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Southwest Film Center's lineup caters to movie lovers
Silver screen schedule
Here's the fall lineup and highlights for the Southwest Film Center at the University of New Mexico:
This weekend
• "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), Ingmar Bergman.
• "L'Eclisse (1962), the conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni's loose trilogy on modern malaise.
Sept. 6-9
• "Electroma" (2006) Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter - aka musicians Daft Punk - tell the tale of robots who strive to be human.
• "Liquid Vinyl" (2005), a history of and valentine to club DJs.
Sept. 13-16
• "Cosmic Voyage" (1936), an early Soviet sci-fi movie, directed by Vasili Zhuravlev.
• "To The Stars by Hard Ways" (1981), a 2001 restored version of Richard Viktorov's cult hit about the voyage of an abandoned spaceship.
Sept. 20-23
• "Stalker" (1979), Andrei Tarkovsky's space-age companion to his classic "Solaris."
• "The Amphibian Man" (1961), one of Russia's most popular films, kind of an "Incredible Mr. Limpet" for the Soviet set.
Sept. 29-30
Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Fest
Oct. 4-7
"1208 East of Bucharest" (2006), a dark, languid comedy about the 1989 Romanian revolution. The Boston Globe says it's a "dingy, mordantly comic 'Rashomon' for the post-Soviet era."
Oct 11-14
"Steal a Pencil for Me" (2007), a "documentary feature film" about Nazi-occupied Holland from Oscar nominee Michele Ohayon, who last charmed us in 2005 with "Cowboy del Amor."
Oct. 18-21
"Rock the Bells" (2006), a celebration of hip-hop culture jumping off from the popular festival in San Bernardino, Calif. With performances by Redman, Dilated Peoples, MC Supernatural, Sage Francis and DJ NuMark.
Oct. 26-27
Women's Resource Center Fall Film Festival
Nov. 1-4
"Lights in the Dusk" (2006), Finland's deadpan filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki completes his absurdist trilogy with a noirish study of loneliness.
Nov. 8-11
"Red Road" (2006), a first feature about a police department's closed-circuit TV operator in Glasgow who inserts herself into a caper. The Los Angeles Daily News says it's "a far more honest and intelligent descendent of Hitchcock's `Rear Window' than . . . `Disturbia' was ever meant to be."
Nov. 15-18
"Oswald's Ghost" (2007), director Robert Stone's deconstruction of the myths of the Kennedy assassination. Stone previously gave us "Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst."
Nov. 29-Dec. 2
"Tony Takitani" (2004), a character sketch of a lonely artist. Directed by Jun Ichikawa from a short story by Haruki Murakami.
The slate this semester at the Southwest Film Center reads a bit like the syllabus of a course in the history of cinema.
Well, the weekend series does take place at the University of New Mexico (in the lower level of the Student Union Building), so that's not much of a stretch.
The fall slate starts out this weekend and next with double-bill tributes to Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, the legendary directors who died about a month ago. That includes the bookends to Antonioni's loose trilogy, "L'Avventura" and "L'Eclisse."
There's also a two-week run of classic Russian cinema, including an early film by the enigmatic Andrei Tarkovsky.
In fact, the schedule is heavy on foreign fare. Other offerings include:
• "Red Road" from Scotland.
• "1208 East of Bucharest" from Romania.
• "Lights in the Dusk" out of Finland.
• "Tony Takitani" from Japan.
The season packs in a good number of double features, but the film center's director, Brian Gillespie, said he got a lot of bang for his buck.
"I feel like we're spending the least we've spent so far, and this is one of our strongest lineups," he said.
Gillespie hopes in the spring to include more lectures and interactive events surrounding the films. In the fall, a Women in Film series is planned in October, and the film center will again be one of the venues for the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in September.
Gillespie hopes to strike a balance between drawing ardent film buffs and those more disposed toward the venue's midweek series of second-run Hollywood hits.
"I want it to be geared more toward the cinephile and less toward the casual moviegoer but have it be attractive to both," he said.
He also wants to foster an enthusiastic, knowledgeable staff, similar to the vibe at the Guild Cinema in Nob Hill, where Gillespie works part time as a projectionist.
"I'm trying to find people who are very outgoing and will happily serve you popcorn and talk about Truffaut."
Gillespie tapped into a traveling series of classic Russian films and will present four of them over two weeks in September, including "Cosmic Voyage" from 1936.
"It's on the level of the original 'King Kong,' " Gillespie said. "The special effects are awesome. It's been praised for its technical realism."
"Electroma" is a bizarre sort of robot road movie from the two men behind the techno duo Daft Punk, although neither they nor their music are featured.
"Rock the Bells," however, does have a lot of music, with performances by Wu Tang Clan and others at the 2004 music festival of the same name. And "Liquid Vinyl" studies the history of the underground club DJ scene.
