The Cinematheque JAN+FEB 2016

EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA

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THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

JAN+ FEB 2016

1131 Howe Street | Vancouver | theCinematheque.ca

1131 Howe Street | Vancouver | theCinematheque.ca

CANADA’S TOP TEN 2015 SEIJUN SUZUKI OUT 1 THE QUAY BROTHERS IN 35MM THE MASK - 3D

GATE OF FLESH

鈴木 清順

Seijun Suzuki

AAcnandtiarocnhy the films of

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THE BEST OF 2015 IN CANADIAN FEATURES, SHORTS, AND STUDENT SHORTS

“Canadian movies and Canadian talent have proven themselves among the best in the world. Now it’s our chance to get together and celebrate our best.”

Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director, Toronto International Film Festival The year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival. Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, this celebration of excellence in our national cinema showcases Canadian achievements in featurelength films, short films, and student short films.

Festival selections are chosen by two panels – one for features, one for shorts – of Canadian filmmakers and film industry professionals. To be eligible, films must be directed by a Canadian citizen or resident and have been released commercially or played a major film festival in Canada.

Acknowledgments: The Cinematheque is grateful to the Toronto International Film Festival for making this Vancouver presentation of the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival possible. Special thanks to Steve Gravestock, Senior Programmer, Festival Programming, TIFF, for his kind assistance.

Program notes adapted from texts provided by TIFF. All Ages Welcome!

Admission to those under 18 will be in accordance with the provisions of the specific rating for each feature film or shorts program.

Annual $3 membership required for those 18+

Opening Night! Director Mina Shum and Producer Selwyn Jacob in Person!

Ninth Floor

Canada 2015. Dir: Mina Shum. 81 min. DCP

In her first feature-length documentary, Vancouver’s Mina Shum (Double Happiness) takes a penetrating look at the Sir George Williams University riot of 1969, when a protest against institutional racism snowballed into a 14-day student occupation at the Montreal university. The film begins with Expo ’67 and its rosy vision of Canada as preternaturally tolerant – but the Caribbean students who came to Canada to study in the late 1960s were hardly welcomed with open arms. When a Sir George Williams professor openly treated black and white students differently, it led to official grievances, disastrous missteps by the university, and a lengthy standoff. Expertly combining archival footage and recent interviews to craft a portrait of genuine heroism, Ninth Floor is a timely reminder of the importance of civil disobedience, particularly in times when governmental powers go unchecked. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF FRIDAY, JANUARY 8

Opening Night: Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival Reception, Refreshments, and Filmmakers In Person 7:00 pm – Doors 8:00 pm – Introduction by director Mina Shum and producer Selwyn Jacob and screening of Ninth Floor

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Cross-Canada Simultaneous Screening!

Into the Forest

Canada 2015. Dir: Patricia Rozema. 101 min. DCP

Acclaimed filmmaker Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) returns to the big screen with this gripping apocalyptic drama about two sisters (Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood) who must fend for themselves after a massive power outage throws North America into chaos. Hidden away at their family’s remote country house, Nell and Eva gradually become aware of the severity of their situation, as the blackout continues and supplies dwindle. Page and Wood offer powerful and nuanced performances as young women forced to re-examine their place in the world and their relationship with each other. Rozema offers a fresh and potent take on the apocalyptic thriller, exposing the vulnerabilities of our modern world while bringing a humanistic approach to her film’s fearsome vision of an all-too-plausible future. – Magali Simard, TIFF Special Cross-Canada Simultaneous Screening!

Live Video Q&A: Director Patricia Rozema and actor Ellen Page!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 9 – 6:00 PM

Sleeping Giant

Canada 2015. Dir: Andrew Cividino. 90 min. DCP

Andrew Cividino’s feature debut (Best Canadian Film, VIFF; Best Canadian First Feature, TIFF) is set in an isolated Ontario cottage community during a bleak midsummer, where the volatile dynamics between three teenage friends are gradually pushed towards a dangerous imbalance. Nate, Riley, and Adam while away idle hours playing videogames, getting wasted, and generally engaging in dimwitted shenanigans. They are a study in contrasts: loquacious Nate is the most overtly troubled; Riley is laid back and socially adept; Adam is shy and overprotected. Enter Taylor, a pretty girl whose attraction to Riley infuriates the other two boys. With its creeping atmosphere of ennui and menace, Cividino’s film provides a whip-smart look at the emotional extremes of adolescence, and is one of the most exciting Canadian debuts in recent memory. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF

Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr

Canada 2015. Dirs: Patrick Reed, Michelle Shephard. 80 min. DCP

Omar Khadr, the 15-year-old Canadian captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, tells his own story in this documentary portrait. Considered a child soldier by some and a terrorist by others, Khadr spent 13 years in a long, torturous battle for freedom. The relentless work of lawyer Dennis Edney saw Khadr repatriated to Canada and ultimately released, in the face of the Harper government’s opposition.

Featuring unprecedented access to former fellow inmates, family members, and government officials, the film acquaints us with an incredibly resilient youth who grew up in a mind-boggling situation.

It also analyzes the political implications of his case – the first instance since WWII where the U.S. convicted someone of war crimes for acts allegedly committed as a child. – Magali Simard, TIFF SUNDAY, JANUARY 10 – 8:30 PM

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts 2015 Bacon and God’s Wrath ● Sol Friedman/ON. 9 min.

Balmoral Hotel ● Wayne Wapeemukwa/BC. 10 min.

Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton ● Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson/MB-ON. 30 min.

Interview with a Free Man | Entrevue avec un homme libre ● Nicolas Lévesque/QC. 9 min.

The Little Deputy ● Trevor Anderson/AB. 9 min.

Intermission (15 min.)

My Enemy, My Brother ● Ann Shin/ON. 18 min.

Never Steady, Never Still ● Kathleen Hepburn/BC. 18 min.

Nina ● Halima Elkhatabi/QC. 15 min. o negative ● Steven McCarthy/ON. 15 min.

Overpass | Viaduc ● Patrice Laliberté/QC. 19 min.

Film synopses available at thecinematheque.ca WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13 – 7:00 PM

SATURDAY, JANUARY 9 – 8:30 PM

The Forbidden Room Canada 2015. Dirs: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson. 119 min. DCP

Our Loved Ones (Les êtres chers)

Canada 2015. Dir: Anne Émond. 102 min. DCP

A film of ambitious scope and penetrating insight, Anne Émond’s latest follows a Québécois family over three decades after the suicide of its patriarch, depicting how the impact of love and especially loss are transmitted from one generation to the next. Protected by his well-intentioned siblings from the truth, sensitive David (Maxim Gaudette) becomes a loving husband and father with a seemingly fulfilling life. But over time, David’s melancholia threatens to engulf him. When his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay) begins to recognize herself in him, she must reckon with her emotional inheritance in order to break the cycle and embrace the future. One of Canada’s great new talents (her 2011 debut Nuit #1 won the Claude Jutra Award), Émond exhibits a wisdom rarely found in young filmmakers. – Magali Simard, TIFF SUNDAY, JANUARY 10 – 6:30 PM

Winnipeg original Guy Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson plunge us into celluloid delirium with this mad, multi-narrative maze of phantasmal fables.

Maddin has always been driven by a deep-seated love of strange and obscure sub-genres from cinema’s past. This intoxicating tour of weird set pieces – from a trapped submarine crew forced to eat flapjacks to an Expressionist music video featuring a man (Udo Kier) fatally obsessed with woman’s backsides – is a paean to movies lost, forgotten, or never made.

There’s also an art-film lover’s dream cast: cinema icons, European stars, Quebec’s best actors, and indefatigable Maddin regular Louis Negin. With each new “room” as depraved, sinful, beautiful, wild, and wondrous as the last, it’s as if The Forbidden Room was designed to give prudish censors a never-ending string of coronaries. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF THURSDAY, JANUARY 14 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 15 – 8:20 PM

Program note: Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s short film Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, co-directed with Galen Johnson, screens in the Canada’s Top Ten Shorts program on January 13.

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The Demons (Les démons)

Canada 2015. Dir: Philippe Lesage. 118 min. DCP

An anxious boy in 1980s suburban Montreal is gripped by fears that turn out to be less irrational than expected in documentarian Philippe Lesage’s thrilling, atmospheric narrative-feature debut.

Nine-year-old Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier) is terrified of almost everything – a terror fuelled by his isolation from his parents, dealing with their own dramas. (Convinced at one point he has HIV, Felix hides in his closet for hours, until his older sister intervenes.) Set during a sleepy late summer, The Demons somehow suggests both surface calm and a hazy sense of menace that starts to enclose the film as rumours of unsolved child abductions creep into its hero’s fraught consciousness. Inspired by his own childhood, Lesage’s movie was a hit at Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma and at the San Sebastien Film Festival. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF THURSDAY, JANUARY 14 – 8:45 PM

My Internship in Canada

(Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre) Canada 2015. Dir: Philippe Falardeau. 108 min. DCP

In this gentle satire of Canadian politics from Philippe Falardeau, director of the Oscarnominated Monsieur Lazhar, a Conservative minority movement is tabling legislation that will send Canada to war. When the deciding vote falls to hapless independent MP Steve Guibord (Starbuck’s Patrick Huard), a former hockey player, it thrusts him into the national spotlight. Pressure comes from all sides, even at home, but salvation arrives in the form of new intern Souverain (Irdens Exantus), a Haitian student who knows more about the ins and outs of our system than Steve does. Reminiscent of Ealing comedies such as The Mouse That Roared, My Internship in Canada offers a witting and incisive portrait of Ottawa wheeling and dealing while exposing Canadians’ ingrained tendency to focus on the regional instead of the wider picture. – Steve Gravestock, TIFF

Additional Screenings ● Exclusive First Run SEE PAGE 7 FOR DETAILS THURSDAY, JANUARY 28 – 8:20 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 29 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 30 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 31 – 8:20 PM

Closet Monster Canada 2015. Dir: Stephen Dunn. 90 min. DCP

Mixing affecting drama with whimsical fantasy and elements of Cronenbergian body horror, Newfoundlander Stephen Dunn’s ceaselessly inventive feature debut – named Best Canadian Feature at TIFF – puts an imaginative spin on the coming-of-age tale. High-school student and aspiring SFX makeup artist Oscar (Connor Jessup) needs out – out of his stifling hometown and out of the closet. While he finds support from best friend Gemma (Sofia Banzhaf) and pet hamster Buffy (the voice of Isabella Rossellini), Oscar is haunted by horrifying visions of the consequences of revealing his homosexuality – a fear compounded by his erratic father (Aaron Abrams). When Oscar meets handsome rebel Wilder (Aliocha Schneider), he’s both attracted and utterly terrified. Striking, sometimes shocking, and often funny, Closet Monster establishes Dunn as one of Canada’s brightest new talents. – Magali Simard, TIFF

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16 – 8:15 PM

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2015 Alia ● Raghed Charabaty/Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, NS. 6 min.

The Casebook of Nips & Porkington ● Melody Wang/Sheridan College, ON. 3 min.

Cupid ● Maria De Sanctis/York University, ON. 14 min.

Dysmorphia ● Kate Grubb/Emily Carr University of Art + Design, BC. 4 min.

Ed ● Taha Neyestani/Sheridan College, ON. 4 min.

Menesetung ● Kyle McDonnell/Ryerson University, ON. 9 min.

Michi ● Kaho Yoshida/Emily Carr University of Art + Design, BC. 4 min.

Ms. Liliane ● Junna Chif/Concordia University, QC. 11 min.

Pretty Dangerous ● Dan Laera/Humber College, ON. 9 min.

Smoke ● Kellen Jackson, Suzanne Friesen, Sasha Tomasky/Simon Fraser University, BC. 13 min.

Film synopses available at thecinematheque.ca SUNDAY, JANUARY 17 – 7:00 PM

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15 – 6:30 PM

Hurt

Canada 2015. Dir: Alan Zweig. 84 min. DCP

Three decades ago, B.C.’s Steve Fonyo, an 18-yearold who’d lost a leg to cancer, became both a national hero and the youngest recipient of the Order of Canada when he ran across the country to raise funds for research. His life since then hasn’t been a fairy tale. Substance abuse, jail time, and the government’s decision to strip him of his honour left Fonyo publicly disgraced and forgotten. Today Fonyo soldiers on, struggling with a hardscrabble existence. Though his story is transfixing, it is the empathy and wit of director Alan Zweig (When Jews Were Funny) that lift this documentary to the level of contemporary classics like Crumb. Hurt, winner of the inaugural Platform Prize at TIFF, shows a Canada seldom seen onscreen – and rarely with such impact. – TIFF SATURDAY, JANUARY 16 – 6:30 PM

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#SEETHENORTH

“Nolan has done a major miracle for cinephiles with this miraculous program.”

– Zack Sharf, Indiewire Vancouver Premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Quay!

The Quay Brothers in 35mm Curated by Christopher Nolan

Great Britain/USA 1986-2015. Dirs: Stephen and Timothy Quay, Christopher Nolan. 67 min. 35mm

Mega-blockbuster director Christopher Nolan shines a spotlight on two Dark Knights and fellow visionaries who toil at the opposite end of the moviemaking spectrum: the independent animators Timothy and Stephen Quay, U.S.-born, U.K.-based identical twins whose nightmarishly surreal, Eastern European-influenced stop-motion films are among the most vital, original, and eerily beautiful in contemporary animation. Curated by Nolan himself, and including his new short film Quay (2015, 8 min), a portrait of the brothers and their methods, this special program showcases three Quay masterworks: In Absentia (2000, 20 min.), an unnerving rendering of the mindscape of a letter-writing madwoman, scored by famed composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; The Comb (1991, 18 min.), inspired

by Swiss writer Robert Walser, a mesmerizing visualization of the subconscious as a labyrinthine playhouse haunted by a doll-like explorer; and the supremely creepy Street of Crocodiles (1986, 21 min.), the Quays’ crowning achievement, an adaptation of Polish surrealist Bruno Schulz. “A dazzling collection . . . If you thought Inception and Interstellar were tricky, just wait” (Indiewire).

Screening order: In Absentia, Quay, The Comb, and Street of Crocodiles THURSDAY, JANUARY 21 – 7:00 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 – 8:45 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 23 – 7:00 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 24 – 7:00 PM & 8:30 PM

“Put the mask on, now!”

New 3D Restoration!

The Mask

(aka Eyes of Hell)

Canada 1961. Dir: Julian Roffman. 83 min. DCP

The Cinematheque’s first-ever 3D presentation excavates the deranged psychedelic glories of 1961’s The Mask, Canada’s first horror feature and first 3D feature – now digitally restored in 2K anaglyph 3D by TIFF and the 3-D Film Archive. After the death of a disturbed patient, a psychiatrist (Paul Stevens) acquires an ancient tribal mask with strange powers. Putting the mask on, the good doctor is assailed by hallucinatory visions (in blazing colour) of ghouls, occultists, and ritual torture – and is quickly in danger of becoming unhinged himself. When prompted by the film – “Put the mask on, now!” – viewers don their own “Miracle Movie Masks” and share the doctor’s horrifying visions, rendered through “the wonder of Depth Dimension and Electro-Magic Sound.” The Mask was shot in Toronto on a shoestring budget by Montreal-born director Julian Roffman. “Miracle Movie Masks” provided at the door!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 21 – 8:30 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 – 7:00 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 23 – 8:30 PM

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AL PURDY WAS HERE

NEW DOCUMENTARY “One man revolutionized and revitalized Canadian literature, and he is finally getting the cinematic attention he deserves.” – Kaeli Van Cott, Indiewire “Marvellous . . . A vibrant, inquisitive new documentary . . . If we didn’t know who Al Purdy was before, we do now.” – Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail “I don’t know of any good living poets. But there’s this tough son of a bitch up in Canada that walks the line.” – Charles Bukowski

Vancouver Premiere!

Al Purdy Was Here Canada 2015. Dir: Brian D. Johnson. 92 min. DCP

Former Maclean’s magazine film critic Brian D. Johnson’s first feature-length documentary is a knockout portrait of rabble-rousing, much-loved Canadian poet Al Purdy, a larger-than-life figure many consider the greatest poet English Canada has ever produced. Purdy was born in Ontario in 1918 and died on Vancouver Island in 2000. He spent years in Vancouver (where he worked in a mattress factory). A statue of Purdy adorns Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto (and has its own Twitter account!). Johnson’s affectionate, artful portrait of this complex, charismatic, often contradictory figure includes great archival footage of Purdy in his prime; reminiscences and/or performances by, among others, Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Joseph Boyden, Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, Gordon Pinsent, and Tanya Tagaq; and an account of the campaign to preserve, as a writers’ retreat, Purdy’s A-frame cabin in Prince Edward County, Ontario, once a mecca for many of Canada’s literary pioneers.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 31 – 4:30 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 8:15 PM

“A dense, poetic journey through the history of connectivity . . . This treasure trove of brilliantly selected bits and pieces cumulatively tells the story of technology’s inexorable march into the 21st century” – Film Forum New York

Vancouver Premiere!

Dreams Rewired

Austria/Germany/Great Britain 2015. Dirs: Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode. 88 min. DCP

“Every age thinks it’s the modern age…” This kaleidoscopic documentary essay, poetically narrated by Tilda Swinton, is a real treat. Dreams Rewired traces the high hopes and dark fears of today’s hyper-connected world back more than a century to find some surprising parallels. The fervent utopian expectations and alarmist social/moral hand-wringing sparked by today’s digital Brave New World were also very much present, it seems, during an earlier revolution in electric media. The telegraph, telephone, cinema, television, main-frame computer – all gave rise to the same excitement and same anxiety that accompanies our 21st-century age of social media. Made up of clips from some 200 films dating from the 1880s to the 1930s – slapstick comedies, documentaries, avant-garde works, animated instructional films, propaganda newsreels – Dreams Rewired constructs a rich, entertaining, and intriguing “genealogy of connectivity.”

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29 – 8:45 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 30 – 8:45 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 31 – 6:30 PM WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – 6:30 PM

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NEW CINEMA

“Extraordinary . . . A daring, exquisite study of agitated child psychology that marks filmmaker Philippe Lesage as a name to watch.” – Guy Lodge, Variety “Stunning . . . If The Demons, easily one of the best Canadian films of the year, doesn’t get a proper opening in Vancouver, then I fucking give up.” – Adrian Mack, Georgia Straight “One of the most compelling films I’ve seen in ages. There is a sense of dread that envelops you from the very first images.” – Brendan Kelly, Montreal Gazette Vancouver Premiere!

The Demons (Les démons)

Canada 2015. Dir: Philippe Lesage. 118 min. DCP

Philippe Lesage, a Quebec documentary maker now launching into features, has drawn comparisons to Michael Haneke and Denis Villeneuve for his quietly astonishing drama The Demons, a film widely praised on the European festival circuit and recently chosen for Canada’s Top Ten. This story of Félix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), a sensitive 10-year-old boy growing up in suburban Montreal, is mostly about the ordinary fears and insecurities of childhood – those everyday demons of bullies, bad dreams, unhappily-married parents, and nascent sexuality. But real-life monsters are also lurking out there in the world, and they begin to intrude. Beautifully shot in assured wide-screen compositions, Lesage’s disquieting, intense, admirably restrained film hints at the psychological thriller and often seems about to explode into more conventional genre territory. Lesage, with impressive control, constantly confounds such expectations, even as events begin to take a darker turn. The Demons is a startling achievement.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14 – 8:45 PM (CANADA’S TOP TEN) THURSDAY, JANUARY 28 – 8:20 PM FRIDAY, JANUARY 29 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, JANUARY 30 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 31 – 8:20 PM

CHAN CENTRE CONNECTS The Chan Centre Connects Series and The Cinematheque present

Brooklyn Boheme

USA 2011. Dirs: Nelson George, Diane Paragas. 75 min.

Brooklyn Boheme is a love letter to the vibrant African American artistic community residing in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Brooklyn during the 1980s and ’90s. Some of the most influential figures in black pop culture of the era called Fort Greene home, including Spike Lee, Terry McMillan, Notorious BIG, Erykah Badu, Chris Rock, and jazz royalty Branford and Wynton Marsalis. Their art was influenced by the people they met and the sense of community they shared. Saxophonist Branford, urged to move to New York by trumpeter brother Wynton, fell in love with the neighbourhood, joining forces with musicians such as Terrance Blanchard and Donald Harrison, and befriending Spike Lee and collaborating on his films. This funny, joyous documentary celebrates Brooklyn’s equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of a new kind of African American artist. (adapted from official synopsis).

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4 – 7:00 PM

This special screening is presented in conjunction with Branford Marsalis’s performance at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, February 13 at 8:00 pm.

The Chan Centre Connects Series features film screenings, panel discussions, talks, and master classes, programmed in conjunction with the artists performing throughout the Chan Centre’s mainstage concert season. For more information on these events, please visit chancentre.com/connects www.chancentre.com

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THE IMAGE A HISTORY OF FILM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA - TAKE 2 Curated by Harry Killas It is time again to celebrate the innovative, iconoclastic, often astonishing cinematic heritage of British Columbia.

“The Image Before Us” is a multi-year series of screenings presenting histories of film in British Columbia, inspired

by The Image Before Us, written and directed by poet, scholar, and filmmaker Colin Browne in 1986. In that documentary essay film, Browne investigates and gently critiques the images of Vancouver that have been presented to us in many historic motion pictures, primarily newsreels and travelogues, produced in and about B.C.

Following up on the success of last year’s first season, “The Image – Take 2” shifts its focus to new themes and sub-themes: autobiography, family, the immigrant experience, American-Canadian relations, and sex. Come to the provocative and entertaining screenings in “The Image – Take 2” and be amazed. – Harry Killas

“What is the image before us?” Browne asks. “And how did it get that way?” How do we “read” our own films? If one focuses on this story or that image, what about the stories and images that have been left out? What stories and images have been presented and persist in our imaginaries of here?

What others are not presented and consequently need

Harry Killas is Assistant Dean, Dynamic Media, at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. His many films about the life and history of British Columbia and British Columbians include Picture Start, Glowing in the Dark, and Spilsbury’s Coast.

From the Vault:

Focus on Autobiography:

Warclouds in the Pacific

She’s a Boy I Knew

Canada 1941. Dir: Stuart Legg. 20 min. DCP

Canada 2007. Dir: Gwen Haworth. 70 min. HDCAM

Lorne Greene narrates this 1941 Oscar-nominated documentary short, produced by the National Film Board as part of “Canada Carries On,” a series of morale-boosting wartime propaganda films. Examining the rise of industrialized Japan in the 20th century, the film warns of an imminent Japanese attack and was released just one week before Pearl Harbor. Clips from the film were incorporated into Colin Browne’s 1986 documentary The Image Before Us, where the images of fear and war were contrasted with the reality of Canada’s wartime treatment of Japanese-Canadians.

Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth’s astonishing autobiographical documentary offers an intimate, engaging exploration of family ties as it chronicles Haworth’s maleto-female gender transition. At each step in the process, the film gives voice to Hawthorn’s anxious but loving parents, sisters, ex-wife, and best friend. As all concerned are forced to re-examine their preconceptions of sexuality and gender, family bonds are strengthened. Archival footage and animation help illustrate the story. She’s a Boy I Knew was voted Most Popular Canadian Film at VIFF in 2007 and also won the Women in Film and Television Vancouver Artistic Merit Award given at the festival.

+ Immigrant Impressions Canada 1965. Dir: Jim Carney. 50 min. DCP

An impressionistic take on the differing reactions of immigrants to the city-in-transition Vancouver of the mid-1960s. Made for CBC Television’s Camera West, a Vancouver-produced series of documentaries, this is a great chance to see the Vancouver of 50 years ago – when high rises in the West End were the latest thing!

+ Swingspan Canada 1986. Dir: Bruno Lazaro Pacheco. 28 min. 16mm

The history of Vancouver’s Cambie (aka Connaught) Bridge is revealed through the explorations and memories of a semifictional young man. Produced by Vancouver’s Cineworks film co-op, Swingspan is a lovingly-shot eulogy for the old bridge and an opportunity to see moving images of the industrial zones of False Creek and Yaletown on the eve of Expo 86. In memory of Gary Young, whose idea it was to make the film.

Introduced by Harry Killas MONDAY, JANUARY 18 – 7:00 PM

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to be? Browne’s rich, condensed, pungent, and ultimately moving work asks these questions that reverberate through our series: What do the films of British Columbia represent to us, and what are the cinematic narratives of here?

preceded by

Your Mother Should Know Canada 2008. Dir: Peg Campbell. 18 min. DigiBeta

Peg Campbell’s deeply personal film meditates on her relationship with her mother and on Campbell’s own journey from teenager in the 1960s and ’70s to a filmmaker career to becoming a mother herself. A portrait of the artist through the prisms of feminism, art, and motherhood.

Guests in attendance: Gwen Haworth, Peg Campbell MONDAY, JANUARY 25 – 7:00 PM

SWINGSPAN

BEFORE US MY AMERICAN COUSIN

Skip Tracer

Deserters

Canada 1977. Dir: Zale Dalen. 95 min. DCP

Canada 1983. Dir: Jack Darcus. 91 min. DigiBeta

“One of the most satisfying features ever made on the West Coast” (Colin Browne), Zale Dalen’s legendary low-budget Vancouver film, a gritty, energetic urban drama from 1977, has lately been reclaimed as a classic of Canuxploitation cinema. David Petersen is impressive as a zealous debt collector/repo man out to retain his company’s “Man of the Year” award. To accomplish the feat, he mercilessly harasses an indebted car salesman, meanwhile teaching the ruthless ropes of his trade to a new hire. Skip Tracer earned international kudos for skilfully capturing the day-to-day milieu of debt collecting and caustically critiquing consumerist values.

“In Dalen’s film the city of Vancouver is a character. It’s an urban labyrinth filled with car lots, parking lots, cheap buildings, tacky offices, noisy streets, junky building sites, unhappy suburbs, and tawdry bars . . . Dalen has managed to portray a part of the city’s soul” (Browne).

DCP courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

The most acclaimed feature of Vancouver director, screenwriter, and painter Jack Darcus, a central figure of the local independent film scene, is an offbeat drama about American draft dodgers and deserters landing in Vancouver at the height of the Vietnam War. Alan Scarfe, riveting in the lead, is Sgt. Ulysses Hawley, who claims to be a combat vet seeking sanctuary. He’s taken in by unhappily-married Val (Barbara Marsh) and Noel (Dermot Hennelly), both a bit too fond of the American war resisters they shelter. The burly, boorish Hawley may have ulterior motives of his own, and his presence upsets mild-mannered draft dodger Peter (Jon Bryden). The script, developed by Darcus and Vancouver’s New Play Centre, was specifically tailored for Scarfe’s talents. The film was nominated for six Genies. “A gem . . . Guerrilla warfare in a Canadian living room . . . Deserters is also about our war within, the conflict between Canadian and American identifies” (Michael Dorland, Cinema Canada).

preceded by

preceded by

VVOOLLVVOO

Brücke

Canada 2013. Dir: Víctor Ballesteros. 1 min.

Canada 2011. Dir: Kristen Turcotte. 4 min.

Volvo 3C: Camera, car, computer. Vancouver filmmaker Víctor Ballesteros’s short speeds by in less than a minute.

Guest in attendance: Zale Dalen

Emily Carr University grad Kristen Turcotte’s Expressionistic animated short poetically evokes the life of a First World War veteran and the mood of a forgotten time.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1 – 7:00 PM

Guest in attendance: Jack Darcus

My American Cousin

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29 – 7:00 PM

Canada 1985. Dir: Sandy Wilson. 89 min. DCP

Now a classic of our national cinema, writer-director Sandy Wilson’s charming film à clef is both an affecting coming-of-age tale and a witty meditation on CanadianAmerican cultural tensions. Sandy Wilcox (Margaret Langrick) is a preteen growing up in the 1950s in B.C.’s Okanagan, where she’s bored (“Nothing ever happens!”) and also tired of being treated like a child. Everything changes with the arrival of Butch (John Wildman), her dreamy, red-convertible-driving cousin from California, who seems to embody everything exciting Sandy’s been longing for. My American Cousin was a popular hit at home and abroad, and won six Genie Awards – for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress (Landrick), Actor (Wildman), and Editing (Haida Paul). Arriving on the heels of The Grey Fox, it also solidified B.C.’s ascendance as an important filmmaking centre – and was a rallying cry for women in film everywhere!

“The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia – Take 2” continues in March and April!

Details available in our March/April 2016 program guide.

preceded by

Pen-Hi Grad Canada 1975. Dir: Sandy Wilson. 28 min. 16mm

For one memorable week, students graduating from the only high school in Penticton, B.C. go through a whirlwind of formal ceremonies, wild celebrations, hijinks, and farewells. The director as wry anthropologist!

Guest in attendance: Sandy Wilson MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 7:00 PM

SHE’S A BOY I KNEW

9

SUN

MON

TUES

WED

THURS

FRI

SAT

1 TICKETS

2

Essential Cinema

9

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

CLOSED FOR

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

THE HOLIDAYS

3

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

4

5

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

6

JANUARY Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

7

8

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

HOW TO BUY TICKETS Day–of tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening.

Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca ($1 service charge applies). Events, times, and prices are subject to change without notice.

The Cinematheque is recognized as an exempt non–profit film society under the B.C. Motion Picture Act, and as such is able to screen films that have not been reviewed by the B.C. Film Classification Office. Under the act, all persons attending cinematheque screenings must be members of the Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique Society and be 18 years of age or older, unless otherwise indicated.

10

Our Loved Ones – 6:30 pm

11

Classics from Our Collection

Zéro de conduite — 7:00 pm

Guantanamo’s Child:

12

13

Le jour se lève — 8:00 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Canada’s Top Ten

14

Shorts 2015 – 7:00 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

The Forbidden Room – 6:30 pm

15

The Demons – 8:45 pm

Omar Khadr – 8:30 pm

17

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday

Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1:00 pm

GUEST

18

BC Film History

Warclouds in the Pacific

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

20

19

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Autism in Love – 7:30 pm

21

22

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Opening Night

Into the

LIVE VIDEO Q&A

Doors – 7:00pm

Forest – 6:00 pm

Ninth Floor – 8:00pm

Sleeping Giant – 8:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Closet Monster – 6:30 pm

16

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Hurt – 6:30 pm

The Forbidden

My Internship in

Room – 8:20 pm

Canada – 8:15 pm

23

New Restorations

The Mask – 7:00 pm

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers in

+ Immigrant Impressions

in 35mm – 7:00 pm

The Quay Brothers

35mm – 7:00 pm

+ Swingspan – 7:00 pm

The Mask – 8:30 pm

in 35mm – 8:45 pm

The Mask – 8:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2015 – 7:00 pm

$3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

theCinematheque.ca

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

GUEST

24

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers

25

in 35mm – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

She’s a Boy I Knew + Your

27

26

DIM Cinema

The Nine Muses – 7:30 pm

28

Mother Should Know – 7:00 pm

The Quay Brothers

New Documentary

Al Purdy Was Here – 6:30 pm

29

New Cinema

The Demons – 6:30 pm

30

New Cinema

The Demons – 6:30 pm

New Cinema

New Documentary

New Documentary

The Demons – 8:20 pm

Dreams Rewired – 8:45 pm

Dreams Rewired – 8:45 pm

in 35mm – 8:30 pm

IN THIS ISSUE CANADA’S TOP TEN 2015 2–4

31

New Documentary

Al Purdy

NEW RESTORATIONS 5

Was Here – 4:30 pm

NEW DOCUMENTARY 6

New Cinema

SEIJUN SUZUKI 12–14

1

Skip Tracer +

OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE 15

Out 1: Noli me tangere

8

New Documentary

Dreams Rewired – 6:30 pm

4

Chan Centre Connects

Brooklyn Boheme – 7:00 pm

5

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 5 + 6 – 2:00 pm

Out 1: Episode 1 + 2 – 2:00 pm

Out 1: Episode 7 + 8 – 6:30 pm

Out 1: Episode 3 + 4 – 6:30 pm

9

GUEST

6

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Opening Night with

Special Introduction

Al Purdy Was Here – 8:15 pm

FEBRUARY

The Demons – 8:20 pm

7

3

2

VVOOLLVVOO – 7:00 pm

Dreams Rewired – 6:30 pm

NEW CINEMA 7 BC FILM HISTORY 8–9

GUEST

BC Film History

Out 1: Episode

Out 1: Episode

3 + 4 – 6:30 pm

1 + 2 – 7:00 pm

11

DIM Cinema

Day Is Done – 7:00 pm

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 5 + 6 – 7:00 pm

12

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 1 + 2 – 2:00 pm

Doors – 6:00pm

10

Out 1: Noli me tangere

13

Out 1: Episode 7 + 8 – 7:00 pm

VIMFF 2016

vimff.org

DIM CINEMA 16 FRAMES OF MIND 17 SCI-FI CINEMA SUNDAY 18 CLASSICS FROM OUR COLLECTION 19

15

14

17

16

GUEST

Frames of Mind

My Skinny Sister – 7:30 pm

18

19

20

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL 2016

Seijun Suzuki

Tokyo Drifter – 6:30 pm Fighting Elegy – 8:15 pm

MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL 2016

vimff.org

vimff.org

Rated G Rated PG Rated 14A Rated 18A

21

Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday

The War of

22

GUEST

BC Film History

23

24

Seijun Suzuki

25

Seijun Suzuki

28

27

Seijun Suzuki

My American Cousin +

Branded to Kill – 6:30 pm

Tokyo Drifter – 6:30 pm

Branded to Kill – 6:30 pm

Tattooed Life – 6:30 pm

Seijun Suzuki

Pen-Hi Grad – 7:00 pm

The Call of Blood – 8:15 pm

Carmen from Kawachi – 8:15 pm

Tattooed Life – 8:15 pm

Branded to Kill – 8:15 pm

Tokyo Drifter – 8:15 pm

SWINGSPAN

Seijun Suzuki

the Worlds - 1:00 pm Fighting Elegy – 6:30 pm

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

26

Seijun Suzuki

The Call of Blood – 6:30 pm

29

GUEST

BC Film History

Deserters + Brücke - 7:00 pm

1

Carmen from Kawachi – 8:30 pm

DIM Cinema

Sessions: Kelley and Trecartin – 7:30 pm

2

Seijun Suzuki

Story of a Prostitute – 6:30 pm Kanto Wanderer – 8:25 pm

MARCH

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL FEBRUARY 12-20, 2016 VIMFF.ORG

3

Seijun Suzuki

Kanto Wanderer – 6:30 pm Story of a Prostitute – 8:20 pm

SUN

MON

TUES

WED

THURS

FRI

SAT

1 TICKETS

2

Essential Cinema

9

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

CLOSED FOR

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

THE HOLIDAYS

3

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

4

5

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

6

JANUARY Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

7

8

Essential Cinema

Barry Lyndon – 7:00 pm

HOW TO BUY TICKETS Day–of tickets go on sale at the Box Office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening.

Advance tickets are available for credit card purchase at theCinematheque.ca ($1 service charge applies). Events, times, and prices are subject to change without notice.

The Cinematheque is recognized as an exempt non–profit film society under the B.C. Motion Picture Act, and as such is able to screen films that have not been reviewed by the B.C. Film Classification Office. Under the act, all persons attending cinematheque screenings must be members of the Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique Society and be 18 years of age or older, unless otherwise indicated.

10

Our Loved Ones – 6:30 pm

11

Classics from Our Collection

Zéro de conduite — 7:00 pm

Guantanamo’s Child:

12

13

Le jour se lève — 8:00 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Canada’s Top Ten

14

Shorts 2015 – 7:00 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

The Forbidden Room – 6:30 pm

15

The Demons – 8:45 pm

Omar Khadr – 8:30 pm

17

ALL SCREENINGS ARE RESTRICTED TO 18+ UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday

Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1:00 pm

GUEST

18

BC Film History

Warclouds in the Pacific

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

20

19

GUEST

Frames of Mind

Autism in Love – 7:30 pm

21

22

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Opening Night

Into the

LIVE VIDEO Q&A

Doors – 7:00pm

Forest – 6:00 pm

Ninth Floor – 8:00pm

Sleeping Giant – 8:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Closet Monster – 6:30 pm

16

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

Hurt – 6:30 pm

The Forbidden

My Internship in

Room – 8:20 pm

Canada – 8:15 pm

23

New Restorations

The Mask – 7:00 pm

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers in

+ Immigrant Impressions

in 35mm – 7:00 pm

The Quay Brothers

35mm – 7:00 pm

+ Swingspan – 7:00 pm

The Mask – 8:30 pm

in 35mm – 8:45 pm

The Mask – 8:30 pm

Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts 2015 – 7:00 pm

$3 ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED FOR THOSE 18+

theCinematheque.ca

Canada’s Top Ten 2015

GUEST

24

New Restorations

The Quay Brothers

25

in 35mm – 7:00 pm

GUEST

BC Film History

She’s a Boy I Knew + Your

27

26

DIM Cinema

The Nine Muses – 7:30 pm

28

Mother Should Know – 7:00 pm

The Quay Brothers

New Documentary

Al Purdy Was Here – 6:30 pm

29

New Cinema

The Demons – 6:30 pm

30

New Cinema

The Demons – 6:30 pm

New Cinema

New Documentary

New Documentary

The Demons – 8:20 pm

Dreams Rewired – 8:45 pm

Dreams Rewired – 8:45 pm

in 35mm – 8:30 pm

IN THIS ISSUE CANADA’S TOP TEN 2015 2–4

31

New Documentary

Al Purdy

NEW RESTORATIONS 5

Was Here – 4:30 pm

NEW DOCUMENTARY 6

New Cinema

SEIJUN SUZUKI 12–14

1

Skip Tracer +

OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE 15

Out 1: Noli me tangere

8

New Documentary

Dreams Rewired – 6:30 pm

4

Chan Centre Connects

Brooklyn Boheme – 7:00 pm

5

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 5 + 6 – 2:00 pm

Out 1: Episode 1 + 2 – 2:00 pm

Out 1: Episode 7 + 8 – 6:30 pm

Out 1: Episode 3 + 4 – 6:30 pm

9

GUEST

6

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Opening Night with

Special Introduction

Al Purdy Was Here – 8:15 pm

FEBRUARY

The Demons – 8:20 pm

7

3

2

VVOOLLVVOO – 7:00 pm

Dreams Rewired – 6:30 pm

NEW CINEMA 7 BC FILM HISTORY 8–9

GUEST

BC Film History

Out 1: Episode

Out 1: Episode

3 + 4 – 6:30 pm

1 + 2 – 7:00 pm

11

DIM Cinema

Day Is Done – 7:00 pm

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 5 + 6 – 7:00 pm

12

Out 1: Noli me tangere

Out 1: Episode 1 + 2 – 2:00 pm

Doors – 6:00pm

10

Out 1: Noli me tangere

13

Out 1: Episode 7 + 8 – 7:00 pm

VIMFF 2016

vimff.org

DIM CINEMA 16 FRAMES OF MIND 17 SCI-FI CINEMA SUNDAY 18 CLASSICS FROM OUR COLLECTION 19

15

14

17

16

GUEST

Frames of Mind

My Skinny Sister – 7:30 pm

18

19

20

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL 2016

Seijun Suzuki

Tokyo Drifter – 6:30 pm Fighting Elegy – 8:15 pm

MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL 2016

vimff.org

vimff.org

Rated G Rated PG Rated 14A Rated 18A

21

Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday

The War of

22

GUEST

BC Film History

23

24

Seijun Suzuki

25

Seijun Suzuki

28

27

Seijun Suzuki

My American Cousin +

Branded to Kill – 6:30 pm

Tokyo Drifter – 6:30 pm

Branded to Kill – 6:30 pm

Tattooed Life – 6:30 pm

Seijun Suzuki

Pen-Hi Grad – 7:00 pm

The Call of Blood – 8:15 pm

Carmen from Kawachi – 8:15 pm

Tattooed Life – 8:15 pm

Branded to Kill – 8:15 pm

Tokyo Drifter – 8:15 pm

SWINGSPAN

Seijun Suzuki

the Worlds - 1:00 pm Fighting Elegy – 6:30 pm

BACKGROUND IMAGE:

26

Seijun Suzuki

The Call of Blood – 6:30 pm

29

GUEST

BC Film History

Deserters + Brücke - 7:00 pm

1

Carmen from Kawachi – 8:30 pm

DIM Cinema

Sessions: Kelley and Trecartin – 7:30 pm

2

Seijun Suzuki

Story of a Prostitute – 6:30 pm Kanto Wanderer – 8:25 pm

MARCH

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL FEBRUARY 12-20, 2016 VIMFF.ORG

3

Seijun Suzuki

Kanto Wanderer – 6:30 pm Story of a Prostitute – 8:20 pm

AAcnaatnidrconhy the f ilms of

i k u z u S n u j i Se 鈴木 清順

“Seijun Suzuki is a master stylist and one of Japanese cinema’s greatest innovators.”

Jim Jarmusch

I

n a career spanning nearly five decades, Seijun Suzuki, now 92, amassed a body of work ranging from B-movie potboilers to beguiling metaphysical mysteries. On the occasion of the publication of Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki (Smithsonian Institution, 2015) by Tom Vick, a travelling retrospective of the director’s work has been organized by the Freer and Sacker Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and The Japan Foundation.

Suzuki first became famous when he was fired by Nikkatsu Studios for making films that, as he put it, “made no sense and made no money.” But it was his freewheeling approach and audacious experimentation that gained Suzuki a cult following in Japan and abroad. Suzuki’s job at Nikkatsu was to make B-movies out of scripts that were assigned to him. In the mid-1960s, with dozens of such films under his belt, Suzuki’s restlessness began to come through as he and his collaborators, art director Takeo Kimura and cinematographers Shigeyoshi Mine and Kazue Nagatsuka, began experimenting with the assigned material. These films established Suzuki as a stylistic innovator working within – and rebelling against – the commercial constraints of B-movie studio work.

In the 1990s, retrospectives in Europe and North America – including one at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1991 – brought long-overdue attention to Suzuki’s films in the West. A new generation of devotees, most notably Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, praised Suzuki in the press and referenced his work in their films.

The Cinematheque’s Vancouver presentation of the films of Seijun Suzuki showcases ten remarkable works from this irreverent, deliriously stylish, outrageously entertaining director’s peak period, the 1960s, and includes all his greatest hits.

Acknowledgements: This travelling retrospective was programmed and organized by Tom Vick, Curator of Film, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.). It was co-organized by and is co-presented with the Japan Foundation.

Film notes by Tom Vick, Freer and Sackler Galleries. Series introduction adapted from Mr. Vick’s introduction for Freer and Sackler.

Tom Vick’s Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki (2015) available for purchase at The Cinematheque during the retrospective!

12

Co-presented with The Japan Foundation

“To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess.”

Manohla Dargis, The Criterion Collection KANTO WANDERER

“If you see only one Suzuki, this should be it - a whacked-out yakuza thriller.” Tom Charity, Rough Guide

殺しの烙印

東京流れ者

(Koroshi no rakuin)

Tokyo Drifter (Tokyo nagaremono)

Japan 1966. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 83 min. DCP

Tasked with making a vehicle for actor/singer Tetsuya Watari to croon the title song, Suzuki concocted this crazy yarn about a reformed yakuza on the run from his former comrades. The film is mainly an excuse to stage an escalating series of goofy musical numbers and over-the-top fight scenes. Popping with garish colors, self-parodic style, and avant-garde visual design, Tokyo Drifter embodies a late-1960s zeitgeist in which trash and art joyfully commingle. “With influences that range from Pop Art to 1950s Hollywood musicals, and from farce and absurdist comedy to surrealism, Suzuki shows off his formal acrobatics in a film that is clearly meant to mock rather than celebrate the yakuza film genre” (Nikolaos Vryzidis, Directory of World Cinema: Japan). “Inspired lunacy . . . Somehow, it still just about works as a thriller” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out).

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 6:30 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – 8:15 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 6:30 PM

_ Fighting Elegy けんかえれじい

(Kenka erejii)

Japan 1966. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 86 min. 35mm

Set in the 1930s, this darkly comic film is the story of Kiroku, a high school kid who lusts after the pure, Catholic daughter of the family with whom he boards. The only relief he can find for his immense sexual frustration is through fighting, which at first gets him into trouble, but later makes him perfect cannon fodder for the Sino-Japanese War. As with Story of a Prostitute, the subject of militarism inspired Suzuki to make one of his most personal and impassioned works. “One of Suzuki’s indisputable masterpieces, this subversively funny account of the making of a model fascist goes where no film had gone before in search of comic insights into the adolescent male mind” (Tony Rayns). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

Branded to Kill Japan 1967. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 91 min. DCP

This fractured film noir is the final provocation that got Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu Studios, simultaneously making him a counterculture hero and putting him out of work for a decade.

An anarchic send-up of B-movie clichés, it stars Jo Shishido as an assassin who gets turned on by the smell of cooking rice, and whose failed attempt to kill a victim (a butterfly lands on his gun) turns him into a target himself. Perhaps Suzuki’s most famous film, it has been cited as an influence by filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook, and John Woo, as well as the composer John Zorn, who called it “a cinematic masterpiece that transcends its genre.” “One of his greatest movies . . . It’s hard to figure how Suzuki could have gone further than this” (Tony Rayns).

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 8:15 PM

_ The Call of Blood 俺たちの血が許さない

aka Our Blood Will Not Forgive (Oretachi no chi ga yurusanai) Japan 1964. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 97 min. 35mm

Though Suzuki created it in the midst of his stylistic breakthrough, The Call of Blood has never received the same amount of attention as other films he made around the same time. Nikkatsu icons Hideki Takahashi and Akira Kobayashi star as brothers – one a gangster, the other an ad man – who unite to avenge their yakuza father’s death eighteen years before. The film features a bold use of colour; an absurdist concluding gunfight; and, in one memorable scene, an impressively illogical use of rear projection as the brothers argue in a car while ocean waves rage around them. Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 6:30 PM

_

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21 – 6:30 PM

_

13

STORY OF A PROSTITUTE

“The eccentric visionary of genre cinema . . .

His work is subversively and joyfully excessive.”

Austrian Film Museum 河内カルメン

関東無宿

(Kawachi Karumen)

(Kantô mushuku)

Carmen from Kawachi Japan 1966. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 89 min. 35mm

Japan 1963. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 92 min. 35mm

A 1960s riff on the opera Carmen (including a rock version of its famous aria “Habanera”), this picaresque tale sends its heroine from the countryside to Osaka and Tokyo in search of success as a singer. Her journey is fraught with exploitation and abuse at the hands of nefarious men – until Carmen seeks revenge. Mixing comedy, biting social commentary, and Suzuki’s customarily outrageous stylistic flourishes, this fast-paced gem is an overlooked classic from his creative late period at Nikkatsu Studios.

“One of Suzuki’s trilogy of women-centered films from the mid60s . . . Yumiko Nogawa, Suzuki’s favourite actress, [gives] a wide-eyed yet weary performance . . . True to form, Suzuki adds plenty of black humour and a surreal, ironic edge” (Ted Shen, Chicago Reader). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

Based on a book by Taiko Hirabayashi, one of Japan’s most famous female novelists, Kanto Wanderer puts a Suzukian spin on the classic yakuza movie conflict between giri (duty) and ninjo (humanity). Nikkatsu superstar Akira Kobayashi plays Katsuta, a fearsome yakuza bodyguard torn between defending his boss against a rival gang leader and his obsession with Tatsuko, a femme fatale who reappears from his past. Suzuki uses this traditional story to experiment with colour and to indulge his interest in Kabuki theatre techniques and effects, most notably in the stunning final battle, in which the scenery falls away to reveal a field of pure blood red. “As an example of Suzuki’s midperiod output at Nikkatsu, Kanto Wanderer offers us an inspiring sample of experimentation on assignment” (Margaret BartonFumo, Senses of Cinema). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – 8:15 PM SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28 – 8:30 PM

_ Tattooed Life 刺青一代

aka One Generation of Tattoos (Irezumi ichidai)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 – 8:25 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 6:30 PM

_ Gate of Flesh 肉体の門

(Nikutai no mon)

Japan 1965. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 87 min. 35mm

Japan 1964. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 90 min. 35mm

Set in the 1930s, Tattooed Life is the story of two brothers: Kenji, an art student, and Tetsu, who is working as a yakuza to help pay for Kenji’s tuition. When a hit job goes horribly wrong, the brothers flee. They end up finding work in a mine – and falling in love with the owner’s wife and daughter. But will Tetsu’s gang tattoos reveal the brothers’ secret past? The first film to earn Suzuki a warning about “going too far” from his Nikkatsu bosses, Tattooed Life contains one of his most iconic and audacious violations of film form: a final fight scene in which the floor suddenly and illogically disappears, and the action is filmed from below the actors’ feet. “Suzuki turns an otherwise ordinary genre movie into a spectacle to set the eyes on fire” (Tony Rayns). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

Part social realist drama, part sadomasochistic trash opera, Gate of Flesh paints a dog-eat-dog portrait of postwar Tokyo. The film takes the point of view of a gang of tough prostitutes working out of a bombed-out building. When a lusty ex-soldier lurches into their midst, the group’s most sensitive member is tempted to break one of its most important rules: no falling in love.

From the women’s bold, color-coded dresses to the unorthodox use of superimposition effects and theatrical lighting, this is Suzuki at his most astonishingly inventive. “Not infrequently shocking . . . Visual stylization reaches new heights in Suzuki’s vehement and convulsive adaptation of Taijiro Tamura’s notorious novel” (Tony Rayns). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 6:30 PM

FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – 6:30 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 8:15 PM

_ Story of a Prostitute

_ Youth of the Beast

Japan 1965. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 96 min. 35mm

Suzuki himself claims that 1963 was the year when he truly came into his own, and Youth of the Beast is one of his breakthroughs.

In his second collaboration with the director, Jo Shishido rampages through the movie, playing a disgraced ex-cop pitting two yakuza gangs against each other to avenge the death of a fellow officer.

As the double and triple crosses mount, Suzuki fills the frame with lurid colors, striking compositions, and boldly theatrical effects that signal a director breaking away from genre material to forge a pulp art form all his own. “Hot stuff . . . Suzuki raises the genre’s visual rhetoric to a new high. Who else would park a gay yakuza in a pink limo under matching cherry blossoms?”

(Tony Rayns, Time Out). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

春婦伝

(Shunpu den)

Suzuki favourite Yumiko Nogawa gives perhaps her most ferocious performance in this scathing portrayal of Japanese militarism preWWII. Sent with six other comfort women to service a garrison of some 1,000 men in Manchuria during the Sino-Japanese War, Nogawa’s Harumi is brutalized by a vicious lieutenant who wants her as his personal property. Meanwhile, she falls in love with his gentle young assistant. Taijiro Tamura’s novel was previously made into 1950’s much-sanitized Escape at Dawn (scripted

by Kurosawa). Working in B-movies allowed Suzuki to use the genre’s expected sex and violence to advance the view he shared with Tamura: “that the sex-drive is a crucial part of the human will to live” (Tony Rayns). “The movie that proves Suzuki should be lifted out of the limiting category of the Asia Extreme cult directors and placed at the grown-ups’ table” (David Chute, The Criterion Current). Print courtesy The Japan Foundation.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 – 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MARCH 3 – 8:20 PM

14

Kanto Wanderer

_

(Yajû no seishu)

Japan 1963. Dir: Seijun Suzuki. 91 min. 35mm

FRIDAY, MARCH 11 – 8:15 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 12 – 6:30 PM

_

“The cinephile’s holy grail . . . In the annals of monumental cinema, there are few objects more sacred.” – Dennis Lim, New York Times

NEW RESTORATION

VANCOUVER PREMIERE

“The biggest cinephilic event of the moviegoing year is upon us . . .

You’ll regret it if you don’t go.” – Michael Nordine, L.A. Weekly

OUT 1 Noli me tangere Out 1: Noli me tangere (Out 1: Don’t Touch Me)

France 1972. Dir: Jacques Rivette. 773 min. DCP

“A film must be, if not an ordeal, at least an experience, something which makes the film transform the viewer, who is no longer the same after having seen the film.” – Jacques Rivette Thirteen hours long and impossible to see – until now! French New Wave master Jacques Rivette’s astonishing opus, fabled for its extreme length and extreme rarity, is one of cinema’s legendary phantoms.

Save for a handful of one-off screenings over the years (including one at VIFF in 2006, in a cut 30 minutes shorter than the complete version we present here), it has never been seen. The Cinematheque is pleased to premiere Rivette’s gargantuan, one-of-a-kind marvel in a brand-new restoration, as Out 1: Noli me tangere receives its first-ever theatrical release. Featuring a cast of emblematic New Wave actors – including Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier, Françoise Fabian, and Michel Lonsdale – Out 1 interweaves the tale of two rival theatre companies preparing productions of plays by Aeschylus with the stories of two eccentric outsiders. Frédérique (Berto) is a con artist who swindles men out of their money.

Colin (Léaud) cadges cash by pretending to be deaf-mute. Both become obsessed with deciphering the codes and uncovering the purpose of a sinister, shadowy conspiracy hatched by a cabal known as “The Thirteen.” The latter subplot is borrowed from Balzac’s History of the Thirteen (there’s some Lewis Carroll in there as well); the film was shot without a conventional script, with Rivette using diagrams to map out when characters would meet and relying on his cast to improvise their dialogue. Out 1 was made in eight episodes for French TV, which refused to show it. Rivette later released an abridged, radically reconstituted four-hour version (Out 1: Spectre, screened in The Cinematheque’s Rivette retrospective in 2007). A playful, paranoiac, manically comedic puzzlebox offering a marathon of viewing pleasures, the full-length Out 1 is a cinematic experience quite unlike any other.

Out 1’s eight parts will be screened in four segments, each comprised of two parts. Double bill prices in effect for each two-part segment: $16 Adult / $14 Seniors & Students

OUT 1

SERIES PASS

45

$

Out 1: Episode 1 + 2

Out 1: Episode 3 + 4

(91 min. + 109 min. + 15 min. intermission)

(107 min. + 106 min. + 15 min. intermission)

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 6:30 PM MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 6:30 PM

Opening Night with Refreshments & Special Introduction Doors 6:00 PM Screening with introduction by Adam Cook 7:00 PM

Out 1: Episode 5 + 6

Adam Cook is a Vancouver-based independent film critic, editor, and programmer. He is a regular contributor to Cinema Scope and a columnist for Little White Lies. He has written for, among others, Sight & Sound, Cineaste, Film Comment, Fandor, Indiewire, and Brooklyn Magazine.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 2:00 PM THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11 – 7:00 PM

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 – 2:00 PM MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8 – 2:00 PM

(89 min. + 100 min. + 15 min. intermission)

Out 1: Episode 7 + 8 (97 min. + 74 min. + 15 min. intermission) SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7 – 6:30 PM FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12 – 7:00 PM

15

THE NINE MUSES

Moving-image art in dialogue with cinema Programmed by Michèle Smith, co-editor of the art journal Drawing Room Confessions.

www.dimcinema.ca

The Nine Muses Great Britain 2011. Dir: John Akomfrah. 94 min.

John Akomfrah Nine Muses, 2011 Courtesy Icarus Films, New York

DIM Cinema opens its 2016 season with Ghanaian-born British artist-filmmaker John Akomfrah’s epic film about the African diaspora to post-war Britain. Conceived as a gallery piece based on Homer’s Odyssey, it grew into a feature-length retelling of Telemachus’s search for his lost father, Odysseus, by mixing archival footage with original scenes shot in Alaska. Structured as a song cycle, with each musical chapter named after one of the nine muses, and scripted from sound recordings of established works of the (mainly) Western canon, the film summons up “a mood, rather than a story, that reflects on the immigrant experience and the violence of displacement with a majestic grace” (Jason Solomons, The Observer). “Striking . . . Extends, complicates, and enriches the definition of documentary. Though lofty, The Nine Muses is never grandiose, taking as its subject the primal notion of what constitutes home” (Melissa Anderson, Artforum).

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27 – 7:30 PM

Day Is Done

USA 2005-06. Dir: Mike Kelley. 169 min.

Extending his subversive, multifaceted, long-term examination of trauma, abuse, and repressed memories refracted through the prism of personal and mass-cultural experience, Mike Kelley’s feature-length video is composed of live-action recreations of high-school yearbook photographs of “extracurricular activities,” or, as the late artist himself termed them, “socially accepted rituals of deviance.” These carnivalesque disruptions of the normal school schedule, in the form of pageants, recitals, variety shows, and dress-up days, mirror events in the broader cultural arena. Since many of the source photographs were of people in costume, singing or dancing, Kelley’s taped restagings — shot in a generic school gymnasium and a wooded landscape, and featuring recurring characters such as Motivational Vampire, Morose Ghoul, and Devil/Barber — are like music videos, or dance numbers, within a “fractured feature-length musical . . . The experience of viewing it is somewhat akin to channel-surfing on television” (Mike Kelley). It was the artist’s intention to play Day is Done in cinemas. This is only the third time it has done so.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 – 7:00 PM (NOTE EARLY START TIME)

Sessions: Kelley and Trecartin

Ryan Trecartin The Re’Search (Re’Search Wait’S), 2009-10 Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York © Ryan Trecartin

Two rarely seen videos highlight the impact of language, translation, and silence on the work of American artists Mike Kelley and Ryan Trecartin. Kelley’s silent, two-fold video Test Room… and A Dance… jumps between protocols of scientific animal study and modernist choreography in a surreal laboratory environment. A unique version of Trecartin’s The Re’Search (Re’Search Wait’S) made for a 2014 exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing premieres here for the first time outside China. The “movie” – a term deliberately used by the artist to describe his films – adopted Mandarin subtitles for that exhibition, further complicating Trecartin’s repurposing and layering of language.

Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses and A Dance Incorporating Movements Derived from Experiments by Harry F. Harlow and Choreographed in the Manner of Martha Graham | Mike Kelley/USA 1999. 60 min.

The Re’Search (Re’Search Wait’S) | Ryan Trecartin/USA 2009-10. 40 min.

TUESDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM February and March DIM Cinema presentations are programmed in conjunction with the exhibition My House: Mike Kelley and Ryan Trecartin at Presentation House Gallery, December 19, 2015 - March 3, 2016, curated by Tobin Gibson. presentationhousegallery.org

16

DAY IS DONE

AUTISM IN LOVE

A Monthly Mental Health Film Series Presented by The Cinematheque and the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry

T

he Cinematheque is pleased to join with the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry in presenting “Frames of Mind,” a monthly event utilizing film and video to promote professional and community education on issues pertaining to mental health and illness. Screenings, accompanied by presentations and audience discussions, are held on the third Wednesday of each month.

Series directed by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Director of Public Education, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia. Programmed by Caroline Coutts, film curator, filmmaker, and programmer of “Frames of Mind” since its inception in September 2002.

Vancouver Premiere!

Autism in Love

USA 2015. Dir: Matt Fuller. 75 min. Blu-ray Disc

My Skinny Sister (Min lilla syster)

Sweden/Germany 2015. Dir: Sanna Lenken. 95 min. Blu-ray Disc

Finding and maintaining romantic relationships can be challenging for anyone, but for those with autism, impairments in social interaction and difficulties with verbal and non-verbal communication can make it next to impossible. Or so you might think before watching Matt Fuller’s hopeful and affecting documentary on four adults with autism (all admittedly on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum). Lindsey and Dave, both in their early 30s, are contemplating marriage after a 10-year relationship that began when they meet at an autism conference. Middleaged Stephen is trying to cope with his wife’s cancer diagnosis. Lenny, a socially isolated 22-year-old living with his mom, is desperately searching (so far unsuccessfully) for a girlfriend. Their stories – profound, hopeful, sometimes heartbreaking – provide a new and necessary perspective on what is without a doubt a universal human need.

Drawing on her own adolescent struggles with anorexia, first-time director Sanna Lenken has crafted a winning family drama centred on two young sisters. Eleven-year old Stella (Rebecka Josephson) is precocious, nerdy, and more than a little awkward. She enjoys practicing her kissing skills on tomatoes and writing secret romantic poetry to her sister’s handsome figure-skating coach. Older sister Katja (Amy Deasismont) is everything that Stella is not: slim, confident, impossibly pretty, and a talented competitive ice skater who enjoys the majority of their parent’s limited attention.

Stella adores and envies Katja; in her immature worldview, she believes Katja has the perfect life. This all changes when Stella discovers that Katja is hiding a serious eating disorder. Sworn to secrecy, Stella is torn between wanting to keep her sister’s secret and needing to help save her life.

Post-screening discussion with Dr. Anthony Bailey, Professor and Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UBC. He was previously the Cheryl and Reece Scott Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, the first medical chair devoted to the study of autism. Dr. Bailey’s research has investigated the neurobiological basis of autistic disorders. His clinical work focuses on teenagers and able adults with autism spectrum disorders.

Post-screening discussion with Dr. Vicki Klassen and Shelley Geislinger.

Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

Co-sponsored by ACT – Autism Community Training WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 7:30 PM

Dr. Klassen is a general practitioner with an interest in eating disorders, youth and addiction medicine. She has been working with the Richmond Eating Disorders Program since 2006. Dr. Klassen’s other clinical activities include addiction medicine and youth health, which includes outreach to East Vancouver schools.

Ms. Geislinger is a Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia. She is currently the Coordinator with the Richmond Eating Disorders Program supported by Vancouver Coastal Health. She has worked with a variety of mental healthrelated concerns during her career, including substance abuse and domestic violence, as well as severe and persistent mental illness.

Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 7:30 PM

MY SKINNY SISTER

17

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

The Cinematheque’s Education Department presents

An Afternoon Film Program for Children and Their Families $6 Children & Youths (under 18) $9 Adults (Cinematheque membership not required)

Attention all ages! Beam aboard the Starship Cinematheque for a 12-month mission as we explore the outer reaches of cosmic cinema with our 2016 series, “Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday.” Each month, we present a science-fiction film that inspires wonderment beyond the infinite with tales of faraway galaxies, alien encounters, ripples in spacetime, and technological tomorrows.

Films will be introduced by Vancouver film history teacher, critic, and intergalactic space pirate Michael van ben Bos. In-theatre giveaways courtesy of Cinema Sunday community sponsors Videomatica Sales, Golden Age Collectables, and Kidsbooks.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Director’s Cut USA 1977. Dir: Steven Spielberg. 137 min. 35mm

We “launch” Sci-Fi Cinema Sunday with a granddaddy of a classic (on 35mm!) by the Hollywood maestro of family SF, Steven Spielberg – presented here in the director’s favoured version. Released the same year as compadre George Lucas’s game-changing Star Wars — which carried (if not detonated) the “blockbuster” torch first ignited by Spielberg’s own Jaws two years earlier — Close Encounters was the antithesis to Lucas’s franchise-building space opera: a decidedly downto-earth take on the visitors-from-space film that looked with wonderment to the stars rather than traversing them at lightspeed. Richard Dreyfuss plays unhinged Indiana suburbanite Roy Neary, witness to a UFO that’s got him carving mysterious mountains out of his mashed potatoes. Spielberg’s film-school idol, François Truffaut, is the sky-watching scientist; Paul Schrader had an uncredited hand on the script. “The greatest science-fiction film ever made” (Ray Bradbury).

SUNDAY, JANUARY 17 – 1:00 PM

The War of the Worlds USA 1953. Dir: Byron Haskin. 85 min. DCP

It took till Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (screening in January) for the idea of benevolent aliens to be accepted in cinema-dom. Before then, E.T.s onscreen more often resembled the kind portrayed in this sci-fi milestone from the height of the Cold War – that is, hostile! The first film adaptation of H. G. Wells’s 1898 invasion-from-Mars novel, director (and effects specialist) Byron Haskin’s atomic-age update depicts a global takeover by militarized Martians, descending on earth in meteorite crafts that emit pulverizing heat rays and neon-green “skeleton beams” – so called because of their ghastly effect on humans. Caught in the chaos are budding romancers Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) and Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson). A veritable time capsule of ’50s doomsday paranoia and up-to-date visual effects (for which it won an Oscar), this is “socko entertainment of hackle-raising quality” (Variety).

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin!” After the film, join The Cinematheque Education Department for an audio activity that records then edits participants into Orson Welles’s sensational 1938 original radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21 - 1:00 PM

18

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

Classics FROM OUR COLLECTION 16mm prints from The Cinematheque archive

All seats $8.00 (single or double bill; adults, students, and seniors) $3 annual membership required

Two Influential and Essential French Masterworks!

Zéro de conduite

Le jour se lève

France 1933. Dir: Jean Vigo. 44 min. 16mm

France 1939. Dir: Marcel Carné. 90 min. 16mm

(Zero for Conduct)

One of the cinema’s most loved, most quoted, and most influential works, Jean Vigo’s immortal featurette can count amongst its progeny François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Lindsay Anderson’s If... Offering a lyrical, joyously anarchic account of youthful rebellion, Zéro de conduite is set in a provincial boys’ boarding school, where four young coconspirators, chafing under the hypocritical, dictatorial discipline, foment a revolt.

Celebrated sequences include a dormitory pillow fight that becomes a balletic blizzard of feathers, and the bombardment of a group of pompous dignitaries with rubbish. Vigo’s wonderfully subversive film deeply offended bourgeois sensibilities and was banned for 12 years as “anti-French”! The ill-fated director died in 1934, at age 29, shortly after the release of L’Atalante, his only feature.

(Daybreak)

From director Marcel Carné and surrealist poet/screenwriter Jacques Prévert, the creators of Les enfants du paradis, this moody masterpiece is both a highpoint of French “poetic realism” and a harbinger of American film noir. Jean Gabin, in a career performance, plays a working-class man who barricades himself in an attic after committing a murder.

Waiting through the night for the inevitable police siege, he recalls, in flashback, the tangled love affair that brought him to this precipice. Les enfants du paradis’s Arletty co-stars. Alexandre Trauner’s set design is “awe-inspiring . . . one of the most memorable ever filmed” (James Monaco). RKO remade the film in 1947 as The Long Night – and tried to destroy all prints of the Carné-Prévert original!

In 1952, in the first of Sight and Sound’s nowfamous decennial polls, Le jour se lève was voted one of the ten best films of all time.

MONDAY, JANUARY 11 – 7:00 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 11 – 8:00 PM

ESSENTIAL CINEMA! ESSENTIAL BIG SCREEN!

Barry Lyndon

Great Britain 1975. Dir: Stanley Kubrick. 187 min. DCP

Stanley Kubrick’s lavish adaptation of Thackeray’s picaresque novel was once dismissed by Pauline Kael and others as a “coffee-table movie,” but has since made its long, slow, inexorable climb to masterpiece status — and to recognition as one of Kubrick’s greatest achievements. Ryan O’Neal is the eponymous Barry Lyndon, an 18th-century Irish rogue and social climber in relentless, unscrupulous pursuit of wealth and status. Kubrick’s bold, painterly film was a massively expensive undertaking: painstakingly researched to ensure historical accuracy, sumptuously costumed, and filmed on location in Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany, it took some 300 days to shoot, and made pioneering use of an ultra-sensitive, NASA-developed lens in order to film sequences lit only by candlelight. Its celebrated, climatic duel scene reportedly took 42 days to edit. Barry Lyndon won Oscars for its cinematography, art direction, costumes, and musical score. Kubrick’s follow-up was The Shining.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 2 – 7:00 PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 3 – 7:00 PM MONDAY, JANUARY 4 – 7:00 PM ADDED SCREENINGS! WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6 – 7:00 PM THURSDAY, JANUARY 7 – 7:00 PM

K WA N T L E N P O LY T E C H N I C U N I V E R S I T Y

DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL February 19 and 20, 2016 Vancouver International Film Centre 1181 Seymour Street Registration open to all and includes admission, speakers, panels/Q&As, and food/beverages For more info and to register visit

kpu.ca/kdocs

facebook.com/KDocsFF @KDocsFF | #KDocs

SAT FEB 13 2016/ 8pm

Branford Marsalis

SAT FEB 27 2016/ 8pm

Dee Dee Bridgewater and Irvin Mayfield with the New

Orleans Jazz Orchestra

chancentre.com

Tickets and info at chancentre.com

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE 200 – 1131 Howe Street Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L7 Phone: 604.688.8202 Fax: 604.688.8204 Email: info@theCinematheque.ca Web: theCinematheque.ca STAFF Executive and Artistic Director: Jim Sinclair Managing Director: Kate Ladyshewsky Operations & Marketing: Shaun Inouye Education Manager: Liz Schulze Education Coordinator: Hayley Gauvin Venue Operations Manager: Linton Murphy Assistant Theatre Managers: Gabi Dao, Jessica Johnson, Aryo Khakpour, Justin Mah Head Projectionist: Al Reid Relief Projectionists: Tim Fernandes, Ron Lacheur, Cassidy Penner, Helen Reed, Ryan Ermacora Film Archive Preservation Coordinator: Jarin Schexnider BOARD OF DIRECTORS President: Jim Bindon Vice-President: Eleni Kassaris Secretary: Lynda Jane Treasurer: Elizabeth Collyer Members: David Legault, Moshe Mastai, Wynford Owen, Eric Wyness

theCinematheque.ca

VOLUNTEERS

THE CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM GUIDE

Theatre Volunteers: Simon Armstrong, Sarah Bakke, Mark Beley, Taylor Bishop, Eileen Brosnan, Jeremy Buhler, Nadia Chiu, Andrew Clark, Rob Danielson, Steve Devereux, Bill Dovhey, Olivia Fauland, Moana Fertig, Kevin Frew, Lesli Froeschner, Andrew Gable, Shokei Green, Paul Griffiths, Joe Haigh, Savannah Kemp, Tash King, Michael Kling, Viktor Koren, Ray Lai, Christina Larabie, Sharon Lee, Britt MacDuff, Abbey Markowitz, Liam McClure, Dawn McCormick, Vit Mlcoch, Kelley Montgomery, Adrian Nickpour, Chahram Riazi, Will Ross, RJ Rudd, Hisayo Saito, Sweta Shrestha, Paige Smith, Gordon Tanner, Stephen Tweedale

Program Notes: Jim Sinclair, additional program notes by Shaun Inouye Advertising: Shaun Inouye Proofreading: Kate Ladyshewsky Design: Marc Junker

Distribution: Hazel Ackner, Horacio Bach, Michael Demers, Gail Franko, Jeff Halladay, Alan Kollins, Martin Lohmann, Lynn Martin, Matthew Shields, Lora Tanaka, Vanessa Turner, Justina Vanovcan, Harry Wong Office: Jo B., Betty-Lou Phillips Education: Ryan Calderon, Michael van den Bos, Abby Wiseman And a special thanks to all our spares!

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Published six times a year with a bi-monthly circulation of 10–15,000. Printed by Van Press Printers.

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