Japanese Film Festival 2008
When you think Japanese cinema, you probably think about anime, right? Or samurai flicks. Or mind-fuck horror. Or a lurid blend of bizarre sex and graphic violence. For 12 years now, the Japan Foundation has been bringing discerning cinemagoers all this... and much, much more!
Like wasabi hitting your sinuses, the festival kicks off with plot-twisting crime comedy After School.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
When Patti Smith moved to NYC in 1967 she said she was going to "kick poetry's ass". Obviously it was not only poetry's butt that had the boot coming. But how Patti got from the pig swamps of Jersey to godmother of punk is a story we all need to hear.
Filmmaker Steven Sebring brings us a document, narrated by Smith, charting eleven years in her life - travels, concerts, spoken word performances, painting, photography, writing and thinking.
MIFF - Frontier of Dawn
When even a MIFF audience leaves the cinema muttering that a film is "too French", you know it must be very French indeed. A tortured romance by post-New Wave director Philippe Garrel - and starring his dreamy son, Louis - Frontier of Dawn's languid predictability didn't fare so well at Cannes.
Young at Heart charity screening
If you hate Battle of the Choirs, but you like old people, Sonic Youth, and wish to help the homeless, then here's a date for your diary. MIFF and Rooftop Cinema present a charity screening of Young at Heart this Wednesday night on the roof. It's not one of those docos where you will sit there thinking, awww, look at the old people singing the rock 'n' roll - they're so heartwarming.
MIFF - My Winnipeg
Breast milk! Betrayed! Wake up, Winnipegger! Even the titles that flash up during Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg are infectious. It's a kinda-sorta love-hate documentary about his home town, populated by dreamers, lorded over by his all-powerful mother, and made mythical by an avalanche of surreal new facts.
MIFF - Jack's Wife (1973)
From the moment they first shuffled across the grainy screen of Night of the Living Dead, zombies became synonymous with George Romero. Since he injected new monstrosity into a feared favourite, the excitement surrounding his zombie films is so frenzied that it's easy to forget he made anything else.
MIFF - Artist Docos
The popularity of the music documentary section of MIFF may lead many - like your idiot housemate - to assume that this is all the doco program has to offer. Not so! If he proves difficult to convince, take him to see these; if he refuses, get a new housemate.
Surely there is nothing less foreboding than the saccharin pop of ‘80s sweetheart, Tiffany.
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