30
Years of Film @ International House
THE
JANUS COLLECTION
Truly
one of our national treasures, American film culture without
Janus Films is unimaginable. Film @ International House is celebrating
30 + years with a selection of titles from Janus’
extraordinary collection, all in brand-new or restored 35mm
prints. Here’s your chance to celebrate their achievements
and to be dazzled all over again by highlights from their incomparable
collection.
Saturday,
January 10 at 7pm
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:
Take One
dir.
William Greaves, US, 1968, 35mm, 75 mins, color
In
this one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid, director William
Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York's
Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of
movie they're making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over
and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew,
locals wander casually into the frame. This wildly innovative
60’s counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly
focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies.
CLICK
HERE for Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:
Take One Program Notes
Saturday,
February 21 at 7pm
Woman
in the Dunes
dir.
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan, 1964, 35mm, 147 mins, color, Japanese
w/ English subtitles
Woman
in the Dunes was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal,
idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara. An amateur entomologist
leaves Tokyo for a remote, vast desert to study an unclassified
species of beetle. After missing the bus back to civilization,
he spends the night in the home of a young widow who lives in
a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema’s
most bristling, unnerving and palpably erotic battles of the
sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean
struggle. Academy Award nominee for Best Director and Best Foreign
Language Film.
CLICK
HERE for Woman
in the Dunes Program
Notes
Saturday,
March 21 at 7pm
Vagabond
(Sans toit ni loi)
dir.
Agnes Varda, France, 1985, 35mm, 105 mins, color, French w/
English subtitles
Sandrine
Bonnaire won the Best Actress Cesar for her portrayal of the
defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch
at the beginning of the film. Agnes Varda pieces together Mona’s
story through flashbacks, producing a splintered portrait of
an enigmatic woman. With its sparse, poetic imagery, Vagabond
is a stunner and won Varda the top prize at the Venice
Film Festival.
CLICK
HERE for Vagabond
Program Notes
Saturday,
April 11 at 7pm
Zazie
dans le Metro
dir.
Louis Malle, France/Italy, 1960, 35mm, 89 mins, color, French
w/ English subtitles
Based
on Raymond Queneau's farcical novel about a little girl left
in Paris for a weekend with her decadent uncle, this wild spree
goes overboard reproducing Mack Sennett-style slapstick, parodying
various films of the 1950s. Playing with editing and color effects,
it gradually becomes a rather disturbing nightmare about fascism.
Forget the preposterous claim by a few critics that the movie's
editing influenced Alain Resnais, but there's no doubt that
Malle affected Richard Lester and was clearly influenced himself
by William Klein, whom he credited on the film as a visual consultant.
- Jonathan Rosenbaum
CLICK
HERE for Zazie
dans le Metro Program Notes
Click
Here for the Janus Collection Fall 08 Archive
Click
Here for the Janus Collection Summer 09
Archive
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