Catherine Breillat (France, 2007)
Starring Asia Argento
VIEW TRAILER

"Like all Breillat's films it's obsessed with sex, power and gender, its protagonists reduced to tragedy as they desperately wield their weapons of seduction."
- Jamie Russel, BBC

"In this lush period piece, a perfect match between gutsy actress Argento and France's enfant terrible-director, Breillat continues to explore gender and sexual politics in a bold yet entertaining way, resulting in her most accessible work to date."
- Emanuel Levy, emanuellevy.com

Yung Chang (Canada, 2007)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze, navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." In the biggest engineering endeavour since the Great Wall, China has set out to harness the Yangtze with the world's largest mega-dam. Meanwhile at the river's edge Yu Shui says goodbye to her family and turns to face the future. From their small patch of land, her parents watch the young woman walk away, her belongings clutched in a plastic shopping bag. The waters are rising.

The Three Gorges Dam, gargantuan and hotly contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle, provides the epic and unsettling backdrop for UP THE YANGTZE, a dramatic and disquieting feature documentary on life inside the 21st century Chinese dream. Stunningly photographed and beautifully composed, UP THE YANGTZE juxtaposes the poignant and sharply observed details of Yu Shui's story against the monumental and ominous forces at work all around her.

Among the two million losing their livelihood to the dam, the Yu family must send their daughter off to work. In a bitter irony she's been hired by Farewell Cruises, part of the strange apocalyptic tourist trade that thrives along the river, offering a final glimpse of a legendary world before it disappears forever.

Life onboard mirrors the hierarchy of the wider world. Western passengers take in the spectral views, consuming entertainment on the spacious upper decks, while Yu Shui toils in the galley down below, vying with workmates for the few permanent positions. A shy country girl, she must compete with young show-offs like Chen Bo Yu, an urban kid with the over-confidence typical of single sons, the "little emperors" of China's one-child-only policy. All the while the ship charts a course towards its controversial destination, travelling upriver through a landscape of unprecedented upheaval, as ancient and revered sites give way to the burgeoning candy-coloured towers of China's neon future. Back at the river's edge, far from the bright lights, Yu Shui's parents assemble their humble possessions as the floodwaters rise.

Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang directs it all with insight and cinematic flair. Drawing inspiration from contemporary Asian cinema and post-war neo-realism, he crafts a compassionate account of peasant life and a powerful documentary narrative of contemporary China.

“Yung Chang is a Canadian director whose grandparents came from China, and his witty, lovely and profoundly unsettling documentary Up the Yangtze takes him back to the legendary river of his grandfather's homeland, now transformed beyond recognition.”
- Andrew O'Hehir, salon.com

“Chang gracefully juxtaposes the country and the metropolitan to express the knotted-up mixture of anguish, anger, hope, and trepidation of those in the dammed river's wake.”
- Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

Silvio Soldini (Italy, 2007)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Well-to-do, sophisticated couple, Elsa and Michele, have a 20 year-old daughter, Alice, and enough money for Elsa to leave her job and fulfill an old dream of studying art history. After she graduates, however, their lives change. Michele confesses he hasn't worked in two months and was fired by the company he founded years ago. Elsa overcomes her initial shock by pouring extra energy into facing the crisis while Michele, exhausted by an unsuccessful job hunt, lets himself go, alternating between vivacity and apathy. The growing distance between them eventually leads to a break-up. Only when they apart will they realize that they risk losing their most precious possession: the love that binds them.

"[A] superb, moving and thought-provoking film…emotionally true and absorbing…the kind of film Hollywood should be making..."
- David Noh, Film Journal - Review

"perceptively written… an absorbing, deliberate drama"
- Eddie Cockrell, Variety

Curated by Jerry Barron and Brent Kliewer

Starting SEPTEMBER 19 at THE SCREEN, The College of Santa Fe and Mission Control will mark the 11th anniversary of Santa Fe's Festival of Film Noir: SUMMER IN THE DARK. Rare prints from the Golden Age of Noir, coming from the world's leading film archives, will be shown.

Last year's guests included Mickey Rooney, Constance Towers, and Coleen Gray. 2008's special guests, film lineup, and schedule will be announced as September's cold nights near...

Wen Yimin (China, 1929)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

LIVE SOUNDTRACK PROVIDED BY THE DEVIL MUSIC ENSEMBLE
ONE NIGHT ONLY

Episode six of RED HEROINE (a.k.a. RED KNIGHT-ERRANT), the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. Made at the height of the martial arts craze in 1920s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre’s then-characteristic blend of pulp and mystical derring-do. A rampaging army raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman’s grandmother. At the general’s lair, the captive maiden faces imminent rape, but is lo and behold rescued by the mysterious Daoist hermit, White Monkey. Three years later, Yun Mei (“Yun Ko” in the English intertitles) reemerges as a full-fledged warrior, ready to deploy the magic powers learnt from White Monkey to avenge her grandmother’s death.

This “maiden of the clouds” (the literal meaning of “Yun Mei”) flies across the skies to rescue another innocent captured by the marauding soldiers. Appearing and disappearing in a puff of smoke, Yungu scurries up and down walls on a rope, runs and jumps, dodges here and attacks there. While sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (for instance, the general’s lair is part-country villa, part-operatic stage and part-DeMille den of iniquity with bikini-clad women and bestial men), the film is never less than a robust telling of a young woman’s transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior. Her flight of empowerment noticeably leads her away from family and marriage towards a chaste omniscience in an otherworldly plane. The film’s director Wen Yimin plays the archetypal non-fighting scholar to whom Yun Mei plays matchmaker. According to Fan Xuepeng who stars as Yun Mei, her warrior garb was originally tinted, the better to be a vision in red.

“Devil Music Ensemble has established itself as one of the primary American groups composing and performing scores for silent films, and can be spoken of in the same breath as groups like The Alloy Orchestra and the Tin Hat Trio."
- Dylan Skolnick, Director of Programming Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington NY

“Plowing a broad furrow behind God Speed You Black Emperor! On a rotary paved with high-minded inventions, instrumentalist genre-smelters Devil Music likely will jump off from their recent take on Terry Riley's 'In C' with contrails of 'Sister Ray', Goran Bregovic, and Maurice Ravel streaming behind."
- E. McMurtrie, Village Voice

Quanan Wang (China, 2006)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Tuya, hardworking and hardheaded, is a Mongolian desert herder who refuses to be settled in a town in accordance with the new industrialization policy. She is kept busy with two kids, a disabled husband and 100 sheep to care for, but one day she hurts her back. The only way for the family to survive is for her to divorce her husband on paper and look for a new spouse who can take care of the whole family. A series of suitors lines up, but it's not easy to find a man who fits the bill. This warm, endearing tale, featuring stunning cinematography, won the top prize at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival.

“A compact near-masterpiece that combines a slow-motion romantic comedy with a docudrama-style portrait of a remote, nomadic culture as it is gradually eroded by the tides of the 21st century.”
- Andrew O'Hehir, salon.com

“With a simple, compelling and direct story, Quanan Wang makes eloquent points about the vanishing life of the Mongolian herdsman.”
- Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

WINNER - GOLDEN BEAR FOR BEST PICTURE- 2007 BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

Fatih Akin (Germany, 2007)
VIEW TRAILER

Nejat initially disapproves of his widower father Ali`s choice of prostitute Yeter for a live-in girlfriend. But the young professor warms to her when he learns that most of her hard-earned money is sent home to Turkey for her daughter’s university studies. After Yeter`s accidental death, Nejat travels to Istanbul to search for Yeter`s daughter Ayten. Political activist Ayten has fled the Turkish police and is already in Germany. She is befriended by a young woman, Lotte, who invites rebellious Ayten to stay in her home, much to the displeasure of her conservative mother, Susanne. When Ayten is arrested and her asylum plea denied, she is deported and imprisoned in Turkey. Passionate Lotte abandons everything to help Ayten. A tragic event brings Susanne to Istanbul to help fulfill her daughter`s mission.

“The point at which a good director crosses the career bridge to become a substantial international talent is vividly clear in THE EDGE OF HEAVEN an utterly assured, profoundly moving fifth feature by Fatih Akin.”
- Derek Elley, Variety

“By the end you know the characters in it so well that you can’t believe you’ve seen the movie only once, yet on a second viewing it seems completely new. And that may be because the world they inhabit is immediately recognizable — until we get to heaven, it’s where we live — and like no place you’ve been before.”
- A.O. Scott, New York Times

WINNER - BEST SCREENPLAY - 2007 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

WINNER - BEST PICTURE, DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, AND EDITING
2008 GERMAN FILM AWARDS (LOLA)

Guy Maddin (Canada, 2007)
VIEW TRAILER

Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage and his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in MY WINNIPEG, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. The film is a documentary (or "docu-fantasia" as Maddin proclaims) that blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths that cover everything from the fire at the local park, which leads to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads, to pivotal, sometimes traumatic, factually heightened scenes from Maddin's own childhood.

MY WINNIPEG is Maddin's most personal film and a truly unique cinematic experience, winning the best Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the opening night selection of the Berlin Film Festival's Forum.

“A multilayered journey through the hometown in his head, MY WINNIPEG is a vigorous caprice of fact and fiction. Employing the filmmaker's by now-familiar but no less unique fusion of silent film technique and pre-moistened melodrama, pic explores a version of his roots that may not be entirely true but sure is entertaining.”
- Eddie Cockrell, variety.com

“If you're not into experimental and fantastical filmmaking, you might not like MY WINNIPEG, but it would be a terrible waste. Maddin has done something that is sorely lacking in documentary film -- he's used his humor to create a thoroughly funny and engaging journey that informs through entertainment, rather than verbose exposition.”
- Monika Bartyzel, cinematical.com

Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden (USA, 2007)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

This is the first, definitive documentary on the life of the legendary Jazz vocalist Anita O' Day. In Anita's own words, we hear the tale of a musical genius who broke race barriers and lived her life boldly, unconventionally, without looking back. In candid interviews with the Filmmakers, Anita gives a poingnant and often funny account of her jazz oddyssey, that is now well into its seventh decade. With her classic wry wit, Anita speaks with television icons such as Dick Cavett, Bryant Gumble, David Frost and Harry Reasoner to reveal why at 87 she is the last living singer from the Golden Age.

The film showcases rare and never before seen vintage performances and includes interviews from vocalists Annie Ross and Margaret Whiting, Jazz Impresario George Wein, award winning arrangers Bill Holman, Johnny Mandel, Russel Garcia & Buddy Bregman, writer/actor producer John Cameron Mitchell, Joe Franklin and friends from different times in Anita's life.

This fast paced trip with Anita has pictorial elements of jazz album design and the graphic qualities of the 40's, 50's and 60's. Including original ads, reviews, and numerous never before seen images.

"O' Day's supple, smoky vocals, at times exhileratingly speedy in bebop phraseology are the heart of this admiring film."
- Dennis Harvey, Variety

Harmony Korine (UK, 2007)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

From the writer of KIDS, A Michael Jackson impersonator lives alone in Paris and performs on the streets to make ends meet. At a performance in a retirement home, Michael falls for a beautiful Marilyn Monroe look- alike who suggests he move to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands. At the seaside castle, Michael discovers everyone preparing for the commune's first-ever gala - Abe Lincoln, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Stooges, the Queen, the Pope, Madonna, Buckwheat, Sammy Davis, Jr... And also Marilyn's daughter Shirley Temple and her possessive husband Charlie Chaplin. Meanwhile, a miracle is happening somewhere in a Latin American jungle.

"The film is a paean to the imagination, but what keeps MISTER LONELY from being just a self-indulgent flight of fancy is that Harmony Korine shows that even in Neverland, the suffering is real."
- Travis Nichols, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A colony of kooks where James Dean, Lincoln, Chaplin, Buckwheat, The Three Stooges and Little Red Riding Hood wannabes run amok in an Eldorado of wackos without ever quite losing their sanity, speaks euphorically to the many paths to personal liberation."
- Prarie Miller, NewsBlaze

Scott Hicks (USA, 2007)
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

In July 2005, filmmaker Scott Hicks started shooting a documentary about the composer Philip Glass to celebrate his 70th anniversary in 2007.  Over the next 18 months, Scott followed Philip across three continents - from his annual ride on the Coney Island “Cyclone” roller coaster, to the world premiere of his new opera in Germany and in performance with a didgeridoo virtuoso in Australia.

Allowed unprecedented access to Glass’ working process, family life, spiritual teachers and long time collaborators, Hicks gives us a unique glimpse behind the curtain into the life of a surprising and complex man.  GLASS:A PORTRAIT IN 12 PARTS is a remarkable mosaic portrait of one of the greatest - and at times controversial - artists of this or any era.

"Scott Hicks's 'GLASS' is an entertaining pic that will fascinate admirers but is wide-ranging and unpretentious enough to engage those intimidated by Glass' aesthetic."
- John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

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