APRIL
Due to COVID19 concerns we have canceled our remaining Cine Club and Art Saturday events. When conditions allow, we will attempt to reschedule our screening of Apocalypse Now and our Student Film Festival. Any updates will be posted here and sent to our mailing list.
Friday 3 - Canceled
Cine Club @ SF Art Institute
Roy Andersson’s SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000)
Due to COVID19 concerns we have tentatively rescheduled this film, originally intended for March 20. Check this site for updates to the schedule.
And now for something completely different! A series of the most bizarre scenes you’ll ever see, connected by brilliant visual concepts, droll humor and a fertile imagination. Come and help us make sense of this film that is as entertaining as it is puzzling.
Why we are showing this film:
Roy Andersson is practically unknown here in the U.S, but this film brought him international acclaim, and it’s so unique, strange, and funny, we couldn’t resist introducing his work to you. His style is all his own, as is his sense of humor—almost morbid, but drawing on a lot of comic timing from silent movies. Andersson’s untraditional thinking tells his stories in bizarre tableaux which always reflect life in unexpected ways. His down-trodden characters moan and groan about the terrible blows life brings them, and the more bleak and horrible the scene the funnier it becomes. Yes, it’s a comedy, just about the most unusual you’ll see – combining elements of Beckett, Chaplin, Ionesco, and the entire surrealist playbook to point out cheerfully just how bleak and ugly life can be. You’ll leave feeling wonderful!
About the director:
Roy Andersson graduated from the Swedish Film Institute and made a fairly realistic film, A Swedish Love Story, which brought him great renown at the Berlin film Festival.
This sweeping success pushed him immediately into a depression, and he retired from features for 25 years, producing hundreds of commercials instead. On his return to serious film making, his personal new style was absurdist comedy using long takes and caricaturing Swedish society. His short, World of Glory, is on many the top 10 best of all time lists, and the three features, Songs from the Second Floor (Jury Prize at Cannes), We, the Living and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (winner at Venice) has made him a favorite of museums and festivals featuring all his work together. He is considered the most important Nordic director since Bergman.
Friday 10 - Will be rescheduled
Cine Club @ SF Art Institute
Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979, USA)
We finish the year with one of the most breathtaking war films ever made. Adapting Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam War, this film follows a special ops officer sent into the jungle to assassinate a renegade colonel. Beautiful, haunting imagery and a poetic narrative bring the tragedy of the war to life.
Warning: drug use and wartime violence
Why we are showing this film:
The Vietnam war brought a decade of trauma to the American political system, and the war itself best illustrates the disastrous result of the ignorance rampant in the foreign policies of our nation. Student’s response to this film in the past has been astounding—it does things to the way one looks at film. It changes some students into film fanatics. It’s not a realistic look at war, but a very truthful one, dedicated to showing the madness apparent everywhere.
About the director:
Coppola was one the most important American directors of the 70’s—with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now considered his masterpieces. He is among the first generation of directors spawned by American film schools at NYU, UCLA and USC (Lucas and Scorcese are others). In the 60’s he began as one of schlock producer Roger Corman’s wonder boys, rising through the ranks to the point where he had enough clout to make his great films. He continues to produce and direct films, but his influence on generations of future filmmakers rests with his films of the 1970’s. He has also encouraged his family to create films: his wife Eleanor (Hearts of Darkness, Paris Can Wait); his daughter Sophia (Beguiled); his son Roman (Mozart in the Jungle) and grand-daughter Gia (Palo Alto).