Ermanno olmi/ songs of man

Best known in this country for his moving THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS, Ermanno Olmi is among the world’s great filmmakers and high among those whose work has been little seen and underappreciated. Hewing to his humane vision and devout Catholic values with disregard for changing cinematic fashion, Olmi has produced a body of quiet masterpieces celebrating the earthy life from which he came.

visiting artists
+ special programs

BILL PLYMPTON
THE ASYLUM STREET
THE MAD SONGS OF FERNANDA HUSSEIN
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
THE TIN HAT TRIO WITH THE PUPPET
FILMS OF LADISLAW STAREWICZ
DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN

myth into movie

Last fall we were pleased to present a retrospective of films by Greek director Michael Cacoyannis that focused on his acclaimed adaptations of plays by Euripides. Presented in conjunction with Portland’s Classic Greek Theater of Oregon, the series afforded the opportunity to see both contemporary film interpretations and live performances of ancient Greek drama, as well as classics of Greek cinema. This year, in conjunction with Greek Theater Festival 2001, we offer another set of intriguing films featuring works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, George Tzavella and Jules Dassin and his wife Melina Mercouri. September 15-30, the Greek Festival will present Euripides’ masterpiece THE BACHAAE in the beautiful outdoor amphitheater on the Reed College Campus. For information on the performances and a schedule of other events call (503) 258-9313.

Presentation of this series is made possible by the support of the Collins Foundation, Regional Arts and Culture Council and Classic Greek Theater.

human rights watch film festival

For those whose definition of “reality programming” does not mean escapist television fare, this selection of films by activist filmmakers dedicated to the struggle for human rights and social, political and economic justice, provides compelling viewing. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival was created in 1988 to advance public education on human rights and human wrongs by recognizing and showcasing outstanding new films incorporating these themes. Presented in London, and in New York in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Festival sheds a global perspective on the inhumanities that confront us all, challenging those with the power, be they perpetrator of injustice or witness, to act. We are pleased to present an eight-film selection drawn from this year’s Human Rights Watch International Traveling Film Festival co-presented by the Soros Documentary Fund. Special thanks to Andrea Holley for her assistance in making these selections available.

philip on film

Widely considered to be one of the most influential composers ever to work in film, Philip Glass has reinvented the relationship between music and the moving image. Rather than simply providing music as an accompaniment to an otherwise finished film, Glass’ approach has considered music an essential narrative force requiring true collaboration with the director.

Exploring Glass’s music as it relates to film, PHILIP ON FILM presents five nights of live performances of selected musical works created over the past 25 years. Featuring debuts of new films commissioned especially for this touring program as well as classics that Glass has freshly adapted for live performance, the series includes live concert screenings of Godfrey Reggio’s cult classics KOYAANISQATSI and POWAQQATSI, the first and second installment of the “Qatsi” trilogy; Jean Cocteau’s poetic LA BELLE ET LA BETE; Tod Browning’s haunting and witty DRACULA; and SHORTS, an evening featuring new work composed for short films by Atom Egoyan, Peter Greenaway, Shirin Neshat and Michal Rovner. With Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble performing live at each program, these events are a synthesis of music concert and film event that create a unique performance experience. All screenings/performances will take place in the Portland Art Museum’s North Wing Grand Ballroom. Advance tickets and discount Glass Pass series passes are available at the Film Center Office (503) 221-1156 or PICA (503) 242-1419.

cinema classics

THE CROWD

HENRY V

CITY LIGHTS

THRONE OF BLOOD

BREATHLESS

BOB LE FLAMBEUR

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID

TO TOP

SPECIAL SCREENINGS AND VISITING ARTISTS

SEP 20 THU 8 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE LIVE PERFORMANCE
THE ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS WITH
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.
US 1928
DIRECTOR: CHARLES RIESNER Tonight we welcome the return of Austin’s Asylum Street Spankers for a live performance of their score for Keaton’s classic STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. The Spanker’s inspired acoustic melange of 20s and 30s jazz, blues, hillbilly swing and sexed-up novelties lends joyous perspective to a film which has amused audiences for seven decades. Considered by many to be the funniest of Buster Keaton’s films, Buster plays a sissified college boy who returns home to work for his burly father, a riverboat captain on the Mississippi. Buster, attired in his dandy finest, is a bit of a disappointment to his dad, but wait till the cyclone hits. Tonight’s event promises to send you to the Medicine Hat Gallery Friday night for more of the Spankers’ delightful vaudeville-fusion of the old-fashioned, modern and off-the wall. (75 mins.)
Special admission: $10 general; $8 members.

SEP 22 SAT 1 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
STUDENT ANIMATION CELEBRATION
This summer more than 50 Portland area students, grades 5-12, enrolled in the Film Center’s animation classes offered in conjunction with Saturday Academy. Under the guidance of award-winning teacher Sharon Neimczyk, the students experimented in a variety of techniques and collaborated in their first films, which receive their public premieres at this special screening. Join the students, their families and friends for an afternoon of animated surprises.
free Admission

OCT 19 FRI 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE VISITING ARTIST
THE MAD SONGS OF
FERNANDA HUSSEIN
US 2001
DIRECTOR: JOHN GIANVITO John Gianvito’s compelling new feature examines the memory and social impact of the Persian Gulf War through three parallel stories set in and around Santa Fe. For the characters in each, the War’s legacy becomes central to their place in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and emblematic of the deep moral and ethical questions surfaced by all wars. For a Mexican-American woman divorced from an Egyptian husband, the lingering surname of Hussein makes her the target of hate, a heinous crime and social dismissal. For an angry teenager daring to affect change in the community, protest is met with family hostility and a life on the streets. And, for a returning veteran haunted by what he experienced first hand, the gap between civilian perception and military/political reality means irrevocable change. Gianvito’s bold, compassionate examination of the state of our culture juxtaposes profound questions with striking images and music to fashion a unique meditation on the delusions of patriotism and loss in the name of victory. “Both as a work of art and a critical piece of history... Thoroughly engaging as a story and provocative as an examination of American values.” —Chris Zinn (168 mins.)
John Gianvito will introduce his film.

OCT 20 SAT 7:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE VISITING ARTIST
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
US 2000
DIRECTOR: HELEN GARVEY The power of community, grass-roots activism has as many sources as there are issues, but most can trace their spiritual origins to the1960s and the emergence of socially conscious students on campuses throughout the country. Helen Garvey’s finely crafted REBELS WITH A CAUSE focuses on the history, ideas, and legacy of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the largest and most influential student organization of that tumultuous decade. Beginning in1960 with only a handful of students and high ideals, SDS claimed more than 100,000 members and close to 400 chapters across the country at its peak in 1968. Exploring the values and motivations of a generation of young people who sought to make a better world and the issues and individuals who influenced them, Garvey, who helped found an SDS chapter at Harvard, seamlessly weaves period film footage and the present day reminsencent of more than two-dozen key leaders—Tom Hayden, Robert Harber, Marilyn Webb, Cathy Wilkerson, Carolyn Craven among them, to captures the spirit of the organization and the decade-long movement that changed the country dramatically. If the ongoing struggle for participatory democracy calls, the eloquent words and actions of this watershed generation will resonate. (110 mins.)
Helen Garvey will introduce her film.

OCT 23 tue 8 P.M.
whitsell auditorium LIVE PERFORMANCE
THE TIN HAT TRIO WITH
THE PUPPET FILMS OF
LADISLAW STAREWICZ
RUSSIA 1911-1925
Russian artist and animator Ladislaw Starewicz’s early films are among the most unique in cinema. Starewicz brought to life amazing and delightful worlds starring his own company of animated insect actors—beetles, dragonflies, grasshoppers and other bugs of all personality. Tonight’s program includes his most famous film, THE CAMERAMAN'S REVENGE, a tale of insect infidelity; INSECT CHRISTMAS, THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER, THE FROG WHO WANTED TO BE A KING and COUNTRY RAT, TOWN RAT. Accompanying the films with their original scores is the Bay Area’s acclaimed TIN HAT TRIO. Their exotic and original blend of folk, contemporary classical, nueva tango and jazz-infused chamber music—performed with whimsical use of the accordion, violin, guitar and other string instruments—marries the avant from two eras into memorable magic.
Special admission $10, general; $8 members.

OCT 26 27 28
FRI 7 & 9:30 P.M., SAT 3, 5, 7 & 9 P.M., SUN 5 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE VISITING ARTIST
DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN
US 2001
DIRECTORS: D.A. PENNEBAKER, nick doob & CHRIS HEDEGUS Last year at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, Alison Krause and many other legendary roots musicians came together for a once-in-a-lifetime concert event. This two-day extravaganza of country, blues, bluegrass, folk and gospel recreated and celebrated the wonderful soundtrack to Joel and Ethan Coen’s O BROTHER WHER ART THOU? Capturing the on stage performances and behind-the-scenes camaraderie, Pennebaker and Hedegus (MONTEREY POP, DON’T LOOK BACK, THE WAR ROOM) beautifully celebrate the spirit and power of the music that lent emotional support and historic resonance to the Coen’s inventive synthesis of Preston Sturge’s social comedy and Homer’s “Odyssey.” (98 mins.)
nick doob will introduce the film Friday evening.

dance on film

Every year the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in association with the Dance Films Association, presents Dance On Camera, a festival initiated to foster creativity and encourage artistic collaborations between dancers and filmmakers. The oldest dance and film showcase in the world, each year’s selections offer diverse works exploring the intersection of these two art forms. We are pleased to present two programs featuring highlights from this year’s 29th Festival, organized and circulated by The Film Society.

SEP 27 29 THU 7 P.M., SAT 9:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE BEST OF DANCE ON CAMERA I
REST IN PEACE UK 2000 DIRECTOR: ANNICK VROOM Four siblings must bury their parents. As they dutifully carry the coffin, their behavior becomes anarchic. At home, constraints are loosened in a flurry of inexplicable, bizarre activity. But what is that, buried away in a desk drawer? It seems the parents had some strange secrets of their own. (9 mins)

A VERY DANGEROUS PASTIME CANADA 2000 DIRECTOR: LAURA TALER A witty collage of dance film, vintage footage, and interviews that plays with the idea that dance is something you have to “explain.” (14 mins).
ERIK BRUHN: I AM THE SAME, ONLY MORE DENMARK 2000 DIRECTOR: ERICK BRUHN With insight and empathy, director Pasborg explores the life, thoughts, and work of internationally renowned ballet star Erik Bruhn. (42 mins)

DUET: VARIATIONS ON THE CONVALESCENSE BRITAIN 2000 DIRECTORS: THE QUAY BROTHERS Given the Quay Brothers’ penchant for unsettling imagery, this is a surprisingly lyrical depiction of a relationship that has endured, with flashes of quirky humor to leaven the nostalgia. Choreographed by William Tuckett. (9 mins)

TREASURES FROM THE CINEMATHEQUE DE LA DANSE FRANCE 1906-1961 DIRECTORS: VARIOUS Patrick Bensard, Director of the Cinémathèque de la Danse, has edited together historical footage from the archive, featuring everything from the cakewalk to Anna Pavlova doing the “Dying Swan”; from Maurice Bejart doing a jazz dance to Bill Robinson’s single-take dance from Dixiana. The program includes additional gems, such as Josephine Baker doing the Charleston. (40 mins)

SEP 29 SAT 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE VISITING ARTIST
THE BEST OF DANCE ON CAMERA II
BOMBA: DANCING THE DRUM
US 2000
DIRECTOR: ASHLEY JAMES An irresistible fusion of dance, music, and Puerto Rican culture, as one dancing family, the Cepedas, keeps the tradition of Afro-Latino dance alive. Charting the evolution of Bomba from its beginnings in the sugar fields where slaves congregated to dance to the drum, James’ lively portrait affirms the continuing role of music and dance in binding family and community. (60 mins)
WITH
SWING, BOP AND HARD DANCE
US 1997
DIRECTOR: BEVERLY LINDSAY An entertaining and informative look at the black roots of swing dancing and all its variations as it moved from D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other American cities. Interviews with dancers, ethnomusicologists, and scholars shed light on the meaning of social dance in the community.
(48 mins)

SEP 27 29 THU 7 P.M., SAT 9:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE BEST OF DANCE ON CAMERA I
REST IN PEACE UK 2000 DIRECTOR: ANNICK VROOM Four siblings must bury their parents. As they dutifully carry the coffin, their behavior becomes anarchic. At home, constraints are loosened in a flurry of inexplicable, bizarre activity. But what is that, buried away in a desk drawer? It seems the parents had some strange secrets of their own. (9 mins)

A VERY DANGEROUS PASTIME CANADA 2000 DIRECTOR: LAURA TALER A witty collage of dance film, vintage footage, and interviews that plays with the idea that dance is something you have to “explain.” (14 mins).
ERIK BRUHN: I AM THE SAME, ONLY MORE DENMARK 2000 DIRECTOR: ERICK BRUHN With insight and empathy, director Pasborg explores the life, thoughts, and work of internationally renowned ballet star Erik Bruhn. (42 mins)

DUET: VARIATIONS ON THE CONVALESCENSE BRITAIN 2000 DIRECTORS: THE QUAY BROTHERS Given the Quay Brothers’ penchant for unsettling imagery, this is a surprisingly lyrical depiction of a relationship that has endured, with flashes of quirky humor to leaven the nostalgia. Choreographed by William Tuckett. (9 mins)

TREASURES FROM THE CINEMATHEQUE DE LA DANSE FRANCE 1906-1961 DIRECTORS: VARIOUS Patrick Bensard, Director of the Cinémathèque de la Danse, has edited together historical footage from the archive, featuring everything from the cakewalk to Anna Pavlova doing the “Dying Swan”; from Maurice Bejart doing a jazz dance to Bill Robinson’s single-take dance from Dixiana. The program includes additional gems, such as Josephine Baker doing the Charleston. (40 mins)

SEP 29 SAT 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE VISITING ARTIST
THE BEST OF DANCE ON CAMERA II
BOMBA: DANCING THE DRUM
US 2000
DIRECTOR: ASHLEY JAMES An irresistible fusion of dance, music, and Puerto Rican culture, as one dancing family, the Cepedas, keeps the tradition of Afro-Latino dance alive. Charting the evolution of Bomba from its beginnings in the sugar fields where slaves congregated to dance to the drum, James’ lively portrait affirms the continuing role of music and dance in binding family and community. (60 mins)
WITH
SWING, BOP AND HARD DANCE
US 1997
DIRECTOR: BEVERLY LINDSAY An entertaining and informative look at the black roots of swing dancing and all its variations as it moved from D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other American cities. Interviews with dancers, ethnomusicologists, and scholars shed light on the meaning of social dance in the community.
(48 mins)

BARBET SCHROEDER:
EXOTIC ENCOUNTERS
Looking forward to the fall release of Barbet Schroeder’s powerful new film OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS, which we premiered in February in the 24th Portland International Film Festival, we are pleased to present five of his early films which rarely receive screenings. Perhaps best known for his darkly wicked classic REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, Schroeder is less recognized for his influential role in post-new wave French cinema. In addition to producing all of Eric Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” and working as an assistant and producer with Jean Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, Schroeder has directed thirteen of his own films, provocative excursions into worlds unseen.

SEP 15 sat 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
MORE
FRANCE 1969
DIRECTOR BARBET SCHROEDER Schroeder’s stunning portrait of the dark underbelly of the Sixties’ sex and drugs revolution is like a Velvet Underground song on film: Mimsey Farmer stars as the gorgeous, Edie Sedgwick-like junkie princess who draws German drifter Klaus Grunberg into her sunlit world of Euro beach parties, retired Nazis and heroin fixes. With a brilliant, sinister score by Pink Floyd that perfectly captures the dreamy paranoia of Schroeder’s early vision. (116 mins.)
WITH
9 P.M.
THE VALLEY
FRANCE 1971
DIRECTOR: BARBET SCHROEDER Viviane (Bulle Ogier), a fashionable young French woman, journeys to the jungles of New Guinea in search of native crafts for a Paris boutique. Soon meeting hippie explorer Gaetan (Jean Pierre Kalfon) and sharing quasi-psychedelic visions, she joins his expedition to find a certain valley marked on the maps as "obscured by clouds." With a trance-like soundtrack by Pink Floyd and Nestor Almendros’ stunning cinematography of an incredibly lush landscape, THE VALLEY is an enigmatic period piece from an era where the eternal, mystical quest for self-discovery and Paradise Lost uniquely resonated. (114 mins.)

SEP 19 WED 7:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA
FRANCE 1975
DIRECTOR: BARBET SCHROEDER Threatened with death if he released a portrait that did not meet with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s approval, Schroeder found his first international success with his engaging documentary of a despotic madman. Despite his precautions, Amin inadvertently revealed his aberrant and ludicrous behavior, attracted international ridicule and eventually a critical mass of attention to his non-comic atrocities. Mercifully for the Ugandan’s not already executed, Amin found himself pressured into exile before the country was utterly destroyed, brought down in no small measure by Schroeder’s gutsy document. (90 mins.)

SEP 22 SAT 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
MATRISSE (MISTRESS)
FRANCE 1976
DIRECTOR: BARBET SCHROEDER Schroeder has paired the two leading stars of the New French Cinema, Gerard Depardieu and Bulle Ogier, as Olivier, a “normal” amateur burglar and Ariane, an accomplished professional maitress (dominatrix) who meet accidentally and become involved in a masochistic love/sex relationship. Calling to mind Nagisa Oshima’s IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES and Bernardo Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS (without their graphic sex) in its attempt to take on passion and obsession, this classic of underground love is a “wickedly funny fable on the more demanding side of romance.”—TIME OUT “To its credit and salvation, the movie makes the kinkiness look absurd, forlorn, and desperate.... The love between the stars is, on the other hand, real, straightforward, touched by old-fashioned jealousy, brought to a happy ending and to a refreshing hint that things do not change quite as much as they sometimes seem to."—Charles Champlin, LOS ANGELES TIMES. (112 mins.)

SEP 28 FRI 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE CHARLES BUKOWSKI TAPES
FRANCE 1984
DIRECTOR: BARBET SCHROEDER Originally produced for French television, Schroeder’s visual montage of four-minute monologues by the Los Angeles poet and novelist reveals Bukowski to be a man as extraordinary as his work and reputation. Shot over a three-year period, Bukowski takes to the streets of Hollywood to offer a personal tour of the dark side of the City of Angels, its misfits and preoccupations. “It’s a gem…an outrageously stimulating and unnerving all-night drinking session with a gutter-eloquent barroom philosopher who has made his soul your own.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES. (200 mins.)

"

The world of work, people who work.
I think I shall never grow tired of this extraordinary theme…Work is man’s chance to express himself…the average person’s opportunity to be creative...What I am against is the relationship man has today with the world in which he works.”—Ermannno Olmi.

ERMANNO OLMI: SONGS OF MAN

Best known in this country for his moving THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS, Ermanno Olmi is among the world’s great filmmakers and high among those whose work has been little seen and underappreciated. Hewing to his humane vision and devout Catholic values with disregard for changing cinematic fashion, Olmi has produced a body of quiet masterpieces celebrating the earthy life from which he came. Olmi was born in 1931, in Bergamo in northern Italy into a family of Catholic peasants and industrial workers. He began making short documentaries in the 1950s for a Milanese electric company, Edison Volta. Early on, he became enamored of the gritty, down-to-earth look of Italian neorealism and this interest, combined with his documentary background, eventually defined his filmmaking style. Avoiding political or sentimental overtones, Olmi portrays the quotidian existence of the "common man," never failing to find humor and empathy and with a sophistication that belies the seeming simplicity of his themes. We thank Camilla Cormanni of Cinecitta Holding,Rome, for organizing the series, with the assistance of Kent Jones, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Cinematheque Ontario and Pacific Film Archive.

SEP 14 16 FRI 7 P.M., SUN 7:15 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
IL POSTO
ITALY 1961
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Humane, heartbreaking, acutely observed, sometimes dumbfoundingly funny, IL POSTO chronicles the (mis)fortunes of a young Milanese who applies for a job in a large firm, suffers the humiliations of office life, and strikes up a relationship with a secretary (played by Olmi’s wife) in hopes of escaping both his smothering family and his numbing work routine. There is no better party scene in cinema than the painfully funny New Year’s Eve office celebration, which will make you cringe with familiarity. When Fassbinder was asked in his film school entrance exam to cite a movie in which an amateur actor plays the leading role, he replied, “IL POSTO by Ermanno Olmi. I thought the actor was outstanding, and I’m inclined to regard his performance as one of the best in film.” (90 mins.)

SEP 15 16 SAT 7 P.M., SUN 5 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
LONG LIVE THE LADY!
ITALY 1987
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI One of his most original, thought-provoking pictures, “quintessential Olmi” (VARIETY), LONG LIVE THE LADY! has had limited international release. Reminiscent of the disarming comedy of IL POSTO, LADY presents its strange, beguiling story through the eyes of a young man, one of six top graduates of a hotel and catering school. The six novices have been engaged to wait at a grand banquet given in a medieval Lombardy castle by a mysterious lady. In the tradition of such gastro-cinema as BABETTE’S FEAST, the film delights in the preparations for the banquet—the first half-hour is a tour de force of almost wordless arrival and kitchen ritual—but then shades into something almost Gothic as the wealthy and powerful guests, a grotesque assortment of bankers, scientists, and industrialists, gather for dinner. “One of the wittiest pictures of Olmi’s career it offers an incredibly rich tapestry of human behaviour.”— Tom Milne. (115 mins.)

SEP 20 22 THU 7 P.M., sat 8:45 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
TIME STOOD STILL
ITALY 1959
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Olmi’s feature debut announced a new poet of the cinema as well as many of his themes and strategies: the use of non-professional actors; an emphasis on landscape and the elements; a rigorous, documentary-like treatment of the world of work; and a quiet lyricism in which narrative proceeds obliquely, by means of looks and silences. Set in the wintry isolation of an unfinished mountain dam site where “time stands still,” the film centers on two watchmen living in a snowbound hut, who guard the site until the construction workers return in spring. When one goes on leave, he is replaced by a cheerful and naive young student from the city, who is the very opposite of the gruff, withdrawn veteran with whom he is teamed. The stark beauty of the alpine setting is splendidly caught in the Cinemscope cinematography, providing a monumental backdrop to Olmi’s intimate comedy of reconciliation. (80 mins.)

SEP 21 22 FRI 7 P.M., sat 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE FIANCÉS
ITALY 1963
DIRECTOR: ERMMANO OLMI In one of the most beautiful and important works of Italian cinema, Olmi refashioned neorealism as decisively as Pasolini and Antonioni had before him. A portrait of a welder from Milan who leaves his father and his fiancee for a job in Sicily only to be bitterly disillusioned by his experience in the South, THE FIANCÉS is distinguished by its humanity, formal elegance, and by the sophistication of its editing. “Olmi is one of the cinema’s most fastidious stylists, so much that the comparisons that come to mind, despite the neorealistic background, are not so much with De Sica and Rossellini as with Bresson and Ozu. He ends up achieving a poetry as intense, as concentrated, as a Japanese haiku.—THE LONDON TIMES. (76 mins.)

SEP 21 27 FRI 8:30 P.M, . THU 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE SCAVENGERS
ITALY 1970
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI “THE SCAVENGERS hearkens back to TIME STOOD STILL in its portrait of the friendship between two men, one much older than the other, who share little other than their vocation of isolation and duress. Set in 1945, the film has as its central character a returning soldier who cannot find a place for himself in the chaos of postwar Italy. He teams up with an old scavenger, and the two comb the slopes of the Dolomites for salvage metal from the war, occasionally digging up unexploded bombs in their increasingly desperate pursuit for their El Dorado- a buried armored car. Deceptively simple, it speaks volumes about our rat-race civilization in its vivid, quizzically funny way.” —Tom Milne, TIME OUT. (94 mins.)

SEP 28 FRI 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE LEGEND OF
THE HOLY DRINKER
ITALY 1988
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Olmi’s tale of spiritual mystery is based on a novella by Joseph Roth. Rutger Hauer, in a performance of depth and unsentimental charm, plays a former Silesian miner—a down and out alcoholic living under the bridges in Paris. When a natty gentleman bestows a gift of two hundred francs on him, insisting only that it be repaid at a Paris chapel dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux, it is the first of a series of miracles that transpires for the “holy drinker,” as he is repeatedly tempted from his path of redemption by drink and women. Scored with music by Stravinsky and shot with dusky elegance by Dante Spinotti, THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY DRINKER is full of human majesty. (128 mins.)

SEP 29 30 SAT 7 P.M., SUN 6 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS
ITALY 1978
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Seldom has a film been so acclaimed. Winner of the Palm d’Or and almost every other juried prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Olmi’s neorealist epic was greeted as a miracle by critics who despaired of ever seeing a return of humanism in the cinema. CLOGS became a surprise box office hit in Europe, breaking records in France and Italy. Olmi scripted, produced, directed, shot, and edited the film, using actual peasants to enact the lives of turn-of-the-century tenant farmers in Lombardy. Capturing the rhythms and rituals of their everyday lives with great precision, grace, and lyric intensity, Olmi also fashioned a powerful statement about economic oppression. (170 mins.)

OCT 5 FRI 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE CIRCUMSTANCE
ITALY 1974
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI THE CIRCUMSTANCE is perhaps the supreme instance of Olmi’s uniting of classic neorealism and the formal modernism of such directors as Antonioni and Resnais. Five members of a privileged Milanese family, all of them anxious or discontented in some way, drift in their own orbits of experience, oblivious to the others. The father, a company executive, must confront a massive restructuring at work; the enterprising mother cannot face the truth about her domestic life; the teenage daughter is all but mute in her emotional void; one son is intent upon his new house, the other on building a robot. Olmi masterfully organizes his elliptical narrative, shifting between the stories of each to stress their mutual isolation. A series of “circumstances”— a traffic accident, a work crisis, a birth, a thunderstorm—forces the family to apprehend its common bonds. “With its superb photography and expressive use of music, THE CIRCUMSTANCE represents a romantic highpoint in Olmi’s oeuvre”—Derek Elley. (97 mins.)

OCT 6 SAT 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
ONE FINE DAY
ITALY 1969
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI ONE FINE DAY is the muted portrait of a middle-aged advertising executive, heir apparent to the director’s office, who faces a crisis of conscience when he accidentally kills a man and finds that his position protects him from the law. Olmi artfully assays the dead life of this successful man and the tyranny and ethical void of his class privilege. By employing the fragmented editing style of THE FIANCÉS, evocatively limning a fog-veiled Tuscan landscape, and casting the major roles with non-actors who in real life hold similar positions to those of the characters they play, Olmi achieves that miraculous blend of neorealism and modernism that was his trademark. (102 mins.)

OCT 7 SUN 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE SECRET OF THE OLD WOODS
ITALY 1993
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI
Many of Olmi’s concerns—ecological, spiritual, and economic—are writ large in THE SECRET OF THE OLD WOODS, a gentle but forceful parable set in the Dolomites at the turn of the century. A retired military man who has inherited a magical forest, in which sprites and spirits live and every plant and animal can talk, is obliged to maintain and protect it until his young nephew comes of age. But greed gets the better of him, and he plans to cut down the ancient trees and sell the wood, against the protests of the nephew. The northern mountainous setting looks back to TIME STOOD STILL and THE SCAVENGERS—Olmi’s pantheistic vision of the forest is beautifully captured by Dante Spinottiís cinematography—and the theme of the mercenary official at odds with both nature and youth recalls LONG LIVE THE LADY! (134 mins.)

OCT 13 SAT 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
CAMMINACAMMINA
ITALY 1983
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Referring to the familiar chant one uses to prod a child to “keep walking, keep walking”, CAMMINACAMMINA is an enchanting epic that retells the Journey of the Magi. It opens as a group of peasants draw up for a present day pageant, and then— inexplicably and unannounced — finds them in the Biblical past, on a trek in pursuit of the Eastern star. Their pilgrimage through often harsh terrain— which the cast and crew also traverse, in arduous imitation of the narrative journey—becomes a metaphoric trek through the valleys and shadows of life and the certainties and doubts of faith. Olmi, who designed the sets and costumes, as well as writing, directing, and photographing the film, treats the pilgrimage as an ambulatory fresco of human frailties and communion; its conclusion passes through the discovery of the Christ child to a somber vision of humanity’s decline and end. “Feather light and full of life...[CAMMINACAMMINA is] pure delight... Olmi’s epiphany.”—Harlan Kennedy, FILM COMMENT. (165 mins.)
“Quite simply, the greatest contemporary Italian
director…The cinema does sometimes throw up a
creative artist whose work is as many textured as Shakespeare or Tolstoy. Renoir is one, and Bergman, and Ray: Olmi is another.”
—David Shipman.

OCT 14 sun 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
GENESIS: THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD
ITALY 1994
DIRECTOR: ERMANNO OLMI Unsurprisingly, Olmi approached the Biblical story of Genesis with faith, humility, and directness; there are no special effects or manufactured miracles. Shot in the Moroccan desert with a cast of Bedouin non-professionals, and scored with North African music, the tale is recounted by a grizzled sage (Omero Antonutti, who reappears as Noah) to his agog grandson. Olmi fills the screen with poetic images of landscapes, sky, water, animals, human faces, light - and lets the bountiful beauty bespeak the presence of God. All dialogue, other than that between sage and grandson, is taken directly from The Bible. “A poetic, timeless statement on the soul and the need for spiritual values in a cold world, undercoated with the director’s unmistakably mystical tenderness for people.”—Ron Holloway. (101 mins.)

TO TOP

OCT 13 SAT 7 & 9 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
WEEKEND
FRANCE 1967
DIRECTOR: JEAN-LUC GODARD Godard’s dark meditation of bourgeois society surfaces the key themes which made his early films famous: the growing violence in “civilized” society, the supremacy of nature over man’s industry and the reality of revolution as the only cure for out-of-control materialism. In this self-described “film found on the scrapheap,” a murderous middle class couple out on a Sunday drive encounter a series of increasingly grisly auto accidents. Only by adding to the mayhem can they negotiate the horrifying breakdown of the world around them and preserve their possessions. At once savagely comic and surreally terrifying “It’s his vision of hell and it ranks with the greatest. As a mystical movie [it] ranks with Bergman’s SEVENTH SEAL and SHAME.”—Pauline Kael, THE NEW YORKER. (95 mins.)

Oct 19 20 21
fri 7 & 9 P.M., sat 6 & 8 P.M., sun 4, 6 & 8 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
BOB LE FLAMBEUR
FRANCE 1955
DIRECTOR: JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE In the tradition of the great gangster films of the 1930, Melville’s finest film is the story of an aging safecracker and compulsive gambler who passes like a prince through the nightclubs and darkened streets of Paris. One day, broke and down on his luck, he masterminds the biggest gamble of his life…the robbery of the Deauville Casino. Melville captures the ambience of the Pigalle underworld with great affection in a very personal blending of crime and comedy—his love letter to a Paris gone by. “ A wonderful movie with all the formal beauty, finesse and treacherous allure of a green baize.”—TIME OUT (97 mins.)

OCT 26 27 28 FRI 7 & 9, SAT 7& 9, SUN 5 & 7
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID
FRANCE 1964
DIRECTOR: LUIS BUNUEL One of Bunuel’s most elegant and enigmatic works, DIARY serves as a pointed observation of the rise of Fascism in1930s France and a trenchant look at French social structure and sexual mores. Jean Moreau (at the peak of her stardom) becomes a Chambermaid at the country home of a rather eccentric bourgeois family. Enduring the advances of the manor master (Michel Piccoli), the mistress’s (Francoise Lugagne) religious fixations, foot-fetishist father (Jean Ozenne), and the suspicion that the filthy groundsman (George Geret) may have committed a heinous murder all takes surprising and singular composure. Sharply and unrelentingly, Bunuel’s wicked humor and striking visual sensibility captures the intimate inhumanities, the bored ambivalence and the subconscious affinities between physical and political aggression. (97 mins.)

Expand your horizons as a film lover or mediamaker through this fall’s courses exploring film history and criticism. Offered in cooperation with the Portland State University Department of English, courses in the series are open to members of the public for transferable academic credit as well as to degree seeking students enrolled at PSU. Selected individual screenings, with a preceeding introductory lecture by PSU faculty, are also open to the public on an individual ticket basis. Please see page 20 of the exhibition schedule for individual screenings. For more information or to register contact the Registrar at classes@nwfilm.org or (503) 276-4259.

CLASSICAL
HOLLYWOOD CINEMA
MONDAYS, SEP 24-NOV 26, 5:30-9:10 P.M.
COURSE #132C
LEEROM MEDOVOI This course surveys the film culture of classic Hollywood, from the silent era of the 1920s through the breakup of the studio system in the 1940s and 1950s. Tracing cinema’s rise as a dominant medium in American culture, the couse will explore the principal genres of the period and how they changed over time. Weekly readings, writing assignments and home video screenings will complement class lectures and films. Among the directors considered are: King Vidor, Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Roy Del Ruth, Busby Berkeley, John Ford, Frank Capra, Preston Sturges, Orson Welles and Douglas Sirk.
10 SESSIONS TUITION: $395

LEEROM MEDEOVOI is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University. He holds a B.A. from Cornell University and PhD from Stanford University.

CELLULOID SHAKESPEARE
TUESDAYS, SEP 25-NOV 27, 5:30-9:10 P.M.
COURSE #132D
RAYNA KALAS This survey course examines film versions of Shakespearean play texts along with films that are indirectly or loosely based on those texts. To what end do these films borrow from, tamper with or perpetrate the cultural authority of the Bard? How do particular interests-- technical, national, economic-- stage and shape the seeming universality of these performance narratives? These questions will be used to challenge our assumptions about unity or integrity of source and to encourage seeing these texts as parts of a many-headed Shakespearean monster. Among the films to be screened are: Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD, Olivier’s HENRY V, Sidney’s KISS ME KATE, Wilcox’s FORBIDDEN PLANET, Stoppard’s ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, Lubitsch’s TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Luhrmann’s ROMEO AND JULIET and Taymor’s TUTIS.
10 SESSIONS TUITION: $395

RAYNA KALAS is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University who has worked as a Research Associate for the UCLA Film and Television Archive. She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania

For those whose definition of “reality programming” does not mean escapist television fare, this selection of films by activist filmmakers dedicated to the struggle for human rights and social, political and economic justice, provides compelling viewing. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival was created in 1988 to advance public education on human rights and human wrongs by recognizing and showcasing outstanding new films incorporating these themes. Presented in London, and in New York in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Festival sheds a global perspective on the inhumanities that confront us all, challenging those with the power, be they perpetrator of injustice or witness, to act. We are pleased to present an eight-film selection drawn from this year’s Human Rights Watch International Traveling Film Festival co-presented by the Soros Documentary Fund. Special thanks to Andrea Holley for her assistance in making these selections available.

OCT 25 THU 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
PROMISES
ISRAEL 2000
DIRECTORS:JUSTINE SHAPIRO, B.Z. GOLDBERG AND CARLOS BOLADO Rather than focusing on current events or “hard news,” PROMISES offers a surprisingly fresh insight into the Middle East conflict when filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg returns to his hometown of Jerusalem to see what seven children–both Palestinian and Israeli–think about war, peace, and just growing up. Each child offers a dramatic, touching and sometimes hilarious insight into the Middle East conflict and into the experience of growing up in the charged and complex city of Jerusalem. Though they live only 20 minutes apart, these children exist in completely separate worlds; the physical, historical and emotional obstacles between them run deep. PROMISES explores this legacy of distrust and bitterness, but signs of hope emerge when some of the Palestinian and Israeli children dare to cross the checkpoints to meet one another. (108 mins.)

OCT 28 SUN 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE CLOSED DOORS
EGYPT 1999
DIRECTOR: ATEF HETATA Set during the Gulf War, this engrossing feature debut by Atef Hetata centers on a teenage boy, Mohamad, caught in an ever-tightening vise between his incestuous longings for his mother and the authoritarian temptations of a local religious leader. Mohamad lives with his strong-minded and loving mother, after his father abandoned the two of them and Mohamad’s older brother to start a new family. When Mohamad’s high school teacher begins to court his mother, Mohamad’s feelings of betrayal escalate and push him to embrace fundamentalist ideas as a way of dealing with the confusion of adolescence and sexual awakening. The CLOSED DOORS touches on taboos in contemporary Egyptian society, while examining their social and political implications on a human level. (105 mins.)

NOV 1 THU 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
RALPH BUNCHE:
AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY
US 2000
DIRECTOR: WILLIAM GREAVES The legacy of 1950 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche (the first person of color to win the prize), who died in 1971, has faded from public consciousness in the 30 years since his death. Given the historical significance of Bunche’s life as a diplomat and scholar, and his impact on the shape of twentieth-century political life, William Greaves’s film acquires compelling importance. Bunche was an icon in the decades after World War II and his role as the behind-the-scenes mediator, in 1949, of armistice agreements between Israel and its four Arab neighbors marks the only time in the long history of Middle Eastern conflict that agreements of this kind were signed by all parties. His critical contribution to the de-colonization of Africa and the rest of the Third World, and his pioneering work in UN peacekeeping operations and conflict resolution techniques are revealed in fascinating detail. (117 mins.)

MYTH INTO MOVIE

SEP 13 thu 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
OEDIPUS REX
ITALY 1967
DIRECTOR: Pier Paolo Pasolini Directly translated by Pasolini from Sophocles’ play, supplemented with a prologue and epilogue, Pasolini’s dream-like version of the Oedipus myth tells the classic story of an “innocent” young man who unwittingly marries his mother, despite warning. “The relationship of hatred and love between father and son is what produces history,” wrote Pasolini, and it is clear that his vision of the story, set in the present, has autobiographical significance for the director, made explicit in the prologue, when the army officer father expresses jealousy of his own baby. Filmed in and around a fifteenth-century adobe city in the Moroccan desert, Pasolini’s psycho-analytic adaptation enhances the timelessness of the story with a musical track that mixes Roman songs, ancient Japanese melodies, Mozart and works he composed. (110 mins.)

SEP 16 SUN 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
NEVER ON SUNDAY
GREECE 1960
DIRECTOR: JULES DASSIN “At the time, this spirited comedy defined Greek cinema, if not Greece itself, for the world, a fact which has many built-in ironies. It was written and directed by the American Jules Dassin, who, exiled by McCarthyism, married Melina Mercouri and adopted Greece as his home. Mercouri established her worldwide reputation with her portrayal of Ilya, the happy Piraeus hooker who bucks the system and helps organize the other prostitutes to do the same. Dassin plays a Connecticut Yankee, Homer Thrace, who comes to Greece to find an ancient truth, finds, in Ilya, "the fall of Greece," and sets to work remaking her. But Ilya, and the film, argues for a modern Greece that wants to be known for itself: a Greece that is vital because it is political, joyous and sensual, because it is communal. This does, after all, hark back to the ancients, but not via Pygmalion.”—Pacific Film Archive. (97 mins.)

SEP 21 fri 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
ANTIGONE
GREECE 1962
DIRECTOR: GEORGE TZAVELLAS "An unjustly neglected version of the Sophocles drama, adapted and directed by George Tzavellas so that the action is lucid and uncluttered, the characters are driven by instinct and passion, and the voices are eloquent. The young Irene Papas is the strong yet defenseless Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, who rebels against the kingly authority of her uncle Creon (the great Manos Katrakis); she breaks an unjust law - a law that violates her deepest feelings and her sense of justice and obligation - and is condemned to be buried alive. Papas and Katrakis give splendidly matched antagonistic performances, and there are such masterly sequences as Antigone stealing into the countryside to bury her dead brother, who has been left exposed in the sun, and such powerful images as the blind, decrepit Teiresias in the shocking daylight.”—Pauline Kael, THE NEW YORKER. (88 mins.)

SEP 23 SUN 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
PHAEDRA
US/GREECE 1961
DIRECTOR: JULES DASSIN Updated from Euripides’ HIPPOLYTUS by avant-garde writer Margarita Liberaki, Dassin’s grand story of doomed passion unfolds among the jet set. Wealthy shipping magnate Raf Vallone sends his second wife (Melina Mercouri) to bring back his estranged son (Anthony Perkins) from exile in London in the hope that he can get him to marry the daughter of a business associate,cementing their empire. But the love affair between stepmother and stepson spells tragedy for all involved. (116 mins.)

SEP 26 WED 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
MEDEA
ITALY 1970
DIRECTOR: PIER PAOLO PASOLINI Photographed in brilliant color in Syria, Turkey and Italy, Pasolini’s MEDEA is an exotic and controversial reconstruction of the Greek legend featuring Maria Callas in her first and only film. Her Medea is a magnificent creature from a ritualistic background—the barbaric, magical world of her native Colchis—that finds her in a strange, materialistic world when Jason and the Argonauts bring her to Corinth and the Court of Creon. Her struggle between the two worlds—between myth and reason, nature and civilization— drives Medea to cause the death of Creon’s daugher and to kill her own two sons. Pasolini has emphasized the regal mystery and sultry brooding of Medea…The processes of savage ritual and demonic incantations are ever present.. —Albert Johnson, San Francisco Film Festival (110 mins.)