International House Philadelphia: Program Guide Fall 2013 | Page 38
Blue Friday, December 20 at 9:30pm EUROPEAN CINEMA UNCOVERED Academic Film Center: Alternative amateur cinema, 50 + 5 years Introduction by curator Greg DeCuir, Jr. Academic Ciné-club was founded in 1958 in Belgrade (Serbia, then Yugoslavia) as an alternative to a thriving postwar institutional ciné-amateur culture that was quickly becoming an impenetrable hierarchy. It offered an open space for experimentation and welcomed cineastes of all types. Very quickly a number of exciting young personalities – many of who would later be counted among the greatest of filmmakers in the history of Yugoslav cinema – flocked to the club and began producing innovative work, including examples of proto-structuralism, poetic documentaries, and lyrical evocations of reality and sur-reality. This program presents some of the groundbreaking films from the history of the club (later re-named Academic Film Center), much of which has not been screened in international settings in a number of decades, providing a glimpse into an invisible history of avant-garde ciné-club culture from a forgotten region. *Please see our website for an updated program and more details. Saturday, December 21 at 7pm THE JANUS COLLECTION Three Colors: Blue ´ dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, France, 1993, 35mm,
French with English subtitles, 94 min.
In the devastating first film of the Three Colors trilogy, Juliette Binoche gives a tour de force performance as Julie, a woman reeling from the tragic death of her husband and young daughter. But Blue is more than just a blistering study of grief; it’s also a tale of liberation, as Julie attempts to free herself from the past while confronting truths about the life of her late husband, a composer. Shot in sapphire tones by cinematographer S?awomir Idziak, and set to an extraordinary operatic score by Zbigniew Preisner, Blue is an overwhelming sensory experience.