Curated by Sam Fielder

Mailing list:cinematheque@chauvelcinema.net.au

Cinémathèque screenings are open to members and their guests. Membership is simple and available at the door.   

 Admission 18+, unless the film has been rated in Australia

TICKET PRICING:
Mini Membership (1 month/4 screenings/1 guest) A$18/C$15
Quarterly Membership (12 screenings/3 guests) A$36/C$32
Annual Membership (52 screenings/12 guests) A$85/C$75

Membership covers cost of tickets for duration of membership.

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Monday 15 & Monday 15 March
A CANTERBURY TALE (UK/1944/B&W/124mins/16mm/NFVLS/ 18+)

Dir: Michael Powell

On a wartime pilgrimage to Canterbury three young people in search of spiritual peace encounter strange attacks on the girls of a Kentish village. The journey is both literally and spiritually a journey in the shadow of Chaucer from darkness to light, an exploration of the spiritual values of rural England. Powell called it 'a crusade against materialism'. The living past is found in the countryside where a sense of magic and the bizarre is conveyed through a symphonic-like

structure and camera poetry

Monday 22 & Monday 22 March
LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (UK/1943/COLOUR/163min/NFSA/R18+)

Dir: Michael Powell

Powell and Pressburger dramatise the life of Clive Candy spanning fivedecades from the Boer War to World War 2. Candy is Colonel Blimpbut he is more than David Low's symbol of British procrastination, regard for tradition and all the things that were losing the war. Although the film is dedicated to the New Army of Britain, Candy is portrayed in an essentially affectionate way but kept at a certain distance. He is clearly at odds with his times, out of touch with the great changes going on around him. But sympathy is extended to him as a loner who cannot change, although he is ultimately able to face up to the realities of the times.

 

Monday 29 & Monday 29 March
FAHRENHEIT 451 (UK/1966/colour/112mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+)

Dir: Francois Truffaut

In this society of the future the job of firemen is to hunt out and incinerate books. 451 degrees F. is the temperature at which they burn. Typically Truffaut sought for new ways to combine pre-existing elements and unsettle audience expectations. Here he makes the fantastic seem banal and the banal seem strange. He strips Bradbury's story of its futuristic elements and apocalyptic ending in blending elements of the recent past and the near future.

 

Monday 5 & Monday 5 April
RAISING ARIZONA (USA/1987/colour/94 mins/16mm/NFSA / 18+)

Dir: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
This screwball comedy was the Coen Brother's follow up to their debut film 'Blood Simple' (1984). It's the story of Edwina, a policewoman who falls in love with Hi, while she's taking his mug shots.

Monday 12 & Monday 12 April
DODESUKADEN (JAPAN/1970/colour/139mins/16mm/NFSA/18+)

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

The story concerns a group of people inhabiting a wretched congregation of shacks which they call their 'town'. Each of the inhabitants has his particular dream which serves as a compensation for a miserable hand to mouth existence.

Monday 19 & Monday 19 April
THRONE OF BLOOD (JAPAN /1957/B&W/94mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+)

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

Although the spoken word is sparingly used in this reworking of Macbeth, the structure of the play is closely adhered to by retaining the division of acts. Kurosawa plays on similarities between the European and Japanese Middle Ages. There are also essentially Japanese elements. The use of the chorus derives from the Noh drama as does the ritual, closed quality especially in the presentation of Lady Asaji and the witch. The film is 'founded on the principle of opposition between extreme violence or pathos and moments of static, restrained tension to be found in nearly all of Kurosawa's films'

Monday 3 & Monday 3 May
ROME OPEN CITY (ITALY/1945/B&W/105mins/ 16mm/NFSA / 18+)

Dir: Roberto Rossellini

Planned while the Germans were still in Rome, with production commencing only two months after its liberation, 'Open City' draws on contemporary events, often filmed in the actual locations where they had taken place, to present the lives of a cross-section of a city under terrible stress

Monday 10 & Monday 10 May
GERMANY YEAR ZERO (ITALY/1948/B&W/76mins/16mm/NFSA / 18+)

Dir: Roberto Rossellini 

In the desolation of post-war Berlin a young boy perpetrates a crime in the belief that he is performing an heroic act. Following 'Rome Open City' and 'Paisan' it was seen by Rossellini as 'the third panel of the triptych on war'. It was filmed in Berlin in 1947 not as a realist drama set in postwar Germany so much as a poetic portrayal of the malaise of Germany at the moment of defeat.

Monday 17 & Monday 17 May
THE PENALTY (US/1920/B&W/72mins/16mm/NFVLS /18+)

Dir: Wallace Worsley

A man, who as  a boy had his legs needlessly amputated, swears revenge on the surgeon. He has become the master of the San Francisco underworld and contrives to take the surgeon's daughter as hostage in order to force him to graft on new legs - the legs of her fiancée.

Monday 24 & Monday 24 May
HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (US/1924/B&W/95mins/16mm/NFVLS / +18)

Dir: Victor Sjöström
When a scientist's professional and personal life is destroyed by his patron, the unscrupulous Baron Regnard, he decides to lose himself in laughter and becomes France's most famous clown, 'He'. This tale of humiliation in the circus is curiously reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's 'The Naked Night'. The phantasmagorical circus scenes are the central focus of the film. The relationship between the crowd and the performers is given a symbolic dimension while Sjostrom projects something of the psychological state of the main character in visual terms experimenting, for example, with the use of small amounts of light amidst darkness.

Monday 31 & Monday 31 May
THE UNKNOWN (US/1927/63mins /B&W/16mm/NFSA/ 18+)

 Dir: Tod Browning

Probably the best of the ten films that Chaney and Browning made together, The Unknown has been described as "one of the most resplendently morbid features ever made ... one of the truly great silent movies". Chaney plays a strangler with two thumbs on one hand masquerading in a circus as Alonzo the Armless Wonder who uses his feet in a knife throwing act. He finds himself rival with the strong man for the affections of a pretty equestrienne (Crawford) who cannot bear to be touched by men. Alonzo believes he has won her love but when his mocking assistant reminds him that marriage would reveal his true identity he plans to have his arms amputated. Truly l'amour fou with a Grand Guignol ending.

Monday 7 & Monday 7 June
THE UNHOLY THREE (US/1925/85mins/B&W/16mm/NFSA )

Dir:Tod Browning

Convincingly disguised as a little old lady, Echo and his two carnival cohorts perform a series of Park Avenue robberies. Echo's sweetheart Rosie (played by Mae Busch) plays along with the Unholy Three but changes her mind when their latest burglary, which ended in murder, threatens to send an innocent man (who is also Rosie's Lover) to the electric chair.

Monday 14 & Monday 14 June
EDVARD MUNCH (SWEDEN/NORWAY/1974/COLOR/174min/16mm/NFSA/18+)

Dir: Peter Watkins
Watkin's portrayal of the life and work of the pioneer expressionist painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch uses an almost documentary approach to the narrative, incorporating meticulous detail to place the artist in a social and historical context. The use of non-professional actors, often communicating directly with the audience by glances into the camera, adds to the immediacy of the dialogue which was written in collaboration with the cast.

Monday 21 & Monday 21 June
2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (FRANCE/1967/colour/87mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+)

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
Juliette, the central character of Godard's film was inspired by journalist Catherine Vimonet's feature on housewives in the modern suburbs of Paris, who make extra money as part-time prostitutes. The fragmented story of 24 hours in Juliette's life is subordinated to sociological analysis and questioning of the filmmaking process itself made by Godard's voice on the soundtrack as he examines modern industrial life.

Monday 28 & Monday 28 June
A BAND APART (FRANCE/1964/B&W/97mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+)

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
The film is an adaptation of the novel Fools' Gold (Doubleday Crime Club, 1958) by American author Dolores Hitchens. The film belongs to the French New Wave movement. Godard described it as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka"
 

Monday 5 & Monday 5 July
CAPE FEAR (US/1962/colour/105mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+ )

Dir: J. Lee Thompson
After spending eight years in prison for assault, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is released. He promptly tracks down Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), a North Carolina lawyer and a man he holds personally responsible for his conviction.

Monday 12 & Monday 12 July
HAXAN:WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES (DENMARK, SWEDEN/1922/B&W/104mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+ )

Dir: Benjamin Christensen
This combination of dramatised fiction, documentary footage and animated sequences was based on the records of witchcraft trials in the 15th and 16th centuries. Christensen (who also plays the devil) adopts a sceptical attitude to the occult in a portrayal, in turn grotesque and humorous, of witches' sabbath and black mass, extraction of confessions and contemporary scenes of possession.

Monday 19 & Monday 19 July
BICYCLE THIEVES (ITALY/1948/B&W/93mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+ )

Dir: Vittorio De Sica
A man and his son search for his stolen bicycle which he needs to hold his job as a bill poster; without the bicycle he is condemned to unemployment.

Monday 26 & Monday 26 July
HOUSE BY THE RIVER (US/1950/B&W/88mins/16mm/NFSA/ 18+ )

Dir: Fritz Lang
In this atmospheric melodrama in a late Victorian setting a young and unsuccessful writer accidentally strangles his maid when she resists his advances. The writer's crippled brother is implicated when he helps dispose of the body. This is a variation on an idea that interested Lang: that in certain situations very little distinguishes a law-abiding citizen from a        lawbreaker. Another Lang concern - the ambiguity of guilt - focuses on the brother.

The Chauvel Cinémathèque acknowledges the assistance of the National Film & Sound Archive in creating this program.