Tuesday 24 January 2012

AU HASARD II : GUILT: SATURDAY 4TH FEBRUARY


Au Hasard's film screenings continue with our second double bill:

II. GUILT - Saturday 4th February
'After all, our department, as far as I know, and I know only the lowest level, doesn't seek out guilt among the general population, but, as the Law states, is attracted by guilt and has to send us guards out. That's the Law. What mistake could there be?' 
Franz Kafka

1pm
Death by Hanging
Directed by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1968, 117 mins)

'We live lives that are even more evanescent than the bubbles floating along the stream – and even more meaningless. The reason we show an abnormal interest in crime and scandal is that a life, which usually drifts by, thereby appears caught up by a pole in the river’s flow. A drowning man grasps at straws. For we find, in crime and scandal, a tiny trace that reminds us of human dignity.'
Oshima



 
3.15pm
The Round Up
Directed by Miklós Janscó (Hungary, 1965, 95 mins)

This film isn't just about 1956. The film is about the fact that there are people who want to be free and people who are oppressing them... There are moments in history where you can never know what happened. Everyone looks at it from a different perspective; everyone sees something different in it. There are always moments that are unsure. These are the little moments of history I am interested in.
Janscó

Sunday 15 January 2012

Journey To The End of The Night


"I, too, dragged myself toward the lights, a movie house, and then another right next to it, and another, all along the street. We lost big chunks of crowd to each of them. I picked a movie house with posters of women in slips, and what legs! Boyohboy! Heavy! Ample! Shapely! And pretty faces on top, as though drawn for the contrast, no need of retouching, not a blemish, not a flaw, perfect I tell you, delicate but firm and concise. Life can engender no greater peril than these incautious beauties, these indiscreet variations on perfect divine harmony.
It was warm and cozy in the movie house. An enormous organ, as mellow as in a cathedral, a heated cathedral I mean, organ pipes like thighs. They don't waste a moment. Before you know it, you're bathing in an all-forgiving warmth. Just let yourself go and you'll begin to think the world has been converted to loving-kindness. I almost was myself.
Dreams rise in the darkness and catch fire from the mirage of moving light. What happens on the screen isn't quite real; it leaves open a vague cloudy space for the poor, for dreams and the dead. Hurry hurry, cram yourself full of dreams to carry you through the life that's waiting for you outside, when you leave here, to help you last a few days more in that nightmare of things and people. Among the dreams, choose the ones most likely to warm your soul. I have to confess that I picked the sexy ones. No point in being proud; when it comes to miracles, take the ones that will stay with you. A blonde with unforgettable tits and shoulders saw fit to break the silence of the screen with a song about her loneliness. I'd have been glad to cry about it with her.
There's nothing like it! What a lift it gives you! After that, I knew I'd have courage enough in my guts to last me at least two days. I didn't even wait for the lights to go on. Once I'd absorbed a small dose of that admirable ecstasy, I knew I'd sleep, my mind was made up.
When I got back to the Laugh Calvin, the night clerk, despite my greeting, neglected to say good evening the way they do at home. But his contempt didn't mean a thing to me anymore. An intense inner life suffices to itself, it can melt an icepack that has been building up for twenty years. That's a fact.
In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasn't entirely alone... It's not possible to sleep alone..."
Louis Ferdinand Celine"Journey to the end of the night"

Thursday 12 January 2012

AU HASARD I: INCARCERATION / SATURDAY 21 01 2012

SATURDAY 21 01 2012

All welcome for our very first AU HASARD screening: Incarceration.




AU HASARD - SCREENINGS

Free and Open to All - Alternate Saturdays from 1pm

Location: Room B18, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX

I. INCARCERATION - Saturday 21st January
'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.' John 3, 8

1pm
A Man Escaped, or The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth
Directed by Robert Bresson (France, 1957, 99 mins)

2.50pm
The Woman of the Dunes
Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japan, 1964, 123 mins)

II. GUILT - Saturday 4th February
'After all, our department, as far as I know, and I know only the lowest level, doesn't seek out guilt among the general population, but, as the Law states, is attracted by guilt and has to send us guards out. That's the Law. What mistake could there be?' Franz Kafka

1pm
Death by Hanging
Directed by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1968, 117 mins)

3.15pm
The Round Up
Directed by Miklós Janscó (Hungary, 1965, 95 mins)

III. SUBMISSION - Saturday 18th February
'Every good servant does not all commands.' William Shakespeare


1pm
The Servant
Directed by Joseph Losey (UK, 1963, 112 mins)

3pm
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Directed by Luis Buñuel (France/Italy, 1964, 97 mins)

IV. MARQUIS DE SADE - Saturday 10th March ***note change of date***
'What De Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind... From the very first he set before consciousness things which is could not tolerate.' Georges Bataille

1pm
Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade)
Directed by Peter Brook (UK, 1967, 116 mins)

3pm
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Directed by Pier Paulo Pasolini (Italy, 1975, 116 mins)

V. CHILDHOOD - Saturday 17th March
'Oh hours of childhood,
when behind each shape more than the past appeared
and what streamed out before us was not the future.'
Rainer Maria Rilke

1pm
Zero For Conduct
Directed by Jean Vigo (France, 1933, 41 mins)

1.50pm
Le Révélateur
Directed by Philippe Garrel (France, 1968, 67 mins)

3.15pm
Viva La Muerte
Directed by Fernando Arrabal (France, 1971, 90 mins)

VI. MUTINY - Saturday 31st March
'The very forms of organization of the struggle will suggest... a different vocabulary - Brother, sister, friend.' Franz Fanon

1pm
Kanal
Directed by Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1956, 95 mins)

2.50pm
The Battle of Algiers
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (Algeria, 1966, 121 mins)