March 2007 Screening Season
8:30pm every Thursday.
Refer to February Program for venue details…
March 1st – Days of Rage 1
Punishment Park – Peter Watkins 1971 : 1 hr 30mins
Its 1970, The war in Vietnam is escalating. Nixon has decided on a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. Martial law is declared, protesters are forced to run the gauntlet of murderous national guards, and searing desert heat. This a severe accusation of extreme violence levelled at the American state, resulted in a nervous black ban by Hollywood distribution. Watkins is a brilliant and an extremely angry and caustic film-maker… be warned some may find this film hard going.
The Third Generation – R.W. Fassbinder : 1979 : 1hr 10min
Fassbinder went to primary school with Andreas Baader (of the Baader Meinhof gang) and was avowedly left wing in his politics. It was a shock to radical youth when he produced this film, resulting in violent attacks on subsequent screenings. A squad of German radicals kidnap a prominent corporate official. Hoping to attract attention to their cause, the terrorists are in constant fear of betrayal from within, and may even be the unwitting tools of the government they seek to disrupt. Meanwhile captive and captor slowly enter into a perverse and comical game.
March 8th Days of Rage 2
Grin without a Cat (Le fond de l’air est rouge) – Chris Marker : 1978 : 3 hrs
Beginning with the Vietnam war and the death of Che Guevara, ending with the Prague Uprising and the fall of the Allende Government in Chile. This brilliant and passionate 2 part document weaves an incredibly detailed picture of those years of revolutionary unrest from 1967 to 1977. Engrossing images of Paris during the May 68 riots, Psychological Operations in Vietnam, as well as interviews and statements from leading players of the left and the right are gleaned from the SLON collectives’ exhaustive film archives. It recapitulates the nearly forgotten dream of worker managed society and the end of capitalist oligarchy. Whilst it admits the lefts’ tactical defeat, it reminds the audience of the perpetuality of revolutionary spirit. This monumental work has never been released in Australia theatrically or on video, and is very hard to obtain.
Expanded Cinema by Trans-Tasman RenegadesSam Hamilton & Eve Gordon (NZ),
“Light-mantled sooty albatross” 25 mins4 modified film projectors/1 destroyed guitar/2 good humans… NZ champions of creative cinema preside over the marriage of abstract sound & image: marmite abstractions conceived in the shadow of a searchlight sweep. Veterans of collaborative activities with the likes of Damo Suzuki & the Tall Dwarfs, organisers of the Auckland International Film Festival’s fps program, Golden Plains Festival guests.
March 15th Hiroshimas Mental Spawn 1
Yûkoku (Patriotism) Rite of Love & Death : Yukio Mishima; Domoto Masaki : 1966 : 28mins
Yukio Mishima, was a cruel example of the identity crisis of post war Japan. Simultaneously homosexual and writer/poet in the mould of Arthur Rimbaud as well as a samurai revivalist at the helm of a right wing militia. “Patriotism” is simultaneously beautiful, erotic and incredibly graphic in its bloody depiction of Seppukku (auto-disembowellment). This film was celebrated as great cinema art, until 5 years later its author lived out in REAL LIFE the same attempted coup, the same disgrace and betrayal, and subsequently the same grisly conclusion. Mishima, the narcissist warrior and literary aesthete, had made this film as a romantic blueprint for his own self imposed martyrdom. Mishima’s long suffering wife desperate to rehabilitate the morbid image of her dead husband, suppressed this film, of which her recent death has again made it possible to see.
Three Animations – Tadanori Yokoo 1964-65 : 17 mins
Garish and sublime zig zag between the poles of pop art and magic, mining the subconscious language of cinema and advertising language in a series of jarring anthemic leaps. Yokoo was a leading figure in 60’s avante garde and psychedelic design who has had a lasting influence on the somewhat perverse aesthetics of Japanese pop culture.
Atman – Toshio Matsumoto 1975 : 11 mins
A convulsive and intensely coloured journey, a magical view of the daemon of the spirit. Toshios trademark zoom fluctuations dominate the scene.
Kanashimi No Belladonna – Eiichi Yamamoto 1973 1hr 36min
“Belladonna of Sadness” is a unique event in animation, by either Eastern or Western standards. A psychedelic, demonic and erotic story of witchcraft and female revolt via a bizarre treatment of the story of Jean D’ Arc. Sympathtic to the devil and to the subjugated woman; the aesthetics of the film more strongly influenced by symbolist / nouveau painting and psychedelia, than by American cartoons.
March 22nd – Hiroshimas Mental Spawn 2
Matango (Curse of the Mushroom People) – Ishirô Honda : 1963 : 1 hr 29min
Visually stunning but bleak in its view of Japans newly americanised society. This was the last TOHO studio films from the director who brought you “Godzilla”. A chartered yacht and crew (spookily reminiscent of the charachters from “Giligans Island”) are stranded on a deserted island with little to eat except prolific funguses. As the food supplies dwindle, each turns against the other, some succumb to the mushroom morsels whilst strange figures lurk in the encroaching shadows.
Uzumaki (Vortex) – Akihiro Higuchi : 2000 : 1 hr 31min
Darkly metaphoric of the singular and obsessive nature of Japanese society. A “spiral” curse has descended on a small village causing most of its members to become insanely or autistically fixated on spirals and rotations, resulting in destruction or turning into snails. A rare and eccentric gem from the Manga genre, a frame perfect reproduction of the cult comic by Junjii.
