Hey there Everyone!
2004 was a great year for documentaries. Let’s see if 2005 can keep up the pace. The Brattle Theatre, known for playing strong documentary features, offers THE TAKE, a Canadian doc that focuses on Argentinian industry. Join us for at the Brattle Theatre for the 7:30 p.m. screening, Monday, February 7 for our Monday Night at the Movies, Avi Lewis’ THE TAKE. And if you’re itching to catch THE TAKE on Friday night, writer/producer Naomi Klein will be on hand at the 7:30 show!
This stirring new documentary focuses on Argentina’s radical new movement of occupied businesses: groups of workers who are claiming the country’s bankrupt workplaces and running them without bosses. Their call-to-arms: ‘Occupy! Resist! Produce!’ In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act ‘The Take ‘ has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.
With THE TAKE, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada’s most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers’ lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.
If you missed last week’s Monday Night at the Movies excursion to the Harvard Film Archive for Rodney Evans and his film, BROTHER TO BROTHER, it’s definitely worth a look. Especially if you go to the 7:20 p.m. screening either Friday or Saturday night, when writer/director Evans will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions. Evans’ film is a poetic and powerful look at a young, black, contemporary artist struggling with issues of race and sexuality. What he finds is that the issues of the young artists who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, were very similar to the ones he faces today. And if you say hello to Rodney, tell him the Chlotrudis Society sent you.
Fans of Japanese film should consider heading to the Harvard Film Archive this Friday or Saturday, as they continue their series of The Films of Hirokazu Koreeda. There are two of Koreeda’s films to chose from this weekend. His glorious and moving AFTER LIFE scored the #5 spot on the recent Chlotrudis Society’s Top 101 Foreign-Language Films. MABOROSI is an earlier film that examines grief in a somber, introspective and beautiful film. If you haven’t seen them, do check them out.
Finally, we won’t really be mourning, but we do want to acknowledge passing of the LAST (yes, you read that right, the last) art-house cinema in Boston. The Lowe’s Theatre Copley Square started showing independent and foreign films when the Loew’s Boston Common opened a few years ago. While there wasn’t much to recommend about the Copley Place Theatre, I did recently grow to appreciate the fact that it was a mere 10-minute walk from our apartment in the South End. I will also remember it fondly as the theatre where I saw I’VE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING, introduced by Patricia Rozema herself, way back in 1987 during the Boston Film Festival. So au revoir, Copley Place Theatre… and Boston, you better start thinking indie!
See you at the movies!
Playing this week, February 4 – 10.
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge
Area Premiere!
The Take
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline
Bad Education Nominated for Best Actor and Best Movie Chlotrudis Awards!
Hotel Rwanda
Being Julia
The Take
Midnite Madness
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Fri. & Sat.)
FEI Theatres Capitol Theatres, Arlington
Finding Neverland
Kinsey Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Chlotrudis Award!
Being Julia
FEI Theatres Somerville Theatres, Somerville
Finding Neverland
The Motorcycle Diaries (Mon. – Thu.) Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Chlotrudis Award!
Bombay Cinema Presents
Black (Fri. – Sun.)
Shabd (Fri. – Sun.)
Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge
The Films of Hirokazu Koreeda
After Life (Fri. & Sat.)
Maborosi (Fri. & Sat.)
An Evening with Kim Hong-Jun
Jungle Story & La Vie En Rose (Sun.) Director Present!
My Korean Cinema (Mon.) Director Present!
Black and White on Screen
Silent Shorts and Veiled Aristrocrats (incomplete print) (Mon.)
Fashion and Film
In the Mood for Love (Tue.)
Life Stories: Film & Autobiography
Frames of Mind
Lumiere Bros. Films (Wed.)
Heimatfilm
The Fisher Girl of Lake Constance (Wed.)
Hollywood Hits Theatre, Danvers
Finding Neverland
Sideways Nominated for FOUR Chlotrudis Awards, including Best Cast!
Being Julia
Million Dollar Baby (ineligible)
Landmark Theatres
Kendall Square, Cambridge
Brother to Brother Director present Friday & Saturday night!
The Sea Inside
Born into Brothels
Bad Education Nominated for Best Actor and Best Movie Chlotrudis Awards!
House of Flying Daggers Nomianted for a Best Cinematography Chlotrudis Award!
Sideways Nominated for FOUR Chlotrudis Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay!
Hotel Rwanda
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (ineligible)
Embassy Cinema, Waltham
Born into Brothels
A Very Long Engagement
Bad Education Nominated for Best Actor and Best Movie Chlotrudis Awards!
Sideways Nominated for FOUR Chlotrudis Awards, including Best Supporting Actress!
The Sea Inside
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (ineligible)
Closer (ineligible)
Million Dollar Baby (ineligible)
Loews Theatres Harvard Square, Cambridge
A Very Long Engagement
Closer (ineligible)
Million Dollar Baby (ineligible)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
African Film Festival
Moolaad’a> (Fri. – Sun. & Thu.) Nominated for Best Movie & Best Actress Chlotrudis Awards!
Cinema Tropical
Bolivar I Am (Fri. & Sat.)
Art of Film
In the Realms of the Unreal (Sun. & Thu.)
POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English (Sat. & Sun.)
Psychoanalysis on Film
Empathy (Sun. & Thu.)
Japanese Cinema
Dolls (Thu.)
The Newburyport Screening Room, Newburyport
House of Flying Daggers Nomianted for a Best Cinematography Chlotrudis Award!
West Newton Cinema, West Newton
Hotel Rwanda
Beyond the Sea
Finding Neverland
Kinsey Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Chlotrudis Award!
Being Julia
Motorcycle Diaries Nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Chlotrudis Award!
Vera Drake Nominated for FOUR Chlotrudis Awards, including Best Actress!
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
Paper Clips
UPCOMING EVENTS!
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BU CINEMATHEQUE RETURNS!
Thursday, February 10: AN EVENING WITH TOM NOONAN BU College of Communications,640 Comm.Ave., Room B-05 6:30 pm (NOTE EARLY STARTING TIME)
Tom Noonan is a New York-based actor-playwright-filmmaker who has supported his idiosyncratic personal projects by appearing in television series and disparate movies such as Heat, Last Action Hero, and Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train. His own movies — What Happened Was and The Wife — are intense, psychologically charged chamber dramas ripe with subtext. What Happened Was won Best Dramatic Film at the Sundance Film Festival. For his BU appearance, Noonan will conduct an informal actor workshop based on his work at New York’s Paradise Theatre, and he will show his 2004 feature, Wang Dang, many years in the making. Noonan describes this film as “an evening in the life of a visiting film professor as he entertains two co-eds at a seedy off-campus motel.”
Friday, February 18: AN EVENING WITH DENNIS LEHANE.
640 Comm. Ave., Room B-05, 7 pm
Dennis Lehane, a native Bostonian, is one of the most talented, and deservedly acclaimed, crime and mystery novelists in the world, known above all for Mystic River, his amazingly spooky tale of three boys growing up in the violent world of Southie. Lehane will introduce a showing of the much-praised 1993 Clint Eastwood adaptation of his book, and offer the inside story on the making of this Sean Penn-Tim Robbins-Kevin Bacon-starring movie. Following the screening, Lehane will read from his book: a section of note which didn’t make it to the screen.
Thursday, February 24: AN EVENING WITH HIRAM MARTINEZ.
640 Comm.Ave., Room B-05, 7 pm.
Each year, the BU Cinematheque searches out one low-budget indie feature of excellence which can be a model and inspiration for university film production students. Hence, Four Dead Batteries, a complex, humane, and often hilarious story of the lives and screwed-up loves of a four-member New York improv comedy group. A prize-winner in 2004 at eight film festivals, Four Dead Batteries is written and directed by Hiram Martinez, a precociously talented 24-year-old college drop-out, who will speak at the BU screening. The official advertising tag-lines for this film: “From the guys who saw Rushmore and American Beauty.”
Michael R. Colford
Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, President