THE THIRD MURDER, the newest movie from two-time Cannes Film Festival winner Hirokazu Koreeda (SHOPLIFTERS; LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON), follows the trial of confessed killer Misumi, a previously convicted murderer who has killed again and this time faces the death penalty. His attorney, Shigemori attempts to defend him from death but as he digs deeper finds that the crime isn’t as black and white as he once thought. A psychological deep dive into the mind of a killer, THE THIRD MURDER, is a gripping and eerie look at what it means to be guilty or innocent, and the lasting effects that can have on the people around you.
Here’s what the critics are saying:
“This mysteriously beautiful film, in Japanese with English subtitles, explores the elusiveness of motives, the nature of truth and nothing less than the justice system – the way it functions in response to an accused murderer who has already confessed and continues to insist he’s guilty.” Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
“What emerges is an inquiry not into the divine, but instead into the mystery of human existence.” Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice
“With a quiet, adamantly moral sensibility and unassuming yet exacting technique, he tells seemingly small stories that grow deeper and more emotionally complex one nuance at a time.” Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Here at AFS, we’re big fans of Austin-based filmmaker and so-called “Godfather of Mumblecore” Andrew Bujalski. Later this month, Bujalski’s newest film SUPPORT THE GIRLS opens around the country, including at AFS Cinema. Our Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen recently sat down with the filmmaker for a conversation about living and working in Austin, his thoughts on Hollywood movies and whether or not we would ever direct a Marvel picture, what he makes of the word “mumblecore” nowadays, and why he will still drop everything to see a 35mm print in theaters.
And make sure to check out SUPPORT THE GIRLS, screening at the AFS Cinema starting August 24th. Andrew Bujalski joins us in person for a Q&A following the August 26th screening. Tickets and more information here.
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA opens this Friday, August 17th, at the AFS Cinema. Tickets are on sale now.
Ryuichi Sakamoto’s prolific career began as a member of the Japanese synth-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra (as seen here on “Soul Train” in 1980). Sakamoto would soon shift his focus onto film scores, composing the acclaimed scores for MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE, THE REVENANT, and THE LAST EMPEROR, for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Original Score. With shooting spanning over five years, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA follows the musician as he navigates this period in his life including his diagnosis with stage 3 throat cancer, his anti-nuclear activism efforts following the Fukushima disaster, and his daily fascination with the sounds that are all around us and how their combination with synthetic sounds can make for a lasting musical impact.
Here’s what the critics are saying:
“The creative process is notoriously difficult to capture on camera, but by the end of this documentary, you will feel as if you not only understand Mr. Sakamoto intellectually, but also share a sense of the excitement he feels when discovering just the right match of sounds.” Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times
“The film serves as a stirringly poetic meditation on the pursuit of creation in the face of mortality.” Michael Rechtshaffen, The LA TIMES
“Stephen Nomura Schible’s documentary, “Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA” is not only a portrait of a great artist, but a sensitive and engrossing depiction of the act of creation and its process.” G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
Watch the trailer for RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA below:
In Augustine Frizzell’s exuberant comedy NEVER GOIN’ BACK, two teenage girls, high school drop outs, live on their own, waitress at the local pancake house, and scheme about putting together enough cash to make rent, party, and take a spontaneous trip to the beach, if they don’t get fired first.
While the ill-advised adventures of the two heroines are as laugh out loud hilarious as the best Hollywood comedies, the film is grounded in an authenticity that comes from the filmmaker’s intense connection with the material. The real-life people and places of Garland, Texas, where Frizzell was herself a high school drop out and pancake house waitress, are behind every scene.
We asked Augustine to take a drive around Garland and give us a tour of the places that she spent her teen years and lived the experiences that she fictionalized for NEVER GOIN’ BACK. Aside from a few corporate brands that you won’t see in the film, here’s a case of the movie versions being as close as it comes to the originals.
Each month, AFS presents Sunday School, a program of family-friendly films that introduce the next generation of filmgoers to cinema’s greatest hits and newest discoveries. The mastermind behind the series is guest programmer (and parent of two) Stacy Brick. We had the chance to speak with Stacy about the inspirations for the series and her life in film watching.
What made you want to start programming the Sunday School series?
As soon as my kids were old enough to watch movies I knew I wanted to expose them to programming that was different from the usual choices. Kids are really open and can absorb things that may at first glance seem too complex. They will sit still for longer than you think to watch things like silent movies – it’s a beautiful thing to see a theater full of kids cracking up over Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. I started screening films for friends with kids in my yard back in 2012 when my kiddos were pretty young.
What were some of your favorite films growing up?
The first movie I remember going to see – at the Highland Mall theater – was THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN. When I was eight we went to Universal Studios and they had some of the giant furniture there that they used for the movie. It was cool to see that behind the scenes kind of thing as such a young kid. It’s always been one of my favorites and we screened it last year at Sunday School.
Can you talk about the importance of offering family friendly content, old and new?
Part of the reason I program Sunday School is so that parents and kids can share the movie-going experience. I think it’s extremely important to watch films with your kids and then explore the topics the films bring to light. I try to screen films that will start conversations – SMALL CHANGE and BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD come to mind. SMALL CHANGE gives kids real insight into what it’s like to grow up in a small French town. My kids loved the fact that the kids in the movie drink watered down wine with dinner. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD opened up a conversation about poverty, illness and death.
What has been a memorable experience thus far at the Sunday School series?
After the screening of THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT I had three women in their 60’s approach me and thank me for programming the film. They said it was one of their favorites and they hadn’t seen it in over 40 years. It’s such a wonderful thing to be able to share films I love so much and find others who love them too.
What is your favorite film you’ve programmed so far?
I’m a big fan of Jacques Tati so it has been great to see my son fall in love with his films. MON ONCLE is one of his favorites so it was a real treat to screen that one.
The next film you have coming up in the Sunday School series is Robert Altman’s Popeye, what drew you to that particular film?
When I was a kid, POPEYE was on HBO all the time – I must have seen the film 30 times. When I began studying film I remember being floored that Robert Altman directed it – he really has done everything! I love Harry Nilsson’s music and so do my kids so this film was a natural choice.
What’s coming up this fall with the series?
In September we have SAFETY LAST! (a silent film staring Harold Lloyd) followed by ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN in October.
Imagine it’s 1930 and you’re a movie producer ready to unveil your latest film to theaters across the country.
Maybe there are a few instances of light profanity or debatable obscenity. Maybe you are intrigued by the life of gangsters and want to let one of them succeed for once. Or maybe you have a movie that features a woman exploring her sexual freedom over the course of the story. None of this should matter in the exciting golden age of the moving image, right? Well before you know it, religious leaders and government figures are banging down your door wanting to censor every “inappropriate” aspect of your film.
After a few years of this annoying and expensive interference, Hollywood itself decided to institute its own censorship, the Production Code, which was passed in 1930 but only effectively went into force in 1934.
It’s strange now to think of movies without some sort of rating. But with the invention of cinema at the turn of the century, no director or production studio exec was terribly worried about “appropriateness” or “inappropriateness.” The success of this new form of entertainment with the masses excited studios, directors, and writers but struck fear into both the government and religious groups across the nation. With a goal of maintaining the “traditional, moral values” of the country, they set out to establish a Code that would dictate specifically what was deemed “appropriate” for the silver screen.
Thus the Pre-Code films, as we affectionately know them today, were born: a strange and delightful group of movies that were released before the code’s enforcement. These films were progressive, representative, and had a freedom of expression that wouldn’t be seen widely until the New Hollywood Renaissance in the late sixties and early seventies.
A Pre-Code film like BABY FACE (screening August 2 at AFS Cinema) reminds us of the need for representation of real women in media today. Despite being made in 1933, Barbara Stanwyck’s portrayal of Lily as a woman using her sexuality to break through the glass ceiling is quite a modern story.
Barbara Stanwyck and Theresa Harris in Baby Face (1933)
Will Hays, a former Postmaster General, was the chosen leader to clean up Hollywood’s “Sin City” image, and began working on the would-be Code in 1922. However, with input from multiple groups and government officials, the actual code wouldn’t take effect until Hay’s lieutenant Joseph Breen seized the reins of enforcement in 1934. While Hays was running around with government and religious figures trying to figure out exactly what was deemed “destructive” on screen, the studios thrived and scoffed at the idea of self-censoring, commenting that “the Hays moral code is not even a joke anymore; it’s just a memory.”
Before the Code, many films were made featuring strong female protagonists who had control of their sexuality and their lifestyles, gay and lesbian characters (who would be eradicated from films altogether once the Code was set in stone), and anti-heroes in crime and gangster films that allowed the audience to decide for themselves who was actually good or evil. These ideas would soon be forbidden from movies for decades to come.
A list of Thou-Shalt-Nots was created as a general guideline for what was allowed and what would be censored in the age of the Motion Picture Production code. Here are some wonderful Pre-Code films that show just what could be seen before the code was finally instituted.
Thou shalt not make the audience sympathize with crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
THE PUBLIC ENEMY, a gangster film starring James Cagney, was a strong proponent of the anti-hero. Cagney plays a young man rising in the criminal underworld and willing to kill to get what he wants. The films empathy for Cagney’s character was said to be an endorsement of evil forces by the Code. Despite not seeing the actual killing in this clip, characters like the one Cagney plays in THE PUBLIC ENEMY would be banned once the code was set into place.
Thou shalt not ruin the sanctity of marriage and the home shall be upheld.
BLONDE VENUS, starring Cary Grant and openly bisexual actress Marlene Dietrich, follows Dietrich’s character as she begins work at a cabaret and eventually becomes Grant’s mistress in order to support her child and ailing husband. Many Pre-Code films featured women-driven stories that focused on their agency and independence in the world, with or without a man by their side. The plot line of adultery in this movie would also be strongly forbidden once the code was put into place.
Thou shalt not dance in a way that suggests or represents sexual actions or indecent passions.
Pre-Code Musicals were known for using the rehearsal space as a way to show off women’s bodies without being overtly exploitative. Busby Berkeley specifically was known for his choreography that was both “lyrical and lewd” in the way he showed female bodies. This scene from FOOTLIGHT PARADE would be deemed too inappropriate once the code was in place for Berkeley’s classic suggestive choreography and the not-so-proper depiction of the Honeymoon Hotel.
Thou shalt not throw ridicule on any religious faith.
Hays and other Code supporters had no issue with horror films as long as they were silent. Once talkies came around and horror films were able to add atmospheric sounds and suspenseful music it was all over. Frankenstein was deemed too brutal with the visceral addition of suspenseful music and realistic sound effects like dirt hitting a coffin. The comparison of the mad scientist to God would be a point of conflict as well due to the code’s strong affliction to disrespecting religious institutions and leaders.
A lost treasure of Bill Gunn’s work, PERSONAL PROBLEMS is a TV movie that never aired. Shot on the defunct ¾ inch U-Matic videotape, Kino unearthed and restored this film in all its hazy digital glory. Despite the drawbacks and imperfections of the format, the sentiment of the film is emotionally stunning. Each aspect of this collaboration, from the writing, acting, and directing to the music and cinematography combines to create a landmark humanist film.
A film without any traditional narrative, PERSONAL PROBLEMS opens with fragmented conversations as complete scenes. Without feeding us backstory, Gunn drops us into the lives of his ensemble cast as they exist at this moment.
Ishmael Reed, an accomplished novelist, writes dialogue that expresses each character’s relationship to each other with every sentence. Reed’s writing provides no outright exposition. Instead, he allows our understanding of each situation to grow as we listen to people speak to each other. Reed’s style avoids plot to provide us with a new way of understanding the emotional flow of conversation when love, pain, pleasure, and loss become indistinguishable.
Gunn’s directorial skill is clear in his ability to create scenes that seem impossible to script. The actors speak over each other, laugh unexpectedly at inside jokes, and bring up memories we have no way of understanding. By getting rid of the formalities of screenwriting and focusing on speech instead of story-building, Gunn is able create an immediate emotional impact. John Cassavetes’ work has a similar effect, and reviewers are rapidly drawing parallels between Cassavetes and Gunn with the release of this restoration.
The format of the movie, U-matic videotape, was used mostly for daytime television and news broadcasts and was significantly cheaper to develop. In a time where African-Americans were severely underrepresented and underpaid (Gunn was blacklisted from Hollywood for demanding equal pay as his white counterparts), the format allowed Gunn to experiment with more takes and longer scenes on his small budget.The most complex and emotionally charged scenes in PERSONAL PROBLEMS are more than a few minutes long and would be too expensive to film on 35mm.
Cinematographer Robert Polidori, now a renowned photographer, captures the small changes of facial expression that happen during the course of a single exchange. Polidori embraces the unique sort of blurry glow of the 3/4 inch format to capture shimmering lakes, dim hospital hallways, and tears that fall on dark skin. The aesthetic of PERSONAL PROBLEMS is a result of Gunn’s invention of a new way of seeing and feeling while being constrained by others for the color of his skin and his lack of funding.
This film went unseen for years. This restoration provides a deep look into Bill Gunn’s legacy and the abundance of talent in this collaboration. PERSONAL PROBLEMS is presented in two parts starting this weekend on July 15th & 22nd.
In the new documentary HITLER’S HOLLYWOOD the idea of media manipulation is brought to a head as we explore Joseph Goebbels’ career as the head of producing and distributing Nazi propaganda films during World War II.
The documentary, coming to the AFS Cinema on July 15th, offers an objective view on the films’ strategic focus on escapism by keeping the population occupied by “lighthearted entertainment” so that they were distracted from the real horrors occurring outside the cinema.
Writer and director Rüdiger Suchsland discusses the complexity of both appreciating these films for their artistry and understanding their use for manipulation below.
How did you first come up with the idea of Hitler’s Hollywood?
When I was a child in the 1970s and early 1980s, I often visited my grandmother during school holidays. My grandmother was a great fan of old cinema classics and together, we watched all sorts of films.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized that most of these films were made during the Nazi era and, in one form or another – sometimes aggressively, sometimes subtly – were conveying the Nazi ideology. I think the memory of these afternoons spent with my grandmother watching TV set the initial spark. How was it possible that one could love these films and loathe the political ideas they stood for?
How did you prepare for it?
I viewed a lot of films and tried not to be restricted by predetermined questions and presumptions.
I have always been irritated by the judgement of some friends and colleagues, who argue that these films, for instance the ones directed by Leni Riefenstahl, were “simply bad films.” I don’t think this is true. They’re politically abject, but artistically, they are good, and in some ways very good – and this is the problem. If they were all bad, we would not have to deal with them any more.
Your last documentary film FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER explored the cinema of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1933. Hitler’s Hollywood addresses German cinema in the era of propaganda, 1933 to 1945. What fascinates you about the cinema of this time?
What particularly fascinates me in National Socialist cinema? The iridescence, the ambivalence of most Nazi films.Many of these films seduce their public into immorality or at least into holding double standards. It was a cinema that was openly insincere, and which integrated lies and imposture.
In your opinion, which film featured in HITLER’S HOLLYWOOD was the most fascinating or dangerous, and why?
In terms of technique, WUNSCHKONZERT by Eduard von Borsody, is very interesting because he is openly, almost shamelessly, propagandistic, but he still wants to be nice and cute and tries to cozy up to the viewer in a populist way. There are many dangerous films, but I think the most dangerous ones are the ones that are precisely not openly propagandistic.
Do you think films are influencing us today?
Of course. Cinema can and should irritate, enlighten, and teach us something. But it can also lie to us and seduce us. And anyway, it is not easy to separate the two; they bleed into each other and intermix. This is precisely the machinery of illusion.
What can the audience expect?
A rollercoaster ride of emotions, of taste and a journey into the unknown. I think this trip should be surprising but also fun for the audience. There are no prerequisites, not even to a particular openness. The film takes care of that.
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS opens this Friday, July 13, at AFS Cinema. This month: AFS members receive a $2 discount on New Releases.
Identical triplets separated at birth are miraculously reunited one-by-one as adults. That initial premise alone could compose a fascinating documentary – but what THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS unearths about these triplets’ past is so much more far-fetched and jaw-dropping.
“A many-sided rumination on psychiatric ethics, mental health and different schools of parenting, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is effortlessly riveting.” Ty Burr, Boston Globe
“Wardle treats his thrilling documentary as an intricate detective story. He involves his audience in every discovery step by step, revealing not only a heartbreaking tale of familial tragedy, but also an unsettling account of corruption, with disturbing parallels to historically catastrophic human greed and misjudgment.” Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert.com
“The best way to experience Tim Wardle’s documentary is to do so without knowing a single thing about it. So before proceeding any further, let’s just get this out of the way: It’s an excellent movie, and you should see it.” Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice
We don’t want to accidentally spoil one twist of this engrossing, acclaimed new film, so stop reading and just go see THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS at AFS Cinema, starting this Friday, July 13.
Richard Linklater’s SLACKER, released nationally on July 5, 1991, has left a lasting impression on the independent filmmaking world and Austin’s own film scene. Back in July 2001, AFS celebrated our Founder and Artistic Director’s groundbreaking film with a ten year reunion at the Paramount Theatre. Cast, crew, and just about everyone who lived in Austin in the early 90s were brought together to remember the making-of the film.
Limited edition programs were made for the occasion, featuring notes from Linklater, producer John Sloss, film rep John Pierson, Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black, and more. Take a few minutes to flip through this unarchived treasure.
There are some pretty prolific filmmakers out there in the world, but none have been as relentlessly productive as the perversely driven Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose work is being celebrated this summer at the AFS Cinema.
Born into a ruined and fractured Germany in 1945, the young director began his work on the live stage, where he mounted a fierce ideological opposition to the official “safe” state theatre with his experimental “Antitheater” principles. These early theatrical productions, in a sense, continued the work of the exiled playwright and dramatic theorist Bertolt Brecht. From Brecht, Fassbinder learned that the dramatis personae need not be figures of personal identification for the audience, but may instead be unsympathetic or even abhorrent.
Fassbinder’s first film, LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH (1969), mixes Brecht’s sense of alienation with a story influenced by American film noir and the production aesthetics of the French New Wave. For the first few years, Fassbinder’s shoestring budgets forced him to make films at a lightning pace, often using the same cast and crew for multiple productions and stepping in front of the camera as an actor when needed. In LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH, the young writer/director cast himself as the small-time pimp Franz. In his leather jacket, sunglasses, and with a rebellious sneer that offsets his round face and baby-fat, he presents an iconic image of the post-war German generation’s rebellion.
Fassbinder’s personal life was as explosive as his body of work. He didn’t really care to draw a boundary between his onscreen and offscreen lives, often adding lovers and friends to his recurring cast of film players. In 1969, Fassbinder began a passionate love affair with the then-married actor Günther Kaufmann, who would go on to play the lead role in the director’s 1971 western (and biggest flop) WHITY. By that year the relationship had run its course – leaving in its wake one broken heart and the copious driveway oil puddles left by the four (4!) Lamborghinis Fassbinder had purchased to win Kaufmann’s affection—three of them sold off and the fourth completely destroyed.
All the while, the work continued at a Herculean pace. Fassbinder did not even stop production for his marriage to Ingrid Caven, another member of his cinematic stock company. He instead recycled his own wedding reception for a film he was making titled THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (1970). By the time 1971’s WHITY came along, Fassbinder’s off-screen drama had come to rival the turmoil that was captured by the camera. The tensions with WHITY’s production would be transmuted to a kind of shaggy comedy in 1971’s BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE, in which Fassbinder turns a sardonic eye to his own idiosyncrasies and the treatment of his cast and crew.
This year marked a turning point for Fassbinder: the end of his “Antitheater” films and the beginning of his relationship with the recently divorced actor El Hedi ben Salem. The two met at a bathhouse and began a rocky romance peppered with jealousy, violence, drugs, and alcohol.
Salem stars in Fassbinder’s ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), in which his onscreen relationship with an elderly German woman subjects the pair to racism and ageism. This technique of analogizing other socially-challenging relationships to the dilemma of gay couples is, of course a Hollywood tradition. This film marks the period when the influence of the German-born Hollywood director Douglas Sirk had fully come to the fore in Fassbinder’s work. Fassbinder loved Hollywood films and, along with the Brechtian theatrical tradition, they grounded the form of his greatest works.
The Fassbinder/ben Salem story had a decidedly unhappy ending. Shortly after their relationship ended, Salem stabbed three people in Berlin and had to be smuggled out by car. According to Daniel Schmid, a Swiss director and Fassbinder’s close friend, the filmmaker cried the entire ride home. There was to be more tragedy in these men’s futures.
By this time, Fassbinder had reached international acclaim. He began seeing Armin Meier, a former butcher with no prior experience in show business. The relationship was especially lonely for Meier: when Fassbinder wasn’t around, no one would come visit him. After the director ended things between them in April of 1978 and neglected to invite him to his birthday celebration, Meier committed suicide—overdosing in the kitchen he had once shared with Fassbinder.
Fassbinder coped with this the only way he knew how: by continuing to work. That same year, he released IN A YEAR OF THIRTEEN MOONS, his most personal and bleakest film yet. The last four years of Fassbinder’s life saw its most diverse work, the disbanding of his recurring cast, and his romantic relationship with editor Julienne Lorenz.
In 1982, while living with Lorenz, Fassbinder received the news that El Hedi ben Salem had hanged himself. Not only that—he had done so five years prior, a fact which had been kept from the volatile Fassbinder.
By then, the director was up to his neck in the in post-production work for the queer drama QUERELLE and looking ahead at the next project. The 37-year old drove himself relentlessly—he snorted cocaine to get going, drank whiskey to soothe the jitters, and popped downers to go to sleep.
In June of 1982, Lorenz found Fassbinder dead in his room, a victim of intoxicants and overwork. QUERELLE was released posthumously a month later and the film was dedicated to El Hedi ben Salem.
Fassbinder’s legacy is as complicated as his life. The numbers themselves are impressive: 38 feature films, several ambitious television miniseries, short films, and countless plays in a career that spanned a only 17 years and ended at an age when most filmmakers are just beginning to make their best work.
It is easy to romanticize Fassbinder’s tortured artistry, but his films are so consistent and compelling that they force us to deal with the whole of his existence—not only the person that Fassbinder was, but also the space and time he occupied in Germany – and in the world.
There is no isolating the political, sexual, or the personal in Fassbinder’s work. It is all caught up together in each soul-bearing film. Even today, we are still catching up with Fassbinder’s volcanic output. His back catalog has seen new rediscoveries as recently as two years ago with the restored television mini-series EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY (1972).
It’s safe to say Fassbinder is not done surprising us yet. He said it best himself: “I don’t throw bombs, I make films.”
The Zellner Brothers’ newest film, DAMSEL, opens today at AFS Cinema. This re-invention of the western genre shows off some of their trademarks—it’s unpredictable, contains a unique brand of humanism, and features their off-kilter sense of humor. We asked David and Nathan Zellner to share their shortlist of westerns that influenced their take on the genre.
