BFS - PROGRAM - 2003

FEBRUARY                                                        

Thursday 27 February - University O Week Screening

Lantana(M), Ray Lawrence, Australia 2001 vhs

MARCH                                                        
Saturday 1 March - Telsa Country Wide Mini Film Festival
Earth(MA), Deepa Mehta, India 1998 16 clr

Satin Rouge
(M) (Red Satin), Raja Amari, Tunisia 2001 vhs

Lantana
(M), Ray Lawrence, Australia, 2001 vhs

Sunday 2 March - Telsa Country Wide Mini Film Festival
Death in Brunswick(M), John Ruane, Australia, 1990 16 clr

Klute
(MA), Alan Pakula, USA 1971 (Jane Fonda) 16 clr
Thriller or Diva classification? Don't miss the opening scene - a finely portrayed piece of cynicism.

6 March
King Kut Comedy, Australia 1930 16 b&w
One of the last silent features made in Australia, a ludicrous plot in which the King of Port Melbourne, from his palace in the Melbourne Alps, wages war with the Tsar of Carlton

Don's Party
, Bruce Beresford, Australia 1976 16 clr
This satire of university educated upwardly mobile ALP supporters is set in a suburb on Sydney’s North Shore on the night of the 1969 Federal Election. The satire achieves its bite through a sense of what passes for naturalism. The essential ockerism of the males becomes more apparent as the party degenerates and the alcohol takes over. The critical focus sharpens and the humour becomes more cynical.
The film of a play by a real playwright. I know a bloke who claims to know a bloke who went to the original real actual Don's party that David Williamson used for a prototype.

20 March
Camp De Thiaroye (Camp Thiaroye), Ousmane Sembene, Africa 1988 16 clr
A critique of the colonial mentality and a stinging indictment of military injustice and racism based on an actual historical incident that took place at the end of World War II (a turning point in African history when the colonial myth of white superiority began to collapse and an African consciousness emerged). In 1944, African infantrymen, back from fighting the Nazis and liberating Paris, relax in a transit camp in Senegal ostensibly for temporary internment before discharge. The real purpose, however, is to reestablish the structures of white oppression disrupted by the war. A dispute over petty regulations soon escalates into fullscale rebellion.

APRIL                                                        

3 April
Mechanized Death, USA 1961 16 clr 27 minutes
This "safety" film was a consequence of a dramatic increase in road fatalities during the late 50's and early 60's, when muscle cars were popular, nobody wore seat-belts and steering wheels were made of rigid steel. These films were designed only to shock with back-to-back real-life footage of roadside carnage.

The Cars That Ate Paris
, Peter Weir, 1974 vhs 84 minutes
A fantasy film about the people of Paris who live off cars. Paris, a little country town, has prospered from the hunting and destruction of cars, but finally it is the cars that turn on the hunters and destroy them.

17 April - Good Friday
Atheis (The Atheist), Sjuman Dyaja, Indonesia 1974 16 cs 147 minutes
A young Muslim of strict religious background encounters new ideas and attitudes through his contact with an old friend and an anarchistic artist. As he is overcome with doubts and jealousy, his marriage breaks up and he is driven to violence. He begins to refind some purpose in life as he is caught up in the revolt against the Japanese occupation in Java in 1942.

MAY                                                        

1 May - Animations

The Band Concert, The Sandcastle, Passing Days, Les Astronautes, The Wizard of Speed and Time, Film of Circles Squares Triangles Lines and Dots, The Bronswick Affair, Tron, Carmen D'Avino Compilation


15 May
A Most Attractive Man, Rivka Hartman, Australia 1982 clr 47 minutes
Described as "a sardonic Australian love story" in which an attractive man, Dorian, lives off the pension of a single mother in an inner city terrace. Winner of an Australian Film Institute Jury award.

Patrick
, Richard Franklin, Australia 1978 clr 109 minutes
Patrick, having murdered his mother and her lover, has become a polyplegic, pre-oedipal, psychotic lump. He has telekinetic powers, fancies his nurse and is hostile to his doctor. This is an entertaining mix of black humour and suspense with a few shocks.

29 May
Kick Start, Charles Sandford, Australia 1987 16 clr 34 minutes
While this comedy has moments of slapstick humour it remains firmly based in naturalism and characterisation. With Aussie crassness, small-time crooks, punters, bikies and opportunists scramble for a windfall. Winner of the Best Fiction (Greater Union) and Rouben Mamoulian Awards, 1987 Sydney Film Festival.

Deliverance
, John Boorman, USA 1972 16 cs 109 minutes
Four Atlanta businessmen are persuaded by Lewis, a philosophising survivalist, to spend a canoeing weekend shooting the rapids on an uncharted river high in the Appalachians. The river valley is soon to be drowned by the waters of a dam project. This taut exciting thriller is a dark inversion of the return to nature theme and of the myth of regeneration through violence often celebrated particularly in the western.
Set in Georgia moonshine backcountry the Bluegrass music and the scenery in this film are superb. The plot is gripping nightmare stuff.

JUNE                                                        

12 June - Live Music To Nosferatu

Nosferatu, FW Murnau, Germany 1922 16 b&w 51min live music Soddell et al.
Although the plot is quite close to that of Bram Stoker's Dracula the emotional and intellectual emphases are different. Murnau showed how the fantastic film could gain from the use of real settings and the imaginative treatment of space. This feeling of landscape became a central element of the classic vampire film. As a special treat, this silent film will be accompanied by live music performed by Jaques Soddell et al.

Nosferatu Phantom Der Nacht (Nosferatu, Phantom Of The Night), Werner Herzog, Germany 1979 vhs 96 minutes
An assault on the senses and the emotions, this film is at once bold and subtle, comic and confounding, disturbing and ultimately deeply moving. Each delicious shudder takes the viewer deeper into the gorgeously sombre nightmare world that director Herzog has painted in delicate and fragile tones, deriving much from the original F.W. Murnau "Nosferatu" silent classic.

26 June
Deep, Rebecca McLean, Australia 1998 16 clr 8 minutes
A tongue-in-cheek look at seventies youth culture in Melbourne's outer suburbs. Stick, Tracey and Tina want to join the Carrum Sharps-- the coolest sharpie gang in town-- but can they handle the initiation?

La Grande Bouffe
(Blow Out), Marco Ferreri, France 1973 vhs 125 minutes
In this grotesque black comedy, four rich, bored middle-aged men decide they have had enough of the tiresome life around them and decide to end their lives in one last decadent, drunken, depraved, orgiastic and impeccably well-catered marathon assault on their systems. The quartet is all successful men with excessive appetites for life's pleasures (food is used as a graphic metaphor here). Ferreri's sexual and scatological catalogue of the men's indulgence of excesses, leaves no sensibility unassailed.

JULY                                                        
10 July
Exits, Laughren et al., Australia 1980 16 clr 48 minutes
Looks at the effect of the Whitlam sacking on a handful of people living and working in Melbourne. Fictional sequences are juxtaposed with an assemblage of demo footage, video news reports, telex messages and a radio voice to create a growing sense of anger, frustration and powerlessness.

Mallacoota Stampede
, Peter Tammer, Australia 1980 16 clr 63 minutes
This narrative, loosely structured as a 'slice of life', is set in Mallacoota during the summer vacation and culminates in the visit of two transvestites from the city to give female impersonations at the local hotel.

Friday 25 July - Midwinter Movie Marathon - Mad Max - A Tour
Welcome to Wherever You Are Aaron Stevenson, Australia
A band of vibrant young "Max" enthusiasts set out in their 'home-made', unregistered 'Interceptor replica, uncovering the spirit of the Mad Max legend. The trek covers over 3000 km of outback wasteland culminating in a pilgrimage to Mt Panorama and the destruction of 52 street vehicles

Mad Max
16 clr apx. 100 minutes
Part science fiction, part road movie, a futuristic vision of a post-apocalyptic Australia where ordered society is fast disintegrating into violent chaos. In this anarchic setting, rogue gangs menacingly roam the land in search of petrol (a vital and increasingly scarce resource.) Mel Gibson stars as Max Rockatansky, a good cop made mad. A truly original film that remains a highlight of Australian film history.

Mad Max II
16 clr 96 minutes
Mel Gibson continues his role of the heroic loner who drives the roads of outback Australia searching for gasoline. Arrayed against him and the other defenders of a fuel-depot encampment are the bizarre warriors commanded by The Humungus.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
16 clr 106 minutes
Mel Gibson as Max becomes the saviour of a tribe of lost children. Tina Turner stars as Aunty Entity, a power-mad dominatrix determined to use Max to tighten her stranglehold on Bartertown Contains one of the best movie fight scenes ever, as Max and gladiatorial Blaster face off with maces, chainsaws and anything not nailed down inside Thunderdome.
I guess the later Mel Gibson was keen to get onto those Danish battlements, for there he was assured of the best lines in the film. You see, earlier in his career, when his fortune was to play the part of Max, a sad suffering silent saviour (who, like the Dane, also messes with slings and arrows), other actors got the best lines - listen for:
Mad Max II - Spence - A clever man could have a weapon hidden under there.
Beyond Thunder Dome - Turner - We're two of a kind, you and me, Mr Raggedy Man.
(quotes subject to memory faults, corrections welcome)

AUGUST                                                        

7 August
Marilyn Monroe: Beyond The Legend, USA 1986 vhs 60 minutes
This documentary contains numerous film clips ranging from her earliest appearances in "Dangerous Years" and "All About Eve", to her triumphant performance in "Bus Stop" and "The Misfits". The film also features rare archival and newsreel footage, as well as in depth interviews with colleagues and friends.

We're Not Married!
, Edmund Goulding, USA 1952 vhs 85 minutes
One Christmas a couple eager to earn a spot on a radio show rush to get married by a newly appointed marriage celebrant. 18 months later, the couple are delighted when they receive a letter in the mail saying they are not legally married. It appears that 6 couples are given a second chance at deciding whether or not they're happy with the partner they've chosen and their life together so far.

21 August
Dead Calm, Phillip Noyce, Australia 1985 16 clr 95 minutes
A pared-down thriller with three actors, two boats and a dog, 'Dead Calm' never lets up on suspense. The setting is contemporary, evoking the beauty and the dangers of isolation.

Spoorloos
(The Vanishing), George Sluizer, Belgium 1988 16 clr 110 minutes
Based on the story "The golden egg", "The vanishing" is an extraordinary and chilling study of obsession, which investigates the edges of rationality and the destructive capacity of idealistic devotion.

SEPTEMBER                                                        

18 September
My Survival As An Aboriginal, Essie Coffey, Australia 1978 16 clr 51 minutes
Essie Coffey, black activist and musician, resident of 'Dodge City' in north-west New South Wales, demonstrates the conflicts and tensions of living as an Aboriginal under white domination. Shows how she is passing on knowledge of traditional bush ways to a generation of young Aboriginal children who have only ever known white education.

A Moment of Innocence
, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran 1996 16 clr 78 minutes
At age seventeen, film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf was arrested for knifing a policeman and was sent the notorious torture chamber administered by the Shah's hated SAVAK secret police. Twenty years later the policeman he wounded auditioned for a role in one of his films. From that bizarre coincidence Makhmalbaf developed a script which blends the present with the past and helps to explain to a younger generation the complicated history of Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. As his young actors struggle to understand the hatreds of the past, they also force the older men to face their own mistakes and prejudices.

OCTOBER                                                        
2 October
The Unemployed, UK 1976 16 b&w 15 minutes

Universal Newsreel, USA 1946 16 b&w 7 minutes

RAAF Record Newsreel No 6
, Australia 1956 16 clr 9 minutes

Basic Instinct
, Paul Verhoeven, USA 1992 (Sharon Stone) vhs 128 minutes
Michael Douglas plays an ex-undercover cop, burnt out and recovering from drug and alcohol addiction when he becomes involved with the investigation of a brutal murder. The prime suspect is a very rich, very beautiful young woman (Sharon Stone) who's calm and collected exterior belies a predatory and hedonistic soul. Shocking, controversial and explicit, this is not a film for the squeamish.

16 October
A Year To Remember 1931-65, Australia 1965 vhs 30 minutes

Barbarella
, Roger Vadim, USA 1968 (Jane Fonda) 16 clr 98 minutes
This cult film begins with a flawlessly executed zero gravity strip tease by the film's feisty 41st century space adventurer, Barbarella (Jane Fonda). The adventure begins when the president of Earth contacts Barbarella for her help in locating a young scientist who has vanished with a deadly positronic ray that contains the power to "shatter the loving union of the universe". Barbarella soon faces a number of challenging situations that result in many costume changes. Barbarella must restore peace and order to the galaxy.

Saturday 25 October - End of Year Social
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, Stephan Elliott, Australia 1994 16 cs 103 minutes
This road-movie comedy follows the adventures of three Sydney drag queens that travel through the outback to Alice Springs where they are booked to perform their cabaret act. On their journey across the desert, they encounter both friendship and enmity from people in the small bush communities.

30 October
The Pie Covered Wagon, Charles Lamont, USA '32 (Temple) 16 b&w 9 minutes

Glad Rags To Riches
, USA 1933 (Shirley Temple) 16 b&w 10 minutes

I'm No Angel
, Wesley Ruggles, USA 1933 (Mae West) 16 b&w 89 minutes
Mae plays Sister Honky Tonk, a carnival entertainer with intentions of climbing the social ladder 'wrong by wrong'. She clears herself of a homicide charge, sings five songs including That Dallas Man and They Call Me Sister Honky Tonk, tames lions and Cary Grant and asks Beulah to peel her a grape. This was one of the films that led to the formation of the Legion of Decency.

NOVEMBER                                                        

13 November - Bendigo Cup

Gone To The Dogs, Ken Hall, Australia 1939 16 b&w 64 minutes
George Wallace plays a disaster prone zoo attendant who accidentally discovers a substance that accelerates motion, which he proceeds to test on his pet greyhound. A good deal of slapstick humour is combined with a romantic subplot, songs and dances.

Wake In Fright, Ted Kotcheff, Australia 1971 16 clr 100 minutes
A young Englishman teaching in an outback school sets off to spend his summer vacation in Sydney but doesn't make it beyond the nearby mining town known as 'the Yabba'. He is engulfed by the slightly sinister mateship of the locals with its undertow of repressed sexuality and squalid violence. The excess of this alcoholic nightmare is held in check by a rough humour.
Kenneth Cook took the title for his book, Wake In Fright, from an old curse:

May you dream of the Devil
and wake in fright.
The book is very Australian and very dark. Book noir? I suspect the film is very Australian and, despite the Australia light, film noir.