Film Society

This continues our look at some outstanding recent films from Latin America. This one is the début of the acclaimed young Argentine director Lucrecia Martel. The film portrays a well-off family in North-West Argentina, as they suffer through summer heat and humidity, along with their own forms of unhappiness.

From Director Michael Haneke, the film is set in a north German village in the years immediately preceding the First World War. A “children’s story”, it explores themes of religious and political tyranny, exploring the origins of evil. The film has received international acclaim, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes […]

“Los Santos Inocentes” (1984) directed by Mario Camus. Based on the novel of the same name by the acclaimed Spanish novelist Miguel Delibes, the movie portrays the life and miseries of a poor family working in the property (“hacienda”) of a landlord in post Civil War Spain. Although it has […]

“A Fistful Of Dollars” (1964) by Sergio Leone. This movie is THE classic of Spaghetti Western and hardly needs a presentation. A young and mysterious bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) arrives to a village with two antagonistic families. The bounty hunter will try to manipulate both families for his own profit. […]

“The Sweet Hereafter” by the Canadian film director Atom Egoyan presents a story about the cultural aftershocks which tear apart a small British Columbia town in the wake of a school-bus accident leaving a number of local children dead. When a big-city lawyer (Ian Holm) arrives in the interest of […]

The story is set in a prosperous locale somewhere in Latin America. Guests gather in evening dress for a party, which they subsequently find they are unable to leave. The result is a social portrait and dark satire, whose wit carries undertones of menace. This continues our look at some […]

This is the story of twenty-eight-year-old Tom (Romain Duris), a pianist who has been leading a life of crime with his father, a real estate broker. Eventually, Tom will have a chance to abandon his life of violence and become a professional concert pianist, like his mother.In this film, the […]

This is one of the most autobiographical films by the great Italian director, and the story of five young Italian men at crucial turning points in their small town lives also mirrors important social changes in 1950s Italy. Coming after Fellini’s commercial failure with his previous film, “I Vitelloni” helped […]

From Brazil, this is the story of a retired schoolteacher obligated by circumstance to take custody of an orphaned 9-year-old boy. Their friendship grows as she agrees to help him find his father in the Northeast of the country. The story of their journey was adapted by director João Emanuel […]

In a posh neighbourhood outside Copenhagen, a cult of middle-class deserters, living in a large, unfurnished house, act out their alienation by pretending to be mentally impaired. In 1995 Lars von Trier co-founded Dogma 95, a movement which aimed at endorsing filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, […]

The film for Sunday, 8 December will be “Raging Bull” (1980). This continues our look at some of the great collaborations of director Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro. It is based on the life of Jake LaMotta, an American middleweight boxer who competed in the mid-20th century. The […]

The film for Tuesday, 2 December will be “Offside” (2006). This is a drama from one of Iran’s most acclaimed writer-directors, Jafar Panahi. The story concerns women who want to watch a world cup qualifying match, but are barred from doing so because of their sex. It is in some […]

The Film for Tuesday, 26 November will be “The King of Comedy.” (1983) A black comedy, this is one of the more original, but less celebrated, works from Director Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro. De Niro stars as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring comic whose delusions of his own […]

Altman’s films are famous for their large casts and overlapping dialogues. ‘Short cuts’ presents a great example of this: the film which was originally inspired by Raymond Carver’s short stories follows 22 different characters in loosely interlinked stories. The main focus is on couples whose relationships are, at one point […]

The film for Tuesday, 19 November, will be “Lust, Caution” (2007). We return to wartime Shanghai. Director Ang Lee adapts Eileen Chang’s espionage novel about a plot by Chinese students againt the occupying Japanese forces. But it is also a love story, and an explicit one. Tony Leung stars with […]

The film for Sunday, 17 November, will be “The Hustler” (1961). Paul Newman stars as “Fast Eddie” Felson, a small-time pool (billiard) hustler who aspires to greater achievement in his craft. Along the way he falls in love. Shot in black and white Cinemascope, the film takes us through a […]

The film for Tuesday, 12 November will be “A Prophet” (“Un prophète”) (2009). A French petty criminal of Algerian background is sentenced to prison. Barely literate upon arrival, he works his way through the hierarchy of organized crime in the prison. Director Jacques Audiard made the film from an original […]

The film for Sunday, 10 November, will be “Happiness” (1998) written and directed by the independent American film-maker Todd Solondz. Awarded in Cannes Film Festival for “its bold tracking of controversial contemporary themes, richly-layered subtext, and remarkable fluidity of visual style”, the movie tells the story of a pedophile and […]