Essential Cinema

Since the early 1960s, the French maverick and rebel-auteur Philippe Garrel has, in a career spanning over four decades, managed to single-handedly make the most important contribution to modern French cinema outside that of the New Wave, yet his work remains criminally unseen beyond European shores despite his legendary collaborations with such cultural and cinematic icons as Nico, Zouzou, Pierre Clémenti, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Catherine Deneuve and Raoul Coutard, as well as his own famous actor-father, Maurice Garrel, and rising star son, Louis Garrel. This mini-retrospective drawn from Philippe Garrel’s large body of work represents a rare opportunity to experience first-hand these rarely screened works, which together represent one of the most radical and groundbreaking legacies in all of French cinema.

– Jameson West, Associate Programmer, Austin Film Society

The Austin Film Society “African Diaspora” film retrospective is a powerful opportunity to appreciate Pan-Africanist creativity under the cold realities of slavery, imperialism, colonization and neo-colonialism and its universalistic ramifications. It provides a unique vision and aesthetics on the cultural agency of people of African descent bypassing geographic and linguistic boundaries for the purpose of tackling fundamental issues of race, identity, violence, memory and belonging. The results are models for considering universal human conditions because the protagonists of these diasporic narratives are confronting the trials and experiences of displacement which do not apply solely to Africans. This cinema, therefore, must be situated in the glare of people struggling for human rights, self-knowledge, self-responsibility, self-respect and dignity under unique forms of pressures such as slavery, genocidal dictatorships and others processes of forced deterritorialization.


The feature term diaspora is drawn from the expulsion of Israelis out of their land by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 136 CE. It was later adopted in Black studies programs to describe the global dispersion of Africans throughout the world, principally engineered by the global slave regime. It is important, moreover, to recognize that no diasporic community, however, manifests all of these characteristics or shares them with the same intensity and identity with its scattered ancestral kin.

By the mid-1950s Britain finally seemed to be on an economic rebound from over two decades of deprivation caused by the Great Depression, World War II, and the immediate postwar period of continued shortages. Despite this admirable recovery, young artists were dissatisfied with the state of British culture. Writers, actors, directors, and artists railed against materialism, the rigid class system, and social issues such as racism, abortion, and homosexuality. Social realism provided a style and look, distantly akin to Italian neo-realism of the late 40s, French poetic realism of the 30s, and American postwar documentary-style narratives set in New York City tenements. Disparagingly described as “kitchen sink realism,” some British paintings, plays, and novels had begun to examine the lives of working class “blokes and birds,” young men and women with dreams or full of rage at the inequities of society. John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956) set the stage for a powerful body of work in literature, in the theater, and finally on the screen. Some of the finest British film directors of the 60s and 70s started in the realist style – among them, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, John Schlesinger, and Basil Dearden. The talented monsters of the British (and later American) stage and screen exploded out of these kitchen sink dramas – Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Dirk Bogarde, Peter Finch, and Michael Caine. Even though the classic “kitchen sink” cinema lasted only about seven years, the British realist torch was picked up and carried even farther by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, both of whom continue to create powerful films unafraid of current social problems. This Austin Film Society series will present six of the great British Realist films of the late 50s and early 60s.
-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

Special thanks to MGM Archives, Warner Bros Archives, Janus Films, Janet Pierson, Photofest, and Evan Driscoll

In 1902 French director Georges Melies released A TRIP TO THE MOON and delighted audiences worldwide, but science-fiction films didn't gain much respect or critical attention until the post-atomic era. Major exceptions were important films of the 1920s by German director Fritz Lang (METROPOLIS in particular, as well as WOMAN IN THE MOON) and by Soviet filmmakers (AELITA QUEEN OF MARS, for instance). In American cinema of the 30s and 40s space travel and the use of futuristic technology for world domination were relegated to Saturday kiddy-matinee serials (BUCK ROGERS and FLASH GORDON) and cartoons (SUPERMAN). However, after the explosion of atomic bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, the world realized that a new power existed, one which could be used to destroy life or perhaps propel humans into outer space. Coincidentally, as earthly eyes gazed heavenward, UFO sightings became far more frequent, a manifestation of hopefulness and paranoia and perhaps sometimes truth. Human dreams of new possibilities in science and fantasy exploded. The 1950s brought a Golden Age of American sci-fi feature films involving space exploration and alien invasions. In 1957, after the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik - the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth -- the race was on to get to the moon (a feat realized in 1969 by American astronauts) and to explore other planets. During that time and beyond, fantasy literature and cinema showing terrors on other planets or dystopias on earth proliferated around the globe. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and E.T. (1982) were the exceptions to the rule that alien beings were evil and came here to steal or destroy our planet. Kubrick's 2001 (1968), Tarkovsky's SOLYARIS (1972), Ridley Scott's BLADERUNNER (1982), and THE MATRIX trilogy (1999-2003) proved that sci-fi could be thought-provoking as well as entertaining and visually stunning. More recently, science-fiction cinema has begun to explore global warming, population stresses, and new and frightening diseases. We no longer need extraterrestrial aliens to be afraid, very afraid of the future. This AFS summer series will present a wide array of science fiction styles and themes from Czechoslovakia, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, the US, and, most intriguingly, the former Soviet Union (represented by four new 35mm prints of films apparently never seen in Texas).

-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

Although doubtlessly a compassionate intellectual, Austrian director Michael Haneke has emerged as the present-day master of dispassionate observation. Most of his protagonists are wealthy, or at least financially comfortable, Europeans who live as if life is simply a set of rules, which they obey, and a stream of rewards, which they have earned for hard work. However, at some point Chance steps into their smooth pathway and blows chaos into their faces. These agents of Fate are often amoral, apathetic, or irrational and act as if they feel nothing, not even excitement, about their tumultuous, meaningless deeds. Much of the havoc is psychological. Even when there is violence in a Haneke film, it is the scars on the emotions and memory that will last longer than any physical pain. With carefully composed, classical shots, often lasting for many minutes, Haneke lets us inhabit the spaces of his characters while coolly observing their greatly changed realities. In the nineteenth century Haneke would have been a major novelist, filling his books with precise details and observations. Instead, at the crossroads of the 21st century, he proved himself to be as worthy of veneration and study as the grand auteurs of the 1960s and 70s. This series will offer a retrospective of eight of his nine feature films.

--- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

This will be the first of an annual film series featuring films from the Middle East and North Africa since those areas have become so much a part of the American consciousness and will doubtlessly remain so. Rather than focusing on the films of an individual country each year, we will show 4-6 important films from various countries in the region: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

In our ongoing mission to showcase the best of Asian cinema, the Austin Film Society is proud to present six films of remarkable beauty featuring vibrant characters from Thailand and Vietnam. Films from Asia have long been a major presence in international film culture, starting with postwar Japan and classic films by Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. Hong Kong smashed its way onto the screen with kung-fu movies in the 60s and 70s. The Chinese 5th Generation directors of the late 1980s brought striking compositions and fascinating stories. The Philippines has long supported a film industry churning out popular melodramas, crime films, exploitation movies, and historic epics. Only relatively recently have South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Viet Nam joined their fellow Asian countries in the major international film festivals. Thailand and Viet Nam have been especially impressive with films of sumptuous beauty and emotionally moving stories of struggle, loss, sorrow, and achievement, often placed within a breathtaking natural setting. Traditional family relationships are an essential element of many of the films from these countries, and the struggle between filial duty and individual dreams often sets up the conflicts.

--Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

“‘Young woman, you ought to be in pictures,’” recalled Gene Tierney in her autobiography. “That line was not even new in 1938. But I listened.” And how. It’s not every day a studio film director says that to a teenager touring the Warner Bros. lot with her family. “Among Hollywood discovery stories, mine might not rank with Lana Turner’s, sipping a soda at the counter of Schwab’s drugstore. But as far as I am aware, no other actress was discovered right in the studio.” Not until Twentieth Century-Fox’s Darryl Zanuck spied her dancing in a nightclub of her native New York almost two years later did Tierney (1920-1991) finally model the big screen’s proverbial glass slipper. Fritz Lang, John Ford, Josef Von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz all spun the young, exotic beauty in their vehicles – not to mention Howard Hughes, JFK, and Prince Aly Kahn. THE RAZOR’S EDGE, LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, NIGHT AND THE CITY: more trophy case Tierney. In the end, her Viennese champion, Otto Preminger, iconicized her for the ages in 1944’s LAURA. Even after Tierney’s mental collapse, the director’s ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962) gave her a penultimate star billing. “That was Laura, but she’s only a dream,” sang Johnny Mercer. That was Gene Tierney.

– Raoul Hernandez, Austin Chronicle, Guest Curator

During the second wave of anti-Communist hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, a subpoena was issued for Hollywood filmmaker Joseph Losey to appear in Washington, DC. Instead of waiting around to be served the summons, Losey and his wife took an extended vacation in Europe. His name was then added to the well-known (but officially denied) blacklist of all entertainment workers suspected of leftist political activities or attitudes. For the rest of his life Losey worked in the UK and Europe as a director, initially under an assumed name. His work was always interesting and uniquely his own, but it wasn’t until EVA (1962) and THE SERVANT (1963) that Losey gained an international reputation. Besides working on the latter film, noted playwright Harold Pinter developed two more screenplays with Losey: ACCIDENT and THE GO-BETWEEN. They were a perfect match. But then, some would say unfortunately, the expatriate American director met the Burtons, Richard and Liz. Together, in a drunken spree, they brought the world one of the unheralded camp classics, BOOM! That same year and more sedately Elizabeth Taylor turned in a fine performance for Losey in SECRET CEREMONY (1968). Burton also worked more civilly with Losey as leader of the anti-Stalinists in THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY (1972). The 70s became an increasingly difficult time for Losey who nonetheless managed to work with Julie Christie (THE GO-BETWEEN, 1970), Jane Fonda as Nora in A DOLL’S HOUSE (1973), Glenda Jackson in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (1975), and Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau (once again) in the mistaken-identity drama MR KLEIN (1976). As with so many Italian film directors, Losey occasionally turned to directing film versions of operas – DON GIOVANNI (1979) and BORIS GODUNOV (1980). After his foray into the classical world, Losey managed to direct only two more films, LA TRUITE (originally intended for Brigitte Bardot in the 60s but finally cast with Isabelle Huppert, 1982) and STEAMING (1985), a surprisingly feminist film, considering Losey’s notorious penchant for philandering. Only death stopped him from pursuing his two loves: film and women. Joseph Losey left behind a rich body of work that likely benefited from his decision to flee the repressive social/political/aesthetic restrictions which engulfed America in the 1950s. He is an excellent role model whose motto might have been, “Keep your passports ready.”

-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society