UWM Union Theatre Fall 2009 Calendar All films are free unless otherwise noted |
| Campus Kick-Off FUTURE DAYS |
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Campus Kick-Off Friday and Saturday, August 28 and 29 at 7pm Idiocracy (Mike Judge, USA, 84 min, 35mm on video, 2007) Underachieving army Private Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) is pegged by his superiors to take part in a top secret experiment in suspended animation.When things go awry and Joe wakes up 500 years in the future, he finds a world so backwards and moronic that his average intellect makes him the smartest man on the planet. |
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Campus Kick-Off Friday , August 28 at 9pm
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, UK, 132 min, 35mm, 1985) The director’s version of this mid-80’s classic, “Brazil is the tale of a mild-mannered clerk in a mega-corporation who is unable to escape the straightjacket of his regimented day-to-day existence, except through the occasional extravagant flight of fancy, until he encounters a shadowy underground organization”. - Cinematheque Ontario "Gilliam fuses terror and comedy with real brilliance" -Time Out Film Guide |
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Campus Kick-Off Saturday, August 29 and Monday, August 31 at 9pm Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, USA, 145 min, 35mm, 2002) It’s the year 2054, and Washington D.C. is virtually crime-free thanks to a trio of young psychics able to see future murders. Nobody believes more in these visions than police Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise), a man haunted by his own tragic past.But when the psychics accuse him of “pre-crime” Anderton must race to clear his name of a murder he did not commit, at least not yet. |
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Campus Kick-Off Saturday & Sunday, August 29 & 30 at 5pm Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA, 98 min, 35mm, 2008) In the distant future, mankind has abandoned the Earth, leaving behind a barren and polluted planet.On the surface, a lone robot, Wall-E, dutifully collects and compacts the waste of a once prosperous civilization.The arrival of another robot with a mysterious mission starts Wall-E on a wild adventure and it is up to the scrappy automaton to teach a wayward humanity what life is all about. |
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Campus Kick-Off Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, September 1 - 3 at 7pm Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, UK, 109 min., 35mm, 2006) London, 2027: No human child has been born in 18 years and, faced with no future, society is crumbling. Poverty, terrorism and hopelessness plague an England already in the grip of a nationalist clampdown.Theo (Clive Owen), a drunken, disillusioned activist reluctantly comes to hold humanity’s fate in his hands when he is thrust into the task of shepherding a miraculously pregnant teenager out of the country and the grip of the brutal, totalitarian government. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 4 - 6 at 7pm Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, in Kazakh w/ Eng st., 100 min, 35mm, 2008) Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard - 2008 Cannes Film Festival Acclaimed Kazakh documentarian Sergey Dvortsevoy’s first narrative feature is a gorgeous mélange of tender comedy, ethnographic drama and wildlife extravaganza. Following his Russian naval service, young dreamer Asa returns to his sister’s nomadic brood on the desolate Hunger Steppe to begin a hardscrabble career as a shepherd. But before he can tend a flock of his own, Asa must win the hand of the only eligible bachelorette for miles—his alluringly mysterious neighbor Tulpan.Accompanied by his girlie mag-reading sidekick Boni (and a menagerie of adorable lambs, stampeding camels, mewling kittens and mischievous children), Asa will stop at nothing to prove he is a worthy husband and herder. In the tradition of such crowd-pleasing travelogues as The Story of the Weeping Camel, Tulpan’s gentle humor and stunning photography transport audiences to this singular, harshly beautiful region and its rapidly vanishing way of life. |
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World Cinema Friday, September 4 at 9pm Tony Manero * Milwaukee premiere! (Pablo Larraín, Chile, in Spanish w/ Eng st., 98 min, 35mm, 2008) 2008 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s second feature is a spiky whirling dervish of a movie, filled with deadpan humor and unexpected moves. On one hand, Tony Manero is a rough-hewn verité-style dance-musical about a 50-something psychotic with inextinguishable dreams of disco glory. On the other, it’s a darkly comic allegory about the spell cast by American pop culture during the grimmest days of General Pinochet’s police state. –NYFF “a brusque black comedy—at times shocking and, in some ways, sui generis.”- J. Hoberman, Village Voice |
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Documentary Frontiers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, September 8 - 10 at 7pm The Garden * Milwaukee premiere! (Scott Hamilton Kennedy, USA, 80 min, 35mm, 2008) 2009 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature The Garden is an engaging and powerful look at the famous political and social battle over the largest community garden in the U.S (located in south central Los Angeles). |
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World Cinema Friday September 11 at 7 and 9pm Hunger * Milwaukee premiere! (Steve McQueen, UK/Ireland, 96 min, 35mm, 2008) Winner - Camera d'Or 2008 Cannes Film Festival Hunger follows life in the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland, with an interpretation of the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 IRA Hunger Strike led by Bobby Sands. With an epic eye for detail, the film provides a timely exploration of what happens when body and mind are pushed to the uttermost limit. “Positively riveting. An artistic masterpiece. A harrowing, poetic film.” -Ann Hornaday, Washington Post |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, September 15 at 7pm The Animated Films of Naoyuki Tsuji (Naoyuki Tsuji, Japan, approx 60 min, 16mm, 2003-2008) A program of 16mm films from Japanese animator Naoyuki Tsuji, whose hand-drawn pencil and charcoal rendered works depict an eerie personal and cosmic mythology, like nightmarish fairy-tales, comprised of animistic objects, living clouds, angelic beings, and children escaping from menacing adults. Tsuji’s original approach to animation- drawing, erasing, and re-drawing -reveals an “afterimage”, which lends a ghostly presence to the movements of figures floating through these dream-like worlds. Films include A Feather Stare at the Dark (17 min, 2003), Trilogy About Clouds (13 min, 2005); Children of Shadows (18 min, 2006) and The Place Where We Were (6 min, 2008). |
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Share the Earth Environmental Film Series Wednesday, September 16 at 7pm Blue Gold : World Water Wars (Sam Bozzo, Canada, 90 min, video, 2009) Based on Maude Barlow's and Tony Clarke's Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water, this film tells the story of conflicts over water that are going on daily across the globe. Looking at dominance of water rights by multinational corporations, corruption of public officials, and grassroots fights against privatization, this film lays out the struggle to keep water a basic human right and inspires us all to keep fighting the good fight. |
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Documentary Frontiers Thursday, September 17 at 7pm After History: The Films of Pavel Medvedev (Pavel Medvedev, Russia, in Russian w/ Eng st., approx 100 min, 35mm and video, 2003-2008) For the past decade, acclaimed Russian documentary filmmaker Pavel Medvedev has been depicting facets of post-Soviet life through taut cinematography, incisive observation and deft montage. This program of four films includes On The Third Planet From The Sun (2006, 30 min), a remarkable portrait of life in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia- the site of Hydrogen bomb tests a half century earlier; and The Unseen (2008, 28 min) which “exposes the rituals of the contemporary business of politics” during the 2006 G8 summit in St Petersburg. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 18 - 20 at 7pm Summer Hours (L'heure d'été) * Milwaukee premiere (Olivier Assayas, France, in French w/ English st., 103 min., 35mm, 2008) The divergent paths of three forty-something siblings collide when their mother, heiress to her uncle's exceptional 19th century art collection, dies suddenly. Left to come to terms with themselves and their differences, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), a successful New York designer, Frederic (Charles Berling), an economist and university professor in Paris, and Jeremie (Jeremie Renier), a dynamic businessman in China, confront the end of childhood, their shared memories, background and unique vision of the future. “Extraordinary. Packed nearly to bursting with rich meaning and deep implication. The assurance and aesthetic poise of the film make it quietly ravishing...a masterpiece.”- A.O. Scott, The New York Times |
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World Cinema Friday, September 18 at 9pm 24 City (Er shi si cheng ji) * Milwaukee premiere! (Jia Zhang Ke, China, in Mandarin w/ Eng st., 112 min., 35mm, 2009) Nominated for Palme d'Or 2008 Cannes Film Festival The masterful new film from Jia Zhang-ke, director of Still Life, The World and Unknown Pleasures, chronicles the dramatic and thunderous fall of a Chinese State-owned munitions factory and its conversion into a luxury high-rise apartment complex. Artfully composed, rich in offbeat details, and punctuated with pop songs, 24 City weaves together the stories of three generations of factory workers (some real, some played by actors) into a fascinating oral history of post-revolutionary China and a bracing meditation on the massive physical and psychological changes transforming the country. “One of the most original filmmakers working today.” - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times |
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Monday, September 21 at 7pm Good Copy Bad Copy (Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, Henrik Moltke, Denmark, 60 min , video, 2007) The Center for Information Policy Research and the UWM School of Information Studies presents an evening of Copyright and Culture as a part of the nation-wide OneWebDay Celebration (Sept 22). Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary (featuring appearances by Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, and Lawrence Lessig) examining the state of copyright in today’s tech-savvy and dynamic remix culture. The film features additional music by RJD2, Santogold, Gnarls Barkley, De La Soul, and more. There will be a panel discussion and commentary immediately following the screening with: |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, September 22 at 7pm Among the Paving Stones (various directors, various countries, approx 80 min, 16mm, 35mm and video, 2007-2009) A program of very recent contemporary international artist’s films and videos; nine visionary works including films from Pat O’ Neill, Nathaniel Dorsky, Jim Jennings, Julie Murray, Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin, Ben Rivers, Scott Stark, Bart Vegter and Robert Todd. Program curated by David Dinnell "Je jouis dans les paves.” -graffiti on the streets of Paris, May 1968 |
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Dig |
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Speechless http://www.hi-beam.net/speechless |
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Lossless #2 |
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De Tijd |
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Horizontal Boundaries |
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Public Domain |
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ELEMENTs In the expectation of not being trees, |
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Origin of the Species |
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Sarabande |
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Documentary Frontiers Wednesday and Thursday, Sept 23 and 24 at 7pm Pripyat (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria/Russia, in Russian w/ Eng st., 100 min, 35mm, 1999) An astonishing and haunting documentary by Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Our Daily Bread and 7915 KM). which looks at life in the town of Pripyat 12 years after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, referred to by its residents simply as “the accident”. Geyrhalter creates a moving portrait of the everyday life of people who still live and work in “the zone”, the 30 km area around the Chernobyl plant where 116,000 residents were evacuated. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 25 - 27 at 7pm Treeless Mountain * Milwaukee premiere! (So Yong Kim, South Korea/USA, in Korean w/ Eng st., 89 min, 35mm, 2008) When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, seven year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother's promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother's homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken to live on their grandparents' farm, it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds in this beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking second feature from So Yong Kim, the acclaimed director of In Between Days. “Simply one of he best films about childhood ever made! Remarkable performances.”– Melissa Anderson, Village Voice |
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World Cinema Friday, September 25 at 9pm Lion’s Den (Leonera) * Milwaukee premiere! (Pablo Trapero, Argentina, in Spanish w/ Eng st., 113 min., 35mm, 2008) Nominated for Palme d'Or 2008 Cannes Film Festival Martina Guzman, in an outstanding performance, stars as Julia, a young pregnant woman sent to the penitentiary for the murder of her lover. In prison, she gives birth to a son and comes to accept that there is no life for her beyond that of her child. She finds an ally in her fellow inmate Marta and an opponent in her mother Sofía. Marta attempts to teach her how to be a mother to her child; while Sofia wishes to take over rearing the child, so that he should grow up outside prison, in freedom. The duel between Julia and her mother expresses the dilemma of what is better for the child- to be brought up next to his mother in prison, or without her, but in freedom. |
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Midnight Movie Friday and Saturday September 25 and 26 at 11pm Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, USA, 136 mins, 35mm, 1968) Roman Polanksi revitalized and legitimized a once-B-grade genre with this stylish occult thriller, his first American feature, paving the way for blockbusters like The Exorcist, Jaws and Alien. Based on the novel by Ira Levin, newlyweds Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) land a spacious Upper West Side apartment in the venerable Dakota, complete with eerily avuncular neighbors, the Castavets (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon in an Oscar-winning performance). Career-obsessed actor Guy is still looking for that big break, then a Broadway lead looms when the star mysteriously goes blind, and Farrow becomes pregnantafter an evening of wild love-making — but wait...was that hubby, or some sort of horned beast? –RN |
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Documentary Frontiers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Sept 29 – Oct 1 at 7pm 7915 KM * Milwaukee premiere! (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, in various languages w/ Eng st., 106 min, 35mm, 2008) 7915 KM documents life in the wake of the 2007 Dakar Rally, the famous two-week,off-road race spanning the 7,915 kilometers between France and Senegal. For four months, Geyrhalter followed the route of the race, photographing stunning landscapes scarred by the high-speed vehicles and encountering the people of the African communities who remain nearly invisible to the rally participants. With patient interviews that match Geyrhalter’s considered formalist approach, 7915 KM reveals the race’s impact on various ways of life of the African people.It depicts a poignant contrast between wealthy Europeans driving south at great speeds and Africans on the margins of society traveling north by foot and rowboats searching for a better life. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, October 2 - 4 at 7pm Yella * Milwaukee premiere! (Christian Petzold, Germany, in German w/ Eng st., 89 min., 35mm, 2007) Narrowly escaping her volatile ex-husband, Yella flees her small hometown in former East Germany for a new life in the West. She finds a promising job with Philipp, a handsome business executive with whom an unlikely romance soon blossoms. But just as Yella seems poised to realize her dreams, she finds herself haunted by buried truths that threaten to destroy her newfound happiness. |
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World Cinema Friday, October 2 at 9pm Jerichow * Milwaukee premiere! (Christian Petzold, Germany, in German and Turkish w/ Eng st., 93 min., 35mm, 2009) In a small desolate town in northeastern Germany, a handsome ex-soldier, a Turkish businessman, and his beautiful, restless wife find themselves in a desperate love triangle in this suspenseful reworking of James M. Cain’s classic Depression-era novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, October 6 at 7pm Luminous Being: The Films of Joost Rekveld Joost Rekveld in person A rare North American appearance by Dutch artist Joost Rekveld, whose work plays out at the intersections of technology and the history of science, and of cognition and natural phenomenon. Since 1991, Rekveld has been making abstract films and light installations and more recently, works in robotics and algorithmic art. The program will include two films created with Rekveld’s self-designed mechanical and optical machines- #11, Marey <-> Moiré (35mm Cinemascope, 21 min, 1999) a film in which all images were generated by intermittently recording the movement of a line, and #23.2, Book of Mirrors (35mm, 12 min, 2002) a film that deals with the multiplication of light beams through kaleidoscopes and mirrors. This program will also include the Midwest premiere of Rekveld’s latest film, #37 (35mm Cinemascope, 31 min, 2009), part of an ongoing exploration of the propagation and diffraction of light through holes and grids, the inspiration for which came from the way crystallographers use X-rays to investigate the internal structure of crystals. |
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Documentary Frontiers Wednesday and Thursday, October 7 and 8 at 7pm Oblivion (El olvido) * Milwaukee premiere! (Heddy Honigmann, Netherlands/Peru, in Spanish w/ Eng st., 93 min, 35mm, 2008) With her latest documentary, Heddy Honigmann focuses on Lima, the capital city of her native country of Peru, revealing its startling contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how many of its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis, terrorism and government violence, denial of workers' rights, and political corruption. Demonstrating anew Honigmann's extraordinary talent as one of the most empathetic documentary filmmakers at work today, Oblivion provides intimate and moving portraits of street musicians, singers, vendors, shoeshine boys, and the gymnasts (some mere children) and jugglers who perform at traffic stops. The film also visits with small business owners, from a leather-goods repairman and a presidential sash manufacturer to a frog-juice vendor, and contrasts the work and home environments of bartenders, waiters and waitresses employed at Lima's finest restaurants and hotels but who live in slums in the city's surrounding hillsides. “Suffused with feeling for its human subjects... Lucid, quietly moving and quietly angry… Honigmann infuses her scenes with an intimacy that brings you close to her subjects without making you feel as if you’d crossed some line.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times |
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Family Weekend Friday, October 9 at 9:30 pm Goodbye Solo * Milwaukee premiere! (Ramin Bahrani, USA, 91 min, 35mm, 2009) Winner of the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize- 2008 Venice Film Festival On the lonely roads of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, two men forge an improbable friendship that will change both of their lives forever. Solo is a Senegalese cab driver working to provide a better life for his young family. William is a tough Southern good ol‘ boy with a lifetime of regrets. One man‘s American dream is just beginning, while the other‘s is quickly winding down. But despite their differences, both men soon realize they need each other more than either is willing to admit. Through this unlikely but unforgettable friendship, Goodbye Solo deftly explores the passing of a generation as well as the rapidly changing face of America. "Original, profound and stirring. This is a great American film."- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times |
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Family Weekend Friday, October 9 at 7 pm The Namesake (Mira Nair, India/USA, 122 min, 35mm, 2007) Based on the popular novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake maps the lives of the Ganguli family - Ashoke, Ashima, Gogol and Sonia. Originally from India, now living in America, Ashoke and Ashima haven't transformed into Americans. Their son, Gogol, on the other hand, is growing up in America, stumbling along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. The Namesake is a family portrait that reveals individual lives, which separate and then merge as they are carried towards their destinies. |
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Family Weekend Saturday, October 10 at 5pm The Straight Story (David Lynch, USA, 112 min, 35mm, 1999) Richard Farnsworth stars as Alvin Straight -- a no-nonsense man who has never been one to lean on others, but is now at an age when his eyesight denies him the ability to drive and walking is accomplished only with the help of two canes. Alvin lives a quiet life with his daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), but when the call comes that his estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a debilitating stroke, he embarks on a dangerous and emotional journey to make amends. With little money, but plenty of patience and tenacity, he climbs aboard his 1966 John Deere lawnmower and plots the 260-mile course from his small Iowa town to Lyle's home in Wisconsin. Filmed along the actual route that the real Alvin Straight traveled in 1994, The Straight Story is a heartwarming and poignant drama chronicling Alvin's six-week odyssey and the many lives he touches along the way. |
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Monday, October 12 at 5 and 9:30 pm Dead Snow * Milwaukee premiere! (Tommy Wirkola, Norway, in Norweigian w/ Eng st., 91 mins., 35mm, 2008) A group of teenagers had all they needed for a successful ski vacation: cabin, skis, snowmobile, toboggan, copious amounts of beer and a fertile mix of the sexes. Certainly, none of them anticipated not returning home alive! However, the Nazi-zombie battalion haunting the mountains had other plans. Wirkola pulls no punches in the carnage department—heads roll, blood flows, and entrails ooze as the young vacationers attempt to make it through the night, and he adeptly utilizes the snow’s eerie and ominous backdrop to its fullest extent while orchestrating this wickedly gory, yet somehow delightful, tale of Nazi-zombie terror. Dead Snow is screened in conjunction with visiting author Max Brooks’ presentation at 7pm in the Union’s Wisconsin Room. |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, October 13 at 7pm Mark (Mike Hoolboom, Canada, 70 min, video, 2009) Mike Hoolboom in person Considered one of the finest independent filmmakers of his generation, Mike Hoolboom has created dozens of films and videos over the past three decades which have been shown worldwide and have garnered numerous awards and critical acclaim. Hoolboom’s most recent film, Mark, is a feature-length portrait of his recently deceased friend. With appropriated images from a wide range of sources as well as original footage and home movies, Hoolboom creates, through spacious and energetic montage, a moving and intimate view. “A sidelong biography of my friend and long time editor Mark Karbusicky. Animal rights activist, political vegan, punk maestro, the life-partner of Mirha-Soleil Ross, a transsexual force of nature.” –Mike Hoolboom |
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Share the Earth Environmental Film Series Wednesday, October 14 at 7pm End of the Line (Rupert Murray, UK, 90 min., video, 2008) The first major feature documentary film to look at the impact of overfishing on our oceans. It examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, brought on by increasing western demand for sushi; the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish; and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation. Filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market – featuring top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world. |
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Documentary Frontiers Thursday, October 15 at 7pm Nollywood Babylon * Milwaukee premiere! (Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, Canada/Nigeria, 74 min., video, 2009) Nollywood Babylon, exploring the explosive popularity of Nigeria's movie industry, drops viewers into the chaos of Lagos' Idumota market where, among the bustling stalls, Nigerian films are sold and unlikely stars are born.Unfazed by low budgets, enterprising filmmakers create a brash, inventive and wildly popular form of B-Movie where voodoo and magic infuse urban stories, reflecting the collision of traditional mysticism and modern culture that Nigerians experience every day. |
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Friday, October 16 through Sunday, October 25 Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival The 22nd edition of one of the community's longest running film festivals, sharing once again 11 nights of an international array of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental media. Highlights of this year's festival include John G. Young's "Rivers Wash Over Me," John Greyson’s “Fig Trees,” Wendy Jo Carlton’s “Hannah Free,” E.E. Cassidy's "We are the Mods," a performance by "manual animator" Daniel Barrow, Andy Warhol's Factory video diaries and much, much more. Opening Night (October 15) at the Oriental Theatre; special program at the Milwaukee Art Museum (October 22).For full schedule, ticket information, location visit: http://arts.uwm.edu/lgbtfilm |
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Documentary Frontiers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, October 27, 28 and 29 at 7pm Examined Life * Milwaukee premiere! (Astra Taylor, Canada, 88 min, 35mm, 2008) In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it. Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwarne Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor. |  |
World Cinema Friday, Saturday, Sunday October 30 – November 1 at 7pm Liverpool * Milwaukee premiere! (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina, in Spanish w/ Eng st., 84 min., 35mm, 2008) The most recent feature from one of the key directors of the New Argentine Cinema, Liverpool follows Farrel (Juan Fernandez), a middle-aged sailor who, having been drifting from one end of the world to another, asks the captain of the freighter he works on for permission to go ashore once they reach the port of Ushuaia, the southernmost town of Argentina. Farrel wants to return to his birthplace and see if his mother is still alive. For the past twenty years he has worked as a seaman. He drinks to oblivion, pays the women he sleeps with and has no friends. Having reached the cluster of snow-covered houses where he grew up, Farrel discovers his mother is indeed still living but someone else has become part of the family. “One of the few living directors whose filmography represents a kind of subgenre, Alonso takes the techniques of observational cinema and invests them with insight and surprisingly wrenching emotion.”- AFI Film Festival Special thanks to Adam Sekuler (Northwest Film Forum) and Anne Götze & Thania Dimitrakopoulou (The Match Factory). |
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World Cinema Friday, October 30 at 9pm Revanche (Götz Spielmann, Austria, in German w/ Eng st., 121 min., 35mm, 2008) Nominee for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 2009 At once a gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, Revanche is the stunning, Oscar–nominated, international breakthrough film from Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works as an assistant in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop (Andreas Lust) and his seemingly content wife (Ursula Strauss). With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, existential, and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side-by-side. |  |
Midnight Movie Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31 at 11pm Black Sunday (La Maschera del Demonio) (Mario Bava, Italy, 87 mins., 35mm, 1960) *Uncut European Version! Mario Bava’s directorial debut still stands as one of the most celebrated Italian horror films ever made. Princess Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) and her brother Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrani), are found guilty of conspiring with Satan, and they are punished by having a mask of steel spikes hammered into their faces. Centuries later the Princess’ body is disturbed and resurrected to reap revenge on a distant relative (also played by Barbara Steele) and her family. In a mixture of folklore, traditional superstition, and genre convention, Bava creates a poetic world and injects it with a streak of sadistic violence and cinematic style that would come to signify Italian horror cinema for the next thirty years. -RN |
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Documentary Frontiers Tuesday and Wednesday, November 3 and 4 at 7pm Life After the Fall * Milwaukee premiere! (Kasim Abid, Iraq, in Arabic w/ Eng st., 155 min., video, 2008) The Iraq War is here shown exclusively through the daily life of an extended Baghdad family over four years. Beginning with joyful home video celebrating family reunion and political change, this intimate and affectionate portrait of Abid’s siblings, nephews and nieces avoids the sensationalism that characterizes Western images of Iraq. Over the course of the film, children become teenagers and teenagers adults, while parents are faced with life-altering decisions in order to try to assure their families’ futures. Abid’s depiction of life-in-the-moment, full of uncertainties, hopes, excitement, disappointment and despair, does what only a film that makes a long term commitment to its subjects can. It allows us to experience events alongside those who are in the process of being deeply transformed by them. – Irina Leimbacher, 2009 Flaherty Film Seminar Co-sponsored by the Center for International Education |  |
Documentary Frontiers Thursday, November 5 at 7pm Afflicted States: Films by Stephen Connolly (Stephen Connolly, England, approx 70 min, 16mm, 2003-2008) Stephen Connolly in person London-based filmmaker Stephen Connolly will present a program of his 16mm documentary and non-fiction essay films, including The Afflicted States series, a trilogy of films begun in late 2001, “a historical moment when exploring the relationship between the individual and state seemed to take on a new urgency. These short films see the present through the past, seeking to locate significant but overlooked precursors to the contemporary”. The Whale (9 min, 2003) is “a deliberation on the state of nature and the nature of the State…. combining several disparate components to consider the need for a renewed communal sensibility in contemporary society” (Jeremy Rigsby); The Great American Desert (16 min, 2007) examines ‘social liberty’ in the West in relation to war, spectacle, the environment and consumerism; and Más Se Perdió (14 min, 2008) draws connections between particular locations in Havana, Cuba, each of which have a relationship to notions of utopia. |
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Friday, November 6 through Sunday, November 8 Turkish Film Series The 3rd annual three day film series will present the best of recent Turkish cinema. All screenings are FREE and open to the public. Sponsored by the Turkish American Association of Milwaukee |
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Friday, November 6 – 7pm After his critically acclaimed mood pieces Distant and Climates, Turkey’s leading filmmaker moves in a more narrative direction while retaining his mastery of ambiance and nuance. Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Three Monkeys tells a twisty, noirish tale that opens with an ambitious politician fleeing a hit-and-run accident. Afraid of hurting his election chances, he pays off his chauffeur, Eyüp, to take the rap. This devil’s bargain takes it’s toll on Eyüp’s shiftless son Ismail (who sees an expensive new car as his ticket to salvation), and on his restless wife, Hacer (who develops an ill-deserved passion for the oily politico). Ismail’s discovery of his mother's infidelity and Eyüp's suspicions after he gets out of jail crank up the simmering tensions in a household already haunted by hidden ghosts.
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Friday, November 6 - 9PM Autumn (Sonbahar) (Ozcan Alper, Turkey, 2008, 100 minutes, 35mm) Winner of 9 awards at various international film festivals, Autumn, with the 1990s as a backdrop, at once documents and criticises a slice of recent history, exposing the irony and ruthlessness of the period. Sentenced to jail in 1997 as a 22 year old university student, Yusuf is released on health grounds 10 years later. He returns to his village in the eastern Black Sea region, where he's welcomed only by his sick and elderly mother, who informs him of his father’s death and that his sister has gotten married and moved to the city. Economic factors have created an almost exclusively eldery population in the mountain village, and the only person Yusuf connects with is his childhood friend Mikail. As autumn slowly gives way to winter, Yusuf goes with Mikail to a tavern where he meets Eka, a beautiful young Georgian hooker. Neither the timing nor circumstances are right for these two people from different worlds to come together. Love becomes a final desperate attempt to grasp life and elude loneliness - for Yusuf at least. For Eka, Yusuf is something like a character from the pages of a Russian novel: inhabiting a faraway world and a faraway time.
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Saturday, November 7 – 5pm Atalay Ta?diken's feature-length writing and directing debut, Mommo debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in February. Inspired by real-life events, the film tells the story of nine-year-old Ali and his younger sister Ay?e, both staying at their grandfather's because their father's new wife does not want them. Can a boy of nine be a big brother, a father, a mother and a luminary all at once? For young Ay?e, the answer is yes. In fact, as far as she’s concerned, her big brother Ahmet is afraid of nothing at all. But the truth is, Ahmet is a child too: he has his fears and it’s impossible for him to know everything. This simple, poignant tale of a village, and the relationship between a brother and sister in that village, portrays one of the grittier realities of Anatolia.
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Saturday, November 7 – 7pm Nominated for the Best Film at the Istanbul International Film Festival, and winner of many awards from other International Film festivals, Bliss is adapted from Zülfü Livaneli's international best-selling novel. Director Abdullah Oguz fills this drama with intensity, vivid cultural clash, fine music and some absolutely stunning scenery (the film was shot on the Sea of Marmara). But ultimately it is the figure of young Meryem (Özgü Namal) that gives the film its heart. Meryem's decision to live, and ultimately, to enjoy her life is the quiet revolution that ignites the entire story. When Meryem is raped, her village custom requires that she be killed in order for the dishonour to be expunged from her family. A young man named Cemal (Murat Han), the son of the village leader, is given the task but at the last moment he has doubts. The pair go on the run, followed close behind by local thugs intent on killing the girl. By sheer luck, Cemal and Meryem meet up with the charismatic Irfan, an ex-university professor embarking on a sailing trip, who needs a crew. Together this unlikely trio set forth on a voyage that will change all of their lives.
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Saturday, November 7 – 9pm When three forty-something siblings in Istanbul receive a call one night that their aging mother has disappeared from her home at the Western Black Sea Coast of Turkey, the three set out to find her, momentarily setting aside their problems. As the siblings come together, the tensions between them quickly become apparent, like Pandora’s box spilling open. They come to realize that they really don’t know much about each other, and are forced to reflect on their own shortcomings. Pandora’s Box won two awards at San Sebastian International Film Festival.
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Sunday, November 8 – 5pm The debut feature from directors Maryna Gorbach and Mehmet Bahad?r Er, Black Dogs Barking had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January 2009. With an uneasy, dynamic and realistic style, Mehmet Bahad?r Er examines the neighbourhood he has lived in for fifteen years, as well as the concepts of urban nomadism, security, unearned income, life’s struggles via the story of two restless, unemployed young best buddies, Selim and Çaça, their class hopping hopes, and slipping by and breaking through the veteran wolves of the city.
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, November 10 at 7pm The Three-Cornered World: (Hannes Schüpbach, Switzerland, approx one hour, 16mm, silent, 2001-2008) The Swiss artist Hannes Schüpbach, an accomplished painter and expert in textile arts, has been making films since 2000. Beautifully photographed and precisely assembled, Schüpbach’s images have a presence that is simultaneously solid and fleeting. While his films originate within a fundamentally diaristic form in his observation of figures, gestures, textures, and the natural world; a deeply personal cosmology develops through a rhythmic, meditative and accumulative montage. This program will present his film portraits, of his mother- Spin (12 min, 2001) and his father -Verso (15 min, 2008) along with his 2005 film Falten (28 min). |
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Share the Earth Environmental Film Series Wednesday, November 11 at 7pm Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner, US, 93 min., 35 mm, 2008) How much do we know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? In Food, Inc., producer-director Robert Kenner and investigative authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) lift the veil on the U.S. food industry – an industry that has often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihoods of American farmers, the safety of workers and our own environment. “Food, Inc. does for the supermarket what ‘Jaws’ did for the beach.”- Variety |
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Documentary Frontiers Thursday, November 12 at 7pm The Ukrainian Time Machine: (Naomi Uman, USA/Ukraine, 65 min, 16mm, 2008) Two films from Naomi Uman’s recent series The Ukrainian Time Machine. Residing in a tiny village for a year in the Ukraine (near her ancestral hometown of Uman), Naomi Uman documents the textures and rhythms of rural Ukrainian life, where its many facets have remained intact since her ancestors left over one hundred years ago. Without the burden of undue sentimentality, Unnamed Film (55 min, 16mm, sound) is marked by a warm and reciprocal curiosity between filmmaker and subjects. With non-synchronous sound, inter-titles, and spare yet intimate cinematography, Uman depicts both the hardships and joy the villagers experience in their daily lives.Kalendar (10 min, 16mm, silent), comprised of twelve chronological shots, is a beautiful observation of seasonal details and events in the village. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, November 13 - 15 at 7pm Silent Light (Stellet Licht) * Milwaukee premiere! (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, in Plautdietsch and Spanish w/ Eng st., 127 min., 35mm, 2007) Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Silent Light tells the story of Johan, a married man who against the laws of his faith and traditional beliefs, falls in love with another woman, thus facing an internal dilemma, whether to betray his wife, the woman he once loved and disrupt the apparent stability of the community or sacrifice his true love and future happiness. |
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World Cinema Friday, November 13 at 9:30 pm Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad) (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, in Thai w/ Eng st., 118 min, 35mm, 2004) Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival One of the greatest films of this decade (and absolutely essential to see on 35mm) Tropical Malady chronicles the mystical love affair between a young soldier and the country boy he seduces, soon to be disrupted by the boy’s sudden disappearance. Local legends claim the boy was transformed into a mythic wild beast, and the soldier journeys alone into the heart of the Thai jungle in search of him. Preceding Tropical Malady will be the Milwaukee premiere of Weerasethakul’s most recent video, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (17 min, 2009). |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, November 17 at 7pm Bruce McClure : Timekiller To His Spacemaker A live projector performance by Bruce McClure Over the past decade, New York- based architect Bruce McClure has created an extensive body of work – dozens of pieces for multiple modified film projectors, film loops, and guitar effects pedals. Exploring sensory and perceptual phenomena by playing the projectors as instruments of light and sound, McClure creates an immersive and enveloping aural and visual environment of considerable intensity. Each single performance is unique, shaped by precise and certain parameters McClure intuitively works within. McClure will be performing two new works for this evening’s program. |
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Locally Grown Wednesday, November 18 at 7pm The Nohl Fellows : program one The first of three programs featuring current recipients of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund for Individual Artists Fellowship and offered in conjunction with their exhibition at Inova/Kenilworth. Tonight's program will feature an excerpt from Special Entertainment’s Hamlet A.D.D. (Bobby Ciraldo and Andrew Swant), and Frankie Latina’s Modus Operandi. The second Nohl program will be presented on December 2nd and the third on December 9th. These programs are co-presented by Inova. |
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Hamlet A.D.D. Directed by Bobby Ciraldo & Andrew Swant (excerpt from a work-in-progress) Hamlet A.D.D. is an independent feature film which re-imagines Shakespeare’s timeless play as a bizarre and comical tour through the ages. This version of Hamlet is a comedy shot entirely in front of a green screen and features live-action characters in an animated world. The story begins in 1602 and leaps chronologically through time to the present, then into the distant future. Guest stars include Dustin Diamond (Saved By The Bell), Majel Barrett Roddenberry (Star Trek), Trace Beaulieu & Kevin Murphy (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Mark Borchardt & Mike Schank (American Movie), Leslie Hall (Yo Gabba Gabba), Samwell (What What In the Butt), and legendary comedian Neil Hamburger (Tim & Eric Awesome Show). |
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Modus Operandi Directed by Frankie Latina 77 min., Super 8 on video, color and b/w, English and Japanese, 2009 Two briefcases with mysterious contents are stolen from top Presidential candidate Squire Parks, setting off a deadly series of double-crosses and betrayals. Desperate warring factions of subterranean organizations will stop at nothing to gain possession of the sensitive material. A covert branch of the CIA calls on notorious Black Ops agent Stanley Cashay, barely existing in a semi-comatose twilight since the murder of his wife. Cashay is offered the identity of his wife's killer in exchange for locating and returning the cases. Agent Cashay uses the most dangerous weapons at his command, the telephone and his reputation, to unleash a bizarre assortment of operatives, including the deliciously sleazy Casey Thunderbird and exotic Tokyo-based special agent Black Licorice. Along with scores of other beguiling rogues, they initiate a horrifying chain of events, including ruthless torture and brutal killings. When Cashay is finally in possession of the stolen materials, the contents of the briefcases shock even him, and he makes a decision that will change the course of history. Cashay then sets the wheels in motion for bitter revenge and harsh justice, but not before the entire operation is nearly derailed as merciless underworld forces fight back. (Mature audiences only). |
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Documentary Frontiers Thursday, November 19at 7pm The Roof (Al-sateh) (Kamal Aljafari, in Arabic and Hebrew with English st., Palestine/Germany, 61 min, video, 2006) The Roof is an eloquent and understated exploration of physical and psychic place in the context of Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari’s family history. Returning to his parents’ and grandmothers’ homes in Ramleh and Jaffa, now part of Israel, Aljafari uses elegant cinematography, unhurried rhythms, and fragmented narrative to convey how space, time, and history have been molded by politics and Israeli institutionalized neglect. The roof of the title is an absent one, on the unfinished house where his family has lived since their resettlement in 1948, and it functions as a place of waiting marked by constant deferral. – Irina Leimbacher, 2009 Flaherty Film Seminar |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, November 20 - 22 at 7pm The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza) * Milwaukee premiere! (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, in Spanish w/ Eng st., 87 min., 35mm, 2008) The Headless Woman is an elliptical, subtle and unnerving third feature film from Lucrecia Martel (director of La ciénaga and The Holy Girl). Vero (Maria Onetto), an affluent dentist, is driving alone on a dirt road, becomes distracted and runs over something. In the days following this jarring incident, she is dazed and emotionally disconnected from the people and events in her life. She becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone. The police confirm that there were no accidents reported in the area and everything returns to normal until a gruesome discovery is made. “The exacting formalism and beauty is undeniable…a tour de force of economical storytelling” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times |
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World Cinema Friday, November 20 at 9pm Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo) * Milwaukee premiere! (Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Japan, in Japanese w/ Eng st., 114 min, 35mm, 2008) Fifteen years ago, Junpei, the youngest son of the Yokoyama family died while rescuing a boy from drowning. On the anniversary of his death, the remaining siblings visit the quaint home of their parents with their families in tow. Over the course of a beautiful day, new relatives become acquainted telling stories and squabbling over sizzling tempura and an elegant graveside ritual is performed for Junpei. Recalling the delicate splendor of Ozu's Tokyo Story, Kore-Eda shows complete mastery of his characters while revealing the complex dynamics of an ultimately loving family with humor and warmth. "Deeply, deeply moving...A universal, deeply felt portrait of family life."-Stephen Holden, New York Times |
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Experimental Tuesdays Tuesday, December 1 at 7pm Action at a Distance: The Union Theatre presents a live program of three performances, all works that uniquely explore the relationships between sound and image. Joe Grimm of Chicago will present Dirty Goggles of Perception (25 min, 2009), a work for two 16mm film projectors and analog electronics. UWM Professor and Milwaukee-based composer Christopher Burns will perform Sawtooth (10 min, 2009), a piece for computer-generated music and image. Haptic, a Chicago-based electro-acoustic trio (Adam Sonderberg, Steven Hess and Joseph Clayton Mills), will perform with video-artist Lisa Slodki as she presents a live mix of beautiful and haunting lo-fi analog video loops (approx 45 min, 2008). |
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Locally Grown Wednesday, December 2 at 7pm The Nohl Fellows : program two - The second of three programs of film and video from the current Nohl Fellows featuring a programs of films from Iverson White including Self-Determination (11 min, 2008), The Johnson Girls (29 min, 1995) and his most recent film- The Funeral (11 min, 2009). Co-presented by Inova.
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World Cinema Thursday, December 3 at 7pm Sita Sings the Blues * Milwaukee premiere! (Nina Paley, USA, 82 min., 35mm, 2008) Tragedy, comedy and musical collide in this gloriously animated film from cartoonist Nina Paley. Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moved to India, then dumped her by email. Three bickering shadow puppets act as comic narrators as these old and new stories are interwoven in a post-modern retelling of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana. Animated in a dazzling mix of traditional and collage animation styles and backed by a soundtrack from legendary 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, Sita is a subtly subversive and visually stunning, highly original work. |
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World Cinema Friday, Saturday and Sunday, December 4 - 6 at 7pm 35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums) * Milwaukee premiere! (Claire Denis, France, in French w/ Eng st., 100 min, 35mm, 2008) Claire Denis has created a sensual and contemplative body of films over the years, but nothing in her work prepares us for this deeply emotional yet light-of-touch story set among a small circle of Parisians and their friends. Lionel, a train engineer, shares an apartment with his daughter Jo, a university student. In the same building live Lionel’s ex, taxi driver Gabrielle, and Noe, a young man who comes and goes. Together, they are a kind of family. Their roles and relationships are revealed only gradually and one of the great pleasures of this extraordinarily pleasurable film is made up of small moments, of looks and silences, and magical touches of physicality and pensiveness. Agnés Godard’s cinematography richly limns an interior architecture in which objects take on an Ozu-like delicacy and immediacy, and uses train tracks (and cars and motorbikes and vans) to propel the story into the out of doors and eventually, the future, as father and daughter face the inevitable: her independence. —Judy Bloch |
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Cinema Classics Saturday, December 5 at 5 and 9pm Rashômon *newly restored 35mm print! (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, in Japanese w/ Eng st., 88 min., 35mm, 1950) Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, Rashomon is perhaps the finest film ever made about the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the same story: the murder of a man and the rape of his wife. Starring Toshiro Mifune in another commanding performance, Rashomon revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema to the world. –Janus Films |
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Locally Grown Wednesday, December 9 at 7pm The Nohl Fellows : program three The third of three programs of film and video from the Nohl Fellows. Tonight's program will feature Ras Malai Dreams (55 min, 2009) by Xav Leplae and two short films by Tate Bunker. Co-presented by Inova |
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Starlight Directed by Tate Bunker, 17 min, video, 2006 A scientist, with the insurmountable desire and a singular quest of reaching the stars is making a rocket to send him into his lover’s arms high in the heavens above. Inventing a new type engine that runs on music, he powers his rocket into orbit. Blast! Atomic! An illuminating flash of light more powerful than the sun, a moment of brilliant blinding light awakens the citizens with surprise and fear. The ground trembles with the echo of a bold roar and the world is rocked by the power of a single man's dream. Moons, planets, and galaxies drift by his window, and he sees his lover’s fabric that is the universe. She simply spins by, beautifully unveiling and exposing herself in her most simplistic form wrapped tightly around his ship, and is the sweetest of all poisons. Starring Steven Hawley, Jim Peck, Tina Poppy, Lilly Czarnecki, Connie Lauersdorf w/ music by Frank Pahl |
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The Albatross Directed by Tate Bunker, 13 min, video, 2008 In lore, seafaring men catch albatross for sport—and the albatross let them. Writhing on these ships and shores, these prisons and deathbeds, diminishes the birds to common creatures. The albatross lives in you and me; we feel the besieged bird in the balance sought in daily life. “Soar! Soar!” the Master commands, yet in soaring, the artist relinquishes rationality and reason for fairy tales, strife, and inexplicable genius unfettered by the domesticating reins of society. The ticking clock is reset, and we wonder: is it the weight of the past that pulls us, or the weight of our future? Starring Bill Baldus, Daniel Mooney, Ted Dulany, Wilamina Sentakina, Jessica Kaminski w/ music by Peter Batchelder |  |
Friday, December 11 at 7pm Student Film Festival A juried showcase of the best short films and videos from the students of the pioneering UWM Department of Film. | |
Saturday, December 12 at 7pm Senior Screening A special evening showcasing the films and videos completed by the UWM Department of Film’s graduating seniors. | |
