CINEMA REBORN - WEEKEND PREVIEW (1) - McCABE & MRS MILLER, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, HOW THE WEST WAS LOST and more.

 

Thanks to Jason Di Rosso of the ABC Radio National Screen Show for a splendid interview with David Noakes on yesterday’s program. The discussion about the birth and rebirth of David’s magnificent  documentary HOW THE WEST WAS LOST, screening at the Ritz on Tuesday 6 May at 6.00 pm and at the Lido on Friday 8 May at 5.30 pm, was warm, enlightening and hugely enthusiastic about the prospects for this film to once again influence the ongoing debate in Australia about the history of our relations with the Indigenous community. It's now available on ABCI-view. The segment with David starts at about the 24” mark and runs for close to half an hour. Great radio. Saturday and Sunday are densely packed days for Cinema Reborn. Six films each day from eight different countries, ranging from the silent masterpiece STELLA DALLAS restored by New York’s Museum of Modern Art through to two programs of autobiographical documentaries by Australian women film-makers Rivka Hartman & Lee Whitmore and Anna Kannava. Likely to attract the biggest crowds are our two Saturday evening presentations so here’s a little more information to help you decide to join the throngs. McCABE & MRS MILLER is Robert Altman’s remarkable western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Critic Roger Ebert laid it out "(It) is like no other Western ever made, and with it, Robert Altman earns his place as one of the best contemporary directors…Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe and Mrs Miller” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times In the Program Notes published on the website and the printed catalogue critic Adrian Martin recalls his first youthful encounter with the film and in particular the music of Leonard Cohen which threads its way through the soundtrack. “Like many teenage cinephiles in the 1970s, I realised that the quickest, easiest, cheapest way to possess a piece of a beloved film was to run an audio cable from my TV set into a humble tape recorder – which is not such a simple procedure today. That’s how, at any rate, I came, once upon a time, to listen so obsessively to the soundtrack (not the soundtrack album – there wasn’t one) of McCabe& Mrs. Miller (1971). Even more than the sheer presence of Leonard Cohen’s haunting songs, I was bowled over by the strange dialogue between the lyrics and other elements in the sound mix: Cohen’s ‘I told you …’ echoed, moments later, by Warren Beatty as McCabe mumbling to himself: ‘I told you …’. Was that planned, or a serendipitous collision discovered in editing? Ladies and Gentlemen and others, welcome to the cinema of Robert Altman.” Full notes and links to bookings SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS is Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece of folk art: Here’s a paragraph from Laleen Jayamanne’s program notes. “The film is based on a tale of legendary star-crossed lovers, and their lost love sets the tone and framework for presenting the everyday life and key rituals of the tribe, such as a wedding, a funeral and Christmas with pagan overtones in the use of grotesque masks. These events are performed in unusual ways presented in disjunct non-chronological sequencing, an aspect of Parajanov’s poetic idiom. Later, this fascination with masks and the idea ofthe puppet (in popular folk theatre and in the Soviet avant-garde), influenced how he directed his actors who also danced in his major films. It’s best to relax into the rhythms of the film and ritualised gestures, instead of trying to “grasp” at meaning, and in that relaxed state the film may speak to you in unexpected ways, as Parajanov’s films are wont to do.” Full notes and links to bookings CINEMA REBORN View