edinfilmburgh guild

2016/2017 PROGRAMME filmedinburgh guild

The Edinburgh Film Guild, established in 1930, is The Guild has its own cinema and clubrooms How to join: the oldest continuously running film society in within the Filmhouse building, which are Becoming a member is easy. You must be aged 18 the world. located next to Screen 3. or over, and you can join in person before any of our screenings or online at: The Guild is run and managed by volunteers. Our 30 seat cinema has a state-of-the-art www.edinburghfilmguild.com digital projector and a 5.1 sound system. Membership: You can enjoy a drink and a chat in the Guild Full Membership...... £60 Clubrooms before a screening. (complete 2016/17 season of films) Basic Membership...... £20 (admission to any 5 films) Top-Up Subscription...... £20 (admission to any 5 films). Members can purchase additional ‘top-ups’ until they reach a total of £60, when they automatically become Full Members with access to the full 2016/17 season of films.

THE GUILD ROOMS, FILMHOUSE, 88 LOTHIAN ROAD, EDINBURGH EH3 9BZ www.edinburghfilmguild.org.uk The Edinburgh Film Guild is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in Scotland. Scottish Charity Number SC041851. PROGRAMME OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2016 The Samurai Trilogy 04 2016/2017 The Emigrants & The New Land 05 Costa-Gavras 06 Larisa Shepitko 07 Alien-Ation 08 Heroic Bloodshed: & Chow Yun-Fat 09 Special Screening: Hallowe’en 30 NOVEMBER — DECEMBER 2016 Antonio Pietrangeli 10 Court Martial 11 Screwball Comedy 12 Nasties II / II Nasties 14 Sci-Fi: Time Travel 15 Special Screening: Christmas 30 Film Calendar: 16 JANUARY — FEBRUARY 2017 World Cinema 18 20 Alejandro Jodorowsky 22 Pinky Violence with Meiko Kaji 23 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2017 The Gamblers 24 Matarazzo Melodramas 25 Imagining 18th Century Europe 26 Going Underground 28 ’s West 29 THE Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto The Samurai Trilogy is “a rousing, emotionally SAMURAI gripping tale of combat and self-discovery. Sunday, 9 October 2016 at 4.30pm Based on a novel that’s often called Japan’s TRILOGY Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1954 | 93 min | Japanese with English subtitles ‘Gone with the Wind’, this sweeping saga... is a passionate epic that’s equal parts tender Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple love story and bloody action.” (Blu-ray.com) Sunday, 16 October 2016 at 4.30pm Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1955 | 103 min | Japanese with English subtitles Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island Sunday, 23 October 2016 at 4.30pm Hiroshi Inagaki | Japan 1956 | 105 min | Japanese with English subtitles

The Samurai Trilogy depicts the ascension of the legendary ronin Musashi Miyamoto from confused but talented youth to Master Samurai. At the heart of The Samurai Trilogy is the brilliant performance by Toshiro Mifune as the legendary swordsman. Awards: Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

“Portraying the traditional quest for honor and self-possession as a noble pursuit that can so easily become one’s own funeral pyre, The Samurai Trilogy attains timelessness by finding a perfectly tuned 4 balance between the glories of the past and the great hindsight of the present.” (Slant Magazine) OCTOBER/NOVEMBER NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 2016 | | SUNDAY FRIDAYS AFTERNOONS AT 8:00PM 5

(Utvandrarna) (Nybyggarna) (1972) charts, and New Land (1972) The (1971) The Emigrants October at 3.00pm* 30 Sunday, 2016 min | Swedish with | 191 Jan | Sweden Troell 1971 subtitles English LandThe New at 3.00pm* 6 NovemberSunday, 2016 min | Swedish | 202 with Jan | Sweden Troell 1972 subtitles English mid-nineteenth-century monumental The The epic Emigrants theover course of two films, a Swedishpoor farming family’s voyage America to and their effortsto put down roots in this beautiful but forbidding new world. and Liv give Ullmann Sydow remarkablyMax Von authentic performances as Karl-Oskar and Kristina, a couple who meet with one physical and emotional trial after another on their arduous journey. Emigrants The won the GoldenAwards: Globe Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress (Liv it In Sweden won the Guldbagge Awards forUllmann). Best Film and Best Actor (Eddie Axberg). It received AcademyAwardsfive nominations including: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress. (*Please note earlier 3.00pm start.) The Emigrants The New Land ) “Troell’s epic film is infinitely infinitely is film epic “Troell’s Ebert) (Roger absorbing moving.” and “It’s a tale with as many clashing realities as there multi-dimensionalare characters, and it stands in itsall grandeur as Troell’s accomplishment.” defining Magazine (Slant Costa-Gavras A trilogy of films from the master of the political thriller

Z The Confession (L’Aveu) State Of Siege (Etat de Siège) Sunday, 9 October 2016 at 7.00pm Sunday, 16 October 2016 at 7.00pm Sunday, 23 October 2016 at 7.00pm Costa-Gavras | France, Greece 1969 | 127 min | Costa-Gavras | France, Italy 1970 | 138 min | French Costa-Gavras | France 1972 | 121 min | French with French with English subtitles with English subtitles English subtitles Costa-Gavras’ landmark feature about an incorruptible Based on a harrowing true story from the era of Costa-Gavras puts the United States’ involvement in judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who investigates the Stalinist Soviet bloc show trials, the film stars Yves Latin American politics under the microscope in this killing of a reformist politician (Yves Montand) at a Montand as a Czechoslovak Communist Party official arresting thriller. An urban guerrilla group, outraged peace demonstration. who, in the early fifties, is abducted, imprisoned, at the counter-insurgency and torture training and interrogated over a frighteningly long period, clandestinely organised by the CIA in their country, “With democracy disappearing in a fog of dirty tricks, and left in the dark about his captors’ motives. Also abducts a U.S. official (Yves Montand) to bargain for conspiracy and cover-up, ‘Z’ was an indictment of the starring Simone Signoret and Gabriele Ferzetti, the the release of political prisoners. The kidnapping US-backed coup in Greece. With dark humour, a faux- film is an unflinching, intimate depiction of one of the soon becomes a media sensation, leading to violence. documentary style...it made Gavras' name as master of a twentieth century’s darkest chapters, told from one Co-written by Franco Solinas, State of Siege piercingly genre that married the pace and suspense of the action bewildered man’s point of view. critiques the American government for supporting thriller with political critique.” (Maya Jaggi, The Guardian) foreign dictatorships, while also asking difficult Awards: Jury Prize and Best Actor award (Jean-Louis questions about the efficacy of radical violent acts to 376 Trintignant), Cannes Film Festival. Academy Award for oppose such regimes. Best Foreign-Language Film. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM 7

follows the path of two The Ascent at 7.00pm 6 NovemberSunday, 2016 min | Larisa | 111 Shepitko | Soviet Union 1976 subtitles English with Russian film overwhelming final emotionally Shepitko’s won the Berlin Golden Bear Film Festival at the 1977 and has been hailed around the world as the finest Soviet film of its decade. Set II’s duringWarWorld darkest Ascent The days, peasant soldiers, cut off from their troop, who trudge through the snowy backwoods of Belarus seeking refuge among villagers. Their harrowing trek leads them on a journey of betrayal, heroism, and ultimate transcendence. , announced herself

as an important new in voice Soviet cinema. Wings October at 7.00pm 30 Sunday, 2016 Larisa Shepitko | Soviet min Union | 85 | 1966 subtitles English with Russian For her first feature after graduating, LarisaShepitko trained her lens on the fascinating Russian character actress who Bulgakova, Maya gives a marvellous performance as a once heroic Russian fighter pilot now quiet, disappointingly a living ordinary school life a as principal. Subtly portraying desperation one woman’s with elegant, spare camera work and casual, fluid storytelling, Shepitko, with Wings , an icon of icon , an Larisa Shepitko sixties was Soviet seventies cinema, and tragically cut short was killed a in when she aged forty, just was as she car crash 1979, in The scene. the international onto emerging body left is of work she though small, behind, masterful, evoking for genius her visually and characters’ more never is worlds interior striking two her in than finestworks. The career of Larisa Shepitko Alien-AtionAlien-Ation They’re cheap, gory and a lot of fun. Two B-movies inspired by Ridley Inseminoid Scott’s Alien... (aka Horror Planet) Friday, 21 October 2016 at 8.00pm Norman J. Warren | UK/ 1981 | 93 min A crew of interplanetary archaeologists is threatened when an alien creature impregnates one of their members (Judy Geeson), causing her to turn homicidal and murder them one by one. Inseminoid “stands out above many low budget sci-fi Contamination pictures of the era thanks to strong production values... (aka Alien Contamination) recommended to fans of the more obscure sci-fi space Friday, 14 October 2016 at 8.00pm movies and British exploitation.” (Mondo Esoterica) Luigi Cozzi | Italy 1980 | 95 min A former astronaut helps a government agent and a police detective track the source of mysterious alien pod spores, filled with lethal flesh-dissolving acid, to a South American coffee plantation controlled by alien pod clones. Branded as a ‘video nasty’ in the UK, director Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination takes the premise of Ridley Scott’s classic Alien and peppers it with exploding “First it’s an Italian sci-fi which means low budget, guts galore and a dangerously infectious soundtrack corny dialog, bad dubbing, and the ripping off of some from the celebrated Italian prog-rockers Goblin. successful American film. That’s a formula for fun times if there ever was any.” (The Film Connoisseur) 8

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER Heroic Bloodshed RingoRingo LamLam && ChowChow Yun-FatYun-Fat The term ‘heroic bloodshed’ was coined in the late 1980s to refer to a type of Hong Kong cinema City On Fire revolving around stylized action sequences and themes of brotherhood, duty, honour, redemption and violence, where gun play took the place of martial arts. | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM Though John Woo may be the best known Heroic Bloodshed director, Ringo Lam has his own distinctive approach to both the genre and its most iconic performer, Chow Yun-Fat.

City On Fire Full Contact Friday, 28 October 2016 at 8.00pm Friday, 4 November 2016 at 8.00pm Friday, 11 November 2016 at 8.00pm Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1987 | 105 min | Cantonese Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1987 | 98 min | Cantonese Ringo Lam | Hong Kong 1992 | 104 min | Cantonese with English subtitles with English subtitles with English subtitles An undercover cop (Chow Yun-Fat) infiltrates a gang of Sentenced to three years in prison, Yiu (Tony Leung Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat), a tough guy with a sense of jewel thieves, but things go terribly wrong during a heist. Ka Fai) is “fresh meat” for the hardened criminals and honour, saves his debt-ridden friend Sam from loan sharks. Hooking up with gay gangster Judge (Simon “Lam’s heist flick – despite its riveting action – is triad stooges that run things, and is preyed upon by Yam) and his dubious henchmen, the friends are perhaps better appreciated as a character study of sadistic guard Scarface (Roy Cheung). The virtuous double-crossed in a violent heist. Sam saves his own a world-weary undercover cop and law-enforcing Ching (Chow Yun-Fat) intervenes, teaching him the skin, while Jeff is left for dead. Big mistake. When Jeff protagonist (Chow Yun-Fat, playfully intense) who ropes of prison life, and a tender friendship develops comes back, he’s mad. is torn between his police duty and loyalty to his between the two. criminal friends.” (Time Out, Hong Kong) “Prison on Fire was one of the last truly unique and A “blast of pure, adrenaline pumping carnage from start good films to come out of Hong Kong during the late to finish. If brutal, over the top thrills and deranged, “The movie that gave us Quentin Tarantino’s career.” darkly funny criminals sound like your bag, give this (Indiewire) 80s. Nominated for eight Hong Kong Film Awards.” (Blu-Ray.com) unhinged Cult classic a spin.” (Cult Movie Guide) 9 Antonio Pietrangeli

The work of this overlooked master of Italian cinema combines the moral urgency of Neorealism with the satirical eye of commedia Adua and Her Friends Adua and Her Friends all’italiana. Antonio Pietrangeli’s films most often focus on the evolving role of women in Italian society as they experience the promises and perils of a new, ambiguous freedom in the “boom” years of Italy’s modernisation.

Adua and Her Friends (Adua e le compagne) The Visit (La Visita) I Knew Her Well (Io la conoscevo bene) Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 4.30pm Sunday, 20 November 2016 at 4.30pm Sunday, 27 November 2016 at 4.30pm Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1960 | 129 min | Italian Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1963 | 111 min | Italian Antonio Pietrangeli | Italy 1965 | 115 min | Italian with English subtitles with English subtitles with English subtitles Adua, Lolita, Marilina and Millie are four sex workers Pietrangeli’s exquisite miniature describes the day-long Unfolding in a series of episodic snapshots, the film who become unemployed when new laws lead to the encounter of two would-be lovers who meet through documents the life of Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli), a closure of all legal brothels. Under Adua’s leadership, a lonely-hearts ad. Adolfo (François Périer) is a fussy young woman who moves to Rome in the early 1960s they pool their savings to open a restaurant on Roman bookstore clerk who travels to the Po Valley to to pursue a career as a model and actress. the outskirts of Rome. However, as they try to rid meet Pina (Sandra Milo), who works for an agricultural “A tragicomic portrait of one woman’s struggle to find themselves of a life they no longer want to be part of, supply firm. Worried that their marriageable days are her way in a society she longs to be a part of, I Knew Her they soon discover they cannot escape their past. The numbered, the two have already decided to fall in love Well offers both a critique of Italian celebrity culture and extraordinary cast of this nearly forgotten film includes with each other—but first they have to get acquainted. Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni, Sandra Milo an impressively progressive examination of femininity. (Juliet of the Spirits), Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima mon ”Despite the fact that La Visita is an outrageously [It] is a thrilling rediscovery, by turns funny, tragic, and 103 amour), and Gina Rovere (Big Deal on Madonna Street). funny film with plenty of zesty scenes its core is altogether jaw-dropping.” (Criterion review) disturbingly serious.” (DVDTalk)

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016NOVEMBER/DECEMBER

King and Country Awards: Best Actor (Tom Courtenay), Venice Film Festival, where the film was also nominated for Sunday, 4 December 2016 at 4.30pm the Golden Lion. Nominated for four BAFTA awards, Joseph Losey | UK 1964 | 87 min including Best Film. During World War I, an army private (Tom Courtenay) is accused of desertion during battle. The officer (Dirk “Director Joseph Losey attacks the subject with Bogarde) assigned to defend him at his court-martial confidence and vigor, and the result is a highly finds out there is more to the case than meets the eye. sensitive and emotional drama, enlivened by sterling

performances and a sincere screenplay.” (Variety) | SUNDAYS, 4.30PM Court Martial Two classic films.

Breaker Morant Awards: Best Foreign Film, Golden Globe Awards. Winner of 10 major Australian Film Institute Sunday, 11 December 2016 at 4.30pm awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Bruce Beresford | Australia 1980 | 107 min At the turn of the twentieth century, three Australian “A palpable, and justifiable, air of anger, army lieutenants (Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, bewilderment and injustice permeates Bruce and Jack Thompson) are court-martialled for alleged Beresford’s Boer War drama, a major entry of the war crimes committed while fighting in South Africa. Australian New Wave of the late 70s and early 80s.” With little time to prepare, an Australian major, (Electric Sheep Magazine) appointed as defence attorney, must prove that they were just following orders and are being made into political pawns by the British military leadership.

112 Design For Living Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 7.00pm Ernst Lubitsch | USA 1933 | 91 min Sc r e w b a l l A risqué relationship story and a witty take on creative pursuits, the film concerns a commercial artist (Miriam Comedy Hopkins) unable—or unwilling—to choose between Hailing from the tradition of Shakespeare’s the painter (Gary Cooper) and the equally dashing playwright (Fredrich March) she meets on a train en battle-of-the-sexes comedies, like Much route to Paris. Design for Living is film director Lubitsch Ado About Nothing and Taming of the Shrew, at his sexiest, an entertainment at once debonair and racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure. Screwball Comedy developed as a distinctive “A daring movie that satirizes sexual mores and heaps genre in 1930s and 40s Hollywood. It brought irony upon irony.” (Scene Stealers.com) to the fore an array of strong and exciting My Man Godfrey female characters who, despite their eventual Sunday, 20 November 2016 at 7.00pm ‘taming’ as per the genre convention, have Gregory La Cava | USA 1936 | 94 min Design For Living lingered in the cultural imagination at their Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) needs a “forgotten man” to win a scavenger hunt, and most vibrant and dominant. no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park (William Powell), who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene THIS SEASON SHOWCASES SOME OF THE hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged BEST EXAMPLES OF SCREWBALL COMEDY family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia (Gail Patrick), who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two. “My Man Godfrey, one of the treasures of 1930s screwball comedy, doesn't merely use Lombard and Powell, it loves them... God, but this film is beautiful.” 12 (Roger Ebert) My Man Godfrey

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016NOVEMBER/DECEMBER Nothing Sacred The Doctor Takes A Wife Sunday, 27 November 2016 at 7.00pm Sunday, 11 December 2016 at 7:00pm William Wellman | USA 1937 | 77 min Alexander Hall | USA 1940 | 88 min Certain she was dying from radium poisoning, Hazel June Cameron (Loretta Young) is the successful Flagg (Carole Lombard) is delighted to learn from her author of the book “Spinsters Aren’t Spinach”, about doctor that it was a false alarm. But when New York how women don’t need men to feel fulfilled. She City reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) shows up makes the mistake of hitching a ride with Dr. Timothy looking for a story about a young girl braving terminal Sterling (Ray Milland) in a car festooned with a “Just NothingNothing Sacred Sacred illness, Hazel decides that she’s sick again. Wally whisks Married” sign. When reporters assume she’s married,

her off to Manhattan, where her supposed courage it’s the end of her book about the joys of the single | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM wins her many admirers. The toast of the town, she life, but also the start of a new career as the voice falls in love with Wally and dreads being discovered. of the married woman. When Sterling finds this perception of marriage to be a career boost, he’s ready “It’s one of the great screwball comedies of the ‘30s, one of to go along with the charade. Trouble is, Sterling’s Carole Lombard’s best roles...shot in beautiful, understated fiancee isn’t so thrilled with his bogus marriage. Technicolor, a real rarity in its time.” (Blu-Ray.com) Holiday Sunday, 4 December 2016 at 7.00pm George Cukor | USA 1938 | 95 min “Marvellous ‘sophisticated comedy’ about a prototype Holiday dropout (Cary Grant in one of his best performances) who takes a rich upper class family by storm: arriving engaged to the conventionally snobbish younger daughter, stirring up latent doubts and resentments through his carefree disregard for material proprieties and properties, he ends up by showing the yearningly dissatisfied elder sister (Katharine Hepburn) the way to a declaration of independence.” (Time Out) “Katharine Hepburn is in her best form...her acting is delightful and shaded with fine feeling and 13 The Doctor Takes A Wife understanding throughout.” (Variety) Snuff “There are some movies where the story behind the film is more interesting that the story in the film. Friday, 18 November 2016 at 8.00pm Snuff is one of those movies, and the story behind the Michael Findlay, Roberta Findlay | USA 1976 | 76 min film had repercussions that are with us to this day. A so-called “snuff” movie depicting the exploits of Though shoddily made and not nearly as controversial a cult figure who leads a gang of bikers in a series of as its reputation, Snuff has been at the centre of a supposedly real killings on film. maelstrom of sex, death and politics ever since it was first released in 1976.” (Stomp ) “Snuff might not be the ‘best’ film produced in the Americas in the 1970s, but it may be the decade’s Nasties II / II Nasties most important ‘worst’ film. Rumoured to depict the Two of the more notorious entries from the actual murder of a female crewmember in its final Video Nasties moral panic of the early 1980s. moments, its notoriety consolidated the urban legend of snuff film.” (Alexandra Heller-Nicholas)

I Spit On Your Grave “A surprisingly well-executed revenge story that (aka Day Of The Woman) plays like a brutally raw nerve – a terrifyingly stark Friday, 25 November 2016 at 8.00pm view of the real horror of rape, painted by bizarre, Meir Zarchi | USA 1978 | 101 min skewed cinematography, gory violence, and a keen sense of creeping atmosphere and dread. To some, An aspiring writer is repeatedly gang-raped, I Spit on Your Grave is a masterpiece of the torture humiliated, and left for dead by four men whom she genre because it presents a brutal reality and forces systematically hunts down to seek revenge. audiences to endure it. To others, the film is nothing more than filth. And to be frank, neither side is entirely right or wrong.” (R. L. Schaffer) “This movie is an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures. Because it is made artlessly, it flaunts its motives. There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of 14 sadism and suffering.” (Roger Ebert)

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM

TIME TRAVEL

Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up And Scald Myself With Tea The Sticky Fingers Of Time Primer Friday, 2 December 2016 at 8.00pm Friday, 9 December 2016 at 8.00pm Friday, 16 December 2016 at 8.00pm Jindřich Polák | Czechoslovakia 1977 | 90 min Hilary Brougher | USA 1999 | 82 min Shane Carruth | USA 2004 | 77 min Sci-fi crazy comedy where, in the near future, a Tucker Harding (Terumi Matthews) is a female writer of Engineers Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David technology enabling time travel has been developed hard-boiled fiction from the 1950s, who is mysteriously Sullivan) build and sell technology with the help of and is now in commercial use. A group of former Nazis transported from 1950s to 1990s Brooklyn. There she their friends Robert (Casey Gooden) and Phillip (Anand conspire to alter the results of the Second World War meets Drew (Nicole Zaray) who stumbles across a copy Upadhyaya). But when Aaron and Abe accidentally by travelling back in time and supplying Adolf Hitler of one of Tucker’s novels in a local book store and is invent what they think is a time-machine, Abe builds with a hydrogen bomb. To this end, they bribe corrupt intrigued to find, inside the book, a newspaper clipping a version capable of transporting a human and puts time-machine pilot Karel, who agrees to assist them. describing Tucker’s death 40 years earlier. Drew tries to the device to the test. As the two friends obsess over But only time will tell whether their plan can succeed. unravel the mystery. their creation, they discover the dark consequences of their actions. “A classically-structured farce which adds temporal “Take that old favourite of filmmakers — the trials displacement to the traditional causes of comic and tribulations of relationships in New York — and Awards: Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival misunderstanding: twin brothers, duplicate suitcases, add to the equation the rather odd dimension of time- 2004. Best Feature Film, London International Festival small errors with knock-on effects. It really hits its travel and what you get is this rather sweet number. of Science Fiction 2005. stride when it explores the best time-travel trope of A distinctly low (even negligible) budget and a fresh “Primer was head-scratchingly baffling for an awful lot of all – that if something goes wrong, you can always young cast of unknowns make this offbeat drama come the time... Yet it had me completely gripped like nothing go back in time again and try to fix it. It’s a brilliantly to life, and the witty script...keeps things bubbling else around.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian) plotted climax.” (MostlyFilm) along nicely.” (Film4) 15 PROGRAMME 2016

OCTOBER 2016 NOVEMBER 2016 DECEMBER 2016

Date Film Time Date Film Time Date Film Time Sun Musashi Miyamoto (p.4) 4.30 Fri Prison on Fire (p.9) 8.00 Fri Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald 8.00 9 Oct Z (p.6) 7.00 4 Nov 2 Dec Myself with Tea (p.15) Sun The New Land (p.5) 3.00 Sun King and Country (p.11) 4.30 Fri Contamination (p.8) 8.00 14 Oct 6 Nov The Ascent (p.7) 7.00 4 Dec Holiday (p.13) 7.00 Sun Duel at Ichijoji Temple (p.4) 4.30 Fri Full Contact (p.9) 8.00 Fri The Sticky Fingers of Time (p.15) 8.00 16 Oct The Confession (p.6) 7.00 11 Nov 9 Dec Sun Adua and Her Friends (p.10) 4.30 Sun Breaker Morant (p.11) 4.30 Fri Inseminoid (p.8) 8.00 21 Oct 13 Nov Design for Living (p.12) 7.00 11 Dec The Doctor Takes A Wife (p.13) 7.00 Sun Duel at Ganryu Island (p.4) 4.30 Fri Snuff (p.14) 8.00 Fri Primer (p.15) 8.00 23 Oct State of Siege (p.6) 7.00 18 Nov 16 Dec Sun The Visit (p.10) 4.30 Sun The Man Who Came to Dinner (p.30) Fri City on Fire (p.9) 8.00 4.30 28 Oct 20 Nov My Man Godfrey (p.12) 7.00 18 Dec (Christmas Special & Guild AGM) Sat Carnival of Souls (Hallowe’en Special 7.00 Fri I Spit on Your Grave (p.14) 8.00 29 Oct Screening) (p.30) 25 Nov Sun The Emigrants (p.5) 3.00 Sun I Knew Her Well (p.10) 4.30 30 Oct Wings (p.7) 7.00 27 Nov Nothing Sacred (p.13) 7.00

16 Note: Brackets (p.1,2,3 etc) show the page number with details of each film. PROGRAMME 2017

JANUARY 2017 FEBRUARY 2017 MARCH 2017

Date Film Time Date Film Time Date Film Time Sun Redes (p.18) 4.30 Fri Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (p.23) 8.00 Fri Death Line (p.28) 8.00 15 Jan (p.20) 7.00 3 Feb 3 Mar Sun A River Called Titas (p.19) 4.00 Sun The Gambler (p.24) 4.30 Fri El Topo (p.22) 8.00 20 Jan 5 Feb (p.21) 7.00 5 Mar Barry Lyndon (p.27) 7.00 Sun The Housemaid (p.18) 4.30 Fri Female Convict Scorpion: Beast 8.00 Fri (p.29) 8.00 22 Jan (p.20) 7.00 10 Feb Stable (p.23) 10 Mar Sun Trances (p.19) 4.30 Sun Nobody’s Children (p.25) 4.30 Fri The Holy Mountain (p.22) 8.00 27 Jan 12 Feb (p.21) 7.00 12 Mar The Lady and the Duke (p.27) 7.00 Sun Touki Bouki (p.19) 4.30 Fri Lady Snowblood (p.23) 8.00 Fri The Hellbenders (p.29) 8.00 29 Jan (p.21) 7.00 17 Feb 17 Mar Sun The Rocking Horse Winner (p.24) 4.30 Sun The White Angel (p.25) 4.30 19 Feb La Marseillaise (p.26) 7.00 19 Mar A Royal Affair (p.27) 7.00 Fri Quatermass and the Pit (p.28) 8.00 Fri (p.29) 8.00 24 Feb 24 Mar Sun California Split (p.24) 4.30 26 Feb Fellini’s Casanova (p.26) 7.00

Note: Brackets (p.1,2,3 etc) show the page number with details of each film. 17 WORLD CINEMA PROJECT

THE FILM FOUNDATION'S WORLD CINEMA PROJECT, ESTABLISHED BY MARTIN The Housemaid (Hanyo) SCORSESE, IS DEDICATED TO PRESERVING Sunday, 22 January 2017 at 4.30pm Kim Ki-Young | South Korea 1960 | 110 min | AND RESTORING NEGLECTED FILMS FROM Korean with English subtitles AROUND THE WORLD. Redes A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 4.30pm is unleashed under one roof in this venomous THIS SEASON OFFERS A RARE OPPORTUNITY Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann | Mexico melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-Young. TO EXPERIENCE THE RICH DIVERSITY OF 1936 | 59 min | Spanish with English subtitles “The Housemaid is almost operatic in its depiction of a THESE FILMS. In this vivid, documentary-like dramatisation of the presumably mild-mannered housekeeper who takes daily grind of men struggling to make a living by revenge on her employer, his family, and anyone who fishing on the Gulf of Mexico, one worker’s terrible might have the least bit of affection for the piano- loss sparkes a political awakening in he and his fellow playing patriarch. Formally quite radical, the film labourers. A singular coming together of talents, jumps perspectives, breaks the fourth wall, and just Redes, commissioned by a progressive Mexican generally disregards conventional rules of storytelling. government, was co-written and gorgeously shot by And it’s all the more exciting for this restless, near- the legendary photographer Paul Strand. baroque approach to narrative.” (Slant Magazine)

The Film Foundation has helped to restore nearly Redes is “packed with extraordinary imagery and a “The Housemaid, is one of the true classics of South 700 films, which are made accessible to the public powerful message. Redes hearkens back to Soviet Korean cinema, and when I finally had the opportunity through programming at festivals, museums, and films from the decade prior and points toward the to see the picture, I was startled. That this intensely, educational institutions around the world. Neorealist films in the decade to come.” PopOptiq( ) even passionately claustrophobic film is known only to 18 the most devoted film lovers in the west is one of the great accidents of film history.” (Martin Scorsese)

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

Touki Bouki A River Called Titas (Titash Ekti Nadir Naam) Trances (El Hal) | SUNDAY| AFTERNOONS Sunday, 29 January 2017 at 4.30pm Sunday, 5 February 2017 at 4.00pm* Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 4.30pm Djibril Diop Mambéty | Senegal 1973 | 89 min | Ritwik Ghatak | India 1973 | 158 min | Bengali with Ahmed El Maanouni | Morocco/France 1981 Wolof with English subtitles English subtitles | 87 min | Arabic with English subtitles With a stunning mix of the surreal and the The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambety paints a vivid, beautiful, elegiac saga focuses on the tumultuous the dynamic subject of this captivating musical fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of documentary. It tells the story of how this group of this French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama, the Titas River in pre-Partition East Bengal. musicians caused a social revolution in Morocco in the two young lovers (Magaye Niang and Mareme Niang) (*Please note earlier 4.00pm start.) early 1970s. By choosing a form of expression which long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of “What makes this epic movie so memorable is was a radical departure from the invasive “languid France, but their escape plan is beset by complications Ghatak’s poetic feeling for landscapes and the Oriental sound”, they became the spokesmen for a both concrete and mystical. Characterised by dazzling ordinary villagers whose lives play out against its generation of rebellious youth. imagery and music, the alternately manic and cyclical, natural rhythms...There is certainly nothing in meditative Touki Bouki is widely considered one of the American cinema that feels anything remotely like A most important African films ever made. “What you see here is a mix of the poetry, the music River Called Titas.” (White City Cinema) and the theatre that goes way back to the roots of the Awards: Cannes Film Festival International Critics Award “The film is a work of pure genius. A passionate elegy Moroccan culture. And I think the group was singing for a dying culture, it moved me profoundly, and damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings “Shot through with French New Wave fizz that flies continues to haunt me to this day. Based on a novel and their prayers all came through their singing. in the face of conventional African cinema. Full of by the Bengali author Advaita Barman and adapted And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El experimental touches, frenetic editing, inspired flights for the screen by Ghatak, A River Called Titas, tells the Maanouni.” (Martin Scorsese) of fantasy...Mambéty’s debut has enough energy to get raw and powerful story of a dying river and a dying to the moon - and back.” (Empire) culture.” (Deepa Mehta) 19 I Shot Jesse James Samuel Fuller Sunday, 15 January 2017 at 7.00pm “The daring films of maverick American Samuel Fuller | USA 1949 | 81 min filmmaker Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) were so Bob Ford (John Ireland) murders his best friend Jesse James (Reed Hadley) in order to obtain a pardon that far ahead of their time that only now are they will free him to marry his girlfriend (Barbara Britton), fully appreciated as some of the most bravely but is plagued by guilt and self-disgust. I Shot Jessie James outspoken, politically progressive and visually “At once modest and intense, I Shot Jesse James is an audacious works of the Hollywood studio era. engrossing pocket portrait of guilt and psychological torment, and an auspicious beginning [directorial debut] for the maverick filmmaker.” Criterion( ) While his films bravely addressed urgent and deeply sensitive historical and social issues rarely touched by the studios, they were also The Steel Helmet deeply entertaining. Sunday, 22 January 2017 at 7.00pm Samuel Fuller | USA 1951 | 81 min Fuller is perhaps best summarised as, above The Steel Helmet all, a master storyteller whose ardent love of a A ragtag group of American soldiers battle against good “yarn” gave his films their unique spark superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War. of unexpected drama and emotional depth.” (The Harvard Film Archive) “A surprise commercial hit that celebrated the heroism of the American G.I. while pointedly critiquing the Korean War and the racist policies of the Army and US government, The Steel Helmet defined a mixture of genuine patriotism and skepticism unprecedented in Hollywood and absolutely key to Fuller’s cinema.” (Harvard Film Archive)

20 The Steel Helmet

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 Run of the Arrow White Dog Sunday, 29 January 2017 at 7.00pm Sunday, 12 February 2017 at 7.00pm Samuel Fuller | USA 1957 | 86 min Samuel Fuller | USA 1982 | 90 min A embittered Confederate soldier () is unable Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American to accept the defeat of the South. Immediately after the racism was misunderstood and withheld from release end of the Civil War, he heads West to seek out the still when it was made in the early eighties; today, this proudly free Native Americans who, like him, have no notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and Run of the Arrow respect for the government of the United States. gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German Shepherd

“Fuller’s courageous and gripping scrutiny of race, | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM prejudice and patriotism was...far bolder than anything dog, only to discover through a series of horrifying Hollywood had seen...as a result [the film] was woefully incidents that the dog has been trained to attack misunderstood and neglected.” (Harvard Film Archive) black people, while Paul Winfield plays the animal trainer who tries to correct this behaviour. A snarling, uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait The Crimson Kimono of the evil done by that most corruptible of animals: Sunday, 5 February 2017 at 7.00pm the human being.

Samuel Fuller | USA 1959 | 81 min “Hate is a dog from hell in White Dog, Samuel Fuller’s The friendship between Detectives Joe Kojaku (James abused and abandoned late-career masterpiece about The Crimson Kimono Shigeta) and Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) runs homegrown racism. It’s easy to see why people did not deep and is seemingly impervious to racial tensions. want to face Fuller’s unmuzzled provocation: Rather In the course of investigating a stripper’s murder they than a reassuring pat on the back, the film leaves...[the meet Christine Downs (Victoria Shaw), who painted audience] with the view of conditioned hate spinning her portrait. Both men fall in love with Christine, but among the characters like a Russian roulette, until it she only has eyes for Joe. Tensions rise between the attacks with precisely the kind of power that wrestles trio, and Joe can’t help seeing race as part of the issue. the filmmaker’s audacity from its B-movie roots and into politicized art.” (Slant Magazine) “Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono is mostly a hard-boiled cop thriller, but also manages to make a defiant anti-racist statement without ever getting on a soapbox. Fuller [also] keeps up equally with the tricky murder case, never faltering or failing to provide a gut-punch of a scene.” (Combustible Celluloid) 21 White Dog Alejandro Jodorowsky Chilean film and theatre director, screenwriter, and actor “venerated by cult El Topo cinema enthusiasts” for his work which “is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation.” (Senses of Cinema)

El Topo The Holy Mountain (La montaña sagrada) Friday, 20 January 2017 at 8.00pm Friday, 27 January 2017 at 8.00pm Alejandro Jodorowsky | Mexico/USA 1970 |124 min Alejandro Jodorowsky | Mexico/USA 1973 |115 min | Spanish with English subtitles | Spanish with English subtitles El Topo A black-clad gunfighter (Alejandro Jodorowsky) A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque embarks on a symbolic quest in an Old West version scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious of Sodom and Gomorrah. The film takes place in two imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces parts. The first half resembles a , albeit a him to seven wealthy and powerful people, each surreal one. The second is a love story of redemption representing a planet in the solar system. These and rebirth. seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide’s assistant, divest themselves of their worldly “El Topo is a gloriously wild, over-the-top tale that puts The Holy Mountain goods and form a group of nine who will seek the Holy the gory into allegory. It’s a surreal, biblical spaghetti Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there western with a strong shot of Zen.” and become immortal. (Philip French, The Guardian) The Holy Mountain is “astonishing, outlandish; unlike anything made before or since...the movie comes riddled, top to tail, with all manner of extraordinary setpieces.” (Xan Brooks, The Guardian) The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain El Topo

22

J ANUARY/FEBRUARY Pinky Violence with Meiko Kaji Pinky Violence, a genre of Japanese exploitation films that emerged in the late 60’s, mixes the erotic elements found

in Pink Films with the action and violence 2017 found in Yakuza crime films. They typically

feature sexy women being dragged through | FRIDAYS, 8.00PM hell and kicking ass because they’ve been wronged and are looking for revenge, or they’re just part of a bad ass gang of chicks looking to keep hold of their turf.

Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter Female Convict Scorpion: Beast Stable Lady Snowblood Friday, 3 February 2017 at 8.00pm Friday, 10 February 2017 at 8.00pm Friday, 17 February 2017 at 8.00pm Yasuharu Hasebe | Japan 1970 | 85 min | Japanese Shunya Itô | Japan 1973 | 87 min | Japanese with Toshiya Fujita | Japan 1973 | 96 min | Japanese with English subtitles English subtitles with English subtitles Mako (Meiko Kaji) and her girl gang “The Alleycats!” Following her successful prison break, Scorpion (Meiko Gory revenge is raised to the level of visual poetry in enter a dispute with male rival street gangsters “The Kaji) is hiding in a brothel. Her friend tries to keep her Toshiya Fujita’s stunning Lady Snowblood. A major Eagles”, a band of racist macho pigs who hate ‘half- identity secret, but the brothel’s madam discovers inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga, this breeds’ (the offspring of mixed-race Afro-American/ that Scorpion is the ex-girlfriend of the vice officer endlessly inventive film, set in late nineteenth- Japanese couples). When one of the girls starts dating who killed her lover. Torture follows, as the madam’s century Japan, charts the relentless path of vengeance a half-breed, the “The Eagles” begin a terror campaign lover was a member of the Yakuza, and his thuggish taken by a young woman (Meiko Kaji) whose parents against them. Mako and her gang fight back. cohorts try to frame Scorpion and get her re-arrested. were the victims of brutal criminals.

“Youth! Violence! Meiko Kaji leading a girl gang called “A heady mix of fierce attitude, visual potency, and “Lady Snowblood is a classic...[offering] fans of martial “The Alleycats!” This is Japanese exploitation at an artful unflinching violence...a stylish slice of Japanese arts and samurai films plenty of action, a beautiful, and unexpectedly moving apex.” (Joseph A. Ziemba) exploitation cinema that helped cement the fiendishly cool tragic heroine, a gripping tale of revenge, all set against Meiko Kaji’s status as an iconic screen siren.” a fascinating historical backdrop.” (Beyond Hollywood) 23 (Electric Sheep Magazine) The Gamblers

The Rocking Horse Winner California Split The Gambler Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 4.30pm Sunday, 26 February 2017 at 4.30pm Sunday, 5 March 2017 at 4.30pm Anthony Pélissier | UK 1949 | 91 minutes Robert Altman | USA 1974 | 108 minutes Karel Reisz | USA 1974 | 109 minutes A young boy receives a rocking horse for Christmas and Charlie (Elliott Gould) is a motormouth gambler who New York City English professor Axel Freed (James soon learns that he is able to pick the winning horse at sucks Bill (George Segal) into his on-the-fly life after Caan) outwardly seems like an upstanding citizen. But the races. This adaptation of a story by D.H. Lawrence they are mistaken for a pair of grifters at an old-folks’ privately Freed is in the clutches of a severe gambling works on several different levels: as an indictment of poker house. Charlie is a magnetic personality who addiction that threatens to destroy him. the consuming nature of rampant materialism, as an always has the inside information and a new line on “James Caan is unforgettable in this tense Oedipal nursery tale of a boy desperately trying to a big score. Bill can’t help but follow him–he makes examination of a college professor who can’t stop earn the love of his cold mother, and as a tale of the everything sound so exciting! gambling. One of the many overlooked gems of the supernatural. “It’s funny, it’s hard-boiled, it gives us a bond between 1970s.” (Fantastica Daily) “One of the most underrated post-war British movies.” (Film4) two frazzled heroes trying to win by the rules in a “James Caan is excellent and the featured players are game where the rules require defeat. California Split “A British film which explores the complex links between superb...James Toback’s script commingles candor and is a great movie and it’s a great experience, too; we’ve sex, money and power is rare indeed.” (Time Out) compassion, without hostility or superficial sociology been there with Bill and Charlie.” (Roger Ebert) or patronizing.” (Variety) 24

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 Matarazzo Melodramas “Love and death dance an endless tango in Raffaello Matarazzo’s emotionally lavish melodramas.” (Slant Magazine) In the late 1940s and early 1950s, film critics, international festivalgoers, and other cinephiles were swept up by the tide of Italian Neorealism. Nobody’s Children

Meanwhile, mainstream Italian audiences were (I figli di nessuno) | SUNDAYS, 4.30PM indulging in a different kind of cinema experience: Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 4.30pm Raffaello Matarazzo | Italy 1952 | 96 min | the sensational, extravagant melodramas of director The White Angel Raffaello Matarazzo. Italian with English subtitles Nobody’s Children is the first half of an (L’angelo bianco) Though turning to Neorealism for character types and overflowing diptych of melodramas chronicling Sunday, 19 March 2017 at 4.30pm settings, these box office hits about splintered love the labyrinthine misfortunes of a couple torn Raffaello Matarazzo | Italy 1955 | 155 min | Italian affairs and broken homes, all starring mustachioed with English subtitles cruelly apart by fate (and meddling villains). matinee idol Amedeo Nazzari and icon of feminine When Guido (Amedeo Nazzari), a young count, In The White Angel, Raffaello Matarazzo’s sequel to purity Yvonne Sanson, luxuriate in delirious plot falls for Luisa (Yvonne Sanson), the poor daughter his blockbuster Nobody’s Children, the perpetually twists and overheated religious symbolism. of one of the miners who works at his family’s put-upon Guido and Luisa (Amedeo Nazzari and quarry, his mother and her nefarious henchman Yvonne Sanson) return for a new round of trials and “Check out any of Matarazzo’s films you can get your scheme epically to separate the two forever. tribulations. This time, the reversals of fortune are hands on, but especially the twin bill of Nobody’s even more insanely ornate, a plot twist involving Children and The White Angel. They are literally doppelgängers beats Hitchcock’s Vertigo to the punch loaded with magic.” (Films Worth Watching) by three years, and the whole thing climaxes with a “The wonderfully precise characterizations and jaw-dropping women-in-prison set piece. costly thematic ripples anticipate Douglas Sirk and the Coen brothers, yet Matarazzo’s films feel wholly unique in terms of narrative pacing. Ebbs and flows “Matarazzo maintains a narrative logic and emotional in a character’s life aren’t just built around cause and authenticity that defy ridicule and race to the sublime. effect, but a godly omniscience that is predetermined, Here is a unique, thrilling talent.” (The New York Times) prefabricated to see how far these people are able to bend.” (Slant Magazine) 25 IMAGINING 18th CENTURY EUROPE

La Marseillaise Fellini’s Casanova Sunday, 19 February 2017 at 7.00pm (Il Casanova di Federico Fellini) Jean Renoir | France 1938 | 132 min | French with Sunday, 26 February 2017 at 7.00pm English subtitles Federico Fellini | Italy 1976 | 154 min | Italian with La Marseillaise focuses on the early part of the French English subtitles Barry Lyndon Revolution, shown primarily from the viewpoint Vainly seeking wealthy patrons for his scholarly of the ordinary citizens of Marseille. While Renoir’s pursuits, Casanova (Donald Sutherland) is seen as sympathies clearly lie with the common people, both an intellectual figure of the Enlightenment and a HISTORY, ADVENTURE, ROMANCE, celebrating the common man bringing to an end the licentious voluptuary of a corrupt society about to be feudal system and moving toward the idea of a nation swept away by the French Revolution. He’s inexorably REVOLUTION. EUROPE DURING THE TIME based on principles of liberty and equality, his film drawn by his inclinations and reputation into a OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, AS REIMAGINED also humanises the king and queen. succession of chilly, unfulfilling sexual encounters. IN THE WORK OF SOME OF EUROPE’S La Marseillaise is “one of the finest and richest Adapted from the autobiography of Giacomo historical films ever made.” (Martin Scorsese) Casanova, the 18th century adventurer and writer. GREATEST FILMMAKERS. “Powerful and poignant, Renoir manages to make a “A spectacular visual fantasy which succeeds in direct, humanist statement about the decadence of capturing the emotional and moral void at the heart the rich and the power of the masses without fuss or of the Casanova myth.” (Film4) extravagance, never patronising or posturing.” (Film4) 26

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017 | SUNDAYS, 7.00PM

Barry Lyndon The Lady and the Duke A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære) Sunday, 5 March 2017 at 7.00pm (L’Anglaise et le Duc) Sunday, 19 March 2017 at 7.00pm Stanley Kubrick | UK 1975 | 184 min Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 7.00pm Nikolaj Arcel | Denmark 2012 | 137min | Danish and Stanley Kubrick’s exquisitely detailed adaptation Eric Rohmer | France 2001 | 129 min | French with English with English subtitles English subtitles of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about The struggle between a conservative, repressive the picaresque exploits of an 18th century Irish During the French Revolution, Scottish aristocrat Grace aristocracy and the ideas of the Enlightenment adventurer. Despite the obstacle of his relatively poor Elliott (Lucy Russell) and her former lover, the Duke are played out in this story of the love affair in the Irish birth, Raymond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) manages of Orleans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), find themselves on 1770s between England’s Princess Caroline Matilda by various stratagems and devices to become the opposite sides of the conflict. Elliot’s friendship with the (Alicia Vikander), wife of the mentally ill Danish King wealthy but ill-respected Barry Lyndon. Duke is tested severely when he votes in the revolutionary Christian, and the king’s German physician, Johann convention for the King’s death. Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), both social progressives. Awards: British Academy Award for Best Director. Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Costume The story is adapted from the 18th-century journals of “Arcel gives this true story the shape and bite of a well- Design, Art Direction, and Adapted Musical Score. Edinburgh-born expatriate Scotswoman Grace Elliott. crafted fiction, and its political themes are every bit as stirring as the romance.” (Robbie Collin, The Telegraph) “Kubrick’s pictorial sense is consistently mesmerising Rohmer’s ”masterstroke is to evoke 18th century Paris and engaging...You can’t tear your eyes from it... in the style of paintings from the period — the actors “This struggle between a conservative, repressive [the film] creates a world that is sumptuously, even were shot on blue screen with the paintings dropped regime and representatives of Enlightenment shockingly, vivid.” (Anthony Quinn, The Independent) in afterwards. They look as if they are in a pop-up preceded the French Revolution and is crucially related book...the effect is strangely artificial and hyper-real.” to the issues of their day and to the present.” (Philip (BBC Film Review) French, The Guardian) 27 Quatermass and the Pit “Quatermass and the Pit stands out as one of Hammer (aka Five Million Years to Earth) Films Productions most artistically successful Friday, 24 February 2017 at 8.00pm ventures, offering...a world troubled by violence and demon-haunted ancient fears that is a long Roy Ward Baker | UK 1967 | 97 min way removed from the optimistic spirit of the age When a team of anthropologists led by Dr. Mathew so often conveyed in popular culture of the period.” Roney (James Donald) and his assistant (Barbara (Horrorview.com) Shelley) discover a cylindrical object and primate bones in an underground construction site, rocket “The narrative, and the concepts that drive [the scientist Dr. Quatermass (Andrew Keir) is called in to film] ...are both brilliant and original, and all that is decipher its origins and explain its strange effects on required is to allow them to dazzle. Effectively, the people. The film was written by Nigel Kneale. script is the star. The influence of Kneale’s masterwork is always lurking in modern sci-fi, where his original Going Underground ideas have now become ubiquitous staples. As such, the legacy of Quatermass and the Pit is hard to underestimate.” (Independent Cinema Office)

Death Line “A minor masterpiece of British horror.“ (Film4) (aka Raw Meat) “One of the great British horror films, Death Line is a Friday, 3 March 2017 at 8.00pm classic example of what Hellraiser director Clive Barker Gary A. Sherman | UK 1972 | 87 min calls ‘embracing the monstrous’.“ (Time Out) An underground tunnel collapses in London in 1892, “This is one of the best of the contemporary-set British and those trapped under its rubble survive only by horrors , and competes with the stronger American eating one another’s flesh. Subsequent generations movies with its very clever, gruesome premise, dollops live on via similar means, but eventually only one of splatter, lots of cynicism and some nice, down-at- person remains. Forced out of hiding, the disease- Where cannibals and spaceships are just heel London locations...a very inventive and effective ridden cannibal begins to look for his nutrition on the another part of the daily commute. thriller, with a fantastic turn from Pleasence.” (Empire) platform of Russell Square tube station. The film stars Donald Pleasence as Inspector Calhoun. 28

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017

Sergio Corbucci’s West “It’s a bleak, brilliant and violent vision of an immoral West.” (PopOptiq) FRIDAYS, | 8.00PM Django The Hellbenders (I Crudeli) Friday, 10 March 2017 at 8.00pm Friday, 17 March 2017 at 8.00pm Sergio Corbucci | Italy/Spain 1966 | 92 min | Italian Sergio Corbucci | Italy/Spain 1967 | 90 min | Italian with English subtitles with English subtitles Django (Franco Nero) rides into a town controlled by Colonel Jonas (Joseph Cotton) is a fanatical and The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio) two rival factions: a gang of racist KKK types wearing unrepentant ex-Confederate who led a regiment red hoods and a gang of gold-hungry Mexicans. called ‘The Hellbenders’ in the recently ended Civil Friday, 24 March 2017 at 8.00pm In Fistful of Dollars style, Django plays both gangs War. Colonal Jonas and his sons now plan to use Sergio Corbucci | Italy/France 1968 | 115 mins | against each other in an attempt to get money and stolen money as a way to revive the Confederacy. Italian with English subtitles possibly revenge. Django's motivations for his actions Set in the Utah Territory during a bitter cold winter of are left vague throughout, although...hinted at. 1899, a mute gunslinger appropriately named Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) faces off against a gang of “Django is considered the finest example of the Spaghetti blood-thirsty bounty hunters led by their vicious Western genre outside of the famous Sergio Leone films, German leader, Loco (Klaus Kinski). With a haunting and rightly so. Its director, Sergio Corbucci, had a stronger musical score from maestro . stomach for violence and took his stories further around the bend than Leone.” (Combustible Celluloid) “Silence is cool, calm and silent and Loco is ruthless and cunning and talks too much. Watching them onscreen together is utterly engrossing. Director The Great Silence Sergio Corbucci’s unrelenting is a must see.” (PopOptiq) 29 Carnival of Souls “This is one of the most original and unsettling horror movies to come out of America during its B-movie Saturday, 29 October 2016 at 7.00pm saturated, drive-in friendly period.” (Film4) Herk Harvey | USA 1962 | 78 min Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is enjoying the day by A “macabre masterpiece”. (Criterion) riding around in a car with two friends, when the car “It’s difficult to overstate how important Carnival is forced off a bridge. It appears that all are drowned, Of Souls is in the history of the independent horror until Mary, quite some time later, amazingly emerges movie. Legions of subsequent micro-budget horror from the river. After recovering, Mary is dogged by a directors owe Harvey...a debt of gratitude. From mysterious phantom figure (Herk Harvey) that seems George A. Romero, who openly acknowledges the Special Screenings to reside in an old run-down pavilion. It is here that visual influence that Carnival had on his black and Mary must confront her personal demons and lack of white classic Night Of The Living Dead...independent Hallowe’en and Christmas spiritual self-awareness. horror filmmakers are all treading in Harvey’s footsteps.” (Empire Magazine)

The Man Who Came to Dinner “The great cast mirthfully brings on the savage dialogue and relishes in the malicious nature of the Sunday, 18 December 2016 at 4.30pm satire.” (Dennis Schwartz) William Keighley | USA 1942 | 112 min A classic comedy in which a pompous lecturer is “It’s rather unimaginatively directed, but the forced to spend the winter in a prominent Ohio performers savour the sharp, sparklingly cynical family’s home due to injury and proceeds to meddle dialogue with glee.” (Time Out) with the lives of everyone in the household. Cast includes: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Jimmy Durante, Mary Wickes and Monty Woolley. The screening will be followed by the Edinburgh Film Guild AGM and Christmas Party.

30 the Drifters and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Strawberries, which led to the screening of his earlier “Vive with both directors present. The Film Society closed films there, his work was well known in Scotland Guild!” in April 1939, but a decade before it expired, it had through the percipience of the Guild’s organisers. inspired the creation of the Edinburgh Film Guild, Among those, I must mention my late friend Forsyth which to this day shows no sign of dimming the lights. Hardy, co-founder of the Guild and the Festival, From the Guild came the Edinburgh Film Festival that who died in 1994. Long-time film critic of The A bit of History: Philip French on the Edinburgh has run alongside and complemented the Edinburgh Scotsman, biographer of Grierson, author of books Film Guild, marking its 75th anniversary in 2004 International Festival since its inception in 1947. on Scandinavian Cinema, Scotland on Film, and a Before the coming of television, video cassettes, From the start, the Guild spread its net as those charming history of the Guild and the Film Festival media studies, the art house, the National Film trawlers celebrated in Drifters, including classics itself, he produced a couple of hundred films for Theatre and its regional equivalents, the principal from the silent period which had just then come to the various Scottish Government Departments. He source of systematic serious film-going was the film a close, documentaries, foreign movies and works was also co-editor of the seminal Cinema Quarterly, society movement. That’s where we saw – often from the international avant-garde. “The old London another offshoot of the Guild, published between in joyfully masochistic discomfort – new foreign Film Society” wrote Grierson in 1951, “was the first 1932 and 1935. Hardy was a beacon of common sense, language movies, the canon from the silent and the to break from somewhat exclusive attention to the a man of catholic tastes and wide sympathies, but talking eras. There are few alive today who attended avant-garde and take the longer and harder way of an enemy of cant, pretentious jargon and ideological the first British institution of its kind, known simply as the Russians and more purposive users of the cinema. judgements. Meeting him every August at the the Film Society, launched in London in 1925 to show But it was the Edinburgh Film Guild which completed Festival was one of the highlights of my cinema-going avant-garde work and films banned by over restrictive the movement – as the London Film Society did year. No one, not even Grierson, has made a greater censors. Its founding members included Bernard not – and saw the infinite variety of a Film Society’s contribution to the Scottish film culture. It is good to Shaw, H G Wells, Roger Fry and John Maynard Keynes, obligations to all categories of the medium”. Having find that what he helped to create – the Guild and the and it was one of the few occasions when all kinds of been inspired by London, the Guild did not take its Festival – is flourishing and responsive to change. artists and intellectuals came together in Britain to cues from there or look to the English metropolis On this auspicious occasion, I can only resort to the celebrate the great new art of the 20th century. This for leadership. Like the Auld Alliance with France, it language of the Auld Alliance and say, Vive the Guild! Film Society was already a legendary organisation looked directly abroad, establishing its own cultural — Philip French, 2004 when my friends and I began to pay serious attention links and exerting its own vision, as has its creation, to the cinema in the years following World War II and Philip French (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film the Film Festival. critic who began writing for The Observer in 1963, and continued to write discovered with something like awe that in 1929 the Long before Ingmar Bergman achieved belated criticism regularly there until his retirement in 2013. Upon his death, Society had put on a double bill of John Grierson’s French was referred to by his Observer successor Mark Kermode as “an fame in London with The Seventh Seal and Wild inspiration to an entire generation of film critics.” 31 PROGRAMME

film edin guild eDinBuRGH GuiLD Film

burgh

2016/2017

EDINBURGH FILM GUILD THE GUILD ROOMS, FILMHOUSE, 88 LOTHIAN ROAD, EDINBURGH EH3 9BZ