Caban Programme 2008 - 09
Screenings are at Y Caban, Brynrefail
at about 7.30pm
Following the programme below there is a short list of the films under consideration for the rest of 2009.
We would welcome any suggestions (positive or negative) to info@occasionalcinema.org.
We are also showing films in Bangor at the Blue Sky Cafe in Bangor.
2006, France, Cert 15, 106 mins, Dir: Michel Gondry Cerebral, romantic comedy
French-born Michael Gondry, and co-writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has given us another movie with that distinctive combination of elegance and wackiness: insouciant, self-reflexive and intensely childlike. It is set in Paris, where Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) has returned to live in the almost-forgotten family home he left with his father when his parents divorced. Now his mother has divided the apartment into two flats, allowing him to live in one and rent the other out to two single girls, Stéphanie and Zoe (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Emma De Caunes). Stéphane simply moves back into his childhood bedroom, which his mother has kept unchanged with all his old toys and posters and wacky inventions, and it encourages Stéphane in his regressive Walter Mitty-ish tendency to reverie and fantasy. In his head, Stéphane is the host of a homemade TV show, with stage-set and cameras made of cardboard, a kind of lifestyle-news programme whose sole purpose is to comment on the ongoing bafflement of his life. And poor Stéphane is falling for his beautiful neighbour, Stéphanie, who is entranced by this innocent, with his ingenuous imaginative charm and love of arts and crafts, but does not find him attractive. Idealistic and romantic: a thwarted love story that does not trade in the degraded cliches either of romance or conventional sexiness. Stéphane's relationship with his workmates, particularly the boorish yet likable Guy, played by Alain Chabat, is effortlessly comic.
UK 2007 Director: Gareth Lewis
A hit man has second thoughts about his career and seeks refuge from his boss by finding work as a baker in a rural Welsh village.
Writer-director Gareth Lewis provides a great story, excellently told with lots of refreshing originality, tons of laughs, and perfect casting throughout. Damian Lewis is wonderful in the lead role, displaying the perfect blend of comedy, action and romance and Kate Ashfield is gorgeous. A family-friendly feel-good story of redemption.
France 2007 Director: V Paronnaud & M Satrapi
Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution. The black-and-white animation, highly stylized and in two dimensions unlike the usual cartoon 3-D, summarizes in quick, intelligent flashes, often impressionistic, growing up in Teheran and Vienna from a highly personal point of view. The narrative is as original as the art.
The narrator, Marjane Satrapi, only daughter of an educated Teheran couple, first sketches in briefly how the Shah first came to power, only to lose it and have it replaced by the fanatical religious regime of today. Educated in a French school, she and her family are rapidly alienated from the so-called revolution; she is sent to Vienna to continue her education, falls in with a group of punks and eventually returns both depressed and disillusioned to Teheran where, with other university students, she must submit to the rule of extreme Islamists.
The story covers a great deal of ground from the point of view of a young pro-Western culture radical, and is told with humor and intelligence. She laughs at herself as much as at the semi-lunatic Guards of the Revolution.
This is no fairy tale with flying horses and beautiful princesses, but a serious, unsentimental and sometimes brutally honest film covering, among other events, the story of the millions of Iranians and Iraqis who died in a now forgotten seven year war around the Persian Gulf.
UK 2007 Director: Anand Tucker
Starring Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth and Juliet Stevenson
Writer, Blake Morrison's moving and candid memoir of the weeks leading up to his Yorkshire GP father’s death. A beautifully written, well acted but above all wonderfully directed, film looking at a man who learns about himself by finding out about his father. Colin Firth plays a real writer who wrote an auto-biographical novel about his relationship with his father played by Jim Broadbent.
The events are funny and moving but restrained within a believable reality. Firth learns to live with his father's behaviour as we see that he isn't perfect either. It's positive about life without being sentimental.
Anand Tucker brings Blake Morrison’s autobiographical bestseller to the screen with sensitivity, humour and visual flair. - Empire
Israel/France 2007 Director: Eran Kolirin
Comedy/Drama
A band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts centre, only to find themselves lost in the wrong town. What follows is a special night of quiet happenings and confessions as the band makes its own impact on the town and the town on them.
A touching film about what makes us similar as humans, you will be subjected to a wide range of emotions during this film: joy, frustration, embarrassment, delight and so on - the humanity of the film really shines. People of such different backgrounds are basically the same; same hopes and aspirations, same fears and frustrations etc. The same things make all of us tick.
This film is also about strangers and others. And how we can help one another. The scene with Haled and the Israeli boy and girl in the skating rink is a classic.
UK 1937 b&w Director: Michael Powell
Shot on the North Sea island of Foula, a magnificent, primal landscape of high, rocky inland plains and sheer cliffs jutting out of the sea. Powell renamed the island Hirta for this fictional story (based on the real-life evacuation of the island of St. Kilda) of an isolated community's traditional way of life slowly dying as the young men are drawn to the modern cities of the mainland. John Laurie and Finlay Currie play the two family patriarchs who struggle over the future of the island community. The romantic melodrama at the heart of the tale turns on a breathtaking race up the sheer cliffs and the grudge resulting from that contest.
The Edge of the World is more stately and still than
Powell's cinematically playful and stylistically vibrant later films like The
Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. The proud, hard residents of the
island are constantly framed against the dramatic sky, the craggy mountains, or
the rolling meadows. Yet there's a poetry to his images, which are never less
than gorgeous, and Powell directs with a sense of tension, urgency, and
desperation that pulls at the easy pace of this harsh lifestyle.
France/Italy 2006 Director: Julie Gravas
A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.
Review from Time Out
There’s a delightfully supple comedy in this early ’70s story, not only from the tantrum-throwing heroine’s uneasy adjustment to newly radicalised priorities, but also in her instinctive probing of mum and dad’s sometimes woolly self-justification. While Julie Depardieu and Stefano Accorsi are both fine as the grown-ups, the film belongs to Nina Kervel’s intuitive brilliance as their Little Miss Unimpressed, a pouting terror in school uniform. It’s conjecture just how close this is to the childhood of the first-time director, whose father is the great political filmmaker Costa-Gavras, but she’s managed the rare trick of making an essentially serious movie with the lightest of touch. How do we learn about notions of justice and equality when as children our perspective’s so naturally self-centred? A deft, original, entertaining and thoughtful look at that moment when we realise the world’s just that bit more complicated than we thought.
UK 2008 Director: Lucy Walker
Documentary/Drama
Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, Blindsight follows the
gripping adventure of six blind Tibetan teenagers on a climbing expedition up
the 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri, on the northside of Mt. Everest.
This is not your average triumph over adversity story. The film reveals the very
strong, often contradictory personalities of two highly accomplished adults
leading the children: Erik is a blind American mountaineer and Sabriye is a
blind German academic who runs a school for blind youngsters in Lhasa Tibet.
They are both exceptional in their own ways, but disagree on what will really
benefit the kids. Erik wants them to reach the summit while Sabriye wants them
to enjoy Erik as a role model and take pleasure in the moment. One walks away
not really being sure who was right, or if the whole climb was a mistake or a
great idea. The most profound scenes are with the Tibetan children themselves
and the hardships they faced before finding their way to the school.
The film captures both the arguments of the climbers as well as their
frustrations, despair and exhilaration towards the end.
UK 1997 Director: Peter Greenaway
This film, starring Vivian Wu from "The Last Emperor", is a seductive and elegant story that combines a millennium of Japanese art and fetishes with the story of a neurotic modern woman who tells a lover: "Treat me like the pages of a book." Early in Nagiko's life, she sees something she was not intended to see: her father's publisher forcing her father to have sex as the price of getting a book published. On another occasion, when she is 6 or 7, she is introduced to the publisher's 10-year-old nephew, and told this will be her future husband. These events set up fundamental tensions in her life, and as an adult, unhappily married to the publisher's nephew, she begins keeping her own pillow book. The nephew is a shallow dolt, who finds her book and in a jealous rage burns her papers and then their house.
Nagiko flees from Kyoto to Hong Kong, where eventually she finds work as a fashion model and begins to seek lovers who will fulfil her dreams. For her the appearance of a person's handwriting is more important than the surfaces of his face; she wants to be used as a book, to be written on, to be read.
Her fetish ties in with two ancient Japanese artistic practices.
One is the art of tattooing, which can be much more elegant and artistic than in
the west, and is used by the yakuza as a way of bonding with their criminal
brothers. It can be seen as a form of submission--to the will of the tattoo
artist, to the will of the group dictating the tattoos, or simply in the
willingness of a person to be used as an object.
The other practice is the long-standing Japanese tradition in art of
deliberately exposing the artificiality of a work of art. Realism is less prized
than style. Landscapes may use great realistic detail, and then have captions
written on them, or the bright red artist's mark. Kabuki and Noh theatre overlay
their stories with ancient layers of style and tradition. To write a poem on a
body is much the same as writing it on a landscape: The word and the image
create a tension.
Greenaway, whose work includes "The
Draughtsman's Contract," "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and "Prospero's
Books," uses an essentially Japanese technique. He likes to build up his
images in layers, combining film and video, live action and paintings, spoken
narration and visual texts. He shoots in colour, b&w, and subtle tints. Here he
tells a lurid story of sexuality, fetishism and betrayal, in an elegant and
many-faceted way.
One of the most elegant parts of the film comes toward the end, as Greenaway
illustrates the pages of Nagiko's pillow book. She has used each part of the
body for the appropriate texts, even writing on ears and tongues, and here the
words (Japanese, English, printed, spoken, Kanji) take on a sort of mystical,
abstract quality. The talkies chained pictures to words; Greenaway finds a way
out by using words as pictures.
France/Germany 2006 Director: Julie Delpy
Comedy/Drama/Romance
Marion and Jack try to rekindle their relationship with a visit to Paris, home of Marion's parents … and several of her ex-boyfriends.
Delpy's script is brilliantly observed, taking pot-shots at
relationship issues that you simply don't see in mainstream Hollywood comedies.
Similarly, the culture clash between American and European attitudes is superbly
handled without ever feeling forced or reverting to tired cliches. Goldberg and
Delpy are exceptional in the lead roles and their naturalistic back-and-forth
dialogue is believable and frequently hilarious. There's also strong comic
support from Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as well as Alexia Landeau as
Marion's grumpy sister and Adan Jodorowsky as one of Marion's smarmy exes.
Delpy directs with a light comic touch that recalls Woody Allen at his best and
the
film is packed with witty, quotable lines and hysterically funny scenes.
However, the film also has an underlying honesty and a genuine point to make
about how hard it is to really know somebody. This is one of the best
relationship comedies in recent memory.
Germany 2003 Director: Werner Herzog
This film is an exploration of several Tibetan Buddhist rituals, and centers around an initiation in India attended by hundreds of thousands of Himalayan devotees, many of whom arrive after punishing pilgrimages that, in one case, took up to three and a half years. As cinema this film excels. Herzog places himself in the midst of the throng. The faces he captures tell a thousand stories.
Difficult to adequately explain fully, the film is part document
of the events, part meditation on them and on larger ideas. It is a film that
beautifully shows how one religion can transcend place and time. It attempts to
show us the length to which the pilgrims will go in order to travel down the
path to enlightenment. Since this is a trip that is only really travelled deep
inside oneself Werner Herzog keeps his camera ever moving over the landscape of
the people who are trying to find nirvana. We are forever looking at the faces
of those deep in prayer and meditation as if we might be able to find some clue
as to what is going on deep with in each persons soul. It becomes a mediation on
meditation.
For the most part this film works wonderfully. It manages to give some clue into
the very nature of what the ceremonies are all about. We are also drawn into a
contemplative and meditative state that seems akin or to approximate those of
some of the pilgrims. While certainly not the real thing it is enough to give
one a feel for deep thought.
Czech Republic/Slovakia 2008 Director: Jiri Menzel
Comedy/Romance/War
A bitter-sweet comedy set in German occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II explores the gradual maturing of an ambitious man who, suddenly in love and guided by stupidity rather than opportunism, finds himself on the side of the occupying power.
Review from Empire Magazine
Like his Academy Award winning Closely Watched Trains, Czech director Jiri
Menzel puts the focus of this light-footed comedy on a loveably naïve central
character. Though we first meet Jan Dite as an old ex-con, Menzel is bustling to
take us back to Jan’s pre-WWII youth, where as a humble waiter his pursuits are
those of young men everywhere: pretty girls and cash. As the young Jan, Ivan
Barnev plays like a blonde, European Zack Braff, all wide-eyed wonder at the fun
that life can bring. He’s a man of mixed fortunes, always taking the good with
the bad – even when the War hits home for him, or the Communists turn up just as
he finally becomes a millionaire. Funny, vivacious and profound without being
earnest, this is an utter delight.
Israel/Germany/France/USA 2008 Director: Ari Folman
Drama - mainly animated
Director Ari Folman presents a personal view of historic events in which he took part as a young soldier, but which he cannot remember due to repression. A full-length documentary, filmed with animation over the recorded speech of actual participants in the 1982 Lebanon War, Waltz with Bashir is beautifully done and get its message across clearly.
Emotionally enthralling, yet uneasily shocking, 'Bashir' follows
director Goldman as he visits various friends and foes trying to rekindle the
memories he has forgotten of the Israeli-Lebanon War in 1982. Shot in mesmerising
animated visuals, it is a thought-provoking ride through the rediscovery of one
man's forgotten nightmares.
From the opening surrealist shot of twenty-six dogs rabidly racing down the Tel
Aviv streets, to the ending where the animation is sacrificed for a few short
minutes to show the real, unaltered horrors of the Sabra and Shatila massacres
from news reels and archive footage, surrealism is constantly mixed with
reality.
France/Belgium/Israel/Italy 2005 Director: Radu Mihaileanu
The story told during the internationally-produced film "Live and Become," is, beyond any doubt, touching; nay, it is heart-wrenching. To witness even a fictionalized version of the poverty suffered by the starving Ethiopeans in the opening scenes of the film; of the fears and challenges of a child coming of age in a strange country; and of the social and religious complexities faced by Ethiopean Jews living in Israel is at once horrifying, confounding, and inspiring. If one has the chance to see this film, do so without hesitation, for the story it tells is one to which all should pay great attention.
The acting is quite impressive, especially that of the
non-professionals: Yitzhak Edgar and Moshe Agazai. Equally impressive is the
performance of Yaël Abecassis.
Man on Wire is an exciting documentary about Philippe Petit who
managed to sneak into the World Trade Center in 1974 and do a high-wire act
between the Twin Towers.
An amazing story and fascinating to watch. The reenactments are also well filmed
and a nice job of telling the story.
This documentary plays like a classic heist film. It's filled with suspense and
has many of those caper moments of mistakes that may ruin the entire job. Even
though the final outcome is already known, it's still thrilling. A well crafted
film that does a wonderful job of telling the story of one man's dream and how
he managed to make it a reality.
A Classic - and it’s The Beatles!
USA 2008 Director: Thomas McCarthy
Drama
A widowed college professor travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young couple, who turn out to be illegal immigrants, living in his apartment.
Richard Jenkins is not the only actor of note in this cast.
Everyone is pitch-perfect. But particularly be on the lookout for Hiam Abbass.
Every time she is on the screen is a delight. This is one of those rare films
that you really do not want to end.
It would be easy to pigeon-hole this film as a topical drama dealing with an
uncaring government system. But this film transcends all that. Instead it is a
heartfelt film about what happens when people -- with all their desires and
difficulties -- bump into one another to express the best part of their
humanity.
Set in Afghanistan, Noqreh (a charismatic performance from the non-professional Agheleh Rezaie) is determined to enjoy the new freedoms available to her since the ousting of the regime. She has enrolled in a girls’ school, but has to conceal the fact from her strict father. She harbours the ambition of becoming the first female president of Afghanistan but has to smuggle an illicit but much-cherished pair of high-heeled shoes under her burka until her father is out of sight. The contrast between Noqreh’s ambition and the opportunities available to women like her is stark.
And while initially we almost believe that Noqreh could become a stateswoman, her options are gradually worn down by the immovable forces of tradition and by the exhausting process of survival. While Makhmalbaf allows moments of off-beat humour, post-Taleban Afghanistan is not a place for optimism, it seems.
UK 1988 Director: Peter Greenaway
Drama/Fantasy
This is a picture that offers so much to the viewer. It is
beautiful, but also, at times, grotesque. It is intriguing and complex, and
covers a cornucopia of subjects. The film has an elegant Englishness about it.
It is a film that always requires your attention and one that you will want to
return to.
The film begins with a young girl (adorned in a dress from Velazquez's painting
Las Meninas) who is skipping and counting stars, 100 of them (some of these
stars have Greenaway names like Hoyten, Luper and Spica). She is the film's
navigator.
The story is about three women, all with the same name, Cissie Colpitts, each
from different age groups, who have something in common, they each murder their
husbands by drowning them. They escape punishment from this by consenting to the
needs of an amorous coroner, Madgett. Madgett's young son, Smut, tells us about
different games, each of them rather odd. The film has a wonderful surreal feel
to it. For instance, a man and a woman on bicycles collide with two dead cows,
but it hardly perturbs them. Throughout the film there are the numbers 1 to 100
placed in ascending order on display in some peculiar positions. It's a
fascinating riddle.
Mexico 2005 Director: Francisco Vargas
Strikingly shot in black and white, this feature debut by Mexican Francisco Vargas has won a number of festival awards. It begins with a grisly torture scene, but soon reveals itself as a very different kind of film - majestically slow at times, but increasingly suspenseful in its evocation of the struggle of a small village against military thugs.
France/Belgium 2006 Director: Pascale Ferran
A French adaptation of the second (and much less well-known) version of D.H. Lawrence's erotic tale.
2007 Director: Ang Lee
The clash of Chinese politics and female sexuality lies at the heart of Ang Lee's controversial erotic thriller, along with equally playful yet portentous themes of identity and role playing, deception and coercion, love and murder. A naive student whose interest in amateur dramatics segues into radical politics in forties Shanghai.
France/USA 2007 Director: Julian Schnabel
The true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn't paralyzed. Biography/Drama
Germany/Turkey/Italy 2007 Director: Fatih Akin Drama.
A Turkish man travels to Istanbul to find the daughter of his father's former girlfriend.
Mexico/Spain 2007 Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend.
France/Belgium 2006 Director: Xavier Giannoli
An aging French pop idol has a melancholic awareness of the slow disappearance of his adoring female audience and of his advancing years. He is completely knocked off balance when he becomes involved with an attractive young businesswoman. But what are her motives for the relationship.
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The Occasional Cinema is a film society run by volunteers. You must become a member to attend a film showing. Membership is available on the door on film nights for a cost of £5 per lifetime: the first film is free, after this film entrance is £3.00. Member's guests may watch a film for £4. Members are welcomed to play an active part in the running of the society.
Films are shown at the Caban, Brynrefail and at the Blue Sky Cafe, Bangor and unless stated otherwise start sometime after 7.30pm.
Food is available from 6.00pm and a sophisticated clientele enjoy the wholesome food, reasonable price (£7.50 for two courses at the Caban, £8.00 at the Blue Sky Cafe) and excellent atmosphere. Meals are provided on a first-come first-served basis and reservations are recommended and often essential (several recent films have been fully booked) - Caban 01286 685500, Blue Sky 01248 355444. You can't book for the film only, which is on a first come first served basis. Everyone who arrives before 7pm and has booked food will get to see the film.
Blue Sky Café is in the central part of Bangor High Street at number 236 behind the butchers and opposite the Halifax Building Society. It was formerly Java and before that the Ambassador Hall.
www.occasionalcinema.org Matrix10 web hosting.
