Dunedin Film Society

16/04/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Ana Lily Amirpour's

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

(USA, 2014, 100 mins, R16 violence, drug use & s*xual material)
Wednesday 19 April, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

An outrageously languid new-school vampire flick about a chador-wearing antiheroine who stalks the night, sinking her teeth into those who deserve to die.

“If you like female characters on the giving rather than receiving end of vampiric violence, then Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature is for you. The title character, mesmerising in her stillness, slides the empty night streets of Bad City, a mythical Iranian ghost town that looks suspiciously like California (where it was shot)… Our hero, the streetwise but harmless Arash (Arash Marandi), who is trying to care for his ju**ie father, meets the Girl whilst drug-addled on the way home from a costume party… Amirpour’s pointed and humorous gender politic is present throughout this masterpiece of image, story and experiential filmmaking, which visually quotes so widely that you will feel you are watching Lynch, Tarantino, Hitchcock, Buñuel and Maya Deren. Shot stunningly in black and white by Lyle Vincent, this is not to be missed on the big screen, with its glorious soundtrack, outrageously languid scenes, blood, drugs, oil rigs… this movie’s got the lot” (NZIFF 2014).

03/04/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Seijun Suzuki's

TOKYO DRIFTER

(Japan, 1966, 82 mins, M violence)
Wednesday 5 April, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

An embattled yakuza hitman attempts to go straight in this deliriously colourful and over-the-top gangster flick.


“In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki’s onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima – an anything-goes, in-your-face rampage. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties." Janus Films

28/03/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Gillian Armstrong's

MY BRILLIANT CAREER

(Australia, 1979, 100 mins, G cert)
Wednesday 29 March, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

Based on Miles Franklin’s celebrated turn-of-the-century coming-of-age story, Gillian Armstrong’s debut feature upends the conventions of period romance. Stars Judy Davis and Sam Neill.

Aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes) was wrong when she told Sybylla (Judy Davis) that her ‘wildness of spirit’ would get her in trouble her whole life. It’s Sybylla’s independence and defiance that frees her from 19th-century Australia’s repressive, patriarchal society in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979). A key work in the Australian New Wave film movement, My Brilliant Career was Armstrong’s first feature film and a global success, gaining Academy Award and Palme d’Or nominations. Adapted from Stella Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel of the same name, the film certainly reflected the author’s feminist spirit: key roles in its production were held by women, including producer Margaret Fink, production designer Luciana Arrighi and costume designer Anna Senior.” (ACMI)

19/03/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Martin Scorsese's

TAXI DRIVER

(USA│1976│112 mins│R18 graphic violence)
Wednesday 22 March, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

Scorsese’s excoriating thriller and unflinching plunge into the darkest recesses of the human soul captures Times Square as a miasma of ### theatres, s*x shops and peep shows, with Robert De Niro as the embittered veteran who sees himself as its saviour.

Martin Scorsese’s unflinching plunge into the darkest recesses of the human soul feels painfully relevant. In anti-hero Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) we see traits of what would become the archetypal online troll – he’s bitter, reactionary and self-involved, describing himself as ‘God’s lonely man’. But still, Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader never treat him with anything less than the utmost empathy. This is a man scarred by war, perplexed by the permissive society and desperate to leave his mark on a world that barely acknowledges his existence. Travis may wear his isolation proudly, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. Forty years on, Taxi Driver remains almost impossibly perfect: it’s hard to think of another film that creates and sustains such a unique, evocative tone, of dread blended with pity, loathing, savage humour and a scuzzy edge of New York cool. Bernard Herrmann’s score sounds like the city breathing, ominous and clammy, while De Niro’s performance is a masterclass in restraint and honesty… This is still one of the pinnacles of cinema.” Time Out.

13/03/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Małgorzata Szumowska & Michał Englert's

NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN

(Poland, 2020, 113 mins, M s*x scenes, s*xual references & offensive language)
Wednesday 15 March, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

This unclassifiable satire of Poland’s disconnected upper-class follows an angelic masseur in a gated community who uses hypnotic techniques to try and draw meaning out of his clients’ lives.

There’s a rich confectionery of strangeness, sadness and fear to this very absorbing film by the Polish film-maker Małgorzata Szumowska, co-writing and directing with cinematographer Michał Englert… The setting is an eerily blank suburban scene: a smug, prosperous but dysfunctional community in a gated development, with identical white McMansion-style houses whose occupants all have their own secrets… The bored and unsatisfied inhabitants are all of a-flutter, due to a Ukrainian masseur called Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), who comes to people’s houses with his foldaway massage table and administers physio- and hypnotherapy and works wonders. Zhenia’s ministrations are electrifying everyone. But as it happens, Zhenia comes from Chernobyl, and he is plagued with agonised dreams and memories of his mother, and of the clouds of radioactive dust that looked like snow to him.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

07/03/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Robin Hardy's

THE WICKER MAN

(UK, 1973, 94 mins, R16 Violence, s*x scenes & nudity)
Wednesday 8 March, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

This brilliant folk horror classic follows a devoutly Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) whose search for a missing girl on a remote Scottish island is led astray by the pagan-worshipping inhabitants.

“Robin Hardy’s slow-burning chiller, from a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer (author of Sleuth, and brother of Peter), was once hailed by the magazine Cinefantastique as ‘the Citizen Kane of horror movies’… Edward Woodward (up until that point best known for the TV series Callan) plays Sergeant Howie, an uptight Calvinist policeman who travels to Summerisle, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, to investigate reports of a local girl’s disappearance. Once there, he finds his solid Christian beliefs confronted by a community dabbling in all manner of dubious pagan practices… The Wicker Man is influential not just on subsequent horror cinema, but on the thriller genre in general in the way it sets an artfully composed series of traps for its unwitting protagonist, expertly wrong-footing both him and the audience until the devastating ending.” — Anne Billson, The Guardian.

26/02/2023

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Alfred Hitchcock's

SPELLBOUND

(US, 1945, 111 mins, PG)
Wednesday 1 March, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

In a Vermont hospital, a psychoanalyst (Ingrid Bergman) falls in love with a handsome doctor (Gregory Peck), who could well be a murderer. Her examination of a dream sequence will reveal the truth.

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a psychiatrist with a firm understanding of human nature – or so she thinks. When the mysterious Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) becomes the new chief of staff at her institution, the bookish and detached Constance plummets into a whirlwind of tangled identities and feverish psychoanalysis, where the greatest risk is to fall in love. A transcendent love story replete with taut excitement and startling imagery, Spellbound is classic Hitchcock, featuring stunning performances, an Academy Award-winning score by Miklos Rozsa, and a captivating dream sequence by Surrealist icon Salvador Dalí” (criterion.com).

Watch the trailer of Spellbound

FURTHER REVIEW
"In discussing the reason why Salvador Dali was brought on to help design the dream sequence setting, Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut that it surely was not for publicity reasons as Selznick initially believed. Hitchcock wanted the “Dali architectural sharpness” to juxtapose the soft photography of George Barnes, the director of photography for the film. Phillips points out in his book that Hitchcock “wanted the dream photographed in the vivid way Dali painted it” and that Hitchcock noticed that traditionally “dream scenes in films had always been enveloped in swirling smoke and filmed slightly out of focus to make them look misty and blurred. ‘But dreams are not like that; they are very, very vivid’” (117-118). The dream that Dali helped with designing is the incredibly vivid dream, as Hitchcock would want it, of John. Constance and a friend of hers, Dr. Alexander Brulov (Michael Chekhov) use their knowledge of psychoanalysis to interpret the dream which takes place in a gambling house with giant painted eyes on curtains that hang on the walls. The dream turns out to be almost entirely too helpful..."

See the complete review


Finally view this interview with actress Ingrid Bergman as she praises Alfred Hitchcock.

View the interview
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

ABOUT THE DUNEDIN FILM SOCIETY

ADMISSION
Free to members. (The 29 remaining screenings for 2023 are also free.)

TO JOIN
Simply arrive ten minutes before the screening begins with payment (cash only please) and fill in a membership form. Subscriptions are as follows:
Full-year waged membership: $65
Full-year student/unwaged membership: $55
Full-year junior membership (for senior secondary school students with ID only, subject to censorship restrictions): $30
Three-movie pass (may be shared by up to three people until all three admissions are used up — no expiry date): $25
You can also make a direct payment into our account (06-0942-0696013-00) – just put your first name, surname and membership type as a reference.

EXTRA DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE
Waged and student/unwaged members will receive discounts at Rialto Cinemas (Monday to Friday).
Please see our website for further details

**To get to the Castle 1 Theatre: walk up between the University of Otago’s Arts building (Burns) and Information Services building (Central Library), on Albany Street.

WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK!... on this screening, or any other Dunedin Film Society showing, on [email protected]
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Copyright © 2022

Our mailing address is:
Dunedin Film Society
PO BOX 6139
Dunedin North
Dunedin, Otago 9059
New Zealand

Add us to your address book

06/02/2023

Kia ora,

Are you interested in watching great movies from around the world?

If so, the Dunedin Film Society is the place to be, and everyone is welcome to join us!

Some of the highlights of our programme, which includes films from the 1920s to the present, are:
Two 1970s cult movies, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man;
Two Japanese masterpieces, Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Shohei Imamura’s Pigs and Battleships (1961);
Three great African films, Mandabi (Senegal, 1968), Le Franc and The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Senegal, 1994/1999) and Tilaï (Burkina Faso, 1990);
Three classic Australian films, Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979), Ann Turner’s Celia (1989) and Nadia Tass’ The Big Steal (1990);
Three fascinating documentaries, Collective (Romania), The Meaning of Hi**er (Germany) and Spaceship Earth (USA);
Four Hollywood classics, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951), starring Kirk Douglas, Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, and John Huston’s The African Queen (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn;
Five films that represent the best of contemporary cinema: Girlhood (France), Never Gonna Snow Again (Poland), Honeyland (North Macedonia), Bait (UK) and The Wild Goose Lake (China);
And more!

Most of these films have never been shown in Dunedin, or have only received a very limited Festival release. For more information on each of the films, please see our website: http://www.dunedinfilmsociety.org.nz

To join the Dunedin Film Society, you can make a direct payment into our bank account (06-0942-0696013-00). Please put your first name, surname and membership type as a reference. Or simply arrive 10 minutes before any of our screenings, fill in a form, and pay the selected membership fee at the door (payment by cash only please). You can also purchase a Dunedin Film Society membership from the reception staff at the OUSA office on the main campus of the University of Otago (cash only).

Just like last year, a full waged membership (gaining its holder free admission to all 31 of our 2023 screenings) will cost $65, while a student/unwaged membership will be just $55 – a cost of less than $2.10 per film, one of the best entertainment deals in town! Junior memberships will also be available for $30 (for senior secondary students with ID only, subject to censorship restrictions). There is no additional screening fee.

Full waged and student/unwaged Dunedin Film Society members will also receive discounted ticket prices at Rialto Cinemas (Monday to Friday), as well as at Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival (August 2023).

If you only want to see a few of this year’s films, a 3-Movie Pass ($25) will also be available. A 3-Movie Pass can be upgraded to a full waged or student/unwaged membership by simply paying the difference in price. A 3-Movie Pass can be shared by up to three people and has no expiry date. (But 3-Movie Pass holders are not entitled to the additional discounts listed above.)

During 2023, our screenings will take place on Wednesday in the Castle 1 Lecture Theatre, located between the University of Otago’s Arts building (Burns) and Information Services building (Central Library), on Albany Street, at 7.30pm.

Please help to ensure the continuing survival of this volunteer-run non-profit charity by joining the Dunedin Film Society and by passing this message on to your colleagues and friends!

taking you further into film

19/12/2022

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Andrey Zvyagintsev's

LEVIATHAN
(Левиафан, Leviafan)

(Russia, 2014, 141 mins, M violence & s*xual references)
Wednesday 21 December, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

In the haunting landscape of Russia’s north coast, Kolya lives and works on a small but desirable piece of waterside property, which the corrupt local mayor has claimed for the town. A blackly funny tale of one man’s struggle in a corrupt world.

“It’s a contemporary Russian tale, set on the shores of the Barents Sea, about the unholy powers of the state and the church bearing down on one man, Kolia (Alexey Serebryakov) and his family, after he dares to challenge an attempt by the local mayor, Vadim (Roman Maydanov), to take his home from him. The film’s title borrows from that of political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s greatest work and helps itself to his view that life would be ‘nasty, brutish and short’ without good government and an organised society. It’s a tragedy with a hint of black comedy that moves at its own, sometimes surprising, pace and rhythm, and it lands a bruising punch on modern Russia… Like [Zvyagintsev’s] Elena before it, this is a parable, but it’s a grander affair unafraid to wander down some unusual paths with all the detail and density of a great novel” (Dave Calhoun, Time Out).

11/12/2022

WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING

Claudia Weill's

GIRLFRIENDS

(USA, 1978, 88 min, R16)
Wednesday 14 December, 7.30PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**

Please note that wearing a face mask is voluntary, but encouraged

This comic tale of a photographer trying to make it in New York follows Susan, who finds herself drifting in both life and love when her best friend and roommate leaves to get married.

“A wonder of American independent cinema by Claudia Weill (who, when she was admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a director in 1981, was one of only four women ever to have received that honor), Girlfriends is a remarkably authentic vision of female relationships that has become a touchstone for makers of an entire subgenre of films and television shows about young women trying to make it in the big city. This 1970s New York time capsule captures the complexities and contradictions of women’s lives and relationships with wry humor and refreshing frankness” (criterion.com).