The blog and the Community

Hi all !!
Welcome to the Cinema-Club blog. We have decided to open this as our own web space and to invite all of you to participate actively in the organisation of the Welcoming Cinema Club.
You can enter and add all your opinions about the viewed movies and also make suggestions for the forthcoming. We hope that you will take the best out of it !!
See you at the screenings!

Wednesday 31 October 2012

The Changeling (Canada 1980) 124´ 01/11/2012

This film was dierected by Peter Medak and tells the story of Dr. Russell (George C. Scott) a composer living in New York City who moves cross-country to Washington State following the deaths of his wife and daughter in a traffic accident while on a winter vacation in upstate New York. In suburban Seattle, Russell rents a large, old and eerie Victorian-era mansion and begins piecing his life back together. However, Dr. Russell soon discovers that he has unexpected company in his new home, the ghost of a murdered child.

The Changeling won the first ever Genie Award for Best Canadian film. When Martin Scorsese was asked to make a list of the films that he considered the scariest ones, he chose, among others, The Changeling.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzgXVosQOU

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Moolaadé (Burkina Faso 2004) 120' 25/10/2012

This film was directed by the the Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembène. It tells the story of Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), the second of her husband's three wives. She is the most intelligent, humorous, charming, and is also loved most by her husband, a temperate enlightened man. Her nubile daughter, Amasatou, has got engaged, although she had not undergone female genital cutting, which is considered a prerequisite for marriage by the local tradition. Collé opposes this practise. This has led the elders in the village, men as well as women, to despise her daughter. Amasatou herself unceasingly requests to have her genitals cut to secure her social status and marriagability, but Collé remains unmoved. She is willing to protect not only her daughter from the life-threatening genital cutting but also four little girls who joined her to escape this practise. Collé pulls up a symbolic witchcraft, the colorful rope Moolaadé, across the gate of the family's premises. Moolaadé (pulaar word that means protection, the right to asylum) interdicts the old women, who carry out the practise and who have been searching for the girls, from entering the house.
See full size image


















As this month it is the Month of the Black History, in the Cinema Club we have decided to screened this movie. You will see in Colle the powerful woman that the Senegalese writer Leopold Senghor, father of the negritud, described in his poem Black Woman
Naked woman, black woman.

Clothed with your colour which is life,


with your form which is beauty!

In your shadow I have grown up; the

gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.

And now, high up on the sun-baked

pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon,

I come upon you, my Promised Land,

And your beauty strikes me to the heart

like the flash of an eagle.

Naked woman, dark woman

Firm-fleshed ripe fruit, sombre raptures

of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth

Savannah stretching to clear horizons,

savannah shuddering beneath the East Wind's

eager caresses

Carved tom-tom, taut tom-tom, muttering

under the Conqueror's fingers

Your solemn contralto voice is the

spiritual song of the Beloved.

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil that no breath ruffles, calm oil on the

athlete's flanks, on the flanks of the Princes of Mali

Gazelle limbed in Paradise, pearls are stars on the

night of your skin.

Delights of the mind, the glinting of red

gold against your watered skin

Under the shadow of your hair, my care

is lightened by the neighbouring suns of your eyes.

Naked woman, black woman,

I sing your beauty that passes, the form

that I fix in the Eternal,

Before jealous fate turn you to ashes to
feed the roots of life.

The filn won Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. A part from that, it was well acclaimed by the critics.
"Sembene provides not only a fascinating glimpse into the culture of tropical Africa, but also a powerful account of the social turmoil which bubbles beneath the surface." Jamie Woolley. BBC. 31/05/2005.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCgCZVPQk7s






Saturday 13 October 2012

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. (Australia, 1994) ) 99´ 11/10/2012

 
LGBT, an organisation that tries to support lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender people who live in, work in and travel in Edinburgh, will host this Australian film.
This comedy-drama film was directed by Stephan Elliot and tells the story of Anthony "Tick" Belrose (Hugo Weaving), using the drag pseudonym of Mitzi Del Bra, is a Sydney-based drag queen who accepts an offer to perform his drag act at Lasseter's Hotel Casino Resort managed by a female friend named Marion (Sarah Chadwick) in Alice Springs, a remote town in central Australia. After persuading his friends and fellow performers, Bernadette Basinger (Terence Stamp), a recently bereaved transsexual woman, and Adam Whitely (Guy Pearce), a younger drag queen who goes under the drag name Felicia Jollygoodfellow, to join him, the three set out in a large tour bus which Adam christens "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" for a four-week run in the Australian Outback town.
In 1995, the film won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 67th Academy Awards.was ranked at 7th on Logo's 50 Greatest Films with an LGBT theme, and 10th on AfterElton's Fifty Greatest Gay Movies list. Despite the fact that the film has been criticised for perceived racist and sexist stereotyping, it was noted for helping to bring Australian cinema to world attention and for its positive portrayal of LGBT individuals, helping to introduce LGBT themes to a mainstream audience. 
"It's often very funny, looks great and is played to perfection." David Parkinson. Empire Magazine. 01/01/2000.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-Zzasrky8
More information about LGBT: http://www.lgbthealth.org.uk/

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Hotel Rwanda. (USA, 2005) 121´ 04/10/2012

This film, that was directed by Terry George, is based on real life events in Rwanda during the spring of 1994. It stars Don Cheadle as hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, who attempts to rescue his fellow citizens from the ravages of Rwandan Civil War that brought hutus face to face with tutsis.


The film won the People´s Choice Award at 2004 Toronto Film Festival. It also received good reviews.
"The emotion comes from Don Cheadle's thrilling portrait of ordinary heroism, a performance that's matched only by the magnificent Sophie Okonedo as his wife Tatiana". Paul Arendt. BBC. 22/02/2005

See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2vMvyQeb1U

Be awere that the film contains violent scenes.