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Home , David Lynch, Edward Yang, Ingmar Bergman, Philip French, Richard Corliss, Ridley Scott

Wednesday 3 June at 20.30 (Part I) Wednesday 17 June at 20.30 Thursday 4 June at 20.30 (Part II) Apocalypse Now (US) 1979

Fanny And Alexander () 1982 “One of the great of all time. shames modern Hollywood’s “This exuberant, richly textured , timidity. To watch it is to feel yourself lifted up to the heights where packed with life and incident, is the cinema can take you, but so rarely does.” (, punctuated by a series of ritual family Sun-Times) “To look at APOCALYPSE NOW is to realize that most of us are gatherings for parties, funerals, weddings, fast forgetting what a movie looks like - a real movie, the last movie, and christenings. Ghosts are as corporeal an American masterpiece.” (Manohla Darghis, LA Weekly) “Remains a as living people. Seasons come and go; majestic explosion of pure cinema. It’s a hallucinatory poem of fear, tumultuous, traumatic events occur - projecting, in its scale and spirit, a messianic vision of human warfare Talking yet, as in a dream of childhood (the film’s stretched to the flashpoint of technological and moral breakdown.” perspective is that of Alexander), time is (Owen Gleiberman, ) “In spite of its limited oddly still.” (, ) perspective on Vietnam, its churning, term-paperish exploration of “Emerges as a sumptuously produced Conrad and the near incoherence of its ending, it is a great movie. It Pictures period piece that is also a rich tapestry of grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration [in childhood memoirs and moods, fear and Redux] of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only April - July 2009 fancy, employing all the manners and added to its sublimity.” (Dana Stevens, ) Audience means of the best of cinematic theatrical can choose the original version or the longer 2001 Redux version. Programme arranged by James Douglas from high and low comedy to darkest tragedy with detours into the gothic, the ghostly and the gruesome.” (Variety) “...The sum total of my Wednesday 1 July at 20.30 life as a filmmaker...” (Ingmar Bergman). Punter’s Choice: Best Film since 2000 MODERN TIMES Top Ten Over the season a poll will be conducted and the public’s choice of best film will be screened to conclude the season. Nominations Wednesday 10 June at 20.30 include MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), CACHÉ (2005), THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY (2006), ATONEMENT (2007), (2008) and THE DARK KNIGHT (2008). Raging Bull (US) 1980

“Taking as his starting point the troubled life of Jake La Motta, the Talking Pictures tough kid who slugged his way to the world middleweight boxing Each Talking Pictures season takes a specific theme or championship in 1948 and then went on to personality from the world of cinema. The format is a brief lose almost everything, Martin Scorsese has spoken introduction based on a prepared handout, the made his most ambitious film as well as his screening of the film, and an informal follow-up discussion. finest. Though it has only three principal characters, it is a big film, its territory being Season membership €5.00 the landscape of the soul... It’s exceedingly Single admission €5.00 violent as well as poetic and, finally, humane Seniors (over 60) €2.50 in the way of unsentimental fiction that understands that a life - any life - can only British Institute students and library members have be appreciated when the darkness that automatic season membership. surrounds it is acknowledged.” (, The New York Times). “RAGING BULL is a film of equal ambition and scope to Library and Cultural Centre APOCALYPSE NOW, but being a Scorsese Lungarno Guicciardini 9 movie is a much more rigorously controlled work, in which the texture of Firenze 50125 0.09/03/31.L.2 the black-and-white cinematography is probably as important as Robert Tel: +39 055 2677 8270 . De Niro’s performance...” (Sight & Sound). Fax: +39 055 2677 8252 [email protected]

www.britishinstitute.it talkpicsjuly0 www.britishinstitute.it Registered charity no: 290647 Introduction Wednesday 13 May at 20.30 Wednesday 22 April at 20.00 Modern Times Top Ten Shakespeare Week: Macbeth (US) 1989 Everyone is familiar with the International Critics’ Poll of the “...The subject is not simply a race riot, Greatest Movies ever made conducted every ten years by the but the tragic dynamic of racism, racial authoritative British film magazine Sight & Sound. The last Throne of Blood (Japan) 1957 tension, and miscommunication, seen poll in 2002 produced as its most recent entry Francis Ford in microcosm. The film is a virtuoso act Coppola’s THE GODFATHER Part II (1974). So the magazine In 1957, Akira Kurosawa reimagined Macbeth in feudal Japan, fusing one of of creation, a movie at once realistic and decided to conduct a mini-poll of UK critics’ Top Ten movies Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies with the formal elements of Japanese Noh symbolic, light-hearted and tragic, funny made since 1974. Talking Pictures presents the countdown theatre to make a Macbeth that is all his own - a classic tale of ambition and and savage... One of the best-directed, from 9th position to number 1, and to end the season, our duplicity set against a ghostly landscape of fog and inescapable doom. best-made films of our time, a film in own public’s choice of the best film made since the most which the technical credits, the acting, and recent film in that poll, that is since 2000. In joint tenth Lee’s brazenly fresh visual style all work position were ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (USA, Sergio together to make a statement about race Wednesday 29 April at 20.30 in America that is all the more powerful Leone, 1984) and A ONE AND A TWO... (aka )(, because it blindsides us... It was the finest, Edward , 2000) – excluded only for reasons of space. We Wong Kar Wai most controversial, most discussed, and begin at No.9, with ’ stunning debut feature, Chungking Express (Hong Kong) 1994 most important film of 1989. Of course, it DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES. Only two films are not in English: was not nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture...” (Roger the Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s CHUNGKING EXPRESS, Cult filmmaker Wong Kar-Wei’s hugely influential international Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times). and Ingmar Bergman’s (the full five- breakthrough is a supremely stylish combination of love story and thriller, set in and around Hong Kong’s hour version shown over two nights). Predictably perhaps, infamous Chungking Mansions, a vast Wednesday 20 May at 20.30 given their Anglophone bias, the critics chose a range of complex of shabby hostels, bars and American movies, including two by Scorsese, a , clubs. The film tells the stories of two love- a David Lynch and a Spike Lee, and of course in the top slot lorn cops and the woman with whom (US) 1986 Francis Ford Coppola’s instant classic APOCALYPSE NOW. they become involved: a mysterious drug “As fascinating as it is freakish. It confirms Mr Lynch’s stature as an dealer and an impulsive young dreamer. What the last night will bring remains to be seen, but in the innovator, a superb technician, and someone best not encountered Featuring a charismatic cast, cool pop running are movies by David Lynch, , Ken in a dark alley.” (Elvis Mitchell, New York Times). “The most brilliantly soundtrack and stunning photography Loach, Joe Wright, and Christopher disturbing film ever to have its roots in small-town American life”. by , the movie is an Nolan. Any other nominations will be gratefully received and, (Sheila Benson, Times) “The last real earthquake to hit unconventional and dazzlingly original where possible, the highest scoring movie will be screened. cinema... I’m sure directors throughout the film world felt the earth modern day noir. (BFI) “High octane visuals move beneath their feet and couldn’t sleep the night of their first and action... Rapturous entertainment” encounter with it back in 1986” (, Village Voice, reviewing (Sight & Sound). Wednesday 15 April at 20.30 the re-release 2006). Violent, sado-masochistic, bizarre, shocking erotic thriller detective story that marks perhaps Lynch’s last flirtation Terence Davies with mainstream conventional story-telling before veering off into Distant Voices, Still Lives (UK) 1988 the weird and impenetrable. Wednesday 6 May at 20.30 Davies draws from his own family memories to shape this movie as a Ridley Scott Wednesday 27 May at 20.30 strikingly intimate portrait of working (US) 1982 Martin Scorsese class life in 1940s and Liverpool. Focusing on lives thwarted by a brutal Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking post-modern classic has gathered (US) 1990 and sadistic father, the film shows us momentum over the years (after a shaky start) and now holds an beauty and terror in equal measure. unquestioned place in the canon. With immaculate attention to detail, “Is it a great movie? I don’t think so. But it’s a triumphant piece of Davies uses the traditional family Scott’s adaptation of Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? filmmaking - journalism presented with the brio of drama.” (Pauline gatherings of births, marriages and transports us to a completely convincing futureworld where Kael, The New Yorker). “Ferocious brutality is presented without deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of fight for longevity, and the age-old questions about the meaning of life commentary or judgment, yet with unmistakable moral understanding family life – of love, grief, and the highs and what it means to be human are given further resonance by Scott’s and vision.” (Mick La Salle, San Francisco Chronicle) “So it is Scorsese’s and lows of being human, a ‘poetry of skilful blend of and science fiction. “This is perhaps the only triumph that the movie offers the fastest, sharpest 2½-hr ride in recent the everyday’ that is at once a deeply that can be called transcendental”.Entertainment ( film history.” (Richard Corliss, Time) Scorsese’s searing exploration of autobiographical and universally Weekly) Ridley Scott’s definitive version – the 2007 Final Cut – will be organised crime in New York, based on Nicolas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy resonant. (BFI) “I defy anyone not to cry. screened. and his own experience of Little Italy is a cinematic tour-de-force that Humane, haunting and utterly unmissable” (Metro). has appeal across the board.