Movie night: Closely Watched Trains (1966)

By: börek - May 1st, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday May 12th 2013, Movie night: Closely Watched Trains (“Ostre sledované vlaky”, Jiří Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1966, 93 min.), in Czech with English subtitles. Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00.

An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform. In the same time he success in antifascist resistance. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Closely Watched Trains “as expert and moving in its way as was Jan Kadar’s and Elmar Klos’s The Shop on Main Street or Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde”, two other recent films from Czechoslovakia. […Lees verder]

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Movie night: Blade Runner

By: börek - May 1st, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday May 5th 2013, Movie night: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982, 117 min.). Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00

In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specializes in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when four replicants escape from an off-world colony to Earth. […Lees verder]

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: F For Fake (1974), Death in the Port Jackson Hotel (1972)

By: börek - March 27th, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond
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Sunday April 28th 2013, Movie night, double bill! Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock. Door open at 20pm, films begin at 21:00..

F For Fake (Orson Wells, 1974, 85′). In English with English subtitles!
The great Orson Wells (Citizen Kane), nearing the end of his career of filmmaking, created this crazy film about magic, illusion and truth. In a sense this is a documentary about the illegitimacy of all documentaries. This film is totally bizarre even within the catalog of Orson Wells, being unlike anything else he ever created. What a magnificent final film for a wild, uncompromising career! Even with his last breath Orson Welles, pulls out something that you would never expect.

Trickery. Truth. Deceit. Magic. The art world. So-called experts. In Orson Welles’ free-form documentary, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) jumps head-long into the central theme of his career- the tricky line between truth and illusion, art and lies. […Lees verder]

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Film night: Reds

By: börek - March 24th, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond
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Sunday April 21st 2013, Film night: Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981, 195 min) in English with English subtitles. Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00.

This movie tells the true story of John Reed, a radical American journalist around the time of World War I. He soon meets Louise Bryant, a respectable married woman, who dumps her husband for Reed and becomes an important feminist and radical in her own right. After involvement with labor and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the October Revolution in 1917, when the Communists siezed power. Inspired, they return to the US, hoping to lead a similar revolution. A particularly fascinating aspect of the movie is the inclusion of interviews with “witnesses”, the real-life surviving participants in the events of the movie. […Lees verder]

Czech film night with Pavel Juráček and Jan Němec

By: börek - March 23rd, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond
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Sunday April 14th 2013, Czech film night with a double bill, Joseph Kilian (“Postava k podpírání” original tile, from Pavel Juráček, 1965, 38 min.) and A Report on the Party and the Guests (“O slavnosti a hostech” original title, from Jan Němec, 1966, 70 min.). English subtitles. Door open at 20pm, films begin at 21:00.

Joseph Kilian (“Postava k podpírání” original tile, from Pavel Juráček, 1965, 38 min.)
A year after Franz Kafka’s work had been translated from German into his native Czech, this experimental feature was full of Kafka’s tone and style. The story is about Harold, an isolated figure in an overwhelming world of totalitarian bureaucracy. Harold tries to find the elusive Joseph Kilian, an old acquaintance, in Prague. When Harold stumbles across a state-run cat-lending store, he impulsively rents a feline for the day. Later, he attempts to return the cat and finds that the store no longer exists. Now with a furry companion, Harold continues his search for Kilian. Written and directed by Pavel Juracek, this 40 minute film effectively aims its allegorical shots at personality cults and the absurdities of a totalitarian regime. […Lees verder]

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Movie night: The Men Who Stare At Goats

By: börek - March 23rd, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond
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Sunday April 7th 2013, Movie night: The Men Who Stare At Goats (Grant Heslov, 2009, 94′). Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice – and indeed, the laws of physics – they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. ‘The men who stare at goats’ reveals extraordinary – and very nutty – national secrets at the core of George W Bush’s War on Terror.

With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades, and sees how it is alive today within US Homeland Security and post-war Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners-of-war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? […Lees verder]

Movie night: The Joke (1969)

By: börek - February 23rd, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday March 31st 2013, Movie night: The Joke (“Zert”, Jaromil Jireš, Czechoslovakia, 1969, 89′). In Czech. Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00

The Joke, adapted from the debut novel of the same name by the famed Czech writer Milan Kundera, and directed by Jaromil Jireš, was one of the most politically charged movies to have come out of the Czech New Wave movement. That, combined with its subversive humour and sharp commentary on the then-totalitarian regime, ensured that it was promptly banned by the powers that by. […Lees verder]

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Movie Night: Micmacs

By: börek - February 16th, 2013  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday March 24th 2013, Movie night: Micmacs (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2009, 105′). In French, with English subtitles. English subtitles. Door open at 20pm, film begins at 21:00.

Micmacs is a 2009 French comedy film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Its original French title is MicMacs à tire-larigot, (‘Non-stop shenanigans’). The film is billed as a “satire on the world arms trade. Micmacs links Keaton, Chaplin and Tati to the surreal, stylised worlds of Lynch, Burton and Gilliam and draws on everything from film noir to Sergio Leone. It is lit in a hallucinatory fashion, golden by day, dreamy by night, shot with lenses that happily disconcert the viewer. […Lees verder]