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| Film Club creator and host Sam Rubin |
Here is what we look forward to:
Sam Rubin's Film Club at the Firehouse Gallery North
1790 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Door opens at 6:30pm. Free entry & pop corn
Bring a comfy folding chair
For dates please check our facebook page under events and our calendar on this site.
Nosferatu (GERMANY: F. W. Murneau): Silent classic based on the story "Dracula." Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter's wife. This film capitalizes on the use of shadow as a means to create the fear of monsters.
DR. STRANGELOVE or: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB: (USA: Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964) A black comedy which satirizes the nuclear scare following the Cold War. An unhinged US Airforce general orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force officer try to recall the bombers to prevent nuclear apocalypse. It separately follows the crew of on B-52 bomber as they try to deliver their payload. A stellar cast including George C. Scott, Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens.
DECEMBER: GRAND THEMES
The Russian Ark (RUSSIA: Alexander Sokurov): The longest uninterrupted shot in film history, and the first feature film ever created in a single shot. Sokurov embarks on a time-travelling journey through 300 years of Russian history.
Moliere (FRANCE: Ariane Mnouchkine): A look at the life of French playwright and actor Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who developed his stagecraft adapting Commedia dell Arte plots to please brutalized peasants and cynical townspeople and eventually the Court at Versailles. Poquelin would later become known to the world as Moliere, one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature.
JANUARY: WOMEN
My Blueberry Nights (CHINA/HONG KONG: Wang Kar Wei): Gorgeously filmed pure romantic sensibility. A big-hearted owner of a small New York diner tries to soothe the broken heart of one of his clients. After going on a year long odyssey, she realizes that love what right at her doorstep all along.
Women Without Men (IRAN: Shirin Neshat): Neshat’s directorial debut, a stunning adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s best-selling magic-realist novel. Set within the turmoil of 1953 Iran, a pivotal period of civil unrest in which a British and American-backed coup e’etat subverted the country’s democratically-elected government. The film follows the intertwining lives of four Iranian woman as they struggle to find peace in the face of overwhelming political strife and crushing cultural oppression.
FEBRUARY: SAM’S PICKS
On the Waterfront (USA: Elia Kazan) A seminal classic of American film. When ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman, Terry Malloy, inadvertently participates in the murder of fellow longshoreman, he struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.
Tetro (USA: Francis Ford Coppola): A visually lush cinematic fugue about love, ambivalence and two brothers fleeing the dark shadow of their domineering father. Bennie, a waiter on a cruise ship, seeks out his estranged brother, Tetro, when he has a layover in Buenos Aires. Thoughts of their father cast a shadow over both brothers. Who is he, and what past has Tetro left behind?
MARCH: SCIENCE FICTION WAR
District Nine (SOUTH AFRICA: Neill Blomkamp) This film pivots on the themes of humanity, xenophobia, and social segregation. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events that took place in District Six, Cape Town, during the apartheid era. An alient spacecraft is confined to District 9, a government camp just underneath the hovering and disabled ship. Wikus van de Merwe, an Afrikaner bureaucrat, is appointed to lead the camp relocation. But he becomes infected with a virus from the ship and slowly becomes one of them. Hunted and hounded, he discovers what it means to be an outsider on your own planet.
Stalker (FORMER SOVIET UNION: Tarkovsky): A haunting meditation on the themes of science, healing and faith. An unseen alien force has taken possession of an area of Russian wilderness dubbed The Zone. Few who enter ever return. Three men become desperate pilgrims walking a desolate trail as they penetrate the dangers outside in search of the power and transcendence rumored to exist inside. This film has one of the most enigmatic and tantalizing endings in the history of cinema.
APRIL: SECRET AGENTS
Breach (USA: Billy Ray): Inspired by the incredible true story of the greaetst security breach in U.S. history. Eric O’Neill is assigned to work with renowned operative Robert Hansenn. Determined to draw this suspected double-agent out of deep cover, O’Neill finds himself in a lethal game of spy versus spy.
Tokyo Drifter (JAPAN: Seijun Suzuki): A 1966 Japanese yakuz (mafia) film. The story follows Tetsuya Watari as the reformed yakuza hitman "Phoenix." Tetsu who is forced to roam Japan avoiding execution by rival gangs. Suzuki’s stylized cult film pokes fun at the serious business of ganster life.
MAY: LIFE IN AND UNDER THE STREETS
In Darkness (POLAND: Agnieszka Holland) The true story of Leopold Socha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (former Poland).
L'Haine (FRANCE: Mathieu Kassovitz): A gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis. A Jew, an African, and an Arab have grown up in the dead-end suburban ghetto-- the banlieu district--of Paris’s suburbs where racist sentiment and an oppressive police force have reached the boiling point. The film follows these three young men through 24-hour aimless spree of resentment at their social marginalization.
JUNE: VIRTUE
Red (FRANCE: Kieslowski): Dense and mysterious, ineffable patterns shape the characters' lives. Coincidences, missed opportunities, overbearing visual clues and strange, haunting parallels: all of these contribute to a gradually emerging sense of destiny between two characters who appear to have little in common. Stories develop like photographs in a darkroom. They are sharply defined only in retrospect, when the process is complete.The final film of The Three Colors Trilogy (Red, White, Blue), which examines the French Revolutionary ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, the national motto of France.