Monet’s “water landscapes” preoccupied the last 25 years of the artist’s life. Less concerned with conventional pictorial space, he pushed landscape painting into a transcendent realm. The subject became the surface of the water and its mesmerizing, illusionistic qualities: its ability to mirror the life above and provide glimpses into the enigmatic world below. Similarly, this series is procured from the rich vein of feature films whose poetic tone derive from their enthralling images of nature, the natural world and particularly water. Films with narratives emerging from the unity of location and character rather than from the dynamics of plot; films whose images of the natural world are charged with meaning. The viewer is engaged less by what is going to happen than by the way in which it happens. Images of the natural world are intensified as the ambience, or the illusionistic qualities of water engulf the frame. - Wednesday 22 October 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 26 October 2pm
Respiro
Dir: Emanuele Crialese 2002 (Italy)
91 mins 35mm Colour Rated M
Cast: Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato
Italian with English subtitles.
Emanuele Crialese’s Respiro is the story of a beautiful young woman, Grazia, who lives with her family on the small, rocky, treeless island near Sicily. She is accused of madness when she gains the disapproval of her fellow villagers as a result her erratic, carefree behaviour. Photographed by cinematographer Fabio Zamarion on the sun drenched island of Lampedusa , the film chronicles the lives of people, neither rich nor poor, but dependent on the vagaries of weather and the sea for a living. In the vivid, evocative, unforgettable climax of the film, with spectacular underwater photography, the Mediterranean ocean is depicted as redemptive, destructive and magical.
- Wednesday 29 October 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 2 November 2pm
The Return
Dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev 2003 (Russia)
105 mins 35mm Colour Rated M15+
Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov
Russian with English subtitles
First time Russian director, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s, The Return opens with mesmeric compositions of the surface of a lake – the undulating waves and shadows engulfing the frame. Zvyagintsev and cinematographer Mikhail Kritchman devised a limited colour palette to capture the blue and green hue of water and sky. The result is a film set in the palette of a perennial dusk: remarkably beautiful, yet disquieting and menacing. The story is of two teenage boys whose father, who they know only from a faded photo, returns home suddenly after an absence of 12 years and takes them on a mysterious trip to the north of Russia.
- Wednesday 5 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 9 November 2pm
Pather Panchali
Dir: Satyajit Ray 1955 (India)
115 mins 35mm B&W Rated M
Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee
Bengali with English subtitles
In master Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray’s first feature the director’s eye for the visual poetry of raw nature was already highly attuned. A simple story of the ordinary events and life experiences of a poor family eking out an existence in a Bengal village, the film has an open form in which the natural world evokes the feelings of the central characters. Harihar is a poet and priest compelled to leave his family in order to seek work. His family, living on the edge of poverty, are forced to survive on the charity of others in the village. Pather Panchali was the first installment in a series of lyrical, poetic films by Ray which came to be known as the Apu Trilogy and also included Aparajito (1957) and The world of Apu (1959).
- Wednesday 12 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 16 November 2pm
Colour of paradise
Dir: Majid Majidi 1999 (Iran)
90 mins 35mm Colour Rated PG
Mohsen Ramezani, Hossein Mahjub
Persian with English subtitles
The hero of this fable of a child’s innocence, Mohammad – a young, sight-impaired boy – is acutely attuned to the nuances of the natural world around him. He loves his lessons at the school for the blind and is loved by his grandmother and two sisters. However, Hashem, his ambitious, widower father, fears the possession of a disabled son will reduce his chances of remarriage into a prosperous family. A transcendent film, deeply committed and brilliantly wrought with a captivating mix of beauty, spare sophistication and profound humanity.
- Wednesday 19 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 23 November 2pm
Aguirre: the wrath of God
Dir Werner Herzog 1972 (Germany)
94 mins 35mm Colour Rated PG
Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra
German with English subtitles
Werner Herzog’s meditative period adventure is about Spanish conquistadors searching for El Dorado in the wilds of 16th century Peru. More a swooning, poetic expression of crazed fanaticism than an accurate historical story, Herzog maroons his characters, most notably Don Lope de Aguirre (played magnificently by Klaus Kinski), in a hostile tributary of the Amazon from which they never return. The film’s power derives from its compositions of mountains and rivers forever threatening to engulf the explorers. It was shot in chronological order with the cast and crew floating on rafts down the Huallaga and Nanay rivers through the Urubamba Valley. Herzog believed this to be an important aspect of the production: the film crew's progress on the river directly mirroring that of the explorers' journey in the story.
- Wednesday 26 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 30 November 2pm
Knife in the water
Dir: Roman Polanski 1962 (Poland)
94 mins 35mm B&W Rated M15+
Zygmunt Malanowicz, Leon Niemczyk
Polish with English subtitles
In Polanski’s intriguing first feature film, a couple – a writer and his bored wife – set off for a sailing holiday and pick up a mysterious young hitchhiker. With three actors, a boat and a huge expanse of water, Polanski exploits the situation for all its worth. Sexual tension develops, allegiances shift and emotional games of cat-and-mouse play out. Devastating and beautiful, cinematographer Jerzy Lipman vividly captures the wonder of weather – gray skies and choppy sea – imbuing it with a foreboding, almost metaphysical presence, so that it functions as a protagonist within the drama.
- Wednesday 3 December 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 7 December 2pm
Badlands
Dir: Terrence Malick 1973 (US)
95 mins 35mm Colour Rated M
Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek
A teenage couple go on a crime spree in Midwest US after shooting the girl’s father when he objects to their relationship. Malick’s hypnotic, low budget, first feature, one of the most impressive directorial debuts ever, places his murderous couple in an American landscape both luxuriant and strangely barren. Beyond the superb performances by Sheen and Spacek is the cinematic lyricism, Malick’s inspired use of music and Tak Fujimoto’s luminous photography.
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