Retrospectives On Carl Theodor Dreyer And Terence Davies, Canada’s Top Ten, Films From The Berlin School, And The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival At Cinematheque Ontario This Winter
Toronto – From Carl Theodor Dreyer’s revered The Passion of Joan of Arc to Chantal Akerman’s legendary prostitute, Jeanne Dielman, from Terence Davies’s grieving mothers to women on the front lines of war, the tragic heroines of the silver screen take over Cinematheque Ontario’s Winter Season. Opening January 23, the season offers retrospectives of the films of Terence Davies and Carl Theodor Dreyer, accompanied by varying versions of Joan of Arc’s story from filmmaking greats such as Jacques Rivette, Robert Bresson, Otto Preminger, Victor Fleming and Cecil B. DeMille. Other highlights include Canada's Top Ten; the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival; States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School, a 14-film series of the finest films to emerge from Germany over the past decade; cutting-edge Canadian and international experimental works in The Free Screen; four epics by Hungarian master Miklós Jancsó; and limited runs of Jia Zhang-ke’s 24 City and Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès.
New in 2009, Cinematheque Ontario has restructured its programming calendar and will now offer Winter, Summer and Fall seasons. The intervening months of April and May will provide valuable time to plan for exciting future programmes. Memberships purchased between April 2008 and March 2009 will be extended for three months. For further information and updates, visit cinemathequeontario.ca or call 416-968-FILM (toll-free 1-877-968-FILM).
Also of note, as of December 16, the year-round box office is moving to a new location at 2 Carlton Street, on the West Mezzanine. Please note new operating hours, which are Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For further ticket inquiries, call 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets go on sale beginning January 6 for members and January 20 for non-members.
Flesh and Soul: The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer
Featuring 17 films presented from February 6 to March 14, Flesh and Soul: The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer is a comprehensive retrospective that brings the director’s profoundly austere and precise visual style to the big screen in new, restored and archival 35 mm prints. Dreyer’s fascination with the corruption and transcendence of the flesh and the soul, and with tormented women gave birth to a string of silent masterpieces (to be presented with live piano accompaniment), including The Parson’s Widow (1921), a witty and touching comedy of amorous entanglement that pits age and tradition against youth and yearning; Mikaël (1924), a sympathetic treatment of homosexual desire; and a recently struck print of The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a film of daunting beauty and strangeness that concentrates on the last eight hours in the life of the martyred saint. The series will also include revered films such as Vampyr (1932), a poetically haunting horror classic; Day of Wrath (1943), an erotic witchcraft drama about a love triangle during the puritanical Danish Reformation; Ordet (1955), a spare and meticulous exploration of the agonies of true faith and the fragility of familial bonds; and Gertrud (1964), the devastating story of a retired opera singer who is trapped in a loveless marriage. In addition, Lars von Trier's Medea (1988), based on a previously unfilmed script by Dreyer, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), which includes a moving homage to The Passion of Joan of Arc, will be presented in the context of the retrospective.
As a sidebar to the Dreyer retrospective, Cinematheque Ontario proudly presents Joan the Woman: The Maid of Orléans on Film. Running from February 6 to February 16, the series is a concentrated look at six celebrated cinematic portraits of Jeanne d’Arc, subject of Dreyer’s most famous film. Featuring many rare and archival prints, gathered from France, Denmark, Italy and the United States, the series offers a study in the changing iconography of Joan through Jacques Rivette’s Jeanne la Pucelle (1994), a spare and strikingly modern chronicle of Joan of Arc’s life; Robert Bresson’s Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), a haunting and unique view of Joan’s physical humiliation; the fulllength version of Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948), starring a radiant Ingrid Bergman, nominated for the best actress Academy Award®; the only tinted archival print of Cecil B. DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1917), a stunning epic featuring opera diva Geraldine Farrar (and presented with live piano accompaniment); Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan (1957), a rare opportunity to watch Jean Seberg’s introduction to the world as a childlike waifish Joan; and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which will also be presented with piano accompaniment.
Distant Voices: The Films of Terence Davies
Running from January 23 to February 7, Distant Voices: The Films of Terence Davies is a complete retrospective that offers Toronto audiences the rare opportunity to rediscover Terence Davies’s highly personal and evocative oeuvre. The series opens with an Exclusive Limited Run of Davies’ new film, Of Time and the City (2008), a moving meditation on time and memory that weaves together arresting archival and contemporary footage of Liverpool. Also included is his semi-autobiographical The Terence Davies Trilogy (1984), a stark triptych that vividly follows the life of a working-class boy and his abiding conflict between Catholicism and homosexuality, and Davies’ critically acclaimed Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), an impressionistic exploration of the director’s working-class childhood dominated by a tyrannical father.
Canada’s Top Ten
Canada’s Top Ten returns to celebrate the best in Canadian cinema. Selected by national panels of filmmakers, journalists, programmers and industry professionals, Canada’s Top Ten features and short films for 2008 will be announced on December 16, together with two special panel discussions. Public screenings with introductions and Q&As by filmmakers, and the panel discussions will be held from January 30 to February 7 at Cinematheque Ontario.
Ongoing Series: The Free Screen and Classic Sundays: Treasures from the Bologna Film Festival
From January 24 to March 26, The Free Screen presents free screenings of work by established and emerging artists engaged in fields ranging from avant-garde film and animation to visual arts, essay films and video art. This season features the restoration of John Hofsess’s legendary, long-thought-lost Palace of Pleasure (1966/67/68), an explosively energetic barrage of civil strife and war cut to Velvet Underground tunes and Leonard Cohen poems, followed by Ronald Nameth’s legendary Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966), a groundbreaking visual and sonic trip that collapses a series of live performances involving Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground and poet Gerard Malanga. The programme also includes the Toronto premiere of Heinz Emigholz’s latest film, Loos Ornamental (2008), a rigorous taxonomic approach to Adolf Loos’s architectural body of work; the North American premiere of a new exhibition by rising German visual artist Nina Könnemann, co-presented with Gallery TPW, an offsite companion piece to States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School programme; and the Canadian premiere of the new restoration of Hollis Frampton’s magnum opus, Hapax Legomena. In addition, Cinematheque Ontario is pleased to play host to two exciting events during Ryerson University’s The New Paragone: The Cinema and Vanguard Art Movements (March 12 -15), namely Entre les images: Christian Lebrat In Person!, welcoming the multi-talented and multi-disciplinary Christian Lebrat to present a solo programme of his film works; and a Special Archival Screening: Robert A. Haller In Person!, at which Haller will present a rare archival programme from Anthology Film Archives, where he is the director of collections and special projects and has been responsible for preserving some of the key works of avant-garde cinema.
From January 25 to March 22, Classic Sundays: Treasures from the Bologna Film Festival features several films cross-listed with Flesh and Soul: The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer, such as Day of Wrath (1943), Leaves from Satan’s Book (1919-1921) and Dreyer’s opera prima The President (1918). The season begins with the longdelayed presentation of Alberto Lattuada’s unmissable Mafioso (1962), a brilliant dark character study starring ace comedian and matinee idol Alberto Sordi. Also included are Richard Fleischer’s The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), a deliriously entertaining crime drama based on the true story of model and “Gibson girl” Evelyn, who becomes the object of a violent romantic rivalry between two men; a beautiful archival Cinemascope print of Vincent Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956), a wrenching and relevant critique of the cult of masculinity; and Raoul Walsh’s The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), a lavish and transfixing tale of an ambitious woman rising in the world by wile and wit.
Exclusive Limited Runs and Special Screenings
Screening in a newly struck 35 mm print from Russia, Sergei Eisenstein’s majestic epic Ivan the Terrible (1944-58) will be shown on February 13 and 14. Operatic, expressionistic and haunting, the two-part film chronicles the rise to power and descent into terror of Czar Ivan IV. Then on February 15, Eisenstein’s first sound film, Alexander Nevsky (1938), will be presented in a new 35 mm print. A thunderous, eye-filling epic, celebrated for its monumental battle scenes and glorious cinematography, it features a stirring score by Sergei Prokofiev.
For those who missed Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City (2008) during the Toronto International Film Festival this year, the Limited Run screenings on March 13, 15 and 18 offer a great opportunity to catch it. Paired with the exclusive Toronto premiere of his newest short film, Cry Me a River (2008), Jia Zhang-ke's masterly combination of fact and fiction recounts the dramatic and thunderous fall of the state-owned Factory 420, exploring both its physical demolition and its powerful symbolic echo of a half-century of communist rule.
On March 19 and 22, Cinematheque Ontario presents a long-anticipated new 35 mm print of Chantal Akerman’s legendary masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Made with an all-female crew, Akerman’s breakthrough film is a key feminist text about three days in the life of an attractive Belgian widow (played by Delphine Seyrig), dominated by an unwavering routine of domestic chores and pre-arranged midafternoon rendezvous.
Presented at the Cannes, Telluride and New York film festivals this year to massive acclaim, the Cinémathèque française definitive restoration of Lola Montès (1955) comes to Toronto in all its majestic complexity. Screening on March 20, 21 and 22, Ophüls’s final masterpiece is a plush, ironic examination of Lola Montès, a cabaret dancer who was the mistress of Franz Liszt and Ludwig I, King of Bavaria.
States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School
From February 20 to March 14, Cinematheque Ontario, in conjunction with the Goethe-Institut Toronto, presents States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School, a compelling series of 14 films (including 12 Toronto premieres) by the "new wave" of contemporary German directors. Alongside a renewed commercial industry, the Berlin School has been compared to the second nouvelle vague in France and represents a rebirth in contemporary German filmmaking. This fresh, uncompromising and artistically driven cinema has consistently gained steam over the last decade, influencing the international landscape of art film, and winning multiple prizes on the festival circuit. Christian Petzold sparked the movement with his legendary The State I’m In (2000), a chronicle of the lives of former German terrorists attempting to lead a normal life. Two more of his films are included in the series: Yella (2007), a stark thriller that focuses on a recently divorced young woman who escapes an industrial town in former East Germany for a fresh start in the West; and a limited run of his latest film, Jerichow (2008), a meticulously constructed story of betrayal, secrecy and sexual passion that was a sensation on last year’s festival circuit. Other films included in the series are Thomas Arslan’s A Fine Day (2001), a sumptuously shot chronicle of a young woman’s search for love, completing the director’s trilogy on the Turkish community living in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin; Angela Schanelec’s Marseille (2004), a moody, beautiful and elliptical film that follows Sophie, a young Berlin photographer who swaps apartments with a student in Marseille; Valeska Grisebach’s Longing (2006), a poignant portrait of anguish that focuses on a man’s unfaithfulness to the wife he adores and the ensuing painful confusion for all parties involved; Ulrich Köhler’s Bungalow (2002), a droll and compelling character study that explores the uncomfortable territory of waywardness and illicit desire of a young and disaffected army deserter; and Maren Ade‘s The Forest for the Trees (2003), an excruciating portrait of the mental disintegration of a young and inexperienced schoolteacher. In addition, on March 6, Cinematheque Ontario, in conjunction with York University, is pleased to welcome German cinema authority and author Thomas Elsaesser to Toronto. Elsaesser will present European Cinema – Face to Face with World Cinema, a free lecture exploring the definitions of European and world cinema.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Cinematheque Ontario's annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, co-presented with the Human Rights Watch Toronto Committee, runs from February 24 to March 5. The programme offers eight powerful films that tackle issues of social justice and personal struggle against impossible odds, including Aida Begic’s Snow (2008), an extraordinary post-war study seen through the eyes of three generations of women living in an eastern Bosnian village two years after the end of the bitter conflict that ripped apart Yugoslavia; Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World…(2007), a sharp and provocative film based on the plight of Eastern European migrants who provide a cheap labour pool for wealthier European Union nations; Malcolm Rogge's Under Rich Earth (2008), an unsettling and eye-opening documentary that offers critical insights from struggling coffee and sugarcane farmers whose communities are torn apart by global forces; Patricio Guzmán's seminal documentary The Battle of Chile (1975-76), an epic chronicle of that country's open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it; Lee Isaac Chung’s directorial debut Munyurangabo (2007), a closely observed drama that offers rare insight into the moral and emotional repercussions of the Rwandan genocide; and Julie Bridgham’s The Sari Soldiers (2008), an extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties.
Special Screenings
On March 27 and 28, Hungarian Rhapsodies: Four by Miklós Jancsó brings extraordinary beauty, power and poetry to Cinematheque Ontario’s screen. This quartet of films, presented in recently struck prints from Hungary, contains breathtaking images in its tales of crushed uprisings. The series includes The Round-Up (1966), a haunting, enigmatic work concerning the torture of a group of Hungarian nationalists by the Austrian army; The Red and The White (1967), an enthralling chronicle of a group of Hungarians fighting beside the Red Army in the Civil War, exquisitely shot in black-and-white CinemaScope; Red Psalm (1971), which follows a turn-of-the-century farm workers' revolt that leads to the subsequent brutal repression of the rebels; and Silence and Cry (1968), an unremitting portrait of terror and tyranny set in 1919, after the defeat of the short-lived communist republic.
Concluding the Winter Season in epic proportions on March 27, Cinematheque Ontario, in conjunction with Images Festival, presents the North American premiere of Lav Diaz's latest film, Melancholia (2008). Winner of the Horizons Award at the Venice Film Festival, Melancholia is a bold and uncompromising eight-hour exploration of the lengths one will go in order to alleviate suffering. Limited Run ticket prices apply.
Cinematheque Ontario screenings continue to be held at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (McCaul Street entrance), Toronto. Regular tickets are $5.90 for members and $10.14 for nonmembers. Limited Runs and Special Presentations are $7.08 for members and $11.56 for non-members. Lecture Series tickets are $9.91 for members and $15.33 for non-members. Prices do not include GST, buildingfund fee or service charges. Films playing at Cinematheque Ontario that have not been rated by the Ontario Film Review Board are restricted to individuals 18 years of age or older; check the Cinematheque Ontario website for updates on film ratings.
Cinematheque Ontario thanks its supporters Bell, RBC, Ontario Media Development Corporation, Canada Council for the Arts, City of Toronto Economic Development Office, Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council.
Cinematheque Ontario is a year-round screening programme dedicated to presenting transformative world cinema through thoughtfully curated retrospectives, filmmaker monographs, and international programme tours. Cinematheque Ontario presents an ambitious selection of more than 300 films annually, including acclaimed directors’ retrospectives, national and regional cinema spotlights, thematic programmes, exclusive limited runs, and classic and contemporary Canadian and international cinema, including many new and rare archival prints. For more information, visit cinemathequeontario.ca.
Bell Lightbox
Currently under construction in downtown Toronto, Bell Lightbox is soon to be the world's leading destination for film lovers. This major new cultural institution on the Canadian and international landscape will be structured around five state-of-the-art cinemas celebrating film from around the world. Bell Lightbox programming will give context to films through innovative crossmedia exhibitions, lectures, and film-related learning opportunities for all ages. Designed by innovative architecture firm KPMB, Bell Lightbox's fluid design encourages exploration, movement and play within its soaring atriums.
The campaign to build Bell Lightbox is generously supported by founding sponsor Bell. The Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario each have contributed $25 million to realize Bell Lightbox. A gift of more than $22 million has been confirmed from the Reitman family – acclaimed filmmaker Ivan Reitman and his sisters Agi Mandel and Susan Michaels – and The Daniels Corporation, who together form the King and John Festival Corporation. The project is also supported by RBC as Major Sponsor and Official Bank, Visa†, Copyright Collective of Canada, NBC Universal Canada, The Allan Slaight Family, The Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation, CIBC, and many other individuals and corporations. The Board of Directors, staff and many generous individuals have also contributed to the campaign. The total amount raised to date is $147 million, three quarters of the total campaign of $196 million. For more information on the Bell Lightbox campaign, visit belllightbox.ca
We are a charitable, not-for-profit, cultural organization whose mission is to transform the way people see the world through film. Our vision is to lead the world in creative and cultural discovery through the moving image.
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For information, contact the Communications Department at 416-934-3200 or email proffice@tiffg.ca