jun 15+16 | ben hur with live piano score

Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ 
1925 silent film with live piano score by Sara Davis Buechner

Pacific Cinematheque Special Event
June 15 @ 7:30
June 16 @ 4:00

On Saturday, June 15 and Sunday, June 16, The Cinematheque is very pleased to present the renowned pianist Sara Davis Buechner, who will provide live musical accompaniment to director Fred Niblo’s 1925 blockbuster Ben-Hur, one of the silent era’s most spectacular and celebrated epics.

MGM’s 1925 version of Ben-Hur (remade by William Wyler in 1959 with Charlton Heston) was the most expensive film of the silent era, and still astonishes with its amazing set pieces and action sequences and truly colossal scale. Matinee idols Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman have the leads. Novarro is Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish prince-turned-slave who crosses paths with Christ while on a quest for revenge. Bushman is Messala, the old childhood friend, now a Roman official, who betrays Ben-Hur and his family. The film’s thrilling sea-battle and chariot-race sequences are justifiably legendary; the lavishness on display throughout is breathtaking. “It was a remake even then [there was a 1907 film version], but MGM put $5 million into it, and so much Amazing, Gargantuan, Stupendous, and Mighty Biblical Pageantry that vast numbers of viewers were swept off their feet. There’s a galley manned by a thousand slaves, the sea battle between Romans and ancient pirates, the Valley of the Lepers, and the chariot race staged in a mammoth stadium” (Pauline Kael).
B&W with Colour sequences, silent. 142 mins.

Dr. Sara Buechner, an Associate Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia, is an accomplished classical concert musician whose performances and recordings have won acclaim and awards around the world. She has appeared as a soloist with many internationally prominent orchestras, won prizes at some of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions, and has an active repertoire of more than 100 piano concertos. Dr. Buechner has been the subject of profiles in the New York Times,Maclean’s, Paris Match, and other major media. She has a great passion for film music and is one of the very few concert pianists today performing originals scores to silent movies. Dr. Buechner will also provide an introduction to the performance/screening and conduct a short Q&A afterwards.

apr 14 + 17 | wizard of oz

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mar 30 + apr 3 | ten commandments

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criterion 50% sale | ends tue 9am pacific time

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Promo Code = FLASHY

Here's a batch of Soul Food picks you might want to check out.  Many favourites here...

Au Hasard Balthazar $15
Andrei Rublev $20
Ikiru $20 / $10
Close-Up $20
Days of Heaven $20
George Washington $20
Day Of Wrath / Ordet  $40
Man Escaped $15 / $20
Metropolitan $20
Last Days Of Disco $20
La Promesse $15 / $20
Last Temptation of Christ $40
Night of the Hunter $20 / $25
On The Waterfront $20 / $25
Wings of Desire $20
Vanya on 42nd Street $15 / $20
Paisan / Rome Open City $40
Seventh Seal $15 / $20
Passion of Joan of Arc $20
Flowers of St Francis $15
Au Revoir les Enfants $15 / $20
Last Wave $15
Les Miserables $20
The Idiot (Kurosawa) $35
Homicide $20
Leon Morin, Priest $20
La Strada $15 / $20
King Of Kings $20
Androcles & The Lion / Major Barbara $22.50
Through A Glass Darkly / Winter Light / The Silence $40
Solaris $15 / $20
Magnificent Obsession $20
12 Angry Men $15 / $20
The Quatsi Trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi / Naqoyqatsi $40
Make Way For Tomorrow $15

magdalene / silent night

IMDb: Father Joseph Mohr, a newly appointed priest in the town of Oberndorf (near Salzburg), meets the beautiful prostitute Magdalene. He struggles to change her situation and make a new life for her, and while doing so, they fall in love. Mohr struggles with his feelings for her, versus his commitment to God. Meanwhile, the Prior, Mohr's superior, whose corrupt dealings with the Baron von Seidl are threatened by Mohr's integrity and honesty, works (unsuccessfully) to falsely accuse Mohr of sexual misconduct with Magdalene, and thereby remove him from office. Meanwhile, Mohr and local schoolteacher Franz Gruber compose the hymn "Silent Night".

1989, Germany
Writer/Director: Monica Teuber
Cast: Nastassja Kinski

 There's a trailer you can view here. At least for marketing purposes, it seems they've chosen to downplay the "this is how the beloved Christmas hymn came to be written," and emphasize certain other aspects of their story.

The Wrong Man (1956, Hitchcock, Maxwell Anderson)

I just watched The Wrong Man. Very fine little film. My friend Doug Cummings recommended it to me years ago, in the context of my Soul Food Movies project, and now I see why.

 Even apart from that aspect of the film, it connects with me in a way some other Hitchcock's don't: it seems less cold, more compassionate (or at least empathetic). I like the aesthetic, too: there is the suggestion that it's influenced by the new awareness of foreign film in the mid-fifties - particularly the post-war realism of Rossellini, Satyajit Ray, perhaps Bresson.

 I find it intriguing to notice that all three of those film-makers were very interested in spiritual questions, even as their aesthetic emphasized unvarnished reality.  And fascinating that this sparse, essentially realist film should also be Hitchcock's most explicitly religious - though in a complex way.

Some of that faith element must be credited to the screenwriter (which is so often a glaring oversight in film criticism): playwright Maxwell Anderson, son of a Baptist preacher, whose plays include Journey To Jerusalem, Miracle of the Danube, The Eve of St Mark, Joan of Lorraine (connected with St Joan of Arc), and Lost in the Stars (based on Cry The Beloved Country).

It's easy to over-emphasize (or over-simplify) Hitchcock's Catholicism, as it is Anderson's Baptist background, but there's clearly something going on here.

*

Thinking about the film's connection to the Italian Neo-Realists or Robert Bresson, and their use not only of real locations but also non-professional actors (or "models," Bresson's preferred term), I found these notes from the TCM website:

In a February 1957 American Cinematographer article, Hitchcock was quoted as saying, "I want it to look like it had been photographed in New York in a style unmistakably documentary." According to reviews and contemporary news items, Balestrero's 74th Street home in Jackson Heights, the Stork Club, the 110th and Roosevelt Avenue police stations, Ridgewood Felony Court, and the actual courtroom used for Balestrero's trial at Queens Felony Court were used as location sites in the film. The Greenmont Sanitarium in Ossining, NY and Edelweiss Farm in Cornwall, NY were also real locations from Balestrero's story. In addition, Hitchcock filmed on Queens and Brooklyn streets at cafeterias, delicatessens and liquor stores. The American Cinematographer article reported that O'Connor's office in the Victor Moore Arcade was also used as a shooting site.

According to modern sources, Hitchcock joked that he needed to add to the film all the reality he could get, because the premise of the true story was so unbelievable. Therefore, he used real people from some of the incidents in Balestrero's life in the film. According to the American Cinematographer article, the husband-and-wife liquor store owners, a policeman, detectives and Cornwall resort owners were real people who portrayed themselves in the film. Sherman Billingsley, the well-known proprietor of the Stork Club, also appeared as himself in the film.

jan 31 + 16 | vertigo

Good choice, Cineplex. The movie that bumped Citizen Kane from top slot on the Sight & Sound once-a-decade poll, just this past summer. Makes me eager to see it again.

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nov 12 | big easy express | mumford & sons

Lots of Soul Food in Mumford & Sons. 
Roll away your stone, I'll roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find...
Cause you told me that I would find a hole
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal...
It seems that all my bridges have been burnt
But you say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with the restart
Here's a movie they're in.

BIG EASY EXPRESS
VanCity Theatre
Mon Nov 12, 8:50pm
(2012, USA, Emmett Malloy) 67 min

3 bands, 6 cities, 1 train, and thousands of miles of track… the Big Easy Express documents a cinematic musical journey. Directed by renowned filmmaker Emmett Malloy (The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights) this new film captures indie folk heroes Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Tennessee’s Old Crow Medicine Show, and Britain’s acclaimed Mumford & Sons, as they embark on a beautiful vintage train in California, setting out for New Orleans, Louisiana on a “tour of dreams”. The resulting film from this journey is nothing short of magical. “An infectiously joyful account of a whistle-stop tour…” Variety “Full of warmth, good music and good vibes that will make you feel like a part of the party while sad that you missed it.” MTV News "Scintilating." Hollywood Reporter

the wrong man | richard brody

Richard Brody:
"In some ways, the Hitchcock film for people who don’t like Hitchcock films.
The Kafkaesque nightmare of a man who has done nothing wrong, and yet who finds himself caught in a seemingly inextricable web of trouble.
For all of its meticulous practicality, the ultimate subject of the film is metaphysical. Fate, and even God, seem to have conspired against this man. He may be innocent of the crimes of which he is accused, but he's certainly guilty of something, and he becomes aware of it very quickly. Retracing his steps in the attempt to find an alibi forces him to look at his life with an exceptional care, and find all of his flaws exposed.
In the scene where he's taken to the station house and fingerprinted, the ink on his fingers looks to an innocent man like the presence of the mark of Cain."

 excerpted from Richard Brody's New Yorker piece on The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)

viff | soul food options

Lots of nuns and priests and contemptible Evangelicals, but maybe not too much Soul Food among the Religion, Spirituality & Myth selections in this year's VIFF online program guide. I've flagged...

Virgin Tales - "Supplies Evangelical Christians with just enough rope with which to hang themselves..."

Apparition - "About nuns in a cloister convent. We explore this closed world, riven by manias and secrets... Less interested in questions of faith than in the issue of good governance."

Beyond The Hills - "Alina comes apart at the psychological seams, leaving the monastery’s authoritarian priest convinced that she’s possessed..."

Actually, the last of those may go beyond the obligatory Bad Priest angle: "What is remarkable about Beyond the Hills and the unexpected interrogations it awakens is the lingering sense of doubt it leaves you with.  Not merely as to the virtues of organized religion - that would be too simple - but just as much the facile condemnation of it..." (Film Comment)

And while there's not a lot to go on, these two at least catch my curiosity...

Jesus Hospital - "about a woman torn between her comatose mother, her alienated family and her secretive religious beliefs."

Consuming Spirits - "Garrison Keillor-like radio broadcasts in the rundown community of Magguson... While these three central characters may be bound by tragedy, they also possess the capacity to grant one another absolution and release.... A transcendent closing chapter."

So far, though, none of the Soul Food buzz of many previous years - though the Vancouver premiere of Jason Goode's film Late is certainly cause for celebration among Soul Foodies. Other VIFFs have had two or three really exciting SF prospects - Son Of Man and The Mill & The Cross come to mind immediately - but nothing stands out so far in this year's line-up. That said, the most interesting films from a faith perspective often don't show up on the programmers' "Spirituality" list anyhow. A scan of Jewish Interest films may reveal more of interest, for example. But what's really needed is a film-by-film close reading of the full VIFF program. I'll let you know what I find. If you promise to return the favour.

viff | late | jason goode

There's a day this past spring that Jason Goode won't forget. He was at the Cannes Festival showing his latest film when he got word that he'd been nominated for a Jessie Richardson award for his first foray into stage directing, on DANNY & THE DEEP BLUE SEA at Pacific Theatre. The movie was the beautifully filmed, poetic short film LATE, part of Telefilm's "Perspective Canada" program promoting Canadian films at the prestigious international festival. 

LATE
Two strangers struggle for an honest connection in a chance, brief, encounter at a café. Screening as part of Heartbreak, a 75 minute program of short films that take a journey into the infinite — and intricate — depths of the human heart. Ben Cotton, Sarah Deakins, Lucia Frangione, Clint Bargen.

Oct 8 9:30pm | Empire Granville 2
Oct 9 4pm | Pacific Cinematheque

DIRECTOR: Jason Goode
EXEC PRODS Rosie Perera, Jeff Benna, Nick Brampton, Chris Hansen
PROD Dylan Jenkinson
SCR Sarah Deakins
CAM Chris Dalton
ED Greg Ng
Hope of Glory Pictures

books | the ethical vision of clint eastwood

This just in from IMAGE Update 

Though he may be controversial as a political personality, there is no doubt that Clint Eastwood is a film icon: a winner of five Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, and numerous other accolades for his work as an actor, director, producer, and composer. Yet few critics have ventured to consider Eastwood's philosophical, ethical, and artistic agenda the way film scholar Sara Anson Vaux has in The Ethical Vision of Clint Eastwood.

Bridging popular film and theology, Vaux traces Eastwood's career from Spaghetti Westerns and Dirty Harry-style shoot-em-ups to more recent films such as Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, and Invictus. "Seen along a forty-year continuum," Vaux writes, "Eastwood's movies reveal stages in an unfolding moral ontology—a sense of being in the world. They become more sophisticated and nuanced in tone and narrative exploration even if the basic motifs—justice, confession, war and peace, the gathering, and the search for a perfect world—remain the same throughout his career."

Vaux is also quick to refuse the temptation of Christian scholars (or any scholars of a particular camp) to dig through art for validation—for "endorsements of a particular religious system." The film analysis in her book is far from it. In four sections (Westerns, mysteries, war movies, and healing narratives), Vaux peels back the surface of Eastwood's films so the reader can see all the humming parts within: reccurring themes, camera techniques, Hollywood tricks and archetypes, critical reception, the whole shebang—and adds it all up to tell the story of the moral worldview that Eastwood has brought into the living rooms of millions of moviegoers.

This is a book for film critics and movie lovers, Clint Eastwood buffs and academics alike—a film-writing delight.

viff | beyond the hills

Could so easily be yet another "Catholic = bad" film. But the Film Comment comment suggests it's maybe more nuanced than that. Here's hoping.

Beyond the Hills
(După dealuri)
(Romania, France, Belgium, 2012, 152 mins, DCP)

Oct 09 10:30 am Granville 2
Oct 11 09:30 pm Granville 7

A nun is torn between her devotion to god and her loyalty to a lifelong companion in Cristian Mungiu’s riveting follow-up to 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. "The increments with which the screws of tragedy turn are finely calibrated."--Sight & Sound. Winner, Best Actress (shared by leads Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur), Best Screenplay, Cannes 2012.

After his race-against-the-calendar abortion thriller 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu employs a slow-burning brand of suspense in this riveting account of a nun torn between her devotion to god and her loyalty to a lifelong companion. Having found her calling at a remote Romanian monastery, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) is taken aback by the arrival of Alina (Cristina Flutur), who insists that they flee to Germany together. When the devout nun demurs, Alina comes apart at the psychological seams, leaving the monastery’s authoritarian priest (Valeriu Andriuta) convinced that she’s possessed. As Aline’s rescue attempt cedes to the priest’s relentless efforts to save her soul, Mungiu’s technical brilliance transforms Beyond the Hills into an equally captivating and disconcerting experience. His masterful long takes not only draw us deeper into the women’s trials, they also leave us with no avenue of escape from the mounting tension of his latest provocative tragedy.

"A quintessentially praiseworthy festival film: weighty in intent, unfamiliar enough in setting, rigorously masterful in execution... But what is remarkable about Beyond the Hills and the unexpected interrogations it awakens is the lingering sense of doubt it leaves you with. Not merely as to the virtues of organized religion -- that would be too simple -- but just as much the facile condemnation of it... It is a work that forces you into the not entirely pleasant yet oddly rewarding territory of moral uncertainty."--Joumane Chahine, Film Comment

viff | virgin tales

The "just enough rope to hang themselves" inclines one to think this won't be exactly the "objective and measured examination" of the subject the blurb-writer advertises. But hey...

Virgin Tales
(France, Germany, Switzerland, 2012, 87 mins, HDcam)

Oct 04 06:00 pm Empire Granville 1
Oct 07 12:15 pm Empire Granville 5
Oct 12 03:15 pm Empire Granville 1

What little girl doesn’t grow up dreaming of attending a Purity Ball: a fairy-tale celebration that sees her don an immaculate gown, hang from her father’s arm and vow absolute celibacy until marriage? Created by Randy and Lisa Wilson in 1998, these elaborate (and unnerving) father-daughter formal events are now staged in 48 US states, with one-in-eight American girls taking a purity oath.

Visiting the Wilsons over the course of two years, documentarian Mirjam von Arx reveals them to be devotees of rituals: be it Randy’s verbose blessings, son Logan’s sword-and-scripture "manhood ceremony" or daughter Jordyn’s increasingly despondent video diaries. As her affirmations about "saying no for the greater yes" cede from righteous to rote, Jordyn emerges as a tragic figure. Ultimately, this objective and measured examination of the virtues of abstinence supplies Evangelical Christians with just enough rope with which to hang themselves...

"Von Arx manages to capture moments of pure gold--manufactured "heartfelt" confessions of familial love whose lack of spontaneity is called out by a particularly sassy daughter, or the revelation from the twenty-something daughter (who’s desperately still waiting for her husband to appear) that she didn’t go to college because it would be a "waste of money" since she just wants to be a wife and mother. If it wasn’t so infuriatingly real, the film would make for great comedy."--Basil Tsiokos, Indiewire

viff | apparition

Seems likely not to be Soul Food ("Sandoval is less interested in questions of faith than in the issue of good governance" - ooh, a civics lesson!), but one never knows...

Apparition
(Aparisyon)
(Philippines, 2012, 87 mins, Betacam SP)

Oct 09 05:00 pm Vancity Theatre
Oct 11 06:45 pm Pacific Cinematheque

A startling left-turn after Senorita (VIFF 11), Vincent Sandoval’s new film is about nuns in a cloister convent, like Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus and Jacques Rivette’s La religieuse. It opens with a quote from Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears.” We’re in 1971, and the largest morbid symptom around is Ferdinand Marcos’s play for greater political power, which occurs off-screen. But little of the outside world impinges on Adoration, a convent set in secluded woods outside Manila, which sees itself as a physical and spiritual sanctuary. We explore this closed world, riven by manias and secrets, through the eyes of Sister Lourdes, a newly arrived novice. She has hardly settled in before she learns that her activist brother is missing, presumed arrested... She finds ways to venture out to Manila, where a terrible fate awaits her.

Apparition obviously reflects the fact that the Philippines is a predominantly Catholic nation, thanks to its years as a Spanish colony, but Sandoval is less interested in questions of faith than in the issue of good governance. Adoration’s Mother Superior, Ruth, knows much more about what’s going on in the outside world than she lets on. Is she a kind of Marcos, imposing her own kind of martial law?

— Tony Rayns

viff | jesus hospital

Jesus Hospital
(South Korea, 2012, 91 mins, HDCAM)

Oct 03 09:30 pm Granville 1
Oct 05 03:30 pm Pacific Cinematheque

Remember Whang Jungmin, the doting girlfriend in Save the Green Planet? She’s equally great in this heartbreaker, co-directed by woman-and-man team Shin A-go and Lee Sangcheol, about a woman torn between her comatose mother, her alienated family and her secretive religious beliefs. Whang plays Hyunsoon, a milk-delivery woman who masks her own vulnerability behind bull-in-a-china-shop aggression. Her "issues" come to the surface when her brother and sister decide that they can no longer afford hospital bills--and authorize the doctors to withdraw life-support from their mother. Hyunsoon is outraged, and convinced that their mother can yet revive... The film tangles together familial, religious and moral questions in a satisfyingly complex knot. It’s engrossing, very well acted and as punchy as a heavyweight title bout. — Tony Rayns

viff | consuming spirits

It's not immediately apparent why this film is listed among the festival's Religion, Spirituality & Myth heading, but...  I'm intrigued.

Consuming Spirits
(USA, 2012, 130 mins, HDCAM)

Oct 05 08:30 pm Granville 5
Oct 07 05:00 pm Granville 6
Oct 10 09:15 pm Pacific Cinematheque

In this spiralling animated tale, the seemingly unrelated misadventures of three down-at-heel Rust Belt grotesques gradually entangle in a single affecting narrative. Twisting its way to a transcendent closing chapter, Consuming Spirits immerses viewers in an extraordinary viewing experience. Fifteen years in the making, Chris Sullivan’s bittersweet, handcrafted labour of love is truly something to behold.

During his ubiquitous Garrison Keillor-like radio broadcasts in the rundown community of Magguson, Earl Gray’s folksy musings routinely segue into bizarre digressions, capably setting the film’s unhinged tone. However, heed Gray when he advises, "Though I ramble… All that I say is vital." As we’re introduced to lonely Gentian Violet and emotionally damaged Victor Blue--this drama’s other key players--shards of narrative and slivers of flashbacks are assembled into a cracked-mirror reflection of small-town America. And while these three may be bound by tragedy, they also possess the capacity to grant one another absolution and release.

"The stand-out aspect of Chris Sullivan’s [film] is its insanely meticulous construction... The film seamlessly combines cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation to create the haunting atmosphere of a self-contained world... What starts off as a collage of broken characters in perfect detail evolves into a carefully woven narrative, as delicately assembled as the pinned puppet characters. "--Priscilla Frank, Huffington Post

red hook summer

"Spike Lee’s new Brooklyn-set film, “Red Hook Summer,” which is about a boy from Atlanta who spends the hot months with his grandfather, is a clear failure, yet Lee is getting at things that mystify him. He celebrates the intense joy that religion brings to the community—and seems to be asking at the same time whether repeated, emotionally overwhelming professions of faith don’t reconcile people to stasis and failure. It’s a bitter question, but not many people working in movies would have the courage even to pose it."  new yorker

sep 19 | william kurelek | the maze | cinematheque

William Kurelek was a Canadian painter whose Christian faith survived severe childhood trauma and resulting mental illness. His Northern Nativity is a favourite of mine: the images can be seen in this YouTube video (though the music seems ill-suited to the spare images: I'd recommend turning off the volume).

William Kurelek’s The Maze
USA 1969/2011
Directors: Robert M Young, David Grubin [Re-imagined by Nick Young, Zack Young]
Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 60 mins.

Pacific Cinematheque
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - 7:30pm

Canadian painter William Kurelek (1927-1977) may be best known for his beautiful illustrations of bucolic children’s classics (Who Has Seen the Wind?, A Prairie Boy’s Winter) and his landscapes of Ukrainian-Canadian prairie life, but it is his disturbing early work and difficult upbringing that is the subject of this intriguing documentary.

Born on a hardscrabble Alberta farm, the oldest of seven children of stern immigrant parents, the sensitive, artistic Kurelek was an outsider from an early age. Bullied at school and at home, especially by his fearsome father Dmytro, William left the farm as soon as he could. Settling in London in 1952, he sought help at the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, an institution at the forefront of the art therapy movement. Kurelek was provided not only with treatment but space in which to paint. He created terrifying works with nightmarish and surreal imagery reminiscent of Bosch and Bruegel — including, in 1953, “The Maze,” a depiction of his tortured youth.

In 1969, the award-winning American filmmaker Robert M. Young co-directed a short documentary on Kurelek and “psychotic art.” Using original interviews, a new score, and modern digital animation techniques to give Kurelek’s paintings dimension and movement, filmmakers Nick and Zack Young have remastered and expanded their father’s original film into a comprehensive and insightful portrait of the artist as a young man.

PS Van Halen used the painting for the album cover on Fair Warning (1981). There's a good article on that cover here. From that article...

"The vividly brutal imagery contained in “The Maze” is remarkably different from the paintings sequel, entitled “Out Of The Maze”, painted after the artist’s recovery. This second painting reflects a pastoral countryside, as well as an artist no longer as deeply disturbed, with his wife and children enjoying a happy family picnic. However, all is not as idyllic as a first glance might suggest. An empty, open skull in the bottom left hand corner is a reminder of the psychological prison from which the artist has escaped and the impending storm on the far right horizon hints at Kurelek’s premonition that the world was heading for a nuclear holocaust."