Kimjongilia by N. C. Heikin (South Korea, 2009, 75 min.). For 60 years, North Koreans have been governed by a totalitarian regime that controls all information entering and leaving the country. A cult of personality surrounds its two recent leaders: first, Kim Il Sung, and now his son Kim Jong II. For Kim Jong Ils 46th birthday, a hybrid red begonia named Kimjongilia was created, symbolizing wisdom, love, justice, and peace. The film draws its name from the rarefied flower and reveals the extraordinary stories told by survivors of North Koreas vast repression, prison camps, and devastating famine. Interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propaganda films and other footage, the film fully exposes the humanitarian crisis in a stylish, deeply moving documentary.
showing through wednesday
find a trailer
find/upload a trailer
Nobodys Perfect by Niko von Glasow (2009, 84 min.). This documentary follows the director as he looks for 11 peoplewho, like him, were born disabled due to the disastrous side effects of Thalidomide, a prescription medication given to pregnant women in the late 1950s to relieve symptoms of morning sicknessto pose nude for a book of photographs. Filmed with a darkly humorous touch and no deference to political correctness, the fascinating story follows the lives of the 12 extraordinary participants learning to live with their disabilities with an impressive level of normality.
showing through sunday
find a trailer
find/upload a trailer
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
With Franco Citti, Silvana Mangano, Alida Valli, Carmelo Bene
Italy 1967, 35mm, color, 104 min. Italian with English subtitles
Pasolini turned to myth in the search for a “primal cinema” that occupied the late stage of his tragically shortened career, choosing Oedipus Rex to delve into perhaps the most primal myth of all. Yet Pasolini explicitly rejected any Freudian trappings of the myth, offering an Oedipus less a man scarred by his forbidden intimacy with his mother than a cautionary emblem of willful ignorance. Pasolini transforms the myth into a critique of innocence, not as an absence of guilt but rather as an avoidance of knowledge. Pasolini Oedipus is not a crusader for truth brought down by fate and hubris but rather a man who blunders into his fate precisely by refusing to confront it. Pasolini’s second film set in antiquity and his first in color, Oedipus Rex explores a noticeably more elaborate art direction and costumes than his previous evocations of a vanished ancient world.
one day only
find a trailer
find/upload a trailer
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
With Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky
Italy 1968, 35mm, color, 98 min. Italian with English subtitles
A radically streamlined and elliptically simple film, Teorema remains one of Pasolini’s most mysterious works. The story of a sexually magnetic stranger, played by a mesmerizing Terence Stamp, who methodically disrupts the well-ordered household of a wealthy Milanese industrialist, Teorema’s hidden tensions are brought to the surface with a shocking suddenness that remains as inexplicable as it is inevitable. Meant as a merciless savaging of the bourgeoisie, Teorema features a pair of well-known Italian actors as the subjects of its critique—Massimo Girotti and Silvana Mangano as husband and wife— as foils to the alluring stranger, who may be angel or demon, or something else entirely.
showing through sep 12
find a trailer
find/upload a trailer