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Cinema International
Each semester, Cinema International presents eight or nine films of every genre by the best and brightest directors from around the world. They are shown in the Curris Center Theater on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 7:30pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Please contact Dr. Michael Waag for more information.
For more information on Cinema International 2012 KIIS Scholarship, click on Scholarships link above.
CINEMA INTERNATIONAL MURRAY STATE UNIVERSITY SPRING 2012
JAN. 19-20-21
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED USA 2008
Dir. Jonathan Demme
With Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mather Zickel
English, Rated R, 114 Min.
Rehab is tough stuff. And when you are released from a clinic to attend a sister’s wedding, forced to face a complicated family environment, things can often feel even tougher. Yet Jonathan Demme’s film manages to draw poignancy and marvelously nuanced performances—especially by Anne Hathaway, Anna Deavere Smith, and TV on the Radio frontman, Tunde Adebimpe--from this prickly premise. As Roger Ebert observes in his four star review: “After I saw [the film] for the second time…a friend asked: ‘Wouldn't you love to attend a wedding like that?’ In a way, I felt I had.”
JAN. 26-27-28
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD USA/GERMANY 2008
Dir. Werner Herzog
Documentary
English, Rated G, 99 Min.
Werner Herzog’s visually arresting documentary about Antarctica explores nothing short of the frontiers of life on earth--and the strange engagement between human beings and animal life in the least visited continent on the globe. Sometimes intentionally banal, at other moments breathtakingly profound, Herzog’s film shows how Antarctica has developed into a pivotal destination for those who aim to discover the most extreme capacities of our planet. “Mr. Herzog opens his mind, heart and eyes to all these wayfarers who—despite the persistent strain of melancholy that touches each and every person who appears on camera—seem eerily at peace at the bottom of the world” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).
FEB. 2-3-4
RUDO Y CURSI MEXICO 2009
Dir. Carlos Cuaron
With Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Guillermo Francella, Elvira Dolores Heredia
Spanish with English subtitles, Rated R, 103 Min.
Two half-brothers are playing football (what we call soccer) in a remote, dusty Mexican village. As luck would have it (more luck that you or I will ever see), sports talent scout, Batuta, notices them only because he is stuck there when his car breaks down. The brothers, Tato and Beto, are soon to be nicknamed Rudo and Cursi when they are catapulted to fame and fortune in the sports world. “This isn’t a sports movie but a human comedy, and depends on the effortless chemistry between Luna and Garcia Bernal, who evoke, like real brothers the ability to love and hate each other and push all the right buttons.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.
FEB. 9-10-11
THE TEMPEST USA, 2011
Dir. Julie Taymor
With Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, Chris Cooper, Djimon Hounsou
English, Rated PG-13, 110 Min.
The Tempest has remained one of the most topical and controversial plays in Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre. Presciently engaging topics such as Europe’s colonization of the non-West, the power of book learning in relief of force of arms, and the possibility of reinventing one’s own civilization in another part of the world, the play continues to delight and haunt. This recent movie adaptation, screened in conjunction with the Murray Shakespeare Festival, stars the wonderful Helen Mirren as Prospera (a female version of Prospero) and the hilarious Russell Brand as Trinculo. Director Julie Taymor presents the work with an “extraordinary vision and voice” (Betsey Sharkey, Los Angeles Times).
FEB. 16-17-18
AJAMI ISRAEL 2010
Dir. Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani
With Omar Shahar Kabaha, Malek Ibrahim Frege, Nasri Fouad Habash
Arabic and Hebrew With English subtitles, Not Rated , 120 Min.
Since Tel Aviv often seems curiously unscathed and unblemished by tensions evident in Jerusalem and in the occupied territories of Palestine to the east and south, Israelis commonly refer to the city as “The Bubble.” Ajami, a prize-winning film set in the neighborhood of Jaffa, in the immediate vicinity of Tel Aviv, complicates this metaphor. Written and directed by Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab, and by Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew, the film offers a slice of life in the Middle East, full of drug hustlers and cops, rarely exposed to the outside world. “One of the pleasures of Ajami, a tough and in many ways unsparing movie, is its deep immersion in the beats and melodies of everyday life in Jaffa and beyond” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).
FEB. 23-24-25
JAPAN 1954
SEVEN SAMURAI
Dir. Akira Kurosawa
With Takeshi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Isao Kimura, Keiko Tshushima
Japanese with English subtitles, Not Rated, 207 Min.
It’s the quintessential samurai movie, father of the genre and the same that was remade in Hollywood as The Magnificent Seven (1960). In 16th century Japan villagers grow weary annual attacks on them by a horde of pillaging bandits. Lacking the military prowess to fend off the annual attack, the villagers decide to invite a rag-tag group of samurai mercenaries to fend off the bandits. As they organize the defense of the village, the seven reveal their less-than-perfect character and try to convince the villagers of their good intentions. Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
MARCH 1-2-3
SUMMER HOURS
FRANCE 2009
Dir. Olivier Assayas
With Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier, Edith Scob
French with English subtitles, Not Rated, 103 Min.
Olivier Assayas’s gorgeous meditation on French culture in a state of flux dramatizes the mourning of two brothers and a sister after the death of their mother. Organized around the traditional ownership of a family home and family heirlooms, and the need to redistribute wealth after the passing of a loved one, Assayas’s film exposes generational tensions in a country gradually abandoning its hold on domestic soil. The movie “refuses to weigh itself down while handling rather weighty material (specifically the question of heritage, a French specialty) and staying grounded in a concern as essential as it is uncomfortable: how to live with the vestiges of the past?” (Frédéric Bonnaud, Film Comment)
MARCH 8-9-10
CHINATOWN USA 1974
Dir. Roman Polanski
With Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
English Rated R, 130 Min.
Shamus Jake Gittes doggedly peels away layer after layer of comfortable, respectable sham to reveal a patriarchal criminal and an archetypical crime. Whether for its convincing portrayal of Southern California of the 1930s, the Nicholson Dunaway love affair (all the more erotic for its subtlety) or the suspense and delightful surprise,s Chiantown has become a classic. Don’t miss Polanski’s cameo as the hood with the knife.
MARCH 15-16-17 NO FILM
MARCH 22-23-24 • NO FILM SPRING BREAK
MAR 29-30-31
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT USA, 2010
Dir. Lisa Cholodenko
With Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Paul Mark Ruffalo, Joni Mia Wasikowska
English, Rated R, 104 Min.
This “smart comedy about a lesbian couple, their children, and the sperm donor who fathered them” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian UK) explores novel constructions of the contemporary American family. Defying expectations and stereotypes, the ensemble performance—including stellar contributions by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore—makes the movie’s subject matter seem far more ordinary and quirky, and comically rich, than sensational or strange. Director Lisa Cholodenko “and her cast carry it off with sensitivity, wit and warmth.”
APRIL 5-6-7
BEST OF THE 2011
RIVER’S EDGE
FILM FESTIVAL
Narrative, Documentary, Animation and Experimental film from Paducah’s International Film Festival. Highlights include Best of the Fest winner. “
Sponsored by the Institute for International Studies; the College of Humanities and Fine Arts; the Curris Center, the Office of the Provost; the Office of Student Affairs; the College of Business and Public Affairs; the College of Education; the College of Health Sciences and Human Services; the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, the Department of English and Philosophy; the Department of History; the Department of Modern Languages; the Department of Psychology; ICALA (the Foreign Language Club); Alpha Mu Gamma, Phi Alpha Theta. The festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC).