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Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)
Mikhail Kalatozov; USSR, 1964, 140 min
Made in 1964 as a propaganda film funded by the Soviet government, Soy Cuba was intended to show how bad life in Cuba
was under the Batista regime. But in the hands of master director Kalatozov (The Cranes are Flying), the film becomes a stunning
epic poem to Communist kitsch ; a whirling, feverish dance through the sensuous decadence of Batista's Havana and the grinding
poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. With a script written by Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Cuban novelist Enrique
Pineda Barnet, the film has received universal acclaim as a true classic of world cinema.
Fri 10 Nov
Forbidden Games (Jeux Interdits) AF
Réne Clément; France, 1952, 90 min
An anti-war tract told in the form of an allegory, waifish children create their own animal cemetery and honour it with
the monuments of the human dead, with the Holocaust and petty family feuds forming a perverse backdrop to their ;innocence;.
Over this fascinating scenario, Clément strings a touching humanism, the whole work displaying his trademark eclecticism to
the fore.
Mon 13 Nov
Master Directors: Don Siegel
Featuring five of the best works of this legendary Hollywood director, probably best known as the creator of rogue cop
Dirty Harry, but whose claim to fame also rested on a number of deftly crafted genre dramas mainly acted by his close friend
Clint Eastwood.
Sat 18 Nov
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955, 80 min) 1.00pm
The original sci-fi cult classic about plant-like ETs who have invaded earth, replicating villagers in giant seed pods
and possessing their souls while they sleep.
Madigan (1967, 101 min) 3.00pm
An acclaimed cop drama directed in documentary style that takes a hard-hitting look at the lives and loves of NYC's top
cops.
Coogan's Bluff (1968, 90 min) 5.30pm
An Arizona sheriff (Clint Eastwood) loses his extradited prisoner and must find him in the concrete canyons of Manhattan.
Siegel's funniest and most violent work is a companion piece to Madigan.
Dirty Harry (1971, 101 min) 8.00pm
Seminal law-and-order film that introduced Detective Dirty; Harry Callahan (and the highly lethal .44 Magnum) to the world,
and labelled fascist by critic Pauline Kael for the way Harry ignores propriety and civil rights to solve murder cases.
The Beguiled [Master Directors: Don Siegel]
1970, 105 min
Employing the conventions of both the Western and Grand Guignol chiller, this is one of Siegel and Eastwood's strangest
collaborations. Eastwood is a wounded Union soldier who takes shelter in an isolated Southern seminary for young women. Shut
away from the world, the women project their romantic fantasies onto him, and he responds with callous, male manipulation,
leading to jealousy, betrayal and revenge. A haunting and elegant work, carefully paced and beautifully shot.
Mon 20 Nov
Power and Terror ; Noam Chomsky in Our Times
John Junkerman; US, 2002, 72 min
After 9/11, Noam Chomsky, the linguistic philosopher and long-time critic of US foreign policy, travelled the world to
provide much-needed analysis and historical perspective to the world's thinking citizens. In this documentary comprising footage
from talks and interviews, he incisively places the terrorist attacks in the context of US foreign intervention in Asia, Central
America and the Middle East, emphasising that all violence against civilians is terror, and challenging the US to apply to
its own actions the moral standards it demands of others.
Mon 27 Nov
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