Special Events

TIFF Bell Lightbox Presents the Films of Bertolucci

by James McNally on January 10, 2011

in Directors,Special Events

Bernardo Bertolucci

From January 6th-19th, TIFF Bell Lightbox is presenting a ret­ro­spective of the work of Bernardo Bertolucci, a dir­ector whose work has always hovered around the peri­phery of my vision. I’m looking for­ward to cor­recting that over­sight. His film­making career has spanned 50 years and although he began working in a vaguely neor­ealist style, he quickly moved on to exper­i­ment with many other styles and a diversity of sub­ject matter. The TIFF pro­gram guide has clev­erly singled out his ever-present themes of “sex, politics and visual splendour” with a slightly naughty allit­er­ative tagline: Fashion, Fascists and Fucking (or F**king, if you’re sensitive).

Although the Lightbox will be a grand venue to watch (or revisit) some of his most well-known films (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor), the real oppor­tunity is to see some of his lesser-known work. In par­tic­ular, I’m looking for­ward to Before the Revolution (1964) and Partner (1968), two form­ative works from the tur­bu­lent 60s which led up to his break­through film The Conformist in 1970.

Leaving aside the Fashion (“visual splendour”) side of the tri­angle for a moment, I’m fas­cin­ated by Bertolucci’s mix­ture of sen­su­ality and polit­ical frus­tra­tion. While the 60s seem to be the decade most asso­ci­ated with sexual lib­er­a­tion and polit­ical struggle, the dir­ector has made almost all of his films about indi­viduals strug­gling against larger forces and using sex as both a res­pite from the struggle and an act of per­sonal defi­ance. I’m intrigued by TIFF pro­grammer Jesse Wente’s obser­va­tion that “Bertolucci con­tinues to identify sex as a pro­foundly lib­er­ating force, a pure human freedom that defies the stric­tures and con­ven­tions of society.” I’m cer­tain that approaching the films with at least this state­ment in mind is going to help me appre­ciate Bertolucci’s sig­ni­fic­ance as a unique voice in world cinema.

Tickets can be pur­chased online for any of the films in the series. Here are a few images to whet your appetite:

Tagged as: bertolucci, italy, lightbox

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Free Screening of NY Export: Opus Jazz

by James McNally on December 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in Special Events

I know I’ve been going on an on about this film, and I promise to shut up soon. But NY Export: Opus Jazz (review) is a film that cries out to be seen on a large screen, and until now, it hasn’t received a the­at­rical release here in Toronto. I’m happy to tell you that you’re going to get a chance to see this great film for FREE this week. Thanks to Jeff Wright’s great ReFocus screening series, my favourite film of 2010 is screening on Wednesday December 15th at 8pm at Double Double Land (down the lane at 209 Augusta Ave. in Kensington Market). You don’t need a ticket, but be aware that seating is first come, first served and the venue can only hold about 30 people com­fort­ably. Since the film is only an hour, I’m won­dering if they’ll run it again at 9pm if too many people show up. Let’s test that hypo­thesis, shall we?

I’m willing to ven­ture that this may well be the best hour of your week.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Free Japanese Films at the Bloor

by James McNally on December 3, 2010

in Special Events

Japan Foundation Free Toronto Screenings: December 9-12, 2010

The Japan Foundation is bringing its annual fest­ival of free Japanese film back to the Bloor Cinema from December 9–12. All films are presented in Japanese with English sub­titles. Arrive early to avoid disappointment!

It’s inter­esting to note that these films are from dir­ectors better-known for other films: Suo dir­ected Shall We Dance? back in 1996 as well as the upcoming and highly anti­cip­ated doc­u­mentary Dancing Chaplin, Yamazaki helmed this year’s Space Battleship Yamato, Nakashima dir­ected Kamikaze Girls and this year’s con­tro­ver­sial Confessions, while Takita is best known for dir­ecting Oscar-winner Departures.

Here’s a chance to see some of their other work, and for nothing!

More inform­a­tion on each film is avail­able at the Japan Foundation’s site.

Tagged as: japan

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Requiem // 102 : Minute 13

by James McNally on November 18, 2010

in Snapshots,Special Events,Web Sites

Requiem // 102 : Minute 13
I wrote a bit about the Requiem // 102 pro­ject a few weeks back. Here’s my meagre contribution.

This moment, cap­tured in minute 13 of the film, is from the “Summer” sec­tion and fol­lows one of the few moments of bour­geois respect­ab­ility in this dark cork­screw of a story.

Harry and Marion have just spent a romantic inter­lude up on the roof of an office building where they are able to look out over the whole neigh­bour­hood of Coney Island and the beach. He encour­ages her to pursue her dream of designing clothes and becoming inde­pendent of her par­ents. He says he’ll help her.

Coming back in through the fire escape door, Marion reck­lessly sets off the alarm that Harry had dis­con­nected and with a mis­chievous grin pulls him toward the elev­ators. They hide as the security guards respond to the alarm, and on the trip down, they make out like horny teen­agers for the security camera. She is the aggressor.

The next time we see the couple, they’re locked in an embrace on the sofa, asleep, sweaty and almost cer­tainly high.

There is love here, cer­tainly. But there is also some­thing else, some­thing more sin­ister. Although Marion at first appears to be the more inno­cent of the two, some­thing about her reck­less­ness in this scene hints at the dark­ness to come.

The inno­cence and freedom of the rooftop, where the lovers fly paper air­planes and talk like shy school­chil­dren, where Harry puts his arm around Marion and kisses her on the cheek, gives way to the con­fined space of the elev­ator, where animal lust takes over and we spy on them through a security camera, a device intended to identify trans­gressors, tres­passers and lawbreakers.

There follow a few more scenes of inno­cence, of what might have looked like pure love between Harry and Marion if we hadn’t already seen a darker side, but the worm is already in the bud.

This essay is a con­tri­bu­tion to the Requiem // 102 pro­ject, con­ceived by Nick Rombes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit, Mercy, as a form of “col­lective, dis­trib­uted film cri­ti­cism.” Requiem // 102 is modeled loosely on Rombes’ ongoing 10/40/70 pro­ject, in which he “reads” three screen cap­tures from a given film taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks.

For this pro­ject, Nick has invited 102 con­trib­utors from across the film cri­ti­cism spec­trum to look at, or oth­er­wise be inspired by, one frame from each minute of Darren Aronofsky’s 102 minute-long film Requiem for a Dream (2000), a movie that unsettled many audi­ence mem­bers when it was first released in cinemas ten years ago.

To learn more about Requiem // 102, check out the project’s About page and/or follow it on Twitter.

Tagged as: requiem102

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Requiem // 102 Project

by James McNally on November 2, 2010 · 2 comments

in Special Events,Web Sites

Requiem for a Dream

I’ve long been a fan of Nick Rombes’ work. By day, Nick is Chair of the English depart­ment at the University of Detroit Mercy, but that doesn’t begin to describe his wide range of interests or his vast tal­ents. Consider just two of sev­eral books he’s written, Cinema in the Digital Age and A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, and you’ll get a bit of an idea why I’m a fan.

One of his most innov­ative ideas is his ongoing 10/40/70 pro­ject, in which he ana­lyzes screen cap­tures from films taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks. Based loosely on that idea, he’s come up with an inter­esting new pro­ject and invited me to take part.

Darren Aronofsky’s second film Requiem for a Dream was released ten years ago this month, and to mark the occa­sion, Rombes has cre­ated Requiem // 102, a pro­ject for which he has invited 102 con­trib­utors to write about a screen cap­ture from each of the film’s 102 minutes. There will be one new entry each weekday, which should take us into the new year. The pro­ject excited me for sev­eral reasons.

First, I’ve never seen the film. I’m aware of its repu­ta­tion and its sig­ni­fic­ance, and have owned the DVD for more than five years now, but until now, I’ve never had a com­pel­ling reason to watch it. That changes now. Second, I’m a huge fan of cre­ative work based on con­straints. In my brief time teaching lit­er­ature to 12-year-olds, I delighted in for­cing them to write poetry in eso­teric forms like the vil­lan­elle. Despite their ini­tial protests, they were often delighted to find that they’d written some­thing better than they ever could have ima­gined. And per­haps related to the idea of con­straints, I’ve never really written about film in this way before. I’ve been reading Rombes raven­ously because he writes about the more formal aspects of film that I’ve pre­vi­ously left unex­amined, and so I’m excited to be asked to rise to the chal­lenge of writing in an unfa­miliar way about an unfa­miliar film.

The first two entries in the pro­ject are already up, and Chuck Tryon and Catherine Grant have set the bar pretty high. It’s also a bit crazy to me that I’ve been somehow admitted to this group of film pro­fessors and aca­demics. I like that the expect­a­tions are so high, and I’m eager to chal­lenge myself to pro­duce some­thing on par with the other participants.

You can read more about Requiem // 102 on the site’s About page, and you can also follow the pro­ject on Twitter.

Tagged as: requiem102

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →