At the Classic & Lido in Melbourne and the Randwick Ritz - SMALL FEELINGS: THE FILMS OF JOHN CASSAVETES - A Complete Retrospective

Classic, Lido & Ritz Cinemas are exploring the career of American maverick and provocateur John Cassavetes with a complete retrospective of his directorial features, from his breakthrough Shadows through to his final film Big Trouble. This is the first time all of Cassavetes’ films have been exhibited together in Australia.

 

Cassavetes' films were hugely collaborative, emphasising the actor’s role in exploring difficult characters and “small feelings” often ignored by the studio system. Created outside of this system, his films ultimately defined the idea of the independent film and expanded the possibilities of the medium.

Every Thursday at 7pm from August 29 to November 14. Tickets are on sale now.

 

FILM PROGRAM
Thursday 29 August, 7pm: Shadows (1959)
Thursday 5 September, 7pm: Too Late Blues (1961)
Thursday 12 September, 7pm: A Child is Waiting (1963)
Thursday 19 September, 7pm: Faces (1968)*
Thursday 26 September, 7pm: Husbands(1970)
Thursday 3 October, 7pm: Minnie & Moskowitz (1971)
Thursday 10 October, 7pm: A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Thursday 17 October, 7pm: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)**
Thursday 24 October, 7pm: Opening Night(1977)
Thursday 31 October, 7pm: Gloria (1980)
Thursday 7 November, 7pm: Love Streams (1984)
Thursday 14 November, 7pm: Big Trouble(1986)

*130 minute director's cut
**108 minute director's cut

TICKET LINKS
Session times and tickets for Classic Cinemas here.
Session times and tickets for Lido Cinemas here.
Session times and tickets for Ritz Cinemas here. 

"When I hear the term independent filmmaker, I think immediately of John Cassavetes. He was the most independent of them all. For me, he was and still is a guide and a teacher. Without his support and advice, I don't know what would have become of me as a filmmaker. The question 'What is an independent filmmaker?' has nothing to do with being inside or outside the industry or whether you live in New York or Los Angeles. It's about determination and strength, having the passion to say something that's so strong that no one or nothing can stop you.  

John made it possible for me to think that you could actually make a movie—which is crazy, because it's an enormous endevour, and you only realize how enormous when you're doing it. But by then it's too late.  

He once said, "You can't be afraid of anyone or anything if you want to make a movie." It's that simple. You have to be as tough as he was. He was a force of nature."

— Martin Scorsese, from a tribute to Cassavetes published in 1989

"Without individual creative expression, we are left with a medium of irrelevant fantasies that can add nothing but slim diversion to an already diversified world. The answer cannot be left in the hands of the money men, for their desire to accumulate material success is probably the reason they entered into filmmaking in the first place. The answer must come from the artist himself. He must become aware that the fault is his own, that art and the respect due to his vocation as an artist are his own responsibility. He must, therefore, make the producer realize, by whatever means at his disposal, that only by allowing the artist full and free creative expression will the art and the business of motion pictures survive." 

— John Cassavetes, ‘What’s Wrong With Hollywood’, from the Spring 1959 issue of Film Culture 

"What makes a film? A script is only words and description—a shorthand for a life situation, an abstraction. The interpretation of the script and the life of the people within it are what makes it real and important. A big passage of dialogue ina. Nervous actor’s hands is a traumatic experience and will either end up being cut at the rehearsal stage or, if shot, deleted when the film is edited. A big passage in John Marley’s hands, or Gena Rowlands’s, or Lynn Carlin’s, or Seymour Cassel’s —is like no words at all: you’re not even conscious of the numnber of words being used, or the time that is passing."

— John Cassavetes, from an introduction to the published screenplay of Faces  

For more information, contact Head of Marketing Jaymes Durante: jaymes@movingstory.com.au