Next up is Moolaadé, a 2004 film from Ousmane Sembene (MC-91), which looks at the plight of women in a Senegalese village, to be shown at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 12th.
Two weeks from then, on March 26th, the next screening will be The Edge of Heaven (2007), the latest from the estimable German/Turkish director Fatih Akin. (MC-85.)
On Sunday, March 28th, I will finally get around to showing the Roberto Rossellini double feature I’ve been promising since our Neorealism series last fall: Open City (1945) at 1:00 pm and Paisan (1946) at 3:00 pm.
The only nomination for future screening offered by the club at the last session was for a film from Vietnam, so for screening on April 9th we will vote amongst the following:
*Vietnam: The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). There doesn’t seem to be a film industry in Vietnam, at least for export, so this sensuous memory piece was filmed in Paris, as Tran Anh Hung looks back at Vietnam before Dien Bien Phu. A patient and poetic tale of women in servitude.
*Belgium: Le Fils (The Son) (2002). The acclaimed Dardennes brothers continue their exploration of the underside of EU affluence, with a direct but subtly controlled approach that tests the attention of the audience, probes its mind and soul. (MC-86.)
*Argentinia: The Headless Woman (2008). Lucrecia Martel is another favorite on the international festival circuit, enigmatic yet illuminating in this story of a woman who has a car accident and loses her memory, which we piece back together along with her. (MC-80.)
*France: Beau Travail (1998). Claire Denis loosely adapts Billy Budd in the setting of a French Foreign Legion post in Africa, in a moody symphony of images that cries out to be seen on a big screen. As the Time Out Film Guide advises: “Prepare to be blown away.” (MC-91.)
In compiling these nominees, I came across one film I really wanted to see again -- on the big screen from a restored dvd -- namely Yi-Yi (A One and a Two…), a 2000 film from Edward Yang of Taiwan (MC-92. Also ranked #3 on Film Comment’s critics survey of the best of the decade). At nearly three hours, it won’t fit in the Fridays at 4 slot, so I will be looking for a Sunday afternoon in April to show it, after we see how the Rossellini double feature goes.
Following up on our last session, I include Netflix links to the two Chinese directors I discussed. To epitomize the career of Zhang Yimou, I particularly recommend To Live (1994), which follows Chinese history since Mao’s revolution through one family’s fate in the succeeding decades. The rest of his films may be divided into trilogies: first the explorations of sensual color and female passion, with the gaze riveted on the magnetic beauty of Gong Li (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern); then the neorealist phase of peasant drama (Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less, The Road Home); and latterly the riot of color and action in a series of martial arts films (Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, with the last a fever dream made notable by the reunion with Gong Li.)
As indicated, Jia Zhang-Ke is an acquired taste, seeming to get better with each film one sees, so you might want to follow The World with its successors, Still Life (2006) and 24 City (2008).
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