CINEMA AT THE DUKES, AUTUMN 1999
This Autumn sees the relaunch of film at the Dukes, with one of the most genuinely exciting and comprehensive selections of films outside of London.
In a programme which includes recent releases, crystal new prints of classic movies, and some rare chances to see back-catalogue of art-house films, the Dukes offers a worthwhile alternative to the multiplex: where more choice often just means more of the same!
The Dukesí Film Education Officer Tim Young has drawn together new releases with blasts from the past in a themed programme which includes sections like "UK 2000: British Films Taking Us into the Millennium" (including Tim Rothís controversial The War Zone), Orson Welles ñ The Maverick Genius (new prints of The Third Man, A Touch of Evil and Citizen Kane), New Europe (including Le Diner des Cons, Pedro Almodovarís All About My Mother and Scandinavian new wave movie Mifune), and New From the USA, which includes Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut.
THE DUKES AUTUMN FILM SEASON LISTING
Sunday 3 October 8pm & Monday 4 October 6.15pm
HUMAN TRAFFIC (18)
Director: Justin Kerrigan, U.K (1999)
Andrew Lincoln, John Simm, Lorraine Pilkington, Shaun Parkes.
1 hour 45 minutes
Part of the WILD AROUND THE WORLD - NEW FILMS, YOUNG AUDIENCES season, this is a film that really gets to the heart of the British approach to clubbing. Having made his way with a series of high octane acclaimed short films, director Justine Kerrigan goes head-first into the lives of six young friends who live for the weekend and their desire for 'repetitive beats' and oblivion from work, college and family.
With a soundtrack put together by DJ Pete Tong (featuring Sasha, Orbital, C.J Bolland and Underworld), this is as close to the real thing as the film world has got so far.
"Five clubbers sorted for E's and whizz on a Cardiff weekend bender." - Empire.
Monday 4 October 8.30pm
BONNIE AND CLYDE (18)
Director: Arthur Penn, USA (1967)
Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder.
1hour 51 minutes
Reclaiming the American gangster movie after it had been stolen by the French New Wave of the Sixties, Bonnie and Clyde was so successful and so imitated that it sometimes seems to be forgotten in certain circles, just what a fantastic film it is. This was a groundbreaking work that has all the depth of true folk legend.
Sunday 10 October 8pm & Monday 11 October 6pm
THE THIRD MAN (PG)
Director: Carol Reed, UK (1949)
Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli.
1hours 44 minutes
In gleaming black and white in a new print, The Third Man is a wonderful and important classic of the 1940's. In crumbling post-war Vienna, Welles plays black marketeer Harry Lime, hunted by friends, the military police and a former lover.
Scripted by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed and boasting one of the finest signature scores in cinema history, some argue a case for this being better than Citizen Kane. Questionable, but this is certainly one of the greatest British films of all time.
Monday 11 October 8.30pm
WINTERSLEEPERS (15)
Director: Tom Twyker, Germany (1997)
Marie-Lou Sellem, Ulrich Matthes, Floriane Daniel.
2hours 2minutes - subtitled
Part of THE NEW EUROPE - A DIVERSE CULTURE series
Although virtually unknown here, Tom Twyker is Germanyís hottest young director thanks to two films, the haunting and exquisitely photographed Wintersleepers, and his latest film, Run Lola Run. Wintersleepers is infused with a truly terrible sense of foreboding, which envelops the stillness of the winter landscape in which it is set.
A penetrating study of late twenty-something life and the struggle to maintain passion, intimacy and freedom in a relationship, Wintersleepers is set around a mysterious car crash. It follows a series of hallucinatory events, which draws four people together in a fog of un-reality. A superb adaptation of the novel by Anne Francoise Pyszora.
Sunday 17 October 7.30pm
ETERNITY AND A DAY (12)
Director: Theo Angelopoulos, Greece/France/Italy (1998)
Bruno Ganz, Isabell Renaud, Achileas Skevelis, Fabrizio Bentivoglio.
2 hours 14minutes subtitled
At the Cannes Film Festival last year, the Jury - headed by Martin Scorsese - unanimously awarded Eternity and a Day the Palme D'Or, announcing that it was the only truly great film in the competition.
Angelopoulos is the last great modernist at work in world cinema and a true philosopher. Past films such as The Travelling Players, Ulyssesí Gaze and Landscape In the Mist constantly feature in other directorísí and criticís favourite films of all time. This tale of a dying poet portrayed by Ganz, (the tortured angel from Wings of Desire) who wanders Greece and Albania who encounters a young refugee at the mercy of border brigands. The film takes us thorough the memories of his life and loves and is as contemporary a film from Europe as one could wish for. True genius.
Eterntity and a Day is showing as part of the One World Week festivities in Lancaster.
Monday 18 October 6pm
A SIMPLE PLAN (15)
Director: Sam Raimi, USA (1998)
Bridget Fonda, Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Brent Briscoe
2 hours
B.B Thornton got another Oscar nomination for his role in Sam Raimi's latest - a variation on the Coen brotherís magnificent Fargo. This brooding film tells of outlandish crimes and small time criminals who are in way over their heads, set against the blood splattered snow scape of Minnesota.
With the director of The Evil Dead at the helm, this tale of two brothers stumbling across a plane wreck and $4 million in used notes is mayhem, mirth and greed incarnate. Raimi goes almost serious shocker.
Monday 18 October 8.30pm
KLUTE (15)
Director: Alan J.Pakula, USA (1971)
Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Roy Scheider.
1 hour 54 minutes
A truly psychological thriller featuring Jane Fonda's Oscar winning performance as a call girl at prey to a former client and under the protection of private investigator 'Klute' (Sutherland). A classic investigation into the independence - real and imagined - of Fonda's character, as a modern female and not just the paranoid conspiracies that Pakula explored in later work.
Sunday 31 October 8pm & Monday 1 November 6pm
GET CARTER (18)
Director: Mike Hodges, UK (1971)
Michael Caine, Britt Ekland, John Osborne, Ian Hendry.
1 hour 58 minutes
A new print of the dark classic of British crime with a superb performance from Michael Caine as the gangster from London, out to revenge his murdered brother in a very grim and seedy looking Newcastle.
Genuinely nasty but quite arty at the same time, it features so much atmospheric and unlikely detail that it transcends its gumshoe origins. Creepy!
Monday 1 November 8.30pm
SWEET SWEETBACKS BADASSSS SONG (18)
Director: Melvin Van Peebles, USA (1971)
Rhetta Hughes, John Amos, Simon Chuckster, Melvin Van Peebles.
1 hour 37 minutes
Arguably the most important black film of its age, Sweet Sweet back.... has remained virtually unseen in this country. In part this is because it was a truly independent production shot on a shoestring that determinedly eschewed Hollywood convention.
The tale of a stud who is moved into radical 'black' action after seeing his brothers brutalised by white cops. The film features psychedelic and split screen imagery and plenty of stops for sex along the way. A 'yeah production', dedicated to 'All the black brothers and sisters who've had enough of the Man'. Truly one of a kind.
Sunday 7 November 8pm & Monday 8 November 6.15pm
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (15)
Director: Pedro Almodovar, Spain/France (1999)
Cecilia Roth, Eloy Azorin, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz.
1hour 40 minutes ñ subtitled
All About My Mother was primed to win the Palme D'Or at Cannes this year but had to settle for the Best Director prize instead. Almodovar is a true maverick and completely commercial at the same time and All About My Mother is arguably the finest and most accessible of his thirteen successively acclaimed films to date, which include Live Flesh, Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown and the notorious Kika.
All about My Mother is a riveting melodrama that aims to be a cross between the Bette Davis classic All About Eve and Tennessee Williamsí A Streetcar Named Desire - in other words, an exploration of strong women and actresses bursting with images and ideas. Unmissable Spanish exuberance.
Monday 8 November 8.30pm
TOUCH OF EVIL (12)
Director: Orson Welles, USA (1958)
Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Janet Leigh.
1 hour 51 minutes B&W - New Print
The last and the greatest Film Noir? Wellesí magnum opus and a true tour de force that chronicles police corruption in a Mexican border town in a complex, baroque style that brings new meaning to the word thriller. Wellesí last masterpiece.
This new print is a re-edit by Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, Godfather 1 and 2) working from a 58-page memo Welles wrote for Universal studios, after the film was edited in his absence. Murch is probably the worldís greatest living editor and has reconstructed the film to bring it closer to Welles original intentions. Probably the finest lager...sorry...thriller in the world.
Sunday 14 November 8pm & Monday 15 November 6.15pm
GO (18)
Director: Doug Liman, USA (1999)
Sarah Polley, Desmond Askew, Katie Holmes, Scott Wolf.
1 hour 43 minutes
The director of last years slacker hit Swingers, turns his hipper than hip eye to the shenanigans of US teenies and party babes in a tale revolving around a one-off drug deal that sets off a trail of blackly comic consequences.
Katie Holmes (Dawsons Creek) plays the winsome friend of the drug prep dragged into the mire of the twenty-something generation and when things go pear shaped once the party is definitely over.
Monday 15 November 8.30pm
McCABE AND MRS MILLER (15)
Director: Robert Altman, USA (1971)
Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Keith Carradine, Hugh Millais.
2 hours
One of the best of Altmanís early movies using a classic theme - that of the gambler and the whore - to produce a non-heroic western of class and panache. Set in 19th Century frontier life in the American West, McCabe and Mrs Miller makes a good case for the old maxim about life being nasty, brutish and short (and we should grab our pleasures while we can).
Sunday 28 & Monday 29 November 8pm
FELICIA'S JOURNEY (15)
Director: Atom Egoyan, US (1999)
Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsinee Khanjian, Peter McDonald.
1 hour 56 minutes
Internationally acclaimed Canadian/Turkish director Egoyan, responsible for such titles as The Adjuster, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, adapts William Trevorís novel. Set in Birmingham and starring Bob Hoskins as a mild mannered serial killer befriending a young and naive Irish runaway on a search for her soldier boyfriend.
As with his previous work, Egoyan captures with meticulous detail the contrasts of environment, from rural Ireland to industrial Birmingham. Chilling, believable and compelling.
Tuesday 30 November 8pm, Wednesday 1 December 8pm & Thursday 2 December 6.15pm
THE WAR ZONE (18)
Director: Tim Roth, UK (1998)
Ray Winstone, Tilda Swinton, Lara Belmont, Freddie Cunliffe.
1 hour 38 minutes
Drawing inevitable comparisons with Gary Oldmanís Nil By Mouth, cult actor Tim Roth turns his hand to directing with this raw, powerful drama. Meticulously staged and with a fine eye for detail and mood, The War Zone is a splendidly acted tale of a family torn apart by parental abuse.
Based on the controversial, critically acclaimed first novel by Alexander Stuart, the film details the 'war zone' that is at the heart of a seemingly happy middle class family, when they uproot from London to start a new life in Devon. Bold and utterly gripping, the film is dominated by a multi-layered performance from Ray Winstone, one of Britainís finest screen actors.
Thursday 2 December 8.30pm
NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (PG)
Director: Federico Fellini, Italy/France (1957)
Giulietta Massina, Francois Perrier, Franca Marzi, Amadeo Nazzari.
1 hour 57 minutes subtitled - New Print
This re-release celebrates one of the lesser known but equally wonderful works of Fellini. Following on from La Strada and similarly starring the cinematic icon Giulietta Massina (Fellini's wife) this is another bridging film between his earlier Neo-realist works and his more fantastical work (La Dolce Vita, Eight and a Half).
The story of a redeemed prostitute, this bittersweet tale - with a score by Nino Rota - provided the inspiration for the musical Sweet Charity. Restruck from the restored negative by the British Film Institute, this version includes, for the first time since its debut at Cannes in 1957, the censored 'man with a sack sequence'. Wonderful.
Sunday 5 December 8pm & Monday 6 December 8pm
THE ITALIAN JOB (PG)
Director: Peter Collinson, UK (1969)
Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill, Irene Handl.
1 hour 40 minutes - New Print
What can possibly be said about a film that so many people love so much? Scripted by Z-Cars originator Troy Kennedy Martin, its tale of Brits executing a Turin bullion heist in Mini-Coopers is so outlandish its brilliant. Plenty of period detail and a good old singsong over bottles of brown ale at the end, fab.
Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8 & Thursday 9 December 8pm
RUN LOLA RUN (15)
Director: Tom Twyker, Germany (1998)
This tale of flame-haired riot girl Lola and her dash to save her boyfriend from the wrath of gangsters is told three times. Each telling alters the random events that compose the narrative ñ a bank heist, shootings, road rage and robbery.
Mixing compassion and love with high actions, this is a cross between Reservoir Dogs and Speed.
Sunday 12 - Monday 13 December
MIFUNE (18)
Mifune is devoid if frenetic or dizzying camerawork, unlike other Dogme titles (Festen and The Idiots). Instead, it is a beautiful, loosely shot film.
The film opens with the wedding of the go-getting yuppie Kersten and Claire, his bossís daughter. Everything looks rosy until Kersten discovers his father has died leaving him responsible for his mentally retarded brother, who he has neglected to mention to his new wife and family. A well-constructed mix of romance, sex and humour, which is genuinely inventive throughout.
Tuesday 14, Wednesday & Thursday 16 December 7.30pm
EYES WIDE SHUT (18)
Director: Stanley Kubrick, USA (1999)
Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson.
2 hours 40 minutes
Kubrickís last film, starring the most successful and glamorous couple in Hollywood, who play a couple wrenched apart by adultery, betrayal and perversion. Number One in the US at the time of writing and earning $21.7 million on its first weekend.
With a screenplay by Frederic Raphael and Kubrick - based on a story by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler ñ the film was shot over two years with a blank cheque from MGM. This is, at the very least, worth a watch. If the story of sexual and psychological intrigue doesn't appeal, then soak up the opulent images from one of the finest filmmakers ever, bar none. R.I.P.
Sunday 19 - Thursday 23 December 8pm
THE WINSLOW BOY (PG)
Director: David Mamet, USA (1999)
Nigel Hawthorne, Gemma Jones, Jeremy Northam, Rebecca Pidgeon.
1 hour 44 minutes
Famous American writer director known for his thrillers turns up as the helm on a classic re-adaptation of the Terrence Rattigan play, turning out a classic family historical costume drama, as Martin Scorsese did with Edith Whartonís Age of Innocence.
This tale of wrongful accusation and the clearing of a public schoolboys name will be perfect family entertainment in the week leading up to Christmas. Wonderfully acted and an accurate recreation of Britain in the dark days before the First World War.
FILM EDUCATION AT THE DUKES
The Dukes Film Education Manager Tim Young is hosting a series of talks and discussions covering many fascinating genres of cinema, past and present. Everyone is welcome and the sessions are free of charge to members of The Dukes Film Club.
Tim has been with The Dukes for over two years and has been responsible for film programming, administration and education. He has qualifications in Film Studies to post-graduate level, is a qualified History teacher and has written on the subject of post-war European film and history. He teaches Film Studies 'A' level locally and also works and writes freelance.
Co-tutor Roy Stafford is one of the leading providers of Media Education in this country. Author of the current standard textbook for Media Studies teachers and students, with many more publications produced over the last twenty tears in the field of Film, Media and Video, Royís association with The Dukes spans three years.
Chris Gregory works for Lancaster University Department of Continuing Education, has taught Film Studies courses at The Dukes under the Universityís aegis for the last two years - attracting a large audience for his education work.
New European Cinema
Tuesday 20 October 7pm
Tim Young gives a talk on film production in Europe today. Discussing a number of the films featured in our European Cinema programme, to post-war classics made in Europe in the 1940's, '50's and 60's.
Wild Films from Around the World
Tuesday 7 December 7pm
This presentation on new cinema from around the world by young directors, covers many of the films features in our Wild Films from Around the World series and aims to get the audience to reveal a bit about the sorts of films they really want to see.
Fellini and Italian Cinema
Thursday 2 December 7pm
A fascinating presentation on the work of Fellini and his relationship to other Italian filmmakers.
Orson Welles - Maverick or Genius?
Sunday 10 October 6pm
Local film educator Roy Stafford will give a presentation chronicling the life and work of Orson Welles - arguing that Welles could have achieved much more within the confines of the Hollywood studio system.
An Introduction to Film History
A 10-week course commencing on Monday 4 October, led by Chris Gregory of Lancaster Universityís Department of Continuing Education.
The Dukes G.C.S.E English/Media/Film audience development project.
Contact Tim Young for full details of schoolsí liaison and curriculum details.
Ends