CINEMA REBORN APRIL NEWSLETTER #2 - INTRODUCTIONS BY...- WORLD PREMIERES - OSCAR WINNERS

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Just ten days   to go until Cinema Reborn 2023 

INTRODUCTIONS BY

It has taken some time but we've almost settled just who will be introducing each of our programs at their main evening or weekend screenings.

Here's the rundown as we know it. You can check session times and make bookings for all films at the Ritz website IF YOU CLICK HERE

SHOESHINE will be introduced by Noa Steimatsky film historian and author of The Face on Film  and Italian Locations: Re-inhabiting the Past in Postwar Cinema

IEOH ISLAND will be introduced by Dr Russell Edwards currently teaching film studies at Monash University and a former advisor to the Busan International Film Festival

I BY DAY YOU BY NIGHT will be introduced by John McDonald film critic for the Australian Financial Review and art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE will be introduced by David Roe who has worked on some of the most renowned Australian films since the 1970s

DETOUR will be introduced by Richard Brennan whose producer credits include Homesdale, Mad Dog Morgan, Love letters from Teralba Road, Long Weekend and Newsfront

RUGGLES OF RED GAP will be introduced by Geoff Gardner, Chair of the Organising Committee of Cinema Reborn

LA PISCINE will be introduced by John Duigan director of The year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Lawn Dogs  and Careless Love among many others.

MAUVAIS SANG will be introduced by Ivan Cerecina an independent researcher and film writer who is currenbtly writing a book on the idea of montage in post-war French Cinema

THE LONG FAREWELL will be introduced by Margot Nash a film-maker and Visiting Fellow in Communications at the University of Technology in Sydney

BLACK GIRL will be introduced on video by Samba Gadjigo, Professor of French at Mount Holyoke College Massachusetts and the director of a documentary on Ousmane Sembene

THE TRIAL will be introduced by Lynden Barber a Sydney based freelance journalist specialising in film and a former Director of the Sydney Film Festival

VARIETY will be introduced by Angelica Waite a film programmer and member of the Organising Committee of Cinema Reborn

THE LAST EMPEROR will be introduced by both Linda Jaivin and Professor Jing Han, two experts in Chinese cultural and political affairs

SUNRISE will be introduced by Quentin Turnour a specialist in silent film programming and a member of the Organising Committee of Cinema Reborn

BLIND SPOT and SERIOUS UNDERTAKINGS will be introduced by Professor Jane Mills an author with a wide range of experience in film production and Helen Grace director of Serious Undertakings

TENDER MERCIES will be introduced by the film's director Bruce Beresford

WORLD PREMIERES

With a touch of pride that each of these has been entrusted to us we can advise that the screenings of MAUVAIS SANG, SERIOUS UNDERTAKINGS and RUGGLES OF RED GAP will be world premieres of 4k restorations. In the case of our sole Australian film Helen Grace’s SERIOUS UNDERTAKINGS, which plays in a double bill with Claudia von Alemann’s 1980 German feminist classic BLIND SPOT/DIE REISE NACH LYON the restoration work has been supervised by Helen, her Director of Photography Erika Addis and Ray Argall of Piccolo Films in Sydney.

OSCAR WINNERS - Something for Everyone

Robert Duvall, Best Actor Oscar, 1983

TENDER MERCIES, (BRUCE BERESFORD, USA, 1983)

Beresford’s triumphant first American film earned Oscars for Robert Duvall as Best Actor and Horton Foote for Best Original Screenplay. Beresford was nominated for Best Director and the film was nominated for Best Picture. In her extensive and informative notes on the film which you can find on the Cinema Reborn website Helen Goritsas says “Tender Mercies is a nuanced work that captures the intricacy and beauty of daily life through a subtle and stirring study of the value of small and incidental acts of kindness and the bonds they form.”

THE LAST EMPEROR (BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI, UK/ITALY, 1987)

As Rod Bishop notes in the commentary on the Cinema Reborn website: “Thirty-five years ago, this film swept up nine Academy Awards. It has aged majestically, and cinema today is no more lavish; its imagery no more ravishing; nor its historical scope more compelling than The Last Emperor.

The list of its Oscars, Globes and BAFTAs is breathtaking. Academy Awards:

Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound. Golden Globes Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score. BAFTAS Best Film, Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up.

THE LAST EMPEROR is this year’s Saturday Centrepiece and THE AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE OF THE NEW 4K RESTORATION will screen in the Ritz’s magnificent Cinema One.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (F W Murnau, USA, 1927)

Sunrise won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film (the award was also for her performances in 1927's 7th Heaven and 1928's Street Angel). 

SHOESHINE (Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1946)

In 1948, Shoeshine received an Honorary Award at the Academy Awards for its high quality. This award was the precursor of what would later become the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. 

Tax Deductible Charitable Donations

Cinema Reborn is an organisation devoted exclusively to exploring the Cinema's heritage. It is managed and organised by a group of dedicated film professionals here working solely on a voluntary basis to assemble an annual selection of cinema classics from around the world.

Cinema Reborn has relied, since its inception, on the generosity of donors who support our aims and are committed to the annual project of bringing cinema classics back to a big screen in perfect new digital copies. Without such support the event could not be presented.

 

To make a large or small tax deductible donation to support our work CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL FUND

Streaming on SBS on Demand - Janice Tong catches up with the Oscar-winner ANOTHER ROUND/DRUK (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark, 2020)

Despite its title and the obvious subject matter, druk is Danish for ‘binge drinking’, this film by Thomas Vinterberg of Festen/Dogme fame (1998), (and let’s not even get me started on the Dogme movement and my hostility against its craft) poses the very diaphanous question of what it means to be alive. 

Four friends and the night where it all began, Druk

The answer is clearly multiple: some people go at it full pelt, whether it’s working yourself to death, or being excessive in consumption - alcohol, drugs, social media, shopping or some other thing; whilst some may live a balanced life (and a ‘balanced life’ would again mean different things to different people - work/life balance, spending time with family and friends etc); and yet still others may live a more sedentary life, having become complacent - many of us are simply existing, cruising through time and space - until you wake up one morning and are hit with the realisation of having to deal with the banality of living with oneself.

 

This problematic - the banality of life, and how to rise above it - is at the heart of this film. 

 

The story centers around Martin (a magnificent Mads Mikkelsen), a history high school teacher who is staring down the barrel of a fading youth, and having to face his dispassionate students for yet another year of his job. He looks somewhat like a lost lamb, or a ghost of his former self. His home life is not any better, he hardly sees his wife (she works the night shift), let alone have any intimacy with her, and his two kids are more interested in video games or screentime than his presence. Martin finds solace with three best mates who are also high school teachers, and I would add, are also suffering the same fate in varying degrees. Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen) is a divorcee and a soccer/PE coach; Peter (Lars Ranthe) is a music teacher; and finally Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) teaches psychology, and as the film progresses, becomes, appropriately, the documenter of this group’s social experiment. 

A celebration of being alive. Mikkelsen (centre) as
Martin, with all the young graduates whose
lives are just beginning watching on, Druk

It all comes to a head for Martin at the celebratory birthday dinner for Nicholaj. The whole crew were enjoying champagne and oysters, wine was being freely poured; all introduced with a flourish by the sommelier, “the champagne has a mineral note” and “this vodka would make a Tsar weep” that kind of thing. At the start of the evening, Martin was simply being Martin, conversative and sensible, refusing to taste any of the alcoholic beverages because he has to drive home. 

 

But gradually, as the talk turns, and after a few friendly jabs from his friends, his demeanour changes. He downs a shot of vodka and an entire glass of red without waiting for the toast, or luxuriating in the taste. His eyes water. His friends get a few details out of him and as the evening progresses and more alcohol is consumed, Martin becomes a happier version of himself. 

 

During the dinner, Nikolaj had referenced Finn Skarderud, a Norwegian psychiatrist, who had purportedly written that man was born with a deficit of 0.05 percent blood alcohol concentration (BAC). And the idea that in order to live a full and happy life, the bar must be set at maintaining a BAC of 0.05 to be able to live that happier and more satisfactory life. (This quote was taken from Skarderud’s introduction to the book "The Psychological Effects of Wine" by 19th century Italian author Edmondo de Amicis. It was actually the premise that was quoted, and Skarderud refuted this premise in the very next line. But far from being misquoted, Skarderud was in fact asked by Vinterberg to be a consultant during shooting. His initial concerns about being misconstrued, especially since he was a practising doctor, abated because he felt the story’s exploration into the effects of alcohol was balanced and measured throughout.)

How much is too much?

 

The next day back at school, Martin takes a pocket-sized bottle of Gordon’s gin with him and downs a good shot or two prior to class. The result was amazing, it was like he had switched gears, the world opened up and he was an illuminated man.

 

Once he confessed his actions and subsequent success to Nikolaj, the four friends met that afternoon and decided that they would test out Skarderud together. One of them even quoted Winston Churchill’s abstinence from drinking after 8pm as a rubber stamping of sorts for the whole shabang.

 

Mikkelsen’s performance took my breath away. He has always been a fine actor, and I remember him well in the The Royal Affair (2012). Nine years later, he’s still heart-achingly handsome and graced with a high degree of emotional intelligence. As Vinterberg said of his performance, Mikkelsen“is a finely tuned instrument”, highly nuanced; he is the emotional core the propels the film, and his range from a caring but desperately lost man to his soaring celebratory dance that closes the film, captures the very joy of being alive, and this transformation is nothing short of evocative, intoxicating, cathartic. 

 

His friends who make up this quartet, are a group of fine actors. Bo Larsen’s Tommy is pitch-perfect as the slow unwinding of a man, Millang’s Nikolaj is the voice of reason, and Ranthe’s Peter is also wonderfully portrayed. You can catch Ranthe in a new gripping nordic noir series The Chestnut Man (2021) on Netflix. Note though, the set is an entirely dry one, and even without a drop of alcohol in their systems, these actors are able to pull off the finesse of being lubricated by ‘just the right amount’ of alcohol with some laugh-out-loud moments. 

 

Although the deliverance afforded to Martin et al. took them by surprise, and in a good way to begin with; we all know that they’re treading on a fine edged sword that is difficult to balance on, one which can both quicken your release, or sink you like a stone.

Grøvlen films Mikkelsen's dance moves

 

Beautifully shot, the cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen recalls his earlier work on   Sebastian Schipper’s hypnotic single-take film Victoria (2015). His ability to stay close to the characters immerses the audience into their world; sharing intimacy without ever being claustrophobic. 

 

To close, l’d like to take a moment to remember Ida, Vinterberg’s daughter, who died four days into the shoot. In his own words, Vinterberg wanted to continue to make this film because he wanted to dedicate this film and the making of this film to her; to do so would mean being able to feel her presence throughout the film, the heart of which is to grasp the essence of existence, and to celebrate this gift we have of being alive.

 

Druk is currently showing on SBS on Demand.

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