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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Repertory Cinema

  
 
Jackie Susann
23:11 / 31.08.08
I've been getting down to a couple of the local repertory cinemas pretty regularly lately, and I thought it would be cool to have a thread for them - do you use them, why/why not, what's good or horrible or interesting that you've seen lately.

The NSW Gallery has an ongoing film series, divided into themed blocks, and at the moment they're running their Revolution program. There's been some pretty great stuff. Last week I got to see the legendary anarchist filmmaker Jean Vigo's 'Zero de Conduite', the inspiration for 'If', a hilarious comedy about childish rebellion in a French boarding school. Then this weekend just past, I got to see 'The Battle Of Algiers'. Both were fantastic, because I was a little afraid in both cases they would be "great" in a worthy sort of way, but both were phenomenally engaging.

Was also excited to see they have 'Aguirre: Wrath of God' coming up, because I've only ever seen that as a bad English dub.

I used to go pretty regularly to the more experimental-focused Cinematheque, but haven't for a while due to work. My favourite moment there was at a screening of Michael Snow's infamously punishing structuralist film, 'Wavelength'. (For 45 minutes, the camera moves slowly from one side of a room to the other.) The programmer noted in his opening comments that this session attracted a younger crowd than the previous one, and he hoped we'd be ok with it. The comment was obviously directed specifically at me and my buddy, the ony people there under 50, and I kind of wanted to yell, "Hey man, I've seen this before! Cinematic structuralism doesn't scare me." Still enjoyed the film.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
03:36 / 01.09.08
I used to own a copy of "Aguirre:Wrath of God" some time ago, more or less as the spoils of obsessed friend. To be honest, I didn't care for it. I think the movie achieved what it wanted: it discomfited me, it made me feel terrible.

I suppose this is a separate thing I can find on my own, yes?

Sorry. My two cents.
 
 
Jackie Susann
05:24 / 01.09.08
I think you should watch it again - I don't think it wants you to feel terrible! Or at least, not just terrible. You also get to be awestruck by the disjuncture of scale between the doomed, obsessed humans and the majestic, impassive natural setting. Plus, the monkeys!

There are other Herzog movies that can make you feel much worse, I promise (i.e., the one Ian Curtis topped himself after watching).
 
 
GogMickGog
08:25 / 01.09.08
My rep. experiences are mixed. First were a number of culty late night screenings at the Cambridge Picturehouse -including a wonderful mass singalong to 'The Wicker man', exhausted, scratchy touring prints of 'Performance', 'Withnail' and 'if...' and a slavish audience of Deadites crammed in to see an early airing of the unexpectedly poignant 'Bubba Ho-tep'. A memorable pall of confusion descended on the audience after a midnight showing of Winterberg's 'It's all about love'. A true curate's egg, that one.

More recently, I've fallen for the more parochial delights of my local cinema-cum-church hall - it's like something out of 'Spirit of the Beehive'. Before taking your seat, you are recommended to book your interval tea + cake. The lights never truly dim, and some enterprising grannies in the back row sit clack-clacking their way through an afternoon's knitting, pausing only at the dramatic peaks.

'Zero' is an absolute gem - a favourite in these parts, alongside Mick Travis and pals (thus the name).
 
 
Seth
13:14 / 02.09.08
I used to own a copy of "Aguirre:Wrath of God" some time ago, more or less as the spoils of obsessed friend. To be honest, I didn't care for it. I think the movie achieved what it wanted: it discomfited me, it made me feel terrible.

I agree with Jackie Susann, and I'd add that more so than any other story I've encountered it captures the crushing and pointless banality of one man's insane quest for power, a megalomania that most writers usually romanticise. In one respect Herzog's take is diametrically opposed that of Alan Moore, whose flawed world-conquerors are depicted as Herculean for all their failings, even if their life's mission should ultimately fail. That it does so while delivering a unique and unsanitised depiction of the natural world in all its terrifying alien beauty (some of these shots are so awe-inspiring that their like has rarely been depicted before or since) with one of the most evocative soundtracks ever to accompany a film and a masterclass of grubbily unhinged acting from a derailed Kinski makes it a rather special piece of cinema, one that I think is thoroughly deserving of repeated cinema runs so it can be seen on the scale that I believe it really warrants.

One of my favourite repertory cinema experiences was watching Miyazaki's Laputa as part of Southampton's Harbour Lights Cinema's season of his films. The visual aspects of his compressed world-building were more appropriately in scale to the scope of his ideas, so the moments that typically have me tearing up seemed vast, almost bottomless in their depth of meaning, particularly the bookend sequences in which Joe Hisaishi's score underpins the Nausica-style montage of mythologised history during the opening credits which can still never truly prepare me for the reveal of Laputa in all its desolate glory at fulcrum between the second and third acts no matter how many times I see the film, a living ecosystem in a perfectly poised fragile harmony with long-lost ancient technology. It made me long for a cinema to show a marathon of Gunbuster I & II back to back, which taken together are two of the only other stories I've encountered that successfully create that sense of deep, deep Time left to take its natural effect, with a similar scope of ideas and images worthy of viewing on a the big screen.

For all that a film might survive the translation to home viewing there are some experiences that really need the cinema experience to truly gain their full impact.
 
  
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