2009 Schedule of Films

All screenings are at Rialto Cinemas on Monday nights at 6:30pm

Mon 2 March:
BASQUIAT
Dir. Julian Schnabel (USA 1996)
Mon 9 March:
GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HARRY
Dir. Lech Majewski (USA/Poland 1992)
Mon 16 March:
MAUVAIS SANG
Dir. Leos Carax (France 1986)
Mon 23 March:
Special Guest: Lech Majewski!
GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Dir. Majewski (UK/Italy 2004)
Monday 30 March: No Screening - World Cinema Showcase, Members get discounted tickets!
Mon 6 April:
ANGELUS
Dir. Lech Majewski (Poland 2000)
Monday 13 April:
No Screening - Easter Monday
Mon 20 April:
MOOLAADE
Dir. Ousmane Sembene (Senegal/France 2004)
Mon 27 April:
DIVA
Dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix (France 1981)
Mon 4 May:
DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE
Dir. Herbert Sauper (Austria/France/Belgium 2004)
Mon 11 May:
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
Dir. Jennifer Baichwal (Canada 2006)
Mon 18 May:
LA SENTINELLE
Dir. Arnaud Desplechin (France 1992)
Mon 25 May:
MALA NOCHE
Dir. Gus Van Sant (USA 1985)
Monday 1 June:
No Screening - Queen's Birthday
Mon 8 June:
I WAS NINETEEN
Dir. Konrad Wolf (East Germany 1968)
Mon 15 June:
THE ARCHITECTS
Dir. Peter Kahane (East Germany 1990)
Mon 22 June:
FLANDERS
Dir. Bruno Dumont (France 2006)
Mon 29 June:
BERLIN-SCHOENHAUSER CORNER
Dir. Gerhard Klein (East Germany 1957)
Mon 6 July:
MY BELOVED HOMELAND / BRIDE OF GALILEE
Dir. Basel Tannous (Palestine 2006)
Mon 13 July:
INFERNAL AFFAIRS
Dir. Andrew Lau & Alan Mak (Hong Kong 2002)
Mon 20 July:
GASLIGHT
Dir. George Cukor (USA 1944)
Mon 27 July:
BROKEN WINGS
Dir. Nir Bergman (Israel 2002)
Mon 3 August:
NO SCREENING - International Film Festival, Members get discount tickets!
Mon 10 August:
NO SCREENING - International Film Festival, Members get discount tickets!
Mon 17 August:
YOU THE LIVING
Dir. Roy Andersson (Sweden 2007)
Mon 24 August:
NOI THE ALBINO
Dir. Dagur Kari (Iceland 2003)
Mon 31 August:
CINEVARDAPHOTO
Dir. Agnes Varda (France 2004)
Mon 7 September:
CHARLIE CHAPLIN SHORTS - WITH LIVE MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT
14-16 September:
Belladonna Short Film Festival
Filmsoc members get free entry to all screenings
Mon 21 September:
AGNES VARDA: PARIS
Shorts, Dir. Agnes Varda (France 1958-2003)
Mon 28 September:
ATTACK THE GAS STATION
Dir. Kim Sang-jin (Korea 1999)
Mon 5 October:
LEAVE ALL FAIR
Dir. John Reid (NZ 1986)
Mon 12 October:
OCCUPATION 101
Dir. Abdallah & Sufyan Omeish (Palestine)
Mon 19 October:
RAIN
Dir. Christine Jeffs (NZ 2001)

Basquiat

Part of our season, Lech Majewski: Landscape of Dreams

Screening: Monday 2 March, 6:30pm

Julian Schnabel | USA | 1996 | M offensive language

Majewski wrote and co-produced this portrait of graffiti artist turned Soho gallery painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat made a meteoric rise from tagging trains to selling his work in downtown galleries and uptown penthouses, but being poor and black in the world of the rich and white only underscored his sense of disgust. In addition to Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat, Julian Schnabel’s cast of cult favourites includes Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, Parker Posey, Willem Dafoe and David Bowie as Warhol. With music from John Cale and PJ Harvey.

Haitian-American Jean-Michel Basquiat began his public life as a graffiti-artist poet who chalked his work up on the walls of Lower Manhattan. Switching to paint, he developed a fusion of roughly drawn images and words that attracted the attention of the art market. Soon his work fetched huge prices. Andy Warhol was his best friend. He was 21. In 1988, at the age of 27, he was dead, in the much-quoted words of the New York Times, “the art world’s closest equivalent to James Dean.”

The portrait of the artist as genius in mortal combat with the demands of fame and commerce is a familiar one, but in Julian Schnabel’s film about Basquiat it is an utterly credible and moving one. Schnabel, whose own early career coincided with Basquiat’s, knows what he’s talking about. This film contains vivid scenes of the art world that in their detail, conviction and matter-of-factness far outweigh the standard caricatures of graft and pretension at gallery openings.

Schnabel has persuaded an extraordinary cast of film-world hipsters to impersonate their art-world equivalents. Bowie gets Warhol. Courtney Love plays the quintessential Basquiat girl groupie. Dennis Hopper pegs the German art impresario Bruno Bischofberger: “This is superfantastic. I haf to haf this painting.” Christopher Walken plays the insensitive journalist fom Hell. Gary Oldman plays Schnabel. And Jeffrey Wright in the title role is brilliant. — Bill Gosden, New Zealand Film Festivals 1997

(108 minutes, 35mm)

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Funding for this season of films was given by: