! Walerian Dorowczyk Screenplay! Walerian Borowczyk Cinematography! Bernard Bailencourt Principal Cast! Elizabeth Humel Borowczyk is the cinema's most relentless perverse romantic. His style is gaudy and elec trifying, with sweepingly operatic camerawork, rapturous muisc, bizarre sexual activity treated symbolically and infrequently surreal settings. Veryfew majorfilmmakers share his obviously self-relished ardor for sen suality. The Beast is a macabre updating of the Beauty and the Beast legend, grossly graphic in its scenes of sexual insatiability, and clearly revealing the Freudian underpinnings in the original fairy-tale. This isfantasy-filth, touchingly innocent for all its show of cynicism, and visually one of the wittiest films in the Festival. It is a worthy follow-up to Borowczyk's past successes, Immoral Tales (Rrst Seat tle International Rim Festiva) and Story of Sin (Second Seattle International Rim Festival).
MIDNIGHTS FURTHER ADVENTURES OF 'X '
"W hat factors warrant an X rating?" w as the potent question w e posed last year, offering as possible answer five films ranging from the regal raunchiness of John Waters' Multiple Maniacs and the dispassionate documentary Exhibition, to the scabrous social satire of Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight and the lunatic lewdness of Curt McDowell's Thundercrack. The fifth scheduled film, Eraserhead, a legend ever since its first showing at the 1976 Los Angeles Film Exhibition, arrived too late to be shown. This year, our screening of Eraserhead will not be sabotaged by the vagaries of any print-shipping system— w e will make very sure of that. Response to our X-rated Midnight shows w as so strong that w e are back with more, and this time it's so substantially salacious that you might not be able to stand it. As before, w e've opted for the explicit over the evasive, the baw dy over the banal, the ribald over the restrained, the erotic over the esoteric, and in no instance has either humor or inventiveness been sacrificed and/or compromised. So come come come. You ow e yourself a titillation.
John Waters has nearly single-handedly created a whole new subclass of American movies— the "Trash Rim." Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and last year's Female Trouble were all sterling examples of the work of an esthete w ho went beyond the taste barrier— and on to deliberate excesses, e m phasized technical crudities, and a delicious sense of the ridiculous. Desperate Living, his most lavish production to date, carries on the tradition. Desperate Living is a monstrous fairy tale com edy dealing with mental anguish, lesbianism, and political corruption. To give you some idea of the plot: Peggy Gavel, an upper-middle-class hysteric, is released from the mental hospital, only to taunt her cloddish husband and abuse her terrified children. Her 400-pound maid, Grizelda, sympathizes with her and kills Peggy's husband by sitting on him and squashing him to death. Peggy and Grizelda flee Baltimore and m ake their w ay to Mortville, a fantasy town ruled by the wicked Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), w ho is on a rampage, trying to stop her rebel daughter Coo Coo from having an affair with a janior in the local nudist camp. In this situation, pregnant with possibilities. Waters assembles his usual cast of crazies and lets loose the most outrageous attack on normalcy likely to be seen on screen for quite som e time.
SATURDAY, M A Y 13 Northwest Premiere
THE BEAST Poland 1977,100 minutes
FRIDAY, M A Y 19 Northwest Premieres Curt McDowell, co-creator's of last year's Thundercrack, is one of the more prolific and certainly most creative of San Francisco's underground filmmakers. He is uniquely gifted. He writes, directs, shoots, edits, and even acts in his films and m anages to create a total fantasy world of his ow n in each. This world also happens to have its ow n set of psycho-sexual standards and a riotous sense of humor. Here w e present three representative labors of his love, together with Mr. McDowell, w ho will be on stage after the showings to discuss his films.
REASON TO LIVE United States 36 minutes Director! George Kuchar Curt McDowell stars in this hilariously bizarre search for love. The characters (including Marion Eaton, star of Thundercrack) exist somewhere in the region between Holly w ood absurd and True Romance. All the actresses' voices are dubbed by other
actresses except one, whose voice is dubbed by the director. The resulting sound track, with music by Mark Ellinger, creates o fourth-dimensional effect which must be heard to be believed.
TRUE, BLUE 6 DREAMY
FRIDAY, M A Y 26 Northwest Premiere
FEMMES FATALES France 1977,104 minutes
United States 16 minutes
NUDES United States 30 minutes
Directors Bertrand Dlier Cinematography! Claude Renoir Principal Costs Jeon Rochefort, Bernard Blier, Brigitte Fossey The latest film by the exciting young director of Going Places (the scandal of the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), this is a rousing sexist fantasy full of carnal wit and an ending sequence that is an outrageously surreal vision of the ultimate sex act. Two of France's most enduring comedians, Blier and Rochefort, familiar to Seattle audiences from the Tall Blonde Man films and Pardon Mon Affaire, are the featured heroes— one a gynecologist and the other a pimp, both obsessed with sexual proclivity and male domination.
SATURDAY, M A Y 27 Northwest Premiere SATURDAY, M A Y 20 Northwest Premiere
GUMS United States 1977,110 minutes Directors Robert Kaplan
A sexual parody of Jows, featuring o mermaid w h o . . . well, doesn't reading just that moke you wont to see the rest?!
Tickets ovoiloble beginning April 26 at the Moore Egyptian box office 1932 Second Avenue, 2nd and Virginia Noon to 4 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m. ot oil Don Marche ticket offices and Cinema Books, 701 Broadway East
SINGLE FESTIVAL TICKETS
Direct or i Curt MacDowell A surreal meditation on a cigarette billboard using a very strange ballerina as an allegory for something or other. Indescribably funny.
A tribute to the filmoker's closest friends; o series of portraits based on stylized, graphically sexual interpretations of per sonality. Director« Curt MacDowell
TICKETS
ERASERHEAD United States 1977,100 minutes Outwardly the film is the simple story of on innocent young man (Henry) who has a fetish for insects and dirt. Henry lives in a modest one-room apartment with his fet ishes and infernal radiator— a meager exis tence by any standards. But Henry's simple life takes turn when, after o most upsetting family dinner, he's forced into marriage by the parents of his pregnant girlfriend. Henry, wife and Baby (one of the screen's most unique new child stars) move in together. However, Henry's wife soon finds the domestic strains too much and leaves Henry and Boby. Henry, at first un trained in the duties of parenthood, soon de velops o true father/it relationship. But Junior becomes increasingly upset with his father. Why? Is it Henry's neglect— his immoral act with the voluptuous brunette across the hall— or his obsessive fantasy with the fat cheeked w om an? These and other questions ore never answered dearly. Henry finally can't take it anymore and solves his prob lems in one of the most repugnant scenes in film history.
Regular Evening Performances: Students and Seattle Film Society Members S3.00 Ail others S3.25 Matinees $2.50 Midnights (X-roted) $2.00 Retrospective $2.00 Golo Cham pagne Opening (Screening of "M adam e Rosa") $5.00 Kiddie Matinee on Sunday, M ay 26 Kids (12 and under) $1.00 Normals $2.00
SERIES FESTIVAL TICKETS Full Series (includes all evening performances, matinees, midnight shows, the Retrospective, and the gala opening. Available only at the Moore.) Students and Seattle Rim Society Members $45.00 All others $55.00 Partial Series (Your choice of any 6 films except Golo Opening.): Students and Seattle Rim Society Members $13.50 All others $15.00
SCREENINGS All screenings will be at the Moore Egyptian Theatre, 1932 Second Avenue. All films will be shown in their original lan gu a ge with English sub-titles. Each film will be accom panied by a short. 1
Each film will begin promptly at the scheduled showtime.
We regret that w e cannot admit any children under 6 years. Please d o not smoke Inside the auditorium. All programs are subject to change without notice. This is because w e are at the volatile mercy of all the complexities inherent in organizing an event of this kind. Please note that these programs are not double-bills. All screenings require separate admission charges.
M A IL O R D E R S Please m ake your remittance payable to the Moore Egyptian Theatre, and include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with each order.
moore egyption staff
Dan Ireland & Darryl Macdonald, Owners Debbie McAdam, M anager Nancy Hall Don Dass Laura Boots Jay Learmonth Cindi Hamstad Rajeeve Gupta, Festival Director Greg Kachel, Festival Consultant Not in photo« Melissa Borden Shelly Foucault Allison Loris Bob W eaver Rick Sanford W endy Brower Dennis Nybeck & Ray Sage, Projectionists Bill Counter, Acoustics
Festival Stills Photographer «John Brott
THE Y E A R 'S M OST EAGERLY AWAITED FILM! -1978 A CA D E M Y AW ARD W INNER, DEST FOREIGN FILM
SIM ONE SIGNO RET S A M Y DEN YO UD IN
MADAME ROSA A FILM DY MOSHE M IZRAHI EXCLUSIVE NORTHWEST ENGAGEMENT STARTS JUNE 7 M O O RE EGYPTIAN THEATRE, SEATTLE AH A TLA H IK RELEASING CORPORATION RELEASE
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