FilmClub Mini-festival

20 – 23 March 2013

6.00pm Wed. 20 March The Saddest Music in the World Dir. Guy Maddin Canada, 2003 (100 mins) The maverick Canadian director Guy Maddin can always be relied on to do the unexpected. The mildly lunatic premise of this Depression-era film is that Winnipeg has been voted World Capital of Sorrow, and brewery heiress Lady Port-Huntley (Isabella Rosellini), who has lost both legs in a car-accident, decides to sponsor a contest to determine which nation has the saddest music in the world. Among the contestants is the man who was responsible for the accident, attempting to make reparation by presenting Port-Huntley with a pair of prosthetic legs – made of glass and filled with beer. Filled to bursting with deadpan absurdity, wildly inventive sight-gags, lugubriously funny characters and the most hilarious tragic plot imaginable, this film is an excellent introduction to one of the oddest film-makers in the world.

6.00pm Thurs. 21 March The Lodger Dir. Alfred Hitchcock UK, 1926 (96mins) We try to include at least one early classic in our festival line-up, and this semester it is something rather special: an immaculately restored edition of Hitchcock’s silent masterpiece, The Lodger, a film that the director himself once called “the first true Hitchcock movie.” A serial killer who calls himself The Avenger is terrorizing London, and landlady Mrs Browning gradually begins to harbor suspicions about her strange, secretive and apparently misogynistic lodger. The film stars matinee idol Ivor Novello, who is described by Hitchcock scholar Neil Sinyard as “a prototype of later Hitchcock leading men: dark, handsome creatures who sometimes have turbulent psychological depths and hints of murderous melancholy beneath the surface charm.” The themes and distinctive visual style of Hitchcock’s later films are already apparent in this early example of his highly individual art, notable in particular for its striking expressionist images. The restored version of the film also has a new soundtrack, composed by Nitin Sahwney and performed by the London symphony orchestra.

6.00pm Friday 22 March Five Broken Cameras Dir. Emad Burnat France, 2012 (94 mins) In 2005, the inhabitants of a small village in Palestine learn that the separation barrier due to be built by the Israelis will cut off half of their cultivated land and transfer it to a nearby settlement. They decide on non-violent protest every Friday – a protest eventually supported by a number of Jewish activists. One of the villagers, Emad Burnat, begins to use his camera – originally bought to film his newly born son – to document the protests and the Israeli response, risking injury, and imprisonment. Burnat’s powerful and moving film follows events up until 2010, when at least some of the villagers’ land is restored to them. Five Broken Cameras was a surprise nomination for best documentary film at this year’s Oscars, but given the nature of its politics was always an unlikely contender. Reviewing the film, however, Philip Kemp observes that “there’s a raw immediacy about Emad’s footage that is impossible to resist. . . . [it] carries its own sense of urgency, of a determination to bear witness, whatever the cost.”

4.00pm Saturday 23 March Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan Turkey, 2011 (150 mins) Previous films by Ceylan – in particular Seasons and Three Monkeys -- have proved popular with Filmclub members. Tonight’s film is widely considered to be his best yet. As the title suggests, it is set in the Anatolian plateau, whose stark landscape provides a visually striking backdrop to the events of the film. A group of rural policemen, the local prosecutor and a doctor go out one night with a confessed murderer in an attempt to find where he buried the body. But this is neither a thriller nor a conventional police procedural – it is a mesmerizingly beautiful and serenely contemplative masterpiece from one of world cinema’s most gifted auteurs. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a film that demands, but also amply rewards, a measure of patience in the viewer. It is much less a film about external events than a compassionate and moving revelation of the characters’ inner lives and shared humanity.

All films are shown in the:

Centre for Visual Arts Lecture Theatre in Ridge Road between Durban and Carbis Roads.

(Safe parking is available by entering the double gate immediately above the CVA in

Ridge Road; the gate will be manned for 15 minutes prior to each screening.)