LENFANT (The Child)

Friday, March 4 at 7:00 and Sunday, March 6 at 4:00

35 SHOTS OF RUM

Friday, February 4 at 7:00 and Sunday, February 6 at 4:00

Claire Denis has created a sensual and contemplative body of films over the years, but nothing in her work prepares us for this deeply emotional yet light-of-touch story set among a small circle of Parisians and their friends. In fact, Denis evokes nothing so much as Eric Rohmer in his seasons quartet as she follows the various characters in a roundelay of relationships that touches on almost every kind of love there is: fatherdaughter, old lovers, old colleagues, absent mother, lost sister, unrequited, one-night, budding, brooding . . . Lionel, a train engineer, shares an apartment with his daughter Jo, a university student. In the same building live taxi driver Gabrielle and a young man who comes and goes. We figure out their roles and relationships only gradually as Denis leaves crumbs along her narrative path for us to followits one of the great pleasures of this extraordinarily pleasurable film.- San Francisco International Film Festival (2007, 100 min., in French w/English subtitles)

Bruno (Jeremie Renier, in a remarkable performance), living on the margins with his girl Sonia and their new baby, makes a living pulling minor heists. Always scheming and always strapped for cash, he decides one day to sell the baby on the black market. Brunos quick, painful growth from childhood to manhood is the central concern of directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and as always they realize their goal through an ingenious mixture of dramatic compression in harrowingly real time, a stunning sensitivity to sound as a dramatic tool, and a mobile camera eye that stays pinned to the action as it unfolds in furious motion. Alternately heart-rending and uplifting, THE CHILD is that rare thing, a film in which we not only see but feel the redemption of a human being. (2005, 95 min., in French w/English subtitles)

VISION: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen

Friday, March 11 at 7:00 and Sunday, March 13 at 4:00
The 12th-century Benedictine nun, Hildegard von Bingen is luminously portrayed by Barbara Sukowa in her 5th collaboration with director Margarethe von Trotta. Hildegard was a Christian mystic, composer, philosopher, playwright, poet, naturalist, scientist, physician, herbalist and ecological activist. As an iconoclastic religious figure who insisted on separate and independent abbies for nuns, she ran up against the churchs authoritarian and patriarchal hierarchy; as a mystic and visionary, she insisted on her right to preach and interpret the Gospels. Sukowa infuses Hildegard with the will of a modern feminist, but one tethered to a medieval universe. Von Trotta makes that world believable and lush, and at times as scary and alluring as a 900-yearold fairy tale. (2009, 110 min., in German with English subtitles) http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/vision/

POETRY

Friday, February 11 at 7:00 and Sunday, February 13 at 4:00

Lee Chang-dong creates a masterful tale about a woman raising a child on her own. Mija (played by the extraordinary Yoon Jeong-hee), a proper, sixtyish home aide in the early stages of dementia, lives with her sullen adolescent grandson, whose mother is looking for work. Enrolling in a poetry class, Mija anxiously awaits inspiration from the museswhich arrives the moment she decides her charge must finally suffer the consequences of a heinous act he has committed. Perfectly paced and performed, POETRY stands out as both a quietly scathing condemnation of male violence (and the craven attempts to cover it up) and an ode to the strengthand moral compassof an indefatigable senescent woman. New York Film Festival (2010, 139min., in Korean w/English subtitles)

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW

Friday, March 18 at 7:00 and Sunday, March 20 at 4:00

SAINT MISBEHAVIN: The Wavy Gravy Movie

Friday, February 18 at 7:00 and Sunday, February 20 at 4:00
Michelle Esricks joyful portrait of countercultural icon and humanitarian Wavy Gravy journeys from the hills of California to the Himalayas. The film blends Wavys own words with magical stories from an extraordinary array of fellow travelers both cultural and counter-cultural, revealing the man behind the clowns grin and the fools clothing. Once described by Paul Krassner as the illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Theresa, Wavy is still feeding the hungry, teaching the children and expressing gratitude to every saint, god, prophet, religion, musician and clown in the universe. With appearances by The Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Dr. Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass, Jackson Browne, Ramblin Jack Elliot, Patch Adams, Odetta and many more! (2010, 86 min.) http://www.rippleeffectfilms.com/wwwavy/index.php

Orson Welles said it would make a stone cry. Leo McCareys masterful comedy/drama is about a sweet, elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) who lose their home to a bank foreclosure and are forced to move in with their grown children. Few other American films have dealt with the discomforting topic of old age and its effect upon the parent-child relationship, and MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW is probably the best of the bunch because of its honesty and lack of manipulative stickiness. It portrays the realities of dealing with aging parents -- the responsibility, the inconvenience, the duty, the guilt -- with tremendous humanity, heartbreak and even humor. If Orson Welles said he likes a film, perhaps you might want to watch it, too... (1937, 91 min.)

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN

Friday, March 25 at 7:00 and Sunday, March 27 at 4:00

THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS

Friday, February 25 at 7:00

The grain is couscous and the recipe is the secret in Abdellatif Kechiches warm and expansive family drama, set in a community of first- and second-generation Maghrebi immigrants in a depressed port town in the south of France. Allowing his story to unfold at a leisurely pace, Tunisianborn Kechiche (GAMES OF LOVE AND CHANCE) envelops the audience in the internecine squabbles of an extended family for whom food provides more than sustenance. When 61-year-old Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares) is laid off after 35 years at the shipyard, he decides to use his severance pay to buy a rundown boat that will house a restaurant to serve his ex-wifes beloved fish couscous. By his side in this venture is his current girlfriends daughter, Rym (Hafsia Herzi), who helps him navigate the government bureaucracy and subtle prejudices that stand in his way, and on opening night his children and boardinghouse compatriots rally to his aid. Now that Kechiche has won Frances top Csar honors for two films in a row, we may be forgiven for dreaming that he perhaps represents a future path for a French cinemaat once naturalistic, multicultural, and shorn of pretense. Peter Scarlet, Tribeca Film Festival (2007, 151 min. in French and Arabic with English subtitles)

The film event of 2010 Roger Ebert The most influential of all silent films, Fritz Langs visionary METROPOLIS (1927) can finally be seen as intended with 25 minutes of newly-discovered footage and Gottfried Huppertzs magnificent original score. The dark and lavish tale is set in the year 2000, a time when the promise of the Machine Age has disintegrated into a nightmarish division between industrialists who live in Edenic splendor amid skyscrapers and workers who labor and dwell in a netherworld below the streets. METROPOLIS remains dominated by the vastness of its sets (unequalled in Germany at the time) and the spectacle surrounding the futuristic story. (148 min, silent, with English inter titles)

SPRING 2011
Warren Auditorium/Ives Hall Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park (707) 664-2606 www.sonoma.edu/sfi $6.00 general admission $5.00 non-SSU students w/I.D., senior citizens and SSU faculty and staff $4.00 SFI members and children under 12 FREE for SSU students w/I.D. Discount tickets: 5 films for $24/$20 Supported in part by Instructionally Related Activity Funds

SOUL KITCHEN

Friday, April 1 at 7:00 and Sunday, April 3 at 4:00

LE QUATTRO VOLTE

Celebrated filmmaker Fatih Akin has been exploring some of the darker aspects of the Turkish and Greek immigrant experience in Germany in dramas like HEAD ON and THE EDGE OF HEAVEN. His latest, however, is something else entirely: a deliciously overstuffed comedy. Zinos Kazantsakis runs a no-frills pub in Hamburg called Soul Kitchen, where loyal locals flock for the good grub and music. His idle life begins to tilt when his girlfriend takes a job in China, fast-tracking his plan to leave the restaurant business forever. However, his exit strategy gets derailed in this vibrant comedy of errors. His surly brother is recently out on parole and needs a job, and his new chefs fancy fare is turning away the currywurst-loving customers What ensues is a foottapping-music-filled, mouthwatering journey of revelations. Genna Terranova, TFI (2009, 99 min., in German and Greek w/English subtitles)

Friday, May 6 at 7:00 and Sunday, May 8 at 4:00

LA MISSION

Friday, April 8 at 7:00 and Sunday, April 10 at 4:00

Peter Bratts powerful and moving film is an ardent love letter to the vibrancy of San Franciscos Mission District and an urgent corrective to the violence that plays out in its streets. Full of affection for its characters and despair for their situations, LA MISSION is a story of community and family and one mans struggle to unlearn a lifetime of destructive habits. Che, in a commanding performance by Benjamin Bratt, is an ex-con who has turned his life around and now devotes himself to his lifelong friends, his passion for building classic lowrider cruisers and his honor student son, Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez). Full of compassion and love, LA MISSION is not only tough but hopeful, beautiful and true. (2009, 117 min.)

M i c h e l a n g e l o Frammartinos wondrous four-part meditation on man and nature traces the grand cycle of life through the humble daily rituals of rural folk in the hilly southern Italian region of Calabria. An elderly shepherd ingests the dust from a church floor to treat his cough; a baby goat from his flock tentatively ventures out to pasture; a majestic fir tree is felled and repurposed as the centerpiece of a village celebration; finally, its logs are transformed into wood charcoal through the ancient methods of the local workers. Connecting the dots among animal, vegetable, mineral, and dust, Frammartinos film is both concrete and cosmic, and it features what may be the most impressive single shot of the year: a masterfully orchestrated long take involving a religious procession, a herd of goats, a runaway truck, and a truly awe-inspiring dog. - NYFF (2010, 88 min., in Italian w/English subtitles)

Co-Sponsored by SSU Queer Studies Minor

I KNOW WHERE IM GOING

Friday, April 15 at 7:00
Created by the British team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I KNOW WHERE IM GOING is one of the most irresistible love stories ever filmed and a long-time SFI favorite. An arrogant and highly practical young woman (Wendy Hiller), about to marry for money, is stranded during a storm on an island off the coast of Scotland. People who saw IKWIG when it was new, and were enchanted by it, find that it is one film that fully lives up to its memories. Others, seeing it for the first time, are inevitably bowled over by its beauty and charm. William K. Everson (1947, 90 min.)

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme dOr at Cannes last year for this gently comic and wholly transporting tale of death and rebirth, set in Thailands rural northeast. Uncle Boonmee, a farmer suffering from kidney failure, is tended to by loved ones and visited by the ghosts of his wife and son. As for his remembered past lives, they mightor might notinclude a water buffalo, a disfigured princess, a talking catfish, and the insects whose chirps engulf the nighttime jungle scenes. A sensory immersion, Uncle Boonmee is an otherworldly fable that lingers on earthly sensations, a film about a dying man thats filled with mysterious signs of life. Apichatpongs vision is above all a generous one: in the threat of extinction he sees the possibility of regeneration. (2010, 113m, in Thai with English subtitles)

Friday, May 13 at 7:00 and Sunday, May 15 at 4:00

TROUBLED WATER
Friday, April 29 at 7:00
Special repeat screenings of an extremely popular film we premiered last year. Released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for the murder of a young child, Thomas returns to Oslo to arrange the scattered pieces of his life and pursue a quiet redemption. He finds employment as a church organist, settles into a small apartment and even manages an awkward but genuine courtship of Anna, the church pastor. Honest about his lack of religious faith, Thomas is nonetheless affected by the music he plays, letting the hymns wash over him with an effect at once caustic and purifying. The tension mounts when a schoolteacher recognizes the organist as the convicted murderer of her child. Director Erik Poppe skillfully combines two strong stories about people who try to come to terms with the past, and explores the possibilities for forgiveness and atonement in a world colored by cruel chance and irreparable acts. (2008, 115 min., in Norwegian w/English subtitles)

Staff

Eleanor Nichols, Director; Philip Caswell, Aidan Humrich, Anya Rose-Ramo, and Jennifer Viale.

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