Sunday, April 29, 2012

Out now: Cinema Orion's new programme (May-August 2012)

Cinema Orion's new season (May-August 2012) is about to start on the First of May. The programme booklet was released a few weeks ago, and the programme is online. In Nordic countries we take our holidays during the short summer, and some Nordic cinematheques take a summer break in their screenings, but in Helsinki we are aware of a strong demand for programming even during the summer, the only difference being that the summer season is based on domestic prints with some exceptions. This year our vaults have been closed all year for renovation, and we had to make bookings already in October, focusing more on rather new films than we usually do, but there was no need to compromise quality. Themes in our summer season include:

STUDIO GHIBLI gets its first retrospective in Finland. During the summer we screen 16 Studio Ghibli masterpieces thanks to Studio Ghibli and Cinema Mondo, their Finnish distributor. The series starts with the pre-Ghibli Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is also the Ur-Ghibli film with many of its profound themes, most importantly the concern for the balance of nature, already in evidence. The other films of the retrospective are Castle in the Sky, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Ocean Waves, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbours the Yamadas, Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, Howl's Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea, Ponyo, and The Secret World of Arrietty.

CINEMA CONCERT METROPOLIS. The 2010 restoration of Metropolis by Martin Koerber, Anke Wilkening and Frank Strobel (Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung / Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin), incorporating the footage believed lost and found in Buenos Aires, at 147 minutes, on 35 mm. The music is played live by Cleaning Women together with Gudmund R. Østard, Nasra, and Ivan Afanasyev. At Bio Rex, 13 May, at 18.00.

FIFTY YEARS AGO: THE FILM YEAR 1962. Inspired by Bologna's "Cento anni fa" project we started our "Fifty years ago" series in 2007, on the 50th anniversary year of the Finnish Film Archive. This year we present the debut feature films of Tarkovsky (Ivan's Childhood) and Polanski (Knife in the Water), the final film of Ozu (An Autumn Afternoon / Le Goût du saké), the maddest expression of the Cold War (The Manchurian Candidate), new wave in France (Godard: Vivre sa vie), Italian modernism (Antonioni: L'eclisse), British realism (Schlesinger: A Kind of Loving) and cinefantastique (Night of the Eagle), Bressonian rigorism (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc), and a too little known masterful adaptation of classic material, Vladimir Gorikker's Mozart and Salieri based on Rimsky-Korsakov's one-act opera, itself based on Pushkin's play, with Innokenti Smoktunovsky in the definitive W.A. Mozart performance of the cinema.

I LOVE YOU, I FILM YOU. Inspired by Rainer Gansera's series for the Munich film museum in 2010 (and others before him) we created our version of a great theme which goes back to the very first film actress, Jeanne d'Alcy, and the director who loved her, Georges Méliès. Lillian Gish / D.W. Griffith (True Heart Susie), Marlene Dietrich / Josef von Sternberg (The Devil Is a Woman), Jean Marais / Jean Cocteau (Orphée), Kinuyo Tanaka / Kenji Mizoguchi (Saikaku ichidai onna), Ingrid Bergman / Roberto Rossellini (Viaggio in Italia), Monica Vitti / Michelangelo Antonioni (L'eclisse), Anna Karina / Jean-Luc Godard (Vivre sa vie), Liv Ullmann / Ingmar Bergman (The Hour of the Wolf), Helmut Berger / Luchino Visconti (Gruppo di famiglia in un interno), Oja Kodar / Orson Welles (F for Fake), Gena Rowlands / John Cassavetes (Gloria), Mia Farrow / Woody Allen (Hannah and Sisters), and Gong Li / Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum).

DARREN ARONOFSKY: all his five feature films are screened starting with Pi, and including his masterpiece Requiem for a Dream.

WOODY ALLEN is a favourite at Cinema Orion, and while he is enjoying a new peak in his popularity we screen during the summer months his movies from the 1980s and the 1990s, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

FRENCH SUMMER: French quality from the last 15 years including works by French and international artists such as André Téchiné (Alice et Martin), Michael Haneke (La Pianiste), and Manoel de Oliveira (Je rentre à la maison).

MYTHICAL POHJANMAA: the first ever retrospective dedicated to the province of Pohjanmaa, where violent knifemen went on rampage in the decades before 1870, the favourite subject of a domestic genre with several resemblances with but hardly any influences from the Western. Writers such as Artturi Järviluoma, Artturi Leinonen, and Antti Tuuri have provided other stories for memorable movies. The highlight of the retrospective is the Cinema concert Pohjalaisia (1925). KAVA has newly restored the handsome movie which has not been screened in 80 years, and the "Etelä-Pohjanmaa Senaatintorilla - Pikkuusen häjymmät piroot" festival provides a "pelimanni" master duo of two accordionists on Friday, 8 June, at 19.00.

MYTHICAL HONG KONG: revisiting the golden age of Hong Kong's explosive action choreography and excessive national romanticism in movies such as A Chinese Ghost Story, Once Upon a Time in China, and Fong Sai-yuk.

SPANISH FAVOURITES include movies from Pedro Almodóvar, Bigas Luna, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Fernando Trueba, and Julio Medem.

THE STEEL HARD EIGHTIES, curated by Lauri Lehtinen and Antti Suonio, is a tribute to the golden decade of a new kind of action cinema, focusing on action in the present (neglecting science fiction except in The Terminator, which is set in the present). Michael Mann, William Friedkin, Abel Ferrara, Brian De Palma, and Walter Hill are among the directors. Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are at the top, as are Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke.

FASHION FILM FESTIVAL is a contribution to the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 year, with Paramount classics of timeless elegance such as To Catch a Thief and A Funny Face.

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