Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Season Film Series News Release
For Immediate Release

June 4, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@sa.ucsb.edu

UCSB Arts & Lectures Summer Cinema 2002
features 9 films from around the globe

Summary Facts:

UCSB Arts & Lectures Summer Cinema 2002, a series of nine films, features six Santa Barbara area premieres and spans both the globe and cinematic history. To celebrate the John Steinbeck Centennial, 1902-2002, we will screen Elia Kazan’s 1955 version of Steinbeck’s sprawling novel, East of Eden, starring James Dean, on Sunday, July 21. On Sunday, July 28, we will present a special screening of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, often cited as the first animated feature film. Composer Michael Mortilla, who has regularly regaled Arts & Lectures’ audiences with his excellent extemporaneous scores, will play live piano accompaniment for this silent German film from 1926.

The series begins on Tuesday, July 2 with a return engagement of Caravaggio, maverick British director Derek Jarman’s complex and lucid film biography of the 17th century Italian painter. Jarman, a painter himself, and his talented director of photography Gabriel Beristain particularly capture the feel of Caravaggio’s works, notably through deeply saturated hues and ultra-dramatic lighting that seems to come out of nowhere. Caravaggio’s pioneering use of theatrical light or chiaroscuro greatly influenced painters like Rubens, Rembrandt and Velasquez, while his scandalous life seems to be a precursor to Arthur Rimbaud’s and those of other artistic bad boys. Jarman’s film is an astonishing reflection on art, sexuality, the profound and the profane. We will screen a new 35 mm print. (1986, 93 minutes)

The profound and profane are examined again through the bitter prism of war in No Man’s Land, a film that screens on Sunday, July 7. Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar and the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes, No Man’s Land concerns two Bosnian soldiers—one lying atop a land mine that will detonate if he moves—trapped together with a Serb adversary in a trench between their respective lines. The Associated Press calls the film “a small satiric masterpiece,” insisting that it “captures combat’s lunacy, rage and unreasoning hatred in a fashion that’s deeply human and horribly frightening.” In English, Bosnian and French with English subtitles. (Danis Tanovic, 2001, 97 minutes)

The series continues on Thursday, July 11 with Time Out (L’Emploi du Temps) a much more mild-mannered if no less critical look at the modern condition. Directed by Laurent Cantet, whose first film Human Resources also examined the world of work, Time Out follows a fortyish business consultant, played by stage actor Aurélien Recoing in a smoldering performance, who loses his job but lies about it. Instead he fabricates an entire new career and gets wrapped up in his elaborate prevarications. The film is based on the real case of Jean-Claude Romand, who hid his unemployment from his family for years, although Cantet opts to end the story far less dramatically (Romand slaughtered his family). “Time Out is not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama,” writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, “it’s a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.” In French with English subtitles. (2001, 132 minutes)

The protagonist (Jeremy Theobald) of Following, screening on Sunday, July 14, fancies himself a writer, but he also fails to work, opting instead to do “research” by randomly tailing people on the street. He gets more than he bargained for when he follows Cobb (Alex Haw) into a world out of a James M. Cain novel, rich with triple-crosses and, of course, a femme fatale (Lucy Russell). Ace writer-director Christopher Nolan made this rarely seen film before his successes with Memento and Insomnia. This brisk blast of B-movie fun is made more delicious by Nolan’s trademark fracturing of narrative and his less commented upon, but just as sure, visual sense (the film is shot in sterling B&W). (1999, 70 minutes)

The series dramatically shifts gears with the Bollywood epic Asoka, screening Thursday, July 18. Over 200 years before Christ, King Asoka ascended to the throne of the Mauryan Empire after a familial power struggle and extended the imperial borders across the Indian subcontinent. Legend has it that the bloody battle for Kalinga led Asoka to renounce war and dedicate his kingdom to Buddhist principles of nonviolence. The Great War of Kalinga scenes are so breathtaking that they rank with the greatest battle sequences in world film history. But the film is much more—an ultra-romantic love story, a grandiose spectacle replete with lavish musical numbers and a showcase for Indian superstars Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor. In Hindi with English subtitles. (2001, 150 minutes)

We return to quintessentially American concerns with East of Eden, set in the Salinas Valley in the early 20th century, screening on Sunday, July 21. James Dean stars in Elia Kazan’s gripping (if much condensed) version of John Steinbeck’s novel, delivering a gutsy, wrenching performance as Cal, pleading for his chilly father (Raymond Massey) to love him. Dean, director Kazan and screenwriter Paul Osborn were nominated for Oscars, while Jo Van Fleet took home the Best Supporting Actress Award for her pivotal role as Cal’s mother-turned-madam. Critic Leonard Maltin claims the film “affects today’s generation as much as those who witnessed Dean’s staring debut.” We present the film as part of the John Steinbeck Centennial, 1902-2002. (1955, 118 minutes)

What Time Is It There?, screening on Thursday, July 25, presents the family dynamics and dysfunction so keenly pitched in East of Eden in a much milder manner. The latest film from Taipei director Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole), What Time Is It There? has earned him comparisons to Ozu, Bresson, Tati, Warhol, Wenders and Harold Lloyd. In this deadpan tragi-comedy a watch dealer (Lee Kang-sheng) becomes enamored of a Paris-bound female customer (Chen Shiang-chyi) and goes about turning all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time. Comparing Tsai Ming-liang’s poetic temperament to silent films, Salon.com writes, “As in silent comedy, the jokes coalesce unexpectedly out of a transformation of the mundane. And as in silent drama, what wounds us has both gravity and fleeting lightness, like a phrase of music that wafts into the air as it burrows into your heart.” In Mandarin, Taiwanese and French with English subtitles. (2001, 116 minutes)

On Sunday, July 28, the series presents a special treat, a gloriously restored 35-mm print of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, arguably the first animated feature film (it was released 11 years before Disney’s Snow White). German director Lotte Reiniger’s trademark silhouette-animation techniques, together with gorgeous filigreed set and costume design, embellish the tale of an Arabian prince, an evil sorcerer, a flying horse and a captured princess. Called “dazzling and visually breathtaking” by the Los Angeles Times, the film is made of nearly 300,000 camera shots, a meticulous triumph of the imagination and animation. This silent classic will feature live piano accompaniment by composer Michael Mortilla. (1926, 70 minutes)

The series concludes on Thursday, August 1 with the grandly ambitious epic Les Destinées, the most recent film from French director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep). Based on a 1936 three-volume novel by Jacques Chardonne about two intertwined families in central France—the porcelain-producing Barherys and the Cognac-distilling Pommerels—Les Destinées gracefully and thoughtfully examines big themes like love and faith, the inadequacies of language and the value of art. Central performances by Charles Berling, Emmanuelle Béart and Isabelle Huppert anchor the sweep of thirty years with intimate passion. (2001, 180 minutes)

All film screenings begin at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Tickets for all films are available in advance at the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office (893-3535) and may be purchased in person or charged by phone. Tickets can also be bought at the door, if available, starting at 6:30 pm. All tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students.

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, these films are supported in part by UCSB Summer Sessions and sponsored by the Santa Barbara Independent, KCSB Radio 91.9 FM, Blue Agave and the UCSB Daily Nexus. Time Out and Les Destinées are presented with support from the French Embassy and the Cultural Ministry of France.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.

©2002 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara