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| Alain Delon, Mr. Klein |
Welcome to the second announcement of titles that will form part of the program for CINEMA REBORN 2022 screening at the Ritz Cinemas Randwick from 27 April to 1 May (+ some additional repeat screenings on 2 and 3 May).
Today we are pleased to announce the Australian component of our selection, two sessions that make us swell with some degree of pride in bringing them to you. The first, the films of the Sydney Waterside Workers Film Unit from the 50s, have been lovingly restored and digitized by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and they bring back a small but significant part of the Australian cinema’s complex history. We are pleased that again we have been able to collaborate with the NFSA to revive a key moment. You may remember that in 2018 we honoured Ian Dunlop, in 2019 Charles Chauvel and in 2021 Cecil Holmes. The NFSA’s crucial role in preserving and allowing access to our history continues to grow.
Our second Australian program is devoted to two films, a feature and a short, from 1990, restored by the film-makers themselves Ray Argall and Lucinda Clutterbuck. The program brings back the original 1990 presentation of the films when they formed a single program for their commercial release in Australian cinemas. Both went on to develop brilliant reputations in screenings around the world. Ray and Lucinda have now entrusted Cinema Reborn with the first screenings of the recent 4K restorations supervised by the film-makers.
Finally we are announcing two films by great film-makers of the seventies Joseph Losey and Andrei Tarkovsky, both of them directors who fought against the systems of production in the countries of their birth and both of whom made masterpieces in the lands of their exile. The Australian premiere screenings of restorations of key films in each director's career represent Cinema Reborn landmarks.
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WATERSIDE WORKERS FEDERATION FILM UNIT (1953-58)
‘IN JUST FIVE YEARS, THEY PRODUCED…FILMS ON SUBJECTS THE GOVERNMENT FILM UNIT OR THE NEWSREEL PRODUCERS WOULD NEVER TACKLE’ – Lisa Milner, The Dictionary of Sydney
Wharfies Keith Gow and Jock Levy were both members of Sydney’s New Theatre along with Norma Disher. In 1953 they formed the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit to counter what the union saw as misinformation and anti-worker propaganda in the mainstream press.
The films they made included a campaign for a pension for wharfie veterans, the 1954 waterfront strike, workers’ rights, housing shortages and health and safety.
Using a customized Kombi van with rear projection as both a production vehicle and for distribution/exhibition, they showed their films at work sites, union and community halls and clubs, private homes and in the streets.
“As films which passionately cared about their subjects, and as works of cinema, the Unit’s projects show a consistency of vision that no other documentary producers of the period were able to match.”
- Graham Shirley & Bryan Adams, Australian Cinema - The First Eighty Years
Cinema Reborn will present four key films made the Unit . Each has been remastered from best quality original materials by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
Introduced by film-makers Norma Disher, Margot Nash and John Hughes
SCREENS WITH
FILM-WORK (1981)
A 43-minute documentary by John Hughes on the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit (WWFFU), dissecting scenes from four of their films and examining their cultural and historical importance and the relationship between politics and history.
“[Hughes] recognized the WWF and Realist Film Units as mainstays of oppositional independent filmmaking in postwar Australia.”
- John Cumming, Senses of Cinema
Film-Work has been restored by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.
THIS PROGRAM SCREENS ONCE ONLY ON SATURDAY 30 APRIL AT 12.30 PM.
To read Margot Nash’s superb set of Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE
TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THESE NFSA SUPERVISED RESTORATIONS CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.
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| Ben Mendelsohn, Return Home |
RETURN HOME (1989)
“THE STORY OF ONE MAN’S COMING TO TERMS WITH HIS PAST AND THE RESPONSIBILITY AND REWARDS OF FAMILY LOVE” – SCOTT MURRAY
A divorced insurance broker in Melbourne returns home to Adelaide where his brother and wife are running a garage in a suburban shopping centre, struggling against American franchises and the loss of customer service.
Director and writer Ray Argall (also an accomplished cinematographer and editor), juxtaposes the mechanic’s struggle against this erosive economic ‘progress’ and shows how working families are threatened by this new consumerism. Superb perfomances by Dennis Coard, Frankie J Holden, Ben Mendelsohn and Mickie Camilleri.
Screens with Lucinda Clutterbuck’s award-winning 10-minute animation Tiga – the original support film for Return Home at its first commercial screening in 1990.
“[Return Home’s] opening makes us immediately consider what we are looking at – images of people on suburban Adelaide beaches, playing cricket, being pulled over by police, fluffy dice, and, most substantively, driving and working on hotted-up cars – asking us to reassess conventional and expected ways of representing class, everydayness and popular culture…[an] almost Ozu-like opening sequence”
- Adrian Danks
WINNER BEST DIRECTOR AFI/AACTA AWARDS 1990. WINNER BEST FILM - FILM CRITICS CIRCLE OF AUSTRALIA AWARDS 1990
Introduced by the film-makers Ray Argall and Lucinda Clutterbuck at the 5.15 pm session on Saturday 30 April Also screens at 3.15 pm on Monday 2 May
WATCH THE RESTORATION TRAILER https://vimeo.com/333675704
To read Scott Murray’s insight-filled Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE
TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE SCREENINGS OF THE NEW 4K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.
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| Jeanne Moreau, Mr. Klein |
MR. KLEIN (1976)
“THIS STORY OF BLURRED IDENTITIES AND CASUAL MORALITY IN GERMAN-OCCUPIED PARIS BENEFITS FROM WHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST PERFORMANCE OF ALAIN DELON’S LONG CAREER.” – LOS ANGELES TIMES
In Nazi-occupied Paris, an art dealer discovers his identity is being confused with another Mr Klein…and this one is Jewish. As he tries to prove who he is and as he searches for his doppelgänger, he begins to realize there is nothing accidental about this confusion.
Behind the mystery at the heart of Mr Kleinis the realization that the collaboration between the Nazis and the French in occupied France wasn’t just the unfortunate choices of misguided individuals, but the result of a systematic corruption within the French government.
“A masterpiece of identity crisis – a mesmeric cat-and-mouse played out in dreadful, ever-lengthening shadows.”
- Financial Times
WINNER BEST FILM, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN FRENCH CESAR AWARDS 1976.
Introduced by John McDonald, Film Critic Australian Financial Review, Art Critic Sydney Morning Herald, Curator and Commentator at the 5.15 pm session on Sunday 1 May
WATCH THE TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvEzNeiQLI
To read Mark Pierce’s informed Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE
TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THE NEW 4K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.
SCREENS AT 11.15 AM ON THURSDAY 28THAPRIL AND 5.15PM ON SUNDAY 1 MAY
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| Mirror |
MIRROR (1975)
“MIRROR DESERVES A BIG-SCREEN VIEWING, WITH ITS SMORGASBOARD OF MEMORIES IN DREAM, DRAMA AND NEWSREEL FROM THE LIFE OF A DYING POET” – THE TIMES (UK)
Chosen by a poll of film directors in 2012 as the ninth greatest film ever made, Andrei Tarkovsky’s unconventional and beautifully poetic film fuses drama, documentary and dreams to express the regrets and reminiscences of a dying man.
Set in three time periods - the 1930s, 1940s and 1970s – the poet’s relationships with his mother, father, two wives, son and daughter are embedded in a subjective view of Russian history in the 20thCentury.
An extremely rare opportunity to see this wonderful work on the big screen and in a new 2K restoration.
“My discovery of Tarkovsky…was like a miracle. Suddenly I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had until then, never been given to me…Tarkovsky is for me the greatest.”
- Ingmar Bergman
Introduced by Alena Lodkina, film-maker, director of STRANGE COLOURS at the 8.15 pm session on Friday 29th April
WATCH THE TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2U9TXmYJ94
To read Rod Bishop’s detailed and comprehensive Program Notes on the Cinema Reborn website CLICK HERE
TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE SCREENINGS OF THE 2K RESTORATION CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE RANDWICK RITZ WEBSITE.
Screens at 8.15 pm on Friday 29 April and 10.30 am on Sunday 1 May
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Meanwhile dont forget to check out THE CINEMA REBORN FACEBOOK PAGE for news and if you are minded to make a tax deductible donation, large or small, to support the work of our all-volunteer group and bring more film classics back to the screen in Sydney click here for THE AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL FUND
....and if you want to maximise your attendance think about joining THE RITZ ROYALTY CLUB and save on all admissions. Seniors get additional savings.
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The full Cinema Reborn 2022 Program is now listed on the Ritz website CLICK HERE More essays and Program Notes will be published on the Cinema Reborn website shortly and you will soon be able to download a copy of the full catalogue containing all the notes plus more.
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