August At the Pacific Film Archive

This Month at the PFA

The Pacific Film Archive is located at:
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720

Admission:
$5.50for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students
$9.50 for adults (18-64)
$6.50for UC Berkeley faculty and staff; non-UC Berkeley students; senior citizens (65 & over); disabled persons; and youth (17 & under)

Call 510.643.2197 for more information

Wednesday, August 18
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
7:00Dersu Uzala
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1972)

Kurosawa’s first film after his 1971 suicide attempt, Dersu Uzala was made in response to an offer from the Soviet Union for Kurosawa to direct a film of his choice there, and is based on a true story that he had discovered many years before. En route to a remote region of Siberia, a Russian surveyor and his party are joined by the wise native guide Dersu Uzala, whose quiet presence hides a powerful grace and an even more powerful connection to the world around him. Abandoning the tight narrative structures, genre settings, and star-driven power of his prior career, Kurosawa turns this simple tale of discovery and exploration (in both physical and metaphysical senses) into a work of true awe: awe at nature and at humanity, and at the possibility of harmony between the two. Shot on location in the vast forests of Eastern Siberia, filmed in 70mm to best capture the sheer magnitude and force of nature, this epic work won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.—Jason Sanders

• Written by Kurosawa, Yuri Nagibin, based on the writings of Vladimir Arseniev. Photographed by Fyodor Dobronravov, Yuri Gantman, Asakazu Nakai. With Yuri Solomin, Maxim Munzuk, Svetlana Danilchenko, Dmitri Korshikov. (165 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, ’Scope, 35mm, From Kino International)


Thursday, August 19
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
7:00The Quiet Duel
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1949)

(Shizuka naru ketto). After union strikes and management crackdowns at Toho and Shintoho Film Studios, Kurosawa quickly joined Daiei for The Quiet Duel, involving a dedicated young doctor stricken with a terrible disease. “I thought the part would be good for Mifune,” Kurosawa recalled. “He had been a gangster; now he could be the doctor.” During the war, a doctor accidentally cuts his finger in an operation, and contracts syphilis from a patient’s wound; returning home years later, he refuses to marry his longtime lover for fear of contaminating her, and instead devotes himself to saving others. Mifune’s headstrong young character learns from his older, wiser father (Takashi Shimura), a pairing of young and old, student and master that Kurosawa would replicate a few months later in Stray Dog, featuring the same pair of actors. A Drunken Angel without gangsters, a Stray Dog without police, The Quiet Duel shuns genre pyrotechnics to focus on these two great stars and their stunning charisma.

• Written by Kurosawa, Senkichi Taniguchi. With Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Miki Sanjo, Noriko Sengoku. (95 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From the Japan Foundation, Permission Kadokawa)


Friday, August 20
Viva la Revolución (Film Series)
7:00Let’s Go with Pancho Villa!
Fernando de Fuentes (Mexico, 1935)
Restored Print

(Vámonos con Pancho Villa!). The liberal government of President Cárdenas gave de Fuentes a new studio, a battalion of soldiers, and a train for what would become Mexico’s first mega-production. Examining the Revolution in all its chaos and contradictions, Vámonos tells the story of six rancheros who, in 1914, join Pancho Villa’s loyal troops and one by one are led to their deaths. The desertion of a single disillusioned survivor contributes to a portrait of the charismatic Villa as a heartless leader in the face of war’s horrors and personal loss. Not to be overlooked, though, is the train—a major protagonist of the film as it was of the Revolution. But if this moving ton of meaning is a cinematographer’s dream (look for the night battle lit by the soldiers themselves), Gabriel Figueroa’s camerawork also lends intimacy to the film’s Grand Illusion-like plea for peace on the personal level.

• Written by Xavier Villaurrutia, de Fuentes, based on a novel by Rafael F. Muñoz. Photographed by Jack Draper, Gabriel Figueroa. Music by Silvestre Revueltas. With Antonio R. Fausto, Domingo Soler, Manuel
Tamés, Ramón Vallarino. (92 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Filmoteca de la UNAM)

9:00La soldadera
José Bolaños (Mexico, 1966)
Rare Archival Print

(Female Soldier). In the early 1930s, Sergei Eisenstein traveled to Mexico to make a six-part film, Que Viva Mexico, which was abandoned within a few years. The never-shot fourth section dramatizing the Mexican Revolution was to be called “Soldadera” and followed the exploits of Pancha, a young woman escorting her husband Juan, a soldier in Pancho Villa’s army. When Juan dies in battle, Pancha takes up arms and replaces him. This scenario is the crux of Bolaños’s La soldadera, an homage (whether intentional or not) to the story never told. Famed Buñuel collaborator Silvia Pinal plays the renamed Lázara, whose stoical (but elegant) determination is a match for the dire times. Though Bolaños’s sturdy film concentrates on the heroic sacrifice made by the female Villistas, it does so with due honesty. Accompanying the troops and often exposed to the same dangers of the battlefield, these fearless women are nonetheless still subject to the rules of hearth and home. The Revolution never quite goes full turn.

• Written by Bolaños. Photographed by Alex Phillips. With Silvia Pinal, Narciso Busquets, Pedro Armendariz, Jr., Sonia Infante. (88 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Filmoteca de la UNAM)


Saturday, August 21
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
5:30Ran

Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1985)The incomparable Tatsuya Nakadai anchors Kurosawa’s lavish adaptation of King Lear, a combination of chamber drama and brutal war epic that is simultaneously visceral and contemplative. Nakadai is a sixteenth-century lord who makes the mistake of first dividing his kingdom among his three sons, then banishing the only one who actually loves him. As in Shakespeare’s tale, such decisions prove fatal, but Kurosawa pointedly concentrates on not only the effects on father and sons but also much larger societal ones, as entire armies are dispatched, brutalized, and destroyed due to one man’s inability to understand human nature. As in Kagemusha, Kurosawa turns battle scenes into expressionist brushstrokes of vibrant, utterly unnatural hues, setting not armies but colors and shapes against one another, the better to achieve pure art on the cinematic canvas. Nakadai’s gothic portrayal of the mad king gives the film a further splash of color, and rage.

—Jason Sanders

Ran is repeated on Sunday, August 22.

• Written by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide, based on King Lear by William Shakespeare. Photographed by Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. With Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu. (160 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Rialto Pictures)

The Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi (Film Series)
8:30To Forget Palermo
Francesco Rosi (Italy/France, 1990)

(Dimenticare Palermo). Rosi’s first English-language film explores the long arm of the Mafia in a political thriller that starts in New York, then moves to Sicily for an impressionistic, sensual tour of the crumbling magnificence that is Palermo. James Belushi stars as an ambitious New York mayoral candidate, Carmine Bonavia, who hits upon legalization of drugs as a winning ticket until the Mafia in Sicily subtly but unmistakably hits on him. Distanced from his Sicilian roots, Carmine and his photojournalist bride (Mimi Rogers) honeymoon in the homeland he has never seen. There they encounter the mysteries and miseries of a culture both foreign and familiar, beautifully captured by Pasqualino De Santis’s cinematography to bring visual reference to the whole of Rosi’s work. A waltzing camera in a ball sequence is an homage to Visconti’s The Leopard. But the honeymoon is clearly over for Italy in this film that decries a culture of violence nourished by the politics of drugs and neglect.—Judy Bloch

• Written by Rosi, Tonino Guerra, dialogue by Gore Vidal, loosely based on the novel Oublier Palermo by Edmonde Charles Roux. Photographed by Pasqualino De Santis. With James Belushi, Mimi Rogers, Joss Ackland, Philippe Noiret. (110 mins, In English and Italian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinecittà Luce S.p.A.)


Sunday, August 22
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
7:00Ran
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1985). King Lear in feudal Japan, with Tatsuya Nakadai as the lord who divides his kingdom among his three sons, with disastrous results. “A majestic piece of filmmaking, a lush tapestry of lordly tableaux, ruthless betrayals, and flaming carnage.”—Village Voice (160 mins) See August 21 blurb above.


Wednesday, August 25
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
7:00Rhapsody in August
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1991)

(Hachigatsu no kyohshikyoku). A dread of nuclear catastrophe was not new to Kurosawa, as I Live in Fear and Dreams attest. Kurosawa sets Rhapsody in August in contemporary Nagasaki as four teenage cousins visit their grandmother, a survivor of the blast. Repelled but curious, the teenagers search through Nagasaki for remnants of the event, while the grandmother fascinates them with chilling stories of water-imps and ghosts. The devastation of Nagasaki, at least for the adults, has passed into the realm of safely remote folklore. But it is Kurosawa’s central metaphor, the twisted wreckage of playground equipment, that focuses the film’s intent. The delicately serene Rhapsody in August speaks to today’s youth, who, after all, are not insulated from the errors of their elders.—Steve Seid

• Written by Kurosawa, based on the novel Nabe no naka by Kiyoko Murata. Photographed by Taikao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. With Sachiko Murase, Hisashi Igawa, Narumi Kayashima, Richard Gere. (98 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From MGM)


Thursday, August 26
The Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi (Film Series)
7:00Neapolitan Diary
Francesco Rosi (Italy, 1992)

(Diario Napoletano). Thirty years after Hands over the City, Rosi returns to Naples and finds the same city of entrenched corruption, impassioned debate, and ruined beauty, but also another city, of memory and of the mind. A screening of Hands at the School of Architecture is the occasion for a prismatic discussion of the city’s troubles, then and now; students and historians, politicians and industrialists, architects and environmentalists each speak their piece. However, the kids who deal drugs for the Camorra seem less concerned with the Southern Question than with their own survival, while Rosi turns toward history and his own past, placing clips from his earlier films alongside images of the ruins of Pompeii. If Rosi’s diary documents a place in perpetual crisis, it also harbors hope: the footage of collapse from Hands over the City runs backwards, and the ruined city rises again.—Juliet Clark

• Written by Rosi, Raffaele La Capria. Photographed by Pasqualino De Santis. With Rosi, Pietro Bontempo, Simona Ceramelli, Nino Vingelli. (89 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinecittà Luce S.p.A.)


Friday, August 27
Viva la Revolución (Film Series)
7:00Reed: Insurgent Mexico
Paul Leduc (Mexico, 1971)
PFA Collection Print

(Reed: Mexico insurgente). Before he wrote Ten Days that Shook the World, radical journalist John Reed covered the Mexican Revolution. He spent months with Pancho Villa’s Northern Division, sharing in their peril and their meager existence. In 1914, his reportage was collected in book form as Insurgent Mexico. This fictionalized account of Reed’s political conversion during the Revolution explores the tenuous line between the detached observer and the committed activist. Amos Vogel, in the Village Voice, noted: “Reed is a work of great subtlety. We enter, stage by stage, into the true realities of the Mexican revolution: its lulls and confusions, fallible leaders, unexpected death, sudden friendships, meandering half-action. . . . The sentiment is anti-convention, anti-folklore, anti-heroism; therefore, closer to revolutionary reality.” Paul Leduc, a film critic turned director, shows great restraint in charting Reed’s realization that there are times when the report of the pen is overcome by the report of the rifle. Reed won the Georges Sadoul prize for best film by a new director.

• Written by Leduc, Juan Tovar, from the book Insurgent Mexico by John Reed. Photographed by Alexis Grivas. With Claudio Obregón, Eduardo López Rojas, Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Juan Angel Martínez. (105 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, Sepia, 35mm, PFA Collection, courtesy IMCINE)


8:30Shelf Life: Free Outdoor Screening 
Weird and Wondrous Shorts from the PFA Collection

Bring a Blanket and Picnic on the Lawn.

At BAM/PFA’s new and improved storage vault, PFA archivists have combed through the film collection shelf by shelf, from up high to down low, excavating little films that
haven’t felt the warmth of the projector lamp in years. These unassuming, humble films have been resting quietly in their cans amidst the classics and the commonplace, waiting patiently for an evening to unleash their suppressed flicker and sonic squall upon an unsuspecting new generation of fresh eyes and ears. You’ll see sensually expanding micro-crystals, a boy who’s lost his marbles, intricate machinery for packaging citrus, woods of wonder, Kodachrome tide pools, and selections teeming with emulsion grain, color, and noise. It’s not often that we can bring these startling examples of everlasting ephemera to an unsuspecting audience. Have no fear: each and every film has been tested by a highly trained archivist, and so far they report no adverse side effects. Join us for an evening under the stars, watching rarely screened films that have none.


Saturday, August 28
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
5:30Dreams
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1990)

(Yume). Having taken the feudal samurai epic to its logical color-drenched conclusions in Kagemusha and Ran, Kurosawa retreated (or advanced) to a far more intimate vision with this collection of eight brightly colored short tales inspired not by historical sagas, but by individual dreams. “A human is a genius while dreaming. Fearless and brave, like a genius,” Kurosawa stated. The dreams may reference folk tales or spirits, past or future, art or utopia, but all are filmed in the director’s late-career trademark style of “moving paintings,” each scene concerned not with replicating reality, but with enhancing it. The cast includes many Kurosawa collaborators, as well as Ozu regular Chishu Ryu and even Martin Scorsese, who plays Vincent Van Gogh. A highly personal dismissal of commercial considerations and genre appeal, Dreams is the statement of an artist continuing to experiment, and astonish.—Jason Sanders

• Written by Kurosawa, Masato Ide. Photographed by Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. With Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, Kota Yui. (160 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, Permission Warner Bros.)

The Modernist Master: The Cinema of Francesco Rosi (Film Series)
8:30 The Moment of Truth
Francesco Rosi (Italy/Spain, 1965)

(Il momento della verità). It’s a familiar tale: poor rural boy heads to the city and is seduced by big money and big glory. Rosi sets this tragic tale in the Spanish bullfighting ring—a world he depicts with brutal poetic realism. Farmer’s son Miguel leaves Andalucia for Barcelona in search of work. As he soon discovers, however, Barcelona is not a city of possibility but one drained by an oversaturated labor market. Hungry and ambitious, Miguel turns to bullfighting, a sport in which he excels. The film shows his meteoric rise through a series of intensely realistic bullfights—all captured in a documentary style that shows the ritualistic details while not shying away from the ugly, messy gore. Miguel’s task, of course, is to destroy each bull—but his technique is almost tender, a series of gestures that woo and hypnotize the animals. “The moment of truth” is that instant when the matador skillfully slays the mighty bull with one final stab. For Miguel, however, we know that this truth will ultimately prove dangerous.—Jonathan L. Knapp

• Written by Rosi, Antonio Cervi. Photographed by Gianni di Venanzo, Pasquale De Santis, Ajace Parolin. With Miguel Mateo Miguelin, Jose Gomez Sevillano, Pedro Basuarn Pedrucho, Linda Christian. (110 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinecittà Luce S.p.A., Permission Janus/Criterion Collection)


Sunday, August 29
Akira Kurosawa Centennial (Film Series)
7:00Madadayo
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1993)

Kurosawa’s final film moves away from the experimental landscapes of Dreams and the battlefields of Ran to present a more realistic, humanist tale of a teacher’s autumnal days. A tribute to the life and thoughts of teacher and novelist Hyakken Uchida (1889-1971), a key figure in Japan, Madadayo is also a celebration of Kurosawa’s own great mentors, the filmmaker Kajiro Yamamoto and primary-school teacher Seiji Tachikawa, who taught him how to paint. Moving from birthday parties to wartime bombing raids and sudden tragedies, the creation of art and the celebration of life, Kurosawa invests the film with a grace and serenity befitting his own status as a master who has lived long and well, and is now comfortable with whatever life has in store. The film’s title references Uchida’s birthday “toasts” to, and rejection of, death, and recalls an old children’s game of hide-and-seek: “Are you ready?” they say. “Madadayo . . . Not yet.”—Jason Sanders

• Written by Kurosawa, based on the book by Hyakken Uchida. Photographed by Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda. With Tatsuo Matsumura, Kyoko Kagawa, Hisashi Igawa, George Tokoro. (134 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From the Japan Foundation, Permission Janus/Criterion Collection)