Film4 brochure
- 1. Legendsof the Screen Ƒilm Ƒour Ƒestival 8 January - 3 February 2016
- 2. Ƒilm Ƒour is proud to announce Legends of the Screen 8 January - 3 February 2016 hnd programmes about, some of the greatest directors in the world of film. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 11:00pm - 2:00am Λntonioni | Βergman | Сoppola | De Mille Еisenstein | Ғassbinder | Goddard | Ηitchcock As well as the films themselves, there will be never-before-seen footage of interviews, on-location insights and debate (often heated) between directors and enthusiasts, from professional critics to passionate film buffs. Prepare for a feast of entertainment! Festival dates 2016 all programmes begin at 11:00pm Monday 8 January: Eisenstein The Battleship Potemkin 1925 Wednesday 10 January: Eisenstein Ten Days That Shook The World 1928 Friday 12 January: De Mille Samson & Delilah 1949 Saturday 13 January: Bergman The Seventh Seal 1957 Monday 15 January: Hitchcock Vertigo 1958 Wednesday 17 January: Hitchcock North by Northwest 1959 Friday 19 January: Hitchcock Psycho 1960 Saturday 20 January: Hitchcock The Birds 1963 Monday 22 January: Antonioni L'Avventura 1959 Wednesday 24 January: Godard Une Femme est une Femme 1961 Friday 26 January: Coppola The Rain People 1969 Saturday 27 January: Fassbinder Despair 1978 Monday 29 January: Fassbiner The Marriage of Maria Braun 1979 Wednesday 31 January: Coppola Apocalypse 1979 Friday 2 February: Godard First Name - Carmen 1983 Saturday 3 February: Bergman Fanny & Alexander 1983 Michelangelo Antonioni29 September 1912 - 30 July 2007 Michelangelo Antonioni is an Italian director best known for a trilogy of films begun in 1959 the created a sense of despair through the juxtaposed of haunting visual imagery, elliptical, mysterious plots and the portrayal of neurotic, empty lives. He begun his career in the cinema as a film critic & scriptwriter and - after working with Roberto Rossellini and Marcel Carne - made his debut as a director in 1943 with the documentary Gente del Po (The People of the Po Valley). Early Work Cronaca di un Amore (Chronicle le of Love, 1950), his first feature, represented a break with the neorealist tradition. Two later films, Le Ameche (The Friends, 1955) and Il Grido (The Cry, 1957) were slow-paced and deliberately obscure in narrative structure. Antonioni’s distinctive style reached its highest expression in the trilogy L’Aventura (The Adventure, 1959), La Notte (Night, 1960) and L’Eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962). Moving into Colour In these films, and in the machine-dominated Deserto Rosso (Red Dessert, 1964), his first colour film, mystery and eroticism merge in landscape of compelling beauty. Antonioni’s subsequent English- Language films, Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), The Passenger (1975) and Identification of a Woman (1982) has less success with the critics despite test stylistic interest. Ⅰ Ⅱ
- 3. Ingmar Bergman14 July, 1918 - 30 July, 2007 Ingmar Ernst Bergman is a major Swedish film-maker who, for over thirty years, has sustained a reputation as an artist of international stature. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Bergman attended Stockholm University and began his directing career in the theatre, where he continuers to work as extensive as he does in films. He wrote the screenplay for the director Alf Sjoberg’s internationally acclaimed Torment in 1944, and the next year he directed his first film, Crisis. A Powerful Impression Although Bergman’s Illicit Interlude (1950) was moderately successful and the light hearted Smiles of Summer Night (1955) even more so, it was only after The Seventh Seal (1957), which made an extraordinarily powerful impress with its despairing philosophy and stark medieval imagery, that a widespread interest developed in such earlier Bergman films as The Naked Night (1953) and A Lesson In Love (1956). With The Seventh Seal, Bergman definitively established the theme that was to characterise virtually all his subsequent work - the individuals quasi-religious search for faith in a context of anguished doubt. This is central to such varied films as Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician (1958), The Virgin Spring (1960) and his ‘chamber’ trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963). Formal Experimentation Later Work By the mid-1960’s Bergman has assembled a group of actors into a now familiar stock company, among them Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thulin. In 1966 he undertook a greater formal experimentation with Persona, an intriguing psychology study of two women that is considered by many one of his most important works. This was followed by a less successful Gothic exercise, Hour of the Wolf (1968), an anti-war allegory, Shame (1968), a more realistic film, The Passion of Anna (1969) and the intense, yet dream-like, Cries and Whispers (1972). Scenes from a Marriage, a six part domestic drama originally made for Swedish television, was aired in the United States and other countries, introducing Bergman to a much larger public. Autumn Sonata (1978) features Bergman’s compatriot Ingrid Bergman. Two later films - Fanny and Alexander (1983), a brilliant vision of childhood in a theatrical family, and After the Rehearsal (1984), a richly- symbolic portrait of an ageing theatre director - contain Bergman’s autobiographical comments on theatrical lie. In 1988, Bergman produced a Swedish language version of Hamlet on Broadway. In March 1990 he received the D.W.Gvriffith Francis Ford Coppola 7 april, 1939 - Present Francis Ford Coppola directed the highly successful film The Godfather (1972) . He had previously directed Dementia 13 (1962), You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), Finian’s Rainbow (1968), and The Rain People (1969), a sensitive study of a runaway wife, which some consider his best film. Coppola departed from the florid style of The Godfather, for the spareness of The Conversation (1974), and the enlarged on his earlier hit with a sequel, The Godfather Part Ⅱ (1974). Controversy For five years, Coppola worked amid controversy and speculation on Apocalypse Now (1979), a realistically violent depiction of the Vietnam War. Another Coppola film generating controversy was the romantic comedy One From The Heart (1982). The $26-million film was a financial and artistic failure. In 1983, Coppola received mixed critical reactions to the Outsiders and Rumble Fish, both based on stories by S.E.Hinton. The Cotton Club (1984) was a lavish production set in New York City in the 1920’s. Later, Coppola films include Gardens of Stone (1987), Peggy Sue Got Married (1987), about a woman who returns to her adolescence, and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), a portrait of the automobile designer. Ⅲ Ⅳ
- 4. Cecil B. DeMille12 August, 1881 - 21 January, 1959 Cecil Blount DeMille was a major American Film director best known for his spectacular productions. Early Work De Mille begun his career as an actor and made his first directorial mark in classic silent Westerns such as The Squaw Man (1913), the first feature film made in Hollywood and The Virginian (1914). With Samuel Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky, he formed a studio that, after its merger in 1918 with Adolph Zukor’s studio, became Paramount Pictures. During the 20’s and 30’s, the flamboyant, imperious DeMille typified the popular image of the Hollywood Director. He is particularly noted for his lavish biblical epics, The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956), The King of Kings (1927) and Samson and Delilah (1949) Other Classics Among DeMille’s seventy films, other notable productions are Cleopatra (1934), The Plainsman (1938) and Union Pacific (1939), both Westerns, and The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the 1952 Academy Award for best picture. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein 23 January, 1898 - 11 February, 1948 Sergei Eisenstein was a seminal figure in the history of film, known for his stylistic innovations and theory of montage. His theoretical and practical work are still intensely studied. Early Work Of a well-to-do family from Riga, in Latvia, Eisenstein studied engineering and architecture in Petrograd, (now Saint Petersburg), where he witnessed both the February and October revolutions of 1917. His service in the Red Army during Russia’s Civil War led him to design (1920) for a front-line mobile theatre troupe. Following the war, Eisenstein worked in Moscow’s experimental theatres and studied under Vsevolod Meyerhold. As a designer and director for the Proletcult Theatre, Eisenstein and the experimental group he gathered around him staged Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s Even a Wise Man Stumbles (1923) as a circus, incorporating into the production of a short film interlude. This foreshadowed Eisenstein’s subsequent theatre work, all of which contained significant cinematic elements. Film and Politics Places in charge of Proletcult’s first large film project, Towards the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, envisioned as a series of seven historical films, Eisenstein began word on Strike (1925), combining exaggerated theatrical elements with some of the most realistic footage ever filmed by Eisenstein, this was recognised for it’s artistic and political power. Eisenstein’s next film, a treatment of the July 1905 naval mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, received international acclaim after it was shown in Berlin. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) demonstrated abroad that the USSR could produce an original film masterpiece and also demonstrated Eisenstein’s used of Montage, a revolutionary film editing technique. Innovative film-making October (1928), also know as Ten Days That Shook the World, was similarly innovative, introducing sequences that tested Eisenstein’s theory of ‘intellectual cinema’, which aimed at nothing less that the communication of abstract thought by visual means. A propaganda film (The General Line) on behalf of the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture was released in 1929 under the title Old and New. Between 1929 and 1932 Eisenstein studied foreign sound-film systems in western Europe, signed a contract with Paramount Pictures (later cancelled) and, with the financial backing of Upton Sinclair, began filming an epic of Mexican culture to be called Que Viva Mexico!, all footage of which was seized by the Sinclairs.w Ⅴ Ⅵ
- 5. Rainer Werner Fassbinder 31 May, 1946 - 10 June 1982 Fassbinder was on of Germany’s greatest and most prolific film directors as well as a stage and screen actor and scriptwriter. He joined the Munich Action Theatre in 1967 and began making films two years later, using a permanent ensemble of experienced actors. Fassbinder’s work reflects the influence of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx, and of Freudian psychology, his choice of material was influenced by the American filmmaker Douglas Sirk. The dullness of daily Life His subject matter ranged from the failure of friends to communicate, as portrayed in Katzelmacher (1969), to the dullness of daily existence, depicted in Warum Lauft Herr R. Amok? (Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?) (1969) and Die bitten Tranen de Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant) (1972). Particularly admired as the bittersweet Der Handler der vier Jahreszeiten (Merchance of the Four Seasons) (1971) the styles Effie Briest and Ali: Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) (1974), a study in adversity. Fassbinder’s Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975), released in English as Fox and his Friends, created a new wave of interest in his films in both the United States avnd Europe. In 1978, Fassbinder released his first English language films, Despair, staring Dirk Bogarde. His most commercially successful films wereThe Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Veronica Voss (1982), Querelle (1983) and the fifteen hour Berlin Alexanderplatz (1983) which portrays life in Berlin between the World Wars. Jean Luc Godard3 December, 1930 - Present One of the most influential film directors of the 1960’s, Jean Luc Godard, born of Swiss parents, is best know for his innovative “New Wave” films and for his increasingly radical approaches to politics and art. His experimental use of the hand-held camera, jump cuts, and flash shots and his disregard for cinematic continuity have done much to revolutionise cinema in recent decades. Truth beyond art or reality Alively and controversial contributor to the important journal Cahiers du Cinema from 1952 on, Godard made several shorts before directing his first feature, Breathless (1959). In Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) (1960) on the Algerian War, and the films, Godard combined documentary with fictional footage in an attempt to arrive at a truth beyond art or reality. Early Work Godard’s early films dealt with the nature and contradictions of modern society. Of particular interest too him was the place of women in society. One Femme eat Une Femme (A Woman is a Woman) (1961), a film on male-female relationships with a happy ending, was followed by the more biting and ironic My Life To Live (1962), on prostitution, Une Femme Mariee (A Married Woman) (1964), Maculin-Feminin (1966) and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (196). Their themes rested on the notion of women as objects, but his approach brought into Weekend (1986). In such films as Made in USA (1966), La Chinoise (1967) and Sympathy for the Devil (1968) staring the Rolling Stones, Godard subordinated considerations of plot and pared down his visual imagery to a few static tableaux, becoming more overtly Marxist and didactic, and in the process, losing much of his audience and influence. Later Work After a 1971 car accident, Godard made the autobiographical Tout va Bein (Everthing’s Fine) (1972). Of Godard’s other, later films First Name - Carmen (1983) win its year’s Best Film award in Venice, Hail Mary (1985) was universally denounced as blasphemous, and a few appreciated Godard’s version of King Lear (1988). Ⅶ Ⅷ
- 6. Alfred Hitchcock13 August, 1899 - 29 April, 1980 Probably no contemporary film director was better known to the general public or more admired by his colleagues and critics than Alfred Hitchcock. Born in London, he began his directional career in the silent era with The Lodger (1927). Hitchcock’s work during the next decade - Blackmail (1929), The Man Who Knew too Much (1934), The Thirty Nine Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938) - established him worldwide as the permanent director of witty suspense thrillers. It also established his personal trademark: the seemingly casual appearance in all his films of his own portly figure. Hitchcock, who received a knighthood in 1980, died on 29 April of that year. Hollywood Films His first film after moving to Hollywood in 1939 was the immensely successful romantic thriller Rebecca (1940). Subsequently, Foreign Correspondent (1940) successfully harked back to hi British style. Although Shadow of a Doubt (1943) won praise for it’s handling of an American setting and Notorious (1946) was popular with cities and public alike, many of Hitchcock’s admired were disappointed by other American works, such as Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1943), Spellbound (1945) and Rope (1948). Suspense Thrillers The witty, ingenious Strangers on a Train (1951), with its sensational merry-go-round sequence, and North by Northwest (1959), which treated thriller conventions humorously, were both praised as a return to form. The popularity of the intervening films exceeded their critical esteem - Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Theif (1953) and a remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). What critics missed in them, while acknowledging their technical mastery, was the wit and sense of milieu that had distinguished Hitchcock’s British suspense thrillers. Suspense or Terror? Increasingly, however, after the appearance of Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), it was recognised that Hitchcock was going beyond suspense to plumb the greater depths of terror. Some critics have emphasised the Catholic content of Hitchcock’s work, others, the Freudian. Whether or not such explications stand scrutiny, the critical ascendancy of American-period Hitchcock now seems secure, and the director’s technical wizardry remains unassailable. Hitchcock also enjoy success as the host (1955-65) of the popular television suspense series ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ and as the editor of such short-story collections as Stories To Be Read with the Lights On (1973). Ƒilm Ƒour is now free-to-air We are making Ƒilm 4 available to everyone with digital TV. The new free-to-air service will screen great films everyday from 3pm. The channel will offer a broader range of titles than any other UK film channel, with classics earlier in the day giving way to modern Hollywood output and the best of US and UK independent cinema during the peak period, and foreign language and cult cinema late at night. Where's Ƒilm4? Tune in to Ƒilm4 on Freeview channel 31, sky channel 315, NTL channel 701 and 50 and Telewest channel 444. A one-hour time shifted channel is available on Sky channel 316, on NTL channel 714 and 46 and Telewest channel 445. Check out Ƒilm4 On TV at: www.filmfour.co.uk Ⅸ Ⅹ