Saturday, DEC. 03 – 6:30 PM
FRANCE
The Artist
France 2011. Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Béjo, John Goodman, James Cromwell,
Penelope Ann Miller
Jean Dujardin won Best Actor honours at Cannes for his performance in Michel Hazanavicius’s crowd-pleasing charmer, a surprise sensation on the 2011 film festival circuit — a surprise because this love letter to silent cinema is itself a silent movie, right down to its B&W images, intertitles, 1:1.33 aspect ratio, and rousing orchestral accompaniment! “Endlessly inventive, packed with clever sight-gags and rich in stunningly achieved detail ... Hazanavicius’s glorious picture is a formally daring and sublimely funny movie about the end of silent movies in 1920s Hollywood ... Dujardin plays George Valentin, a sleekly handsome star whose career comes to a crunching end with the coming of the talkies. As Valentin becomes yesterday’s man in yesterday’s movies, his former co-star Peppy Miller (Bérénice Belo) is storming to stardom ...The Artist is tender, touching and never makes the mistake of simply sending itself up ... I can’t wait to see it again” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). B&W, 35mm, silent with English intertitles and musical score. 100 mins. B&W, 35mm, silent with English intertitles and musical score. 100 mins.
Saturday, DEC. 03 – 4:30 PM IRELAND • ALL AGES WELCOME!
The Runway
Ireland/Luxembourg 2010. Director: Ian Power
Cast: Demián Bichir, Kerry Condon, James Cosmo, Jamie Kierans, John Carpenter
There’s more than a little Spielbergian whimsy in writer-director Ian Power’s debut feature, a kid-friendly, warm-hearted charmer inspired by actual events. In 1983, a Mexican pilot made an emergency landing near a small Irish village in County Cork; the locals rallied to build him a runway so he could take off again. Here, the airman is a mysterious Columbian (Demián Bichir, from Soderbergh’s Che and Showtime’s Weeds). The film’s spunky hero is nine-year-old Paco (Jamie Kierans), son of single mom Grace (Kerry Condon). The pilot is the answer to Paco’s prayers, sort of — Paco was actually expecting an intergalactic spaceship. And, because Paco is the only local who knows even a smidge of Spanish — self taught, because the boy fancies his missing father is a Spaniard — he’s soon acting as translator for the exotic stranger. “This beautifully filmed Irish yarn is a corny but touching fable about rural kindness” (Irish Times). Colour, Blu-ray Disc, in English. 90 mins.
Saturday, DEC. 03 – 8:30 PMROMANIA
First of All, Felicia
(Felicia, înainte de toate)
Romania/France/Belgium/Croatia 2009.
Directors: Razvan Radulescu, Melissa de Raaf
Cast: Ozana Oancea, Ileana Cernat, Vasile Mentzel, Victoria Cocias, Gelu Nitu
Prominent Romanian screenwriter Razvan Radulescu, who scripted Cristi Puiu’s extraordinary The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, debuts as a director with First of All, Felicia, a collaboration with Dutch film curator Melissa de Raaf. “Radulescu and de Raaf have co-written and directed a simple yet rich story confined to a single day. It dawns for Felicia (Ozana Oancea) with expectations that her sister will drive her to the Bucharest airport for her flight to Amsterdam, where Felicia has lived with her husband and son for years. The sister flakes out, triggering a chain of frustrating complications that conspire to keep Felicia waiting with her excessively protective yet well-intentioned mother (Ileana Cernat) at the airport. Even by the extraordinarily high standard of Romanian film acting, Oancea and Cernat attain rare levels of emotional honesty” (AFI Film Fest, Los Angeles). “With its long takes, quiet realism, and fusion of dark humour and poignancy,Felicia bears all the hallmarks of recent Romanian cinema” (Hollywood Reporter). Colour, 35mm, in Romanian and Dutch with English subtitles. 108 mins.
Screenings restricted to 18+.
Pacific Cinémathèque
membership required unless
otherwise indicated.
